Millennius eMpress 22" LCD TV

The Millennius eMpress 22" Full HD LCD TV is a low-priced, small LCD television with an integrated DVD player. It would make a good addition to a child's bedroom, a play area or a home office where space is at a premium. Picture quality is not as good as more expensive models, but it is sufficient for watching broadcast TV and the occasional movie.

The Millennius eMpress 22" Full HD LCD TV uses a last-generation Samsung LCD panel, with a native resolution of 1920x1080 (1080p) and a contrast ratio of 1000:1. The screen's 16:9 aspect ratio means that widescreen DVD content and broadcast digital television will fill the screen, but 4:3 content will leave black bars on the screen's sides. A variety of picture adjustment menus are offered to tailor the panel to suit your viewing habits, and a zoom function allows you to fill the entire screen with video.

The picture quality of the Millennius eMpress 22" LCD TV is acceptable for casual viewing. Its low contrast ratio and lack of dynamic contrast adjustment mean that especially dark and bright scenes of movies are robbed of detail. We plugged in a Blu-ray player and played The Dark Knight, and found that the opening scenes were difficult to watch — although this is a very taxing movie. The screen scales 480p and 720p video sources to its native horizontal resolution reasonably well, though a small number of aliasing artefacts become visible and some detail is lost. When presented with a 1920x1080 signal through a computer connected via VGA, the Millennius eMpress 22" displayed a clean video signal with good detail levels. If you intend to watch high-definition video, this screen is a surprisingly good performer.

The design of the Millennius eMpress 22" is somewhat uninspired — just like the Millennius eMperor 40" LCD TV, it has a simple glossy black plastic bezel. It has small transparent accent at the base of the bezel, which would have looked nice if the television's power LED was shining down into it. The buttons are arranged on the lower right-hand side, and the in-built DVD player is accessible by reaching around on the right.

Our main concern with the Millennius eMpress 22" Full HD LCD TV is its poor remote control layout. We most often use the channel and volume control buttons, and on the eMpress' remote control they are the four smallest buttons, hidden seemingly as an afterthought around the DVD navigation pad. Other buttons are arranged in a grid with little to differentiate them — to find the appropriate button we often had to consult the text under each button.

The integrated DVD player works well, operating relatively quickly and quietly. It's a convenient inclusion; you won't have to shell out another $50 for a DVD player, and you don't have to find somewhere to put one and plug it in. The picture quality when playing a DVD is reasonably good, although the best picture can be achieved with a high-definition source. The Millennius eMpress 22" Full HD LCD TV has enough video inputs to connect multiple A/V devices if you desire — an HDMI port allows high-definition players to connect easily while component, composite, S-Video and VGA are suitable for older analog devices.

Millenius' eMpress 22" Full HD LCD TV is a capable secondary television if picture quality isn't a primary concern. Consider it for your bedroom, study or child's play area if small size and versatility should be key concerns.

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