Freelance technology writer and reviewer John Archer reportson the hottest products and issues to catch his eye this week...

Last week I was in a nice happy place, full of thejoys of LED backlighting and Freeview Playback. Today, though, I'm feeling a bit disgruntled. And the causeof my disgruntlement is a little something called 'full HD'.

"Full HD" suggests 720p isn't any good

Talk to almost any TV brand marketeer these days - or thevast majority of store assistants, come to that - and they'll tell you thatfull HD TVs, with their swanky 1080p (1920 x 1080) resolutions, are the answer to all your AVprayers. They're the TVs that high definition was really made for.

It seems only yesterday thatwe were being told (by the same people!) that 720p HD Ready TVs with 1366 x 768 (or similar) resolutions were the answer to all our AV prayers. What bugs me is the apparent assumption that just having a full HDresolution automatically makes a TV great. Or at any rate better than a 720p one.

Things aren't that black and white. As two new products I've been looking at this weekprove, full HD is certainly not a guarantee of quality. In some cases, full HD can actually bedetrimental to some aspects of performance.

Poor black levels can ruin anything

Epson's EMP-TW1000 is a full HD projector that uses LCDtechnology. It sells for the pretty reasonable sum of £1,800. It's possible toappreciate the TW1000's full HD resolution - HD pictures do look slightly more detailed,and slightly less noisy compared to an SD projector.

The problem is this. You only notice this quality once you've peeredthrough the glaring problems raised by a pretty poor black level response; a response thatfinds dark parts of the picture looking flat and grey and many colour toneslooking drab and unnatural.

In other words, while yes, the full HD pixel countdoes contribute a small positive element to the picture, overallthat picture is still considerably worse than that of some much cheaper, 'mere' HD Readymodels. I'm thinking of InFocus's IN78 or Planar's PD7060.

"Full HD" doesn't guarantee "great HD"

Where a full HD resolution actually causes performanceproblems is with a set like Toshiba's new 42Z3030. Standard definition pictures of thesort watched on the 42Z3030's own Freeview tuner actually look worse than theydo on many, if not most, lower-resolution HD Ready TVs. This is presumably thanks todifficulties converting the standard definition picture to fit the 42Z3030'sultra-high resolution panel.