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7 Responses to 'Hannspree 28″ Class LCD HDTV ST289MUB'

1. Edward G. Taylor - December 4th, 2010 at 6:37 am

   Rating

   My rating is relative to other TV’s & Monitor’s I’ve owned. This is the biggest screen I’ve ever had. The picture is excellent, the setup was very easy, and it is very nice looking. It was shipped promptly, and arrived with all parts as advertized by TigerDirect (purchased through Amazon). There were no dead pixels, etc.

   We use it primarily as a TV…hooked to Comcast Cable. We have watched DVD movies on it (no BluRay), watched a slideshow of our new grandson via USB Thumbdrive, streamed a movie from netflix (via Nintendo Wii), and used it as a PC Monitor. It has worked flawlessly, and looked sharp in every instance.

   I am NOT a highly qualified reviewer…i.e. little experience with HDTV’s, etc. Having said that, I am a very technically oriented person (USMC electronics, Network Administrator, Major Telecom provider technician) and can say without equivocation that I would buy another of these in a heartbeat. I very well may become a fanatic for Hannspree.

2. William George - December 5th, 2010 at 4:10 am

   Rating

   This TV is a great size for a small livingroom or bedroom, but I did have some disappointing issues with it which I wasn’t expecting. For background I am using this in my living room, connected to a home theater PC I built. Here is a summary:

   Pros –

   Resolution (1920×1200) – This is great for use as a computer monitor, as you can see more than 10% more vertical pixels; a screen this size, resolution and price range is hard to come by. It also goes great with older 4:3 (SD) TV signals, as you get to see a larger picture than a 1920×1080 screen of the same size.

   HDMI Inputs – These look great! I only tried this after trying VGA, which I was not happy with (see below), but it is definitely the way to go if possible.

   Weight – I was surprised how light this felt, compared to my ~5 year old Viewsonic of the same screen size. Much easier to position, and I imagine it would be better for wall-mounting as well (though I’ve not tried that).

   Horizontal Viewing Angle – You can go nearly 180 degrees to the right or left and the image still looks great (color-wise). Much improved over my last TV, though I think this is pretty standard these days.

   Cons –

   Resolution – While it is a positive, the non-16:9 resolution also brings some problems. For example, most of the current crop of game consoles aren’t built to handle that. You’ll either get an image stretched vertically a little bit or small black bars on the top and bottom.

   VGA Input – I’d been using the VGA input on my previous TV, as it pre-dated HDMI, but I found that with this screen the pixels wobbled. You couldn’t really notice with TV or movies, but viewing text was very distracting. I tried the on-screen controls, which did have some things to help compensate, but I couldn’t remove the shakiness. Do *not* get this if you need to use VGA.

   No Sleep Mode – The last TV I had, and every monitor I’ve owned in at least the last decade, has had some form of sleep mode. Usually they will go into this if there is no signal for a few seconds, and it helps save power as well as the backlight. This TV, however, just sits on a bright blue screen with yellow text indicating there is no signal… and I’ve emailed their tech support to make sure this was how it is supposed to work. This is *almost* a deal-breaker for me – I really considered returning the monitor because of it, and it is responsible for 1 and 1/2 of the stars I took off the rating. There is no excuse today for a screen not to go into sleep mode, and manually turning the TV off whenever you wander away from it seems like a waste of time. Maybe this wouldn’t be an issue for folks using it as a pure TV, but for HTPC users it is a serious issue.

   Controls – There is no button to simply toggle inputs. The only option is to open a menu, move the selection to the input you want, and then select it. This seems rather slow and inconvenient, but maybe they didn’t want to clutter the remote further.

   Vertical Viewing Angle – If you are much more than 10% or so off of straight-on there is pretty serious color change. This seems to happen a bit more than with my older TV, though it really only affects me when I lay on the floor and look up at the TV (playing with my young son). Viewing from below is worse than from above, as well.

   Hopefully the above info helps someone else make a good decision – whether you choose to purchase this or something else!

3. charles' - December 5th, 2010 at 7:56 am

   Rating

   This is a wonderful tv! What a great deal! I gave it 4 stars because I have only had it for a week and it is but it isn’t a wide screen tv (16:10). Make sure your read the specs before you buy. I am happy with this purchase because I new what I was buying. This Tv is made in Tawain! I had a 27inch Flat panel Tube tv from Curtis Mathias,and this TV puts it to shame. It is also a HDTV at 1080p and you can surely notice it. The quality of the TV and packing are great! Now I will need to look at a Blue Ray DVD Player. One final note: it uses UPS to ship, I would recommend you have it drop off at a Customer Care Center (check out the Web site) and you pick it up rather than have it delievered to your door.

   Aurora, Co.

4. Colinm5 - December 5th, 2010 at 6:17 pm

   Rating

   This is an excellent tv! I bought one for my work place to replace an older and smaller LCD tv. We didn’t have a lot of money to spend and were VERY surprised with the quality of this TV! You can find a lot of cheap LCD tvs out there, and I was not familiar with HANNSPREE products other than knowing that they existed, so I was hesitant, but after reading reviews I was satisfied it would be worth a try.

   Notes:

   Usage: This TV has run approximately 12hrs a day for 2 months now and has had no problems.

