HD TV

Im looking into the purchase of a 32" HD telivision and wonderd if any one could offer advise or recomend a set.
Ian

I've bought Panasonic in the past and they are very good quality and reliable. Ensure you get HD 1080 lines as any thing less (resolution, badged as HD ready is not full HD)

Hope this helps!

If my experiences with DTT and DVDR are anything to go by, avoid Sony.

Ironically then, we always end up buying Sony TVs as they have the best picture quality.

Panasonic is another excellent choice.

The best thing to do is visit a shop and have a look.

I have one of their CRT TVs John and I have to say it's not as bad. The only reservation I had with it when we first got was that it could not handle black. Anything that was remotely black was black so for example dark suits lost all their detail.

The picture has also degraded disappointingly quickly with age. Picture quality and alignment of the three guns have drifted considerably. In the analogue days I would simply have gone for my tweaker and sorted it, but these days you have to use a computer or dedicated set up box.

As to the TV shop - yes I agree, but pick a proper one. The chain stores have been known to regrade the picture quality on one set when they want to sell another. Go to a good home theatre shop and look at what they have got, then try to find it cheaper on the internet.

Not sure what you are looking to spend Ian, but Loewe are worth searching out if you are looking for something nice.

Good advice, just what I would recommend.
Also lots of useful information (and opinions) can be found on avforums http://www.avforums.com/

Just bought a Samsung 8000 series LED TV and it's fine.

Rather thin at around 20mm.

Regards

Ensure it is 1080 P not 1080i ... There is a significant difference.

Don't be swayed by the "Sony are the best" comments. Most of the high end Sony panels are made in a JV with Samsung and others are sourced from Sharp.

Personally, I believe that all Sony products are overpriced and they base that on their claim to be the best and you will get a lot better value for money looking at suppliers such as Samsung,Panasonic, Toshiba ...

I have to say, I am still with my 32" Sony CRT and neighbours often comment on the quality of the picture. Good aerial and on hill does of course help

As Wallace would say "cracking picture Grommit"

Howard

Thanks Guys very helpful feed back from you all. I have looked at a few shops such as Dixons and to be honest pic quality varied from set to set. I did look at the Sony but was not that overly impressed to be honest. There was a nice LG with a good picture and the spec was also very good as well.

http://www.richersounds.com/product/lcd-tv/lg/32lf7700/lg-32lf77starstar

Has any one got one by any chance.
Ian

Ian beware of your average high street retailer (as Oggy said in an earlier post). They will deliberately oversaturate and turn up contrast on display sets. Also high street viewing distances and particularly shop lighting don't reflect the average lounge

Better to go to a good home theatre shop for a balanced image / sound quality comparison

No it isn't if the shop doesn't setup their TVs properly. I see awful picture quality in most shops.

Find professional reviews on the internet if you don't have a local shop with people who know what they're doing.

Only advice I would give is that if you are looking to get a HD picture (wether Blu-Ray, Sky HD, PS3 / XBox 360 etc. etc.) a 32" TV in the average size living room is way too small to gain or see any difference that a 1080P picture will give you unless you sit around 5 feet away from it!

Following picture is quite crude, but the quickest thing I could find, but does illustrate a good point which is if you want 1080P you need a large enough screen to actually get the benefit from it. We have a 40" 720P screen, and I'm looking at replacing it with something around 50"+ to get the most benefit from Blu-Ray and PS3, all in a 12 foot long living room!




Of course, if you have no intention of going HD, then 720P or 1080P would be overkill anyway, but it's just not possible to buy a Standard Definition 32" LCD anymore! The advice about finding a decent shop to compare is very sound as well, as a trip to Comet proved on sunday where we saw a £2K LED screen giving a worse performance then trying to receive CH5 in a welsh valley!

Remember that a lot of Richer Sounds products are "obsolete" models from suppliers. Not a problem with quality and they are not ex-demo or returns unless stated, just that they will be last years model.

Ok., you asked for it. The trouble is nearly all the manufacturers make a variety of models from cheap and cheerful to really quite high spec with additional image processing. A lot of them look the same physically and only the model number distinguishes them,.... until you see a decent picture on them.
The high end sony's are quite good the low end ones, not very good at all really . In my opinion the high end panasonic's are very good and the LED backlit LCD Samsung tv's are also very good. Plasma screens can tend to look noisey up close but historically had better black performance than LCD screens. ( LCD blacks were dark grey) But this is changing, slowly on the whole, but the LED backlit LCD Samsung tv's produce black levels on a par with the best plasmas and good old CRT's.
I have to say you should seriously consider a 37" or 40" I know they sound huge now... but they won't if you start looking at HD on them, nd most native 180 screens start at this size. You can find smaller 1080 screens but they are few and far between these days.Do get a 1080P model as this will have a native 1920x1080 screen so it won't be resizing the pictures so the HD quality will be better.
DO make sure you see normal tv on it as they will resize normal tv to HD and frankly some do it a LOT better than others. After all you will be watching it in this mode most of the time!
Many of them will also display your photos and some even have a card reader slot for this puropse, which could be a useful feature for a Pentax user! ( Your photos will look stunning on a HD screen!)
Go to a GOOD tv shop or a department store like John Lewis where they have most of the models on display side by side.GET THE EXACT MODEL NUMBER of the one you like best. ( then check the internet for the best price.)