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JVC is not normally a brand we’d associate with cut-price LCD antics. In fact, we’ve criticised various of its previous flat TVs for being flat out too expensive. So we’re more than a little surprised today to find the brand’s latest 26in LCD, the LT-26DA8BJ, currently being flogged for the truly insignificant sum of £420. Not that we’re complaining mind – so long as the corner cutting that’s likely required to reach such a price point doesn’t prove too severe.

The 26DA8BJ does, at least, not look cheap, and the chassis feels robust. But that’s not to say it’s particularly lust-inducing; in fact, the design is a bit cluttered looking if you ask us, and the robustness we mentioned falls arguably the wrong side of ‘chunky’.

Ironically the rear panel isn’t quite as cluttered as we’d like. For while the connections it plays host to include a perfectly reasonable two HDMIs, a component video input, an RF jack/CI slot for a digital tuner, plus a digital audio output, there’s no sign whatsoever of a D-Sub PC port. Darn. It is possible to get a PC feed into the screen via the HDMIs, but only if you manually set your PC’s resolution to match the 1,366 x 768 pixel count of the JVC’s screen – hardly an ideal situation.

Other key specifications of the 26DA8BJ include JVC’s DynaPix HD processing – which we’ll get to in a moment – and a slightly uninspiring contrast ratio of 1200:1. In a world where many LCD screens are starting to quote contrast ratios many times as large as this, it’s clear that the 26DA8BJ does not use a dynamic backlight system to boost its black level response during dark scenes. Still, while this raises concerns about how much greyness might sneak into the picture’s black areas, it does also mean we won’t see the ‘jumping brightness’ phenomenon seen with some of the less accomplished dynamic backlight screens.

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