   Image Quality: As far as we can tell, this tv also has excellent image quality. Our satellite receiver is standard definition, and there are some lines occasionally on the tv screen, but we believe this to be the satellite signal quality, not the tv. More than likely an HD receiver would make a perfect picture. DVD quality is crystal clear! This tv also has a wide viewing angle, so you can be seated almost anywhere!

   Sound Quality: Quality and volume range is excellent, unlike many other cheap LCDs out there.

   Other Features: Adjustable image quality, the remote control was easily programmed to control our DVD player and Satellite receiver. Many different connection types: S-video, HDMI, PC, component video and composite video, coaxial, etc.

   All in all: Excellent value for the money! Will be buying another soon for my house and looking into other HANNSPREE products!

5. BUYIT - December 5th, 2010 at 11:29 pm

   Rating

   I am sorry, but every time i would read a review that people have written about this television giving it a rating less than 5 stars i say to myself, “What an idiot.” Not because i thought differently about the tv (i didn’t even own it yet), it was because after my research of the Hannspree website i found the tv has a very good aspect ratio control feature. I thought all the people were idiots because they rated this product lower than 5 stars because they were too dumb to change their aspect ratio. I was right, in fact this tv has a setting called “wide” meaning wide screen and so a 16:9 aspect ratio. I bought the tv and really hate everyone who is willing to call themselves a technophile or is even reviewing product with what seems very little experience dealing with the product. This tv has 16:10 so people can more easily view the screen like a computer’s when a computer is hooked up. Hannspree is just trying to make themselves known and offer a very affordable excellent quality tv. Hannspree even makes their own lcd panels. None of the big manufacturers do that (Sony, LG…). Hannspree even gives you an HDMI. Now you may be thinking, “it is probably a cheap, slow, one foot long HDMI cable”. No… this is a six foot long HIGH SPEED HDMI that if i could review seperately i would award it a 5/5 also. I’m a real person just like you. I don’t work for Hannspree and don’t plan to. I am a sixteen year-old technophile writing this review on my mom’s account.

6. Mr. H - December 8th, 2010 at 1:51 am

   Rating

   When I purchased this TV I didn’t really know what I would be getting. The 1080p was a great selling point for me but I took a risk with its low contrast ratio. Turns out, this TV is just garbage. The 1080p isn’t really 1080p. They say that you may lose image quality if your TV can’t support 1080p but you are using it anyway. I used this TV to it’s full potential with blu-ray and HD gaming with my Xbox 360. Very disgusted at the picture quality this TV produced for 1080p. The picture became very pixelated and made my brand new video games look like games from 10 years ago.

   My other 720p television looks way better than this, and that is not full HD as this TV claims itself to be. If you want true HD experience from 1080p, you better be ready to buy something with 100,000:1 contrast ratio and at-least 120hz. If you buy anything lower than this, your 1080p will mean nothing and will look worse than 720p.

   For simply watching TV and not taking this television to its maximum potential, you wont notice any difference at all. HD cable looks like it should, although I am very sure the cable looks more clear on my other 720p tv because it has a higher contrast ratio than this. Also, this TV has a aspect ratio of 16:10. This is unheard of. This is partly the reason of a worse screen. There are options to change it to “wide” or a few other things, BUT it puts black bars on your TV to make up for it. If you want to lose size then why not just buy a smaller TV that can actually handle a 16:9 ratio. To add on to settings, this TV has VERY MINIMAL customization of picture and audio. You can choose their preset settings, but those are either too bright or too dim, and you cannot edit those. This forces you to create your own picture setup, and there isn’t much you can change to make it better.

   So to bottom line this: if you are going to take the TV to the max, this TV is NOT for you. If you are going to use the TV casually, this TV is NOT for you either. You are better off buying a 720p with higher contrast ratio for the SAME PRICE and I guarantee you will get better picture

7. TTP3317 - December 9th, 2010 at 3:39 am

   Rating

   I purchased this TV because of its size, not its price, but I found no other TV in its price range I liked better.

   This is is a true HD TV with built in digital tuner and a brilliant 10,000:1 contrast ratio. Its refresh rate is great, I haven’t noticed and ghosting. I get my programming off the airwaves, no cable or satelite, and the HD picture is amazing, real eye candy. HD football games are incredible.

   The one and only con I have about the set is that IT DONES NOT HAVE RCA AUDIO OUTPUTS TO CONNECT TO A SURROUND SOUND SYSTEM. This is why I give it only four stars. It has a headphone jack that can be adapted to RCA, but it mutes the TV speakers requiring the surround sound to be on for all viewing.

   I find the 16:10 aspect ratio as opposed to the typical 16:9 is not an issue. Widescreen programming on WIDE aspect looks OK to me. Go to any TV store and watch, all the sets have distortion on some of the programming beacause different programs come in different aspect ratios, like unto DVD movies that come in FULL and WIDESCREEN. The sets all have a variety of aspect ratios. You either get used to the distortion (people look tall and narrow or short and wide) or you adjust the aspect ratio on the TV set. This Hannspree set has FULL, NORMAL, WIDE, ZOOM, ZOOM-1, SUBTITLE and AUTO. For TV viewing I like the AUTO setting. Some contemporary broadcasts are still full screen, many are widescreen. The AUTO setting adjusts to both.

   I purchased a BluRay DVD player at the same time as this TV. The sales person tried hard to sell me an HDMI cable to make the connection to the TV. Don’t fall for that, this set comes with a good quality HDMI cable, something that may be unique to this set.

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