What do I look for when Buying a TV?

beachbeth

We want to buy a new widescreen tv and don't know whether to have lcd/hd ready etc. A relative of ours has an lcd one which is hd ready and my husband was trying to watch football on it and found it really irritating because you could see a trail whenever anyone on the screen moved.

What do we need to look out for to make sure we don't get a tv that does this? Is it something to do with response rate? If so, what is the minimum rate we should look for?

DuncanMiller

Older LCD t'vs did have problems with motion due to response rates.

this has been largly fixed by newer t.v.s and lower response times - you should be looking at 8ms or lower as a bench mark.

Other factor which can make this worse on an LCD are poor cables and the quality of the signal - obviously the internal processing of the t.v. plays a big part as well.

What is your budget and what sort of tv will you be watching more than most (HD/SD - football/films etc...)

Plasma t.v.s tend to handle SD and football better than LCDs do but there are some LCDs out there whihc hold there own - LCDs are also better for hooking up to a PC and many offer 1:1 pixel mapping from HD sources to give a crisper picture.

If you are going to be watching Blue Ray/ HD Dvd or playing PS3 then a 1080p tv will give you the most detail. A good site to look at as it has very good reviews as well as some good articles on HD is this.

http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk

Though as well as reading reviews it's worth getting the tvs properly demo'd (ie. proper source footage rather than just looking at them all wired together in Currys).

I personnally like the Sony W2000 for its future proofing 1080p and also the very good reviews which it has received.

The panasonic PX70 is also supposed to be an excellent set but is 720p - if you are going to watch a lot of SD and football though this might be the way to go!

ABH_3

When you eventually find the tv you are interested in, note down the model number and enter it into the 'search this forum' link on this site:

http://www.avforums.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=155

You will then have more 'user' reviews than you can find on any site or magazine review.

HTH

beachbeth

DuncanMiller wrote: »

What is your budget and what sort of tv will you be watching more than most (HD/SD - football/films etc...)

Im thinking of up to around £500-£600. I don't want a huge 55" inch or anything, probably around 32". We mainly watch normal tv through our Sky digibox. We don't tend to use a playstation on it and don't intend to get HD yet. We once had a ordinary widescreen Sony tv that had an out-of-this-world picture (not lcd or anything). Is this still the case with Sony's?

computerwoman

try these
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=27025582743&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X3Jldmlld3M=&product_uid=124743
and read the customer reviews,
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/122995/rb/27025576022
and this one
cw

DuncanMiller

At that price - I'm looking at one of these for my bedroom TV (want to get one future proof but not $$$$)

Good reviews from AV Forums

http://www.intekx.com/product_info.php?cPath=17&products_id=104&osCsid=58b6df3e1e02de0c10d8cee0c3f1bfc4

with digital tuner

http://www.intekx.com/product_info.php?cPath=17&products_id=141&osCsid=58b6df3e1e02de0c10d8cee0c3f1bfc4