New TV with internet access - What would you get ?

sooty&sweep

Hi

We started off intending to get a new 32" TV for the bedroom, birthday pressie for my husband. We fancy being able to access iplayer etc so we were considering a smart TV.

When we started looking LED appears to be the popular choice because its more energy efficient. Our TV in the lounge is a 40" Sony LCD TV, approx 2 years old. So we're now wondering about moving that into the bedroom and buying a new LED Smart TV for the lounge (as that will be used more by the kids etc than the TV in the bedroom) and buy an internet accessable blu ray player to attach to the TV in the bedroom. We do have a Wii & an Xbox but I don't want either of them in my bedroom !!

Now we're wondering about getting a TV with 3D as well as smart for the lounge. We've even talked about whether we could stream music through it...

As you can see this is all spiralling, getting more & more complicated & expensive. I still have a mindset of buying something "good quality" so that it lasts... but now begining to think I'm wrong as the technology is moving so fast.

Just wondering if anyone else has faced this dilema and how you dealt with it ?

Cheers

Jen

vyle

I wouldn't worry too much about the energy consumption.

If you had one of these: http://www.johnlewis.com/231568176/Product.aspx?SearchTerm=42gt50

Switched on for five hours a day, every day of the year, it would cost you around £25.

I'd personally recommend the Panasonic ST50 though (the model below this) as the best value TV you can buy right now for picture quality.

These are also pretty good:

http://www.johnlewis.com/231584250/Product.aspx

and would cost you approx £7.50 a year to run... okay, it's a big difference between the two, but I'm happy to spend a bit more over the course of a year for quality, especiallly when the ST50 is usually cheaper than the 6540.

closed

laptop/ipad instead? (more uses, less intrusive)

Don't forget that a smart tv has to be connected to the net somehow, they aren't all wireless.

Whatever you buy will be slightly out of date, and cheaper in 6 months, so decide on your "needs" first. ie 3d/music streaming, are you going to use it often, with what?

DCFC79

Depends what you really want from the tv, do you want 3D? do you want the tv to be wireless or wired ? If it were me id forget about the 3D option but im not a fan of 3D but each to they're own. If you do go for 3D bear in mind the glasses can be expensive (eg the pany at just under £1k comes without glasses whereas the sammy set theres a link for glasses at £25) and if the tv you do end up getting isn't wireless the wifi adapter can also be expensive.

Before you buy myabe see if you can test 1 of these out even if to see if 3D is a feature you want.

Dave_C_2

My opinion:

HDTV

• Worth getting
• Now the standard. Little or no extra cost
• Waste of time getting HD ready 720p
• HD programs on freeview

Smart TV (based on our Samsung 42" LCD)

• Needs ethernet lead to TV or wireless dongle to connect to router.
• Now fairly standard add-on. Small extra cost
• Good for catch-up TV and youtube
• No keyboard or mouse
• No built-in web browser.
• Smart connection to laptop etc. a bit pants
• Anything else is a Firmware update

3D TV

• Gimmicky, needs glasses and not that good really.
• Expensive add-on to cost of TV.
• Needs either blue-ray player/blue-ray DVDs or Sky movies subscription (at about £70 per month)
• Occasional BBC experiment
• Maybe next TV

Finally HD TV connected to laptop via HDMI cable as a monitor/speaker- excellent. Playing Thief Deadly Shadows* on a 42" HD monitor is great!

* Other PC games are available

Dave

ballyblack

Good post Dave_C

especially about 3D being gimmicky

spannerzone

Having got a 'smart' Sony blu ray player it's quickly become obvious that all these smart TV's seem to suffer from ongoing support and features. Most smart devices seem to get few updates so don't expect the updatability that you get with a PC. Internet use on a smart TV won't be that great an experience either.

Personally I like the idea of BBC iplayer, itv player etc on a TV but anything more probably requires something like a PC or maybe an Android plug in device that's cheap and easy to replace when it goes out of date.

Technology moves on so quickly that I think you have to consider the TV just as a monitor and rather than an all in one solution because it'll never be a very good all in one solution.

Enterprise_1701C

We have a 3D Plasma, We do not use the 3D much, but the picture quality is better than on the 2D version of the same TV. We only bought it because it was cheaper than the 2D version at the time, but we are very pleased with it.

vyle

Yeah, people seem to forget that the 2D picture quality improves as the TVs gain 3D capabilities.

Entry level (usually 720p. Crap picture processing)
Mid range (most reputable manufacturers add smart features and enhanced picture processing)
Upper mid-range (3d added. Improved picture processing again)
Top-end (3d may become active 3d. Improved picture processing once more, improved panel uniformity, dual core processing for improved smart performance)

I have a 3d tv. Never used 3d. Just so happens the picture is far superior to the 2d versions.

bloss0m

I have been looking at a 32" smart tv full 1080p, led backlight (slim) with Freeview HD. I was disappointed on just how much some of them are like Samsung. I got a 32" Samsung 2 years ago for a relative and it was very slim all tvs I seen so far are much thicker, and you seem to pay a premium price for smart tv. I was wanting to pay around £300ish

sooty&sweep

Thankyou all !

I must admit that I thought 3D was abit gimmicky but we were wondering about it. I hadn't realised that it improved the quality of 2D though.
The thing for me though is that when you look at a range of TVs in a showroom you ooh & aah at the relative picture quality of each but when you've nothing to compare against in your own lounge I'd be happy with most of them.

Jen