Tekforums
Chat => Entertainment & Technology => Topic started by: zpyder on February 18, 2010, 20:30:03 PM
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Lounge/living room TV.
Our current random CRT (Its not widescreen nor 4:3, we got it when widescreen was only just getting popular and my dad was sold on the fact it wouldnt be too bad letterboxing either way :|)
Hes actually asked me to do some research this time, rather than his usual of picking up the first thing he sees at the price hes willing to pay.
So, any suggestions on a good quality good price TV for a main TV. Our lounge isnt huge, but at the same time the placement of the TV puts it further away than recommended.
Obviously would be good if it was HD so that its future-proof, though I pointed out at our budget, the size screen wed get and the distance wed be you wouldnt notice the difference really.
I was surprised that my father was thinking £800, so Id say the budget is between £500-£1000, as Ill be putting some money in.
For me itd be great if it had some extras like the ability to play videos from a usb stick etc, though to be honest I hardly get a chance to use the TV as it is so its not much of a priority!
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You can get some fantastic LCD sets for that kind of money. TBH pick a maximum size you want, choose a HQ 720p set over a 1080p if its 32" or smaller (I know how far back you need to sit in your house ;) ) and go with some recent review threads/recommendations from the ultra-geeks on AVForums. Your best sets will be Samsung or Panasonic really, go view some once you have a few sets in mind just to get the deciding factor. Id highly suggest going with John Lewis when purchasing for the 5 year warranty.
Thats all there is to it
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I love all my Samsungs. You might be able to get one of the LED ones now in that budget.
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Massive budget! As Clocked said, check out AVForums - youll get a stonking set for that price.
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I have a sammy 40" 720p and its a lovely TV, I think now you can get 1080s for a similar price, although Im not convinced that you will really notice much difference.
Bare in mind that often you can get a 32" samsung 720 for around £300 so in your budget you could actually get quite a lot more.
Also mine is an LCD, a plasma will give you better blacks, but suffer more from image burn as its basically burning gas (LCDs dont suffer at all), if you have the same stuff up on your screen often then go for LCD, and TBH you can get some really good contrast ratios on the LCDs now. LED is even better really good blacks and no image burn and very thin, but you will pay a lot more for that over the other two options...
Panasonics and Sonys are supposed to be good as well though, but everyone I know has the samsungs (LCD and Plasma)
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Sounds like Samsung are a good choice. Ill be steering clear of plasma as I think theyre less energy efficient for not much gain, and if they get image burn its not for us as my dad spends more time on the sky planner than he does watching things.
Id imagine well end up settling around the £600 mark putting £300 in each. Im all for 720p if it saves money as there is no way theyd notice the difference. They dont watch DVDs and we dont have a blue-ray player/PS3. The xbox lives next door unless the rents are away so really HD is pointless for the family but we might as well get an HD TV anyway.
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Depends on the actual size of screen you end up with, anything over 36" and its worth considering 1080.
Many computers can interface with a HD screen using hdmi. Cables are relatively cheap for this from 7dayshop.com and some other places.
I bought a 47" 1080p from the local branch of Aldi a couple of years back for under £1K. Damn nice picture still.
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Minimum distance between the seats and the tv location is 3.5m going up to 4.5m.
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tbh, you need to walk into smiths and see what what hifi most recently gave 5 stars to in your price range. then cross over to currys and pick it up. jobs a goodun.
Matt
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Yeah, pondering popping into some TV type shops at the weekend maybe.
I always find though that the TVs in these places are always really randomly tuned, where a £2k tv will look much worse than the £100 one next to it, but you just know once its set up itll look good. I always find it weird that they dont bother in that regards, as theyd want to sell them.
Or is it pyschological, they figure no one will buy the really really expensive stuff so they make them look less good than the expensive stuff. People browsing will then feel more comfortable forking out if they think theyre getting a tv with a better picture than the more expensive ones?
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They generally all feed off the same source in shops and what youll find is the cheaper ones look better because they have something cartoony on like Finding Nemo full of rich colours, and the TVs by default have massive contrast and are oversatured. Awesome for cartoons, not so awesome for general TV and film. The better sets are usually more reserved in picture out of the box, Id guess this is why youre seeing the cheaper sets looking better than the better sets.
Bear in mind they wont have anal staff with the knowledge, time or training to calibrate displays even if it could potentially sell more sets.
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True. Though usually when I go in theyre generally all on the same channel and usually its either a film or sports ><
What ya doing tomorrow or sunday Nige, fancy meeting up in Soton and looking at TVs? :D :P
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i love my panny 50" - £1400 with a 5yr warranty...
Ask at AV-Forums tbh, otherwise people will only recommend their own sets
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True. Though usually when I go in theyre generally all on the same channel and usually its either a film or sports ><
What ya doing tomorrow or sunday Nige, fancy meeting up in Soton and looking at TVs? :D :P
Any other weekend I would have been able to, but Im up north this weekend!
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Not sure why its going cold, but comments may be on there soon:
http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/615464/samsung-le40b550a5-40-inch-widescre
Looks a good deal, depending on size you are looking for..
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This one is going cold as well, but still looks a good deal...
http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/615740/full-hd-1080p-samsung-32-le32b550lc
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This hot/cold thing seems so weird and people seem really anal over it. Surely all that matters is that the price is as low as you can get!
I was in tescos earlier and dropped by the tv section just to see the sizes. I think a 40" would be about right :D
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Ye, most of the cold voters seem to not comment as well...
