The CRT has finally packed in, so new telly time. Any recommendations for a good box (is that the right term anymore??) around the £500 mark.

Looking at the Samsung – UE40D5520 or the 37″ version at the moment, but I’m not too bothered on bells and whistles as I’ll probably hang an Apple TV off it. Freeview HD tuner would be good though unless I’m better buying it as a separate?

I’m pretty clueless having not bought one for around 20 years 🙂

EDIT: Oops, wrong forum, sorry!

John Lewis – Price match, 5yr warranty and excellent service. Don’t buy a TV anywhere else.

Samsung 32″ Freeview HD thing here – bought last Xmas for about £400 (IIRC) from John Lewis. No Complaints, but equally not alot to compare it against. Have a compatible Samsung Blu-ray and a Humax HD PVR hung off it and I barely scratch the surface of all the ‘Smart-TV’ capabilities….. 😳

Don’t buy a TV anywhere else.

Bought a 32″ Samsung Full HD LED with DLNA server built in from Amazon. Closest priced model JL had was a **** Toshiba with piss poor backlighting.

…oh and Richer Sounds offer 5 year warranty for 10% of the TV models price. Quite reasonable.

What model Jamie?

The Samsung? It’s a Samsung UE32D5000

…I paid £340 for it. Seems Amazon themselves are out of stock?

So Samsung is a good bet? A friend has some 50″ monster, but even as a limited TV watcher who doesn’t want to encourage the habit in his children, I had to admit it was ACE 🙂 – they seem to produce good screens in all sizes.

I prefer Panasonics – Samsungs have by default loads of picture processing which doesn’t work imho.

If you don’t need it for a PC then you will often get a better picture from a 720P set rather than a full-hd set at 1080P.

Most HD broadcast content will be at 720P and the tv/freeview/freesat box will have to do less upscaling of the picture to fill in the ‘missing’ information.

Look at the 720P and 1080P versions of a tv playing the same content and you will see what I mean – Selfridges had some lines set up like this as they group manufacturers sets together.

http://www.tec7.co.uk/Television/Plasma/Panasonic+TXP42S20+FVHD+Plasma_TX-P42S20B/3054.aspx

and £50 to spare too 🙂

…oh and Richer Sounds offer 5 year warranty for 10% of the TV models price. Quite reasonable.

I believe you can also claim back the cost of the warranty after 5 years if you haven’t used it!

+1 for John Lewis

With Richer sounds coming in 2nd if they have a bargain that John Lewis don’t stock and can’t match.

and yup, Richer Sounds cover is reasonably priced and you can claim it back if you remember. But tbh if you forget it’s not a huge amount, unlike some other companies.

another +1 for John Lewis or richer sounds. I went richer sounds the last time round for a LG 50″ plasma. doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but the picture quality is amazing.

If you don’t need it for a PC then you will often get a better picture from a 720P set rather than a full-hd set at 1080P.

Most HD broadcast content will be at 720P and the tv/freeview/freesat box will have to do less upscaling of the picture to fill in the ‘missing’ information.

Sky did original broadcast HD in 720p, but its now been upped to 1080i. So if you set the box to be 720p, the SKY box is actually downscaling the picture, losing quality. Likewise, if you get a 720p TV, you’ll be losing quality as well.

Get a 1080 TV …

Sky did original broadcast HD in 720p, but its now been upped to 1080i. So if you set the box to be 720p, the SKY box is actually downscaling the picture, losing quality. Likewise, if you get a 720p TV, you’ll be losing quality as well.

wrong – 1080 is interlaced frames of 540.

look at it this way – people were raving for ages that plasmas gave the best pictures when, at the time, plasmas were 480p screens.

It’s still 1080 lines all in, and with 100hz tvs these days , they hold all 1080 lines on screen. I’m not going to argue, the 1080i picture on my 1080 100hz screen is notably sharper than the 720p setting on the sky box

Have a look on the forums for what’s on offer at Costco. 5 year warranty no quibbles and 90 day no questions asked return policy. Get the executive membership for £55 and you get 2% cash back on everything you buy as well (actually a voucher) got my samsung 40c7000 with bd6900 blu ray (Inc wifi) and 3d starter set plus extra specs in box and by mail in to samsung. Total was £1100 Inc vat. Nearest equivