Matsui M22DVDB19

Had no problem with both TVs I own. One of the best features that I only came across by chance was that if you plug a USB stick in the back you suddenly have recordable TV! Bonus. So we can record prrogrammes using one of the TVs in the bedroom now!

For the money you can't really complain about any of the shortcomings listed elsewhere.

The DVD player worked fine for about 13 months then packed in. Will not read discs or even realise that one is in. HAve had the back off but 'no serviceable user parts' inside so cant fix myself. Its also asembled in a way that makes taking the dvd unit out/apart would risk breaking other parts (screen etc). It looks as if the mech for moving the read head has gone faulty. HAve asked about for some quotes to fix but usually in excess of £20-£30 and can buy a new dvd unit from Asda for less so thats what we did. Other than this its a nice little bedroom tv for the kids.

If you want to have TV freeview, DVD and HD, this package is fantastic value for money. The screen quality is brilliant, in fact better than some I have seen at triple the price!!!

Its packed full of features, more than the average user will ever need. If you want a great all round product, then this is the package for you. Its our main TV, we watch lots of films and sport, and its really out performed our expectations.

Ours didn't pick up more than the basic freeview channels (probably our aerial not the TV - our friends works perfectly in a different property) but we have virgin media HD so use that mainly.

It is great for recording to a USB hard drive, effectively making it a freeview digital recorder and enables you to pause and rewind live TV.

My big issue is that there doesn't seem to be any information on what video formats you can play back from the hard drive. In the manual it clearly displays an 'AVI' file in the image associated with the section about movie payback. I've tired and none of my files play.

I have tried AVI, MP4, MOV... all the basics. Really annoying. But again, this probably wont be an issue with 90% of users! Any information on this / what file types play is gratefully appreciated.

Recommend this product to anyone.

I bought this tv in June for my bedroom. It is perfect size for me at a viewing distance of around 1 - 2 meters. Below I will explain the pro's and con's;

Connectivity - 5* for connectivity as there is a port for just about everything, scart, tv arial, AV, HDMI, USB, Pc and 1 other one which I don't even know what goes in there.

Picture quality - 4* The picture quality is awesome when you get it onto the right settings, You can perfectly see the difference from a standard detail TV and this HD ready TV. The only problem with the picture is the constant adjusting that has to be done to get the right brightness for certain devices.

Style - 4* The style is AMAZING. There is no logo's or company name on there to distract viewing. But the reason for the 1* taken off is because of the blue LED light in the bottom right hand corner of the frame, it can get distracting but you can fix that with a black sticker.

Sound - 3* I don't know why people are complaining, the sound is good for a small space like a bedroom. The only bad thing about the sound is that the lowest volume isn't that low which is a inconvenience for thin walls.

Features - 3* It has loads of features such as recording and multi media. The thing that it is lacking is support of divx and media formats, it can't even play mp4!

Value - 5* Extremely good value and I recommend to a friend.

I have had this TV, the Matsui 22" HD READY DIGITAL LCD TV WITH DVD PLAYER M22DVDB19 for only a couple of days and it has been quite a roller-coaster ride of highs and lows so far - sometimes very pleased, sometimes very disappointed.

Image quality - 4 stars. I am not seen an HD video on it yet - 4 stars is for Freeview TV and maybe the limitations that lost a star are more to do with the freeview signals than the TV?

Sound quality - 3 stars consisting of 4 stars for the TV speakers (clear but not very powerful), 5 stars for the headphone sound (my own headphones!) and 1 star for the SCART audio out signal - more on that later.

Features - 4 stars. A good number of features some of which I have not even tried yet but I am one of those never-happy guys that when they include a DVD player I wish they would have included a DVD recorder, and a VHS player/recorder as well. Oh and no Freesat either, not that I have satellite TV yet but it would be nice to have for the future.

Ease of use - 2 stars consisting of 4 stars for easy of using the remote - most of the basic remote functions are easy enough to understand and use once you find and press the correct button but the remote is too narrow and the writing and some of the buttons are too small. 1 star for ease of setting the audio up to play through your hi-fi (for which it helps to be an experienced audio engineer) and 1 star for ease of setting up the USB DVR hard disc drive (for which it helps to be an experienced computer user).

Value for money - 5 stars when you take into account the low cost of adding on a DVR.

Now the tale of ups and downs.

I wanted a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) with my new LCD TV and the Matsui 22" has a USB port for that purpose. The manual SAYS that you can use up to a 1TB which is 1024GB of memory hard disc - which is a lot, and Currys have one for £59.60 so I bought that but it didn't work - "Device is not ready!" the TV flashed at me on screen every time I tried to use the USB DVR.

I took the 1TB hard disc drive back to the shop and confirmed it would not work with the shop's display Matsui 22" LCD TV either.

So then we tried a 320GB portable hard disc which takes its power from the USB port of the TV - it seemed to work.

So then we tried a 500GB which otherwise was identical to the 1TB disc drive (a desktop external USB hard disc drive with its own power plug) and that seemed to work.

We tried another shop 1TB disc drive and that didn't work either so we came to the conclusion that maybe the 1TB was actually too big and the manual was not quite right when it says

Quote:

"The maximum supported storage space of the hard disc is 1TB"

It looks like 1TB is over the maximum for the TV. In fact, to be precise, 1TB is 1024GB and the disc was only about 900 odd GB so it was well under 1TB so something is not right somewhere with Matsui 22" LCD TV 1TB-maximum boast.

