With the pending emigration, it will mean time for a complete new TV and sound system.

Can anyone help shed some light on what to look out for with a budget of about £900 for a 48-52″ TV?

From what I’ve heard, ignore 4K (for now), refresh rates don’t mean much and there’s no standard for measuring contrast levels, so they can’t be relied on. Although I may have been misinformed!

So considering a show room/shop is such an alien place to view a TV, what would your advice be on choosing a new set?

I would be looking to buy a soundbar as well, so the speaker performance is not as important as picture quality.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/new-tv-and-sound-bar-help-a-luddite-please

Not Samsung…

Buy from John Lewis as they treat their staff decently and offer good warranties.

Sony or Panasonic.

Then Google the model number on the web for some geek that has calibrated it for some online review or similar, and apply the same settings. The difference on my Sony from the default settings and the adjusted ones is huge.

I have just bought a Denon DHT-T110 soundbar (£199) for my mother-in-law – will be able to report on what I think of it on Friday – reviews seem consistently good and it is nice and compact as it acts as a plinth to the tv stand.

Get a Samsung. 3 in out house have all been flawless. 😀

And yes John Lewis as you get a 5 year warranty.

Get a Samsung if you are not worried by their poor upscaling performance, or their reliability.

Check back for older threads that have discussed this…

I have just bought a Denon DHT-T110 soundbar (£199) for my mother-in-law – will be able to report on what I think of it on Friday – reviews seem consistently good and it is nice and compact as it acts as a plinth to the tv stand.

have listened to it a bit now and it is interesting – quite good sound quality actually.

powers up when it sees a signal from one of the inputs, which can be optical/coax or analog. And powers down when the signal goes.

Pairs with a bluetooth device.

Learns your remote commands if you prefer to use the volume/etc on your tv remote.

Has 3 sound modes – dialog/music and movie. Dialog has more projection on the midrange/vocals so useful for following Broadchurch.

Also has a nighttime mode, which effectively compresses the sound so it is not so dynamic for nighttime use and lower volumes, works quite well.

Main drawback is that there is nothing to adjust the sound further, for instance if the bass becomes bloated where you have to place it. Only real method would be the old socks/straws in the bass ports method – which can be reasonably effective.