28" Widescreen At Under £300! (Beko 28426 ND)

Member Name: kenjohn

Product:	Beko 28426 ND
Date:	30/05/02 (2696 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quality at a budget price

Disadvantages: Nothing so far

~ ~ A little while back I wrote an opinion about my new Minoka DVD player, that I purchased for the amazingly low price of only €159, (£101 Sterling) and which now allows me to watch DVD’s with a practically flawless picture.
But what was still missing in the ‘mad cabbie’ household was a widescreen TV, in order to take full advantage of the DVD format, and also to allow me to watch my beloved golf, not to mention the forthcoming World Cup matches, in all their glory.
I save up my one and two Euro coins (tips in the taxi) in order to buy the small luxuries in life in a painless fashion, and had started to save for a widescreen TV as soon as the DVD player was purchased in the January sales.
I had in mind a 28” Philips, the cheapest price for which I’d been able to unearth here in Ireland being around the €599 (£383 Sterling) mark.
About a month ago, I popped into our local discount electrical warehouse, (Power City) purely for a skulk around to see what they had on offer, as I was still about €250 short of the required amount to buy the Philips widescreen TV I had set my heart on.
So imagine my surprise when I spotted a similar TV on offer at only €379 (£242 Sterling)
It was a Beko 28” widescreen, with Stereo Surround sound, and certainly looked the part, with a crystal clear picture.
Further enquiries of one of the sales staff elicited the information that it was a display model, but that if I returned a few days later, they would have the latest model in stock at only €399, (£255 Sterling) which gave you the added benefit of Virtual Dolby Surround sound.
So in the meantime I took the opportunity to scan the web for more information, using both dooyoo and Ciao, and, of course, Google.
There were only a couple of opinions here at dooyoo, and none that I could find at Ciao, but what I unearthed at Google decided me to go ahead and make the purchase.

><br>~ ~ Beko are a Turkish manufacturer, who have been making amazing inroads to the European export market in the last few years, and who are now rated as the fourth-largest television manufacturer in Europe, exporting to over 50 countries, and with projected sales figures in 2002 of over four million TV sets, a staggering 50% increase in their 2001 sales.
Their main export markets are the UK, Spain, France and Germany, and they recently (1999) invested $10 million in new technology to improve the quality of their products, and to help them compete with the likes of Sony, Philips, etc.
So it was obvious that I wouldn’t be buying some second rate import from the Far East, thrown together using a mish mash of different components from various manufacturers, but a good quality product that was fast increasing in popularity.
So the deal was concluded, and the new widescreen TV purchased just in time for the World Cup festivities!

~ ~ The Beko 28” widescreen (model No. 28426ND) comes in either a silver or slate grey cabinet, so it’ll blend in with most colour schemes or decorations in your living room. (I bought the slate grey)
As well as being a widescreen, it is also classed as ‘superflat’, which means you don’t get as much picture distortion as you do with an ordinary ‘rounded’ TV screen.
It was simplicity itself to set up. I simply plugged it in (plug supplied) and hooked it up to my cable decoder box with one of the two Scart connectors at the back. (Scart lead also supplied) I used the second Scart connector for my DVD and Video.
The Scart connectors give you a far better picture and sound quality that you get with the old-fashioned cable connections on older models.
There is an onscreen menu where you can adjust all the settings, such as colour, sound, contrast, brightness, sharpness, and so on, and it has a quick set up facility which searches out and stores all the
TV channels it can find automatically, with a simple press of a button on the remote. If the order in which they are stored doesn’t suit your personal preference, then it’s easy enough to change them manually.
And if the channel isn’t tuned in quite right, then there is a fine tuner that allows you to get the best picture possible.
It also has a 100-programme memory, so even if you have digital TV (I still use cable) then you have more that enough space to store all your favourite channels.
There’s a child lock facility too, so if there are any channels that you don’t want the kids to access, you simply block them.
The sound will usually adjust itself depending on what programme, video, or DVD you are watching. So if the DVD has Dolby Sound, the TV will pick up on this without you having to do a thing.
There’s an equaliser that allows you to adjust the sound just the way you like it for different sorts of programmes, such as sports, cinema, and speech. So you can have more (or less) bass or treble, and also adjust the balance of the speakers.
A ‘picture format’ facility allows you to manually adjust the size of the picture to suit whatever it is you’re watching, the preset being a 16:9 format. There is also a 4:3 format, and a large letterbox mode for watching video clips. A zoom facility also lets you zoom in on anything that takes you’re fancy. (don’t be naughty, you lot!)

~ ~ One feature that I particularly like is the headphone socket.
On my old Philips TV, if you plugged in the jack for the headphones, then it automatically cut off the sound to the speakers, so that nobody else could listen to the programme. With the Beko, you can leave the headphones permanently plugged in, without affecting the normal sound settings. This means that if the wee lass and my wife are only half watching a movie, for instance, and yapping away and distracting me, then I c
an slip on my headphones to cut out the annoying background chatter, while still allowing them to view as well.
I have a pair of Philips cordless headphones, and when I’m watching a DVD, I can also adjust the sound to my own personal preference using the onscreen menu, which is great.
And talking about DVD’s. The widescreen format makes them an absolute joy to watch, and with the Dolby sound, it’s probably as near as you’re going to get to actually sitting in the cinema. One drawback is the amount of money I’m now spending weekly at my local video shop, as I’m still at the “novelty” stage, and tend to rent out a new DVD movie most evenings. (at about €4.75 a pop for a new release!) But on the plus side, I’ve now many more films to write opinions about here at dooyoo. (heh, heh)
And who would want to watch sports live anymore, when the large widescreen gives you a better view than if you were there in person? Well, I would actually, but you probably get my meaning. It’s as near as you’ll get to the real thing! Roll on the World Cup and the US Open Golf Championship!
The TV also has Fastext (as distinct from ordinary Teletext) which is useful if you’re looking for information or news in a hurry.
Other features include a sleep timer, which will turn off your TV into standby mode at a preset interval of your choice. (up to two hours in five-minute intervals) Ant it will turn itself off automatically a short time after a channel ceases to broadcast.

~ ~ But by far the single biggest factor in my decision to buy this particular model was the amazingly low price of only €399. (£255 Sterling) Considering that the next cheapest comparable model (Philips) was all of €200 more expensive, and didn’t seem to carry any extra features that warranted the price differential, and that the picture and sound quality of the Beko was at least as good, I saw n
o reason to pay out extra money for no good reason.
As I said in my opinion about my Minoka DVD player, I think that a lot of the time you are simply paying for the “brand” name when you buy more expensive electrical goods, and that the cheaper models are at least their equal most of the time.
It also came with a full year’s guarantee on parts and labour.

~ ~ I’ve done a little digging around on your behalf, and you can purchase one of these TV’s in the UK for as little as £289 from Tesco!
Either in store or online. (www. Tesco.com)
Highly recommended by the ‘mad cabbie’ if you’re looking for a good widescreen/flatscreen TV at a budget price.

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