Moser Baer's 24-inch ICE LCD - Feel that Chill?

Apparently, Moser Baer named its new range of TVs ICE, because they thought they were really cool. Well, the 24-inch full HD LCD we received certainly looked the part, but whether it’s cool, hot, or just plain luke warm remained to be seen. Yes, yes, I tested it alright, and if you want to know what the final outcome was, keep reading.

Moser Baer ICE 24-inch Full HD LCD

Design and Features
Straight out of the box, the ICE looks really nice and sleek, although the bottom part of the border is a tad wide. It doesn’t have a conventional design with a stand and screws to hook it up to. Instead, it has a foldout rear stand that you can prop it up against. But here’s where it starts going south. The stand feels tacky, and looks like it might break after a while. And to make matters worse, the geniuses at Moser Baer have actually put the controls and the inputs on that very stand. So if your stand breaks, you’re definitely in for a hard time.

Menu buttons on the flimsy stand

The ICE has quite a lot of decent features including 1080p playback, a dynamic contrast ratio of 15,000:1 and an aspect ratio of 16:10. It also has quite a few input/output options right from HDMI, composite and component video to S-Video, PC VGA (with audio input) and an earphone out. But there’s no USB, and that saddens me greatly, as I am sure it does you as well. Why, Moser Baer, why?

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The remote is pretty standard and easy to use, so you will not have to bend over and fiddle with the rear of the TV, where the controls are situated. This can be quite a pain, especially when you know they could’ve just as easily placed the controls at the front (what with the bottom panel being so wide).

The remote is pretty straightforward and easy to use

Performance
My first impression of the ICE wasn’t very good, but I obviously wanted to give it a fair shot. So I was hoping that it would perform well and win me over. Well, it didn’t do too badly, but let’s just say that the ICE wasn’t all that hot either.

I connected the TV to a Blu-ray player via HDMI, popped the test disc in and ran through a few scenes. Everything seemed alright, but after a couple of minutes, I noticed that the edges seemed a little dull, and the overall picture was a little patchy. Even the colours seemed a bit faded. I fast forwarded it to an action sequence, and also noticed that there was a bit of ghosting and streaking as well. I shuddered to think what would happen when I popped Arkham Asylum into the PS3, but I put on my brave face, and did it anyway. The result was as I expected – Batman literally seemed to be dragging his feet while I played the game.

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OK, maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit. The overall picture quality wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great either, so let’s just leave it at that and move on to ease of use. Here’s where the TV scored highest, as it’s a breeze to use. I honestly didn’t use the panel at the back, as it’s an absolute pain in the behind, but the remote pretty much did everything I wanted it to. I also felt the inputs could’ve been placed better, as they’ve situated them at a very inconvenient place – the part of the stand that faces down. So if you’re new to this arrangement, and can’t work with simply feeling your way around, you’ll have to actually turn the TV upside down to plug in your cables. Bah.

Pretty sleek and very nice looking

My last test was, of course, the DisplayMate test, and the TV did pretty okay here too. It scored a total of 41.25 out of 60, which is actually pretty good. My main areas of concern were screen uniformity, as the edges were dull, and the overall picture showed up as patchy. The video bandwidth test was also pretty much a failed scenario, as was the streaking and ghosting, colour scales and screen regulation. On the other hand, the TV did really well in the areas of vertical and horizontal colour registration, defocusing, blooming and halos, and pixel tracking, timing and locking. It didn’t even show any major signs of moiré patterns forming.

The stand holds the TV up as well as provides a menu and input options

Verdict
This TV is pretty affordable at Rs. 18,900, and it is full HD. Although the picture quality showed discrepancies during the DisplayMate test and during general viewing and gaming, it was pretty decent after adjusting the contrast, brightness and colour settings. Let the record state that I had to keep the colour pretty high, and reduce the brightness considerably to achieve desired results.

Hard to reach inputs

All in all, this TV is okay for the price and features, although I still say that the addition of a USB port and better placed inputs and menu buttons would’ve made a better impression.