But ye 40" is a good size, Its what I have ;)
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They generally all feed off the same source in shops and what youll find is the cheaper ones look better because they have something cartoony on like Finding Nemo full of rich colours, and the TVs by default have massive contrast and are oversatured. Awesome for cartoons, not so awesome for general TV and film. The better sets are usually more reserved in picture out of the box, Id guess this is why youre seeing the cheaper sets looking better than the better sets.
Bear in mind they wont have anal staff with the knowledge, time or training to calibrate displays even if it could potentially sell more sets.
As they all do suck off the same feed later ones will not get as good a signal as earlier ones in the line, this can be the reason why some producing much worse picture than others.
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Will likely be heading out tomorrow to look at some TVs with the father.
Hes pretty adamant that he doesnt want to buy from the net. Ive suggested at the least if he finds one he likes in a shop to give me a day or two to find it online and see how much cheaper it would be, at the least just so that he/we can turn around and try to get the shop to drop the price/do a deal if theres a vast difference. He does have a valid arguement regarding paying for disposal of the old TV which is pretty much a brick, and getting them to set it up, though if the shop has a big markup and we pay for delivery/installation on top he could be looking at more than £50 extra.
So, anyone got any good ammunition to use in terms of justifying buying online? Ive tried using the example of my dell monitor being replaced next day when there was a fault with it...4 times. Plus installation wise Id like to think I could figure it out, and failing that my siss partner is pretty knowledgeable in that. TV removal as well shouldnt be too hard with 2 people.
Only thing I can think of is refusing to pay the extra if he wants to do that. Ill put so much towards it but I cant justify paying a load more for the sake of getting it from a shop...
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To be honest I picked up my TV from Richer Sounds, and it was cheaper than buying online, by about £70. Their shop deals are stunning. OK its only a 720p, but its good enough for a 32". Even the AV nerd mate "only" has a 32" 720p TV in his bedroom, because hes of the opinion a decent panel at 720p is better that a poor one at 1080p. Lets ignore 1080i, as is right and proper!
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Will likely be heading out tomorrow to look at some TVs with the father.
Hes pretty adamant that he doesnt want to buy from the net. Ive suggested at the least if he finds one he likes in a shop to give me a day or two to find it online and see how much cheaper it would be, at the least just so that he/we can turn around and try to get the shop to drop the price/do a deal if theres a vast difference. He does have a valid arguement regarding paying for disposal of the old TV which is pretty much a brick, and getting them to set it up, though if the shop has a big markup and we pay for delivery/installation on top he could be looking at more than £50 extra.
So, anyone got any good ammunition to use in terms of justifying buying online? Ive tried using the example of my dell monitor being replaced next day when there was a fault with it...4 times. Plus installation wise Id like to think I could figure it out, and failing that my siss partner is pretty knowledgeable in that. TV removal as well shouldnt be too hard with 2 people.
Only thing I can think of is refusing to pay the extra if he wants to do that. Ill put so much towards it but I cant justify paying a load more for the sake of getting it from a shop...
If he wants to buy from a shop you seriously need to drag him to John Lewis. 5 year warranty!
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Ended up with the Samsung LE40B550A5....from John Lewis!
http://www.johnlewis.com/230573761/Product.aspx
Price wise there wasnt too much in it, Other shops were similarly priced, those that were cheaper ended up more expensive if you put the 5 year warranty plans on.
Tis arriving Wednesday afternoon, should be interesting!
About the only bad point so far was the shockingly bad saleswoman. 5 minutes longer and Id have asked to speak to her manager. Couldnt have come across any more as "I dont want to be here right now serving you idiots". Even to the point of when my dad queried whether she had included the disposal of the old TV her response being "Well YOU didnt say you wanted that, you just asked if it was possible!" My dad may not have explicitly said "Yes, we would like our old TV removed" but he said something that gave me the impression we wanted them to remove it. At the very least the correct response for a salesperson would have been "Oh, Im sorry, I didnt think you wanted that, let me add it..."
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Looks like an excellent choice for the money, Im sure youll be very happy with it!
Have read on AVForums about it, youll probably get some good ideas on using/setting it up
http://www.avforums.com/reviews/Samsung-LE40B550-LCD-HDTV-Review.html
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Arrived today, wasnt quite idiot proof in the set up, originally got the aerial setting wrong so it only picked up the 4 terrestrial channels. And then something was set somewhere that locked me out of re-doing the tuning, and it took 30 mins of head scratching to finally come to the conclusion it was samsungs networking thingy that links other samsung gadgets together that was doing something. Disabled that and could then change the tuning settings, now have freeview etc yay.
Dads gone and ordered a sky HD box though too, which is good, as Im noticing a lot of the channels are a little blurry. Im guessing this is due to the TV rendering SD channels at HD?
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Normal TV needs a lot of upscaling to get to 1080 so expect some issue there but it also depends on method used to upscale too, some TVs are better than others.
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Could be the scart cables I guess too? They are pretty old and my dads not known for buying decent quality things...?
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If they are under 3 metres then no, even the cheapest ones wont have any negative effect.
Ive got ones from £1 shops and a £15 gold plated one, the difference in picture is not noticeable at all.
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it does seem to vary between the channels and program, so Im guessing its to do with the compression. Hopefully getting SkyHD will help in that regards as the sky box is quite old from before the start of HD.
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SCART is obviously not the best connection but it still shouldnt cause you those issues, I think as youve pointed out upscaling poor quality source material is the cause, its one of the downsides of having large LCD panels, I think plasma fares better, but plasma brings its own issues (and larger dents in the wallet).