Anyway I did a swap in the shop, returning the 1TB and taking a 500GB and pocketing the difference in price and left the store feeling pretty pleased as things were looking up.

Well it was not really smooth sailing when I got home because I still found I had to format the 500GB to FAT32 using my PC and that FAT32 formatting utility I had found earlier. The TV didn't cope with a 500GB formatted as NTFS either, though I could have sworn that this was the same hard disc drive that we had working in the shop but maybe the crafty salesman gave me a different, out of the box, 500GB from the demonstration 500GB he was using in the shop (already formatted and initialised to work with the Matsui 22)?

I am not sure that is the way to sell this TV and DVR to the public as many people don't have PCs or can't find their way to strange utilities to format disc drives.

Surely, the way to go is to have FAT32 formatted disc drives (optimised for Matsui DVR use) ready and waiting in the shop?

Then after formatting to FAT32 it seemed to hang up while plugged in and the TV was telling me it was "initialising the file system", asking me "please wait" but I got bored of waiting after half an hour and switched the TV on and off and there it was, working, my own LCD TV and DVR!

So this is the deal I got from Currys - a 22" LCD TV, with DVD player, costing £169 and a £45 500GB hard disc drive DVR total cost £214, excellent value for money, so long as it keeps working and has no nasty surprises in for me.

To comment on other issues I can have seen others report in a few bad reviews of this TV. Apparently others report playing DVDs and the sound goes mute unexpectedly. Well to check this I played a DVD all the way through with no audio problems last night - admittedly that was just the one DVD, but DVD playing looks OK so far.

One issue I have found with the Matsui 22" LCD TV is quite serious but there is a work-around if you know how.

The Matsui's 22" LCD TV SCART outputs a signal for the TV sound which should be handy for playing the sound through Hi-Fi speakers for a louder and bigger sound, for easy listening without having to be in front of the screen all the time.

Imagine my disappointment then when I discovered that the sound on the Matsui 22" LCD TV SCART output is distorted because the gain on the SCART audio pre-amplifier is set too high.

Whether this is because my own TV in particular has been poorly adjusted at the factory, whether there is a variable resistor inside the board which can be adjusted (possibly invalidating my warranty if I opened it up to see) to bring the gain down and stop the distortion, whether it is not adjustable even on the board and the designer has put the wrong value of fixed resistor in the design of the Matsui LCD TV SCART audio output pre-amplifier - none of that I can be sure about.

The only thing which is sure is that the amplified sound from the audio signal out of the SCART socket on my TV is unbearable. It grates on my ears after 10 minutes or so.

The sound out of the TV's own speaker is sweet and pleasant enough if not very powerful.

I won't niggle about this fault because there is a work around.

The signal out of the TV's headphone socket is not distorted and what is more, the amplification of the headphone output voltage is adjustable via the TV's volume control. So setting the TV volume to, oh, one third full volume or something allows you to use the TV headphone output as an input to your Hi Fi amplifier instead of using the SCART output. Sneaky huh?

There after I am using the Hi Fi volume control as my only TV speaker volume control and I leave the TV volume alone mostly.

I have bought a headphone splitter 1-to-2 plug from an audio specialist shop (£3) to replicate the free headphone socket on the TV. The input on the hi-fi won't take much current from the headphone socket so it should continue to work much as before.

Well being forced to use such a work-around is not ideal and the problem with the over-amplification and distortion of the SCART audio out is a fault of the kind that if there were too many of them you'd be wanting to return the TV and get your money back.

Meanwhile, for me, because I know how to work around, it is easier for me to work around than take the TV back and see if another TV would be better adjusted or if it is a model fault.

So far, now that the USB DVR is working, the SCART audio out is only one of the features which is failing badly.

All in all though, the TV and DVR is shaping up as a good deal. Still, it is early days so I will keep you informed

People sometimes underestimate the Matsui name, it only being a brand name and not a real company.

Well I must have had my old Matsui colour TV for maybe 10 years or something and although there is a warning label inside the back cover warning people about the X-ray danger of watching this TV too close and for too long, causing me to shield it using 1mm steel around the sides and 1cm glass at the front, it is a good TV to have lasted so long.

Long live Matsui TVs into the LCD generation!

Nice looking TV! Big on features! Major sound problems! When watching at a low volume or during quiet scenes the sound goes off! If they sort this problem out they will have a top seller! Until the time they fix this problem i would NOT recommend buying it! Its a shame because its a really nice looking TV packed with features for a budget price!

I sell TV's for a living, and would love to raise a few concerns. Firstly, if you're going to buy the cheapest, most value orientated TV on earth, DO NOT complain that it is of poor quality. this tv is value max.

Picked one up from Currys on 14/2, found when changing channels it either switched off, went to a blue screen or a back lit screen. Then no amound of pressing buttons would revive it, you had to go and manually switch it off and then you would regain control. Took it back on 16/2 got another which I took back for a refund on 17/2 as it did exactly the same. Otherwise the tele seemed ok apart from this fundamental problem.

bought this tv in october for my son and really pleased no sound problems like mentioned in other reviews but some what surprised about the comment regarding obnoxious staff in newtown if this is the same store i shop in on a regular basis i always find the staff incredibly helpful polite and pleasant!

We are now on our third set because the obnoxious staff in Newtown Curry's refuse to give us a refund. The third set has exactly the same gaps in sound when playing DVD. Now have to pluck up the courage to return again, armed with reviews here that say the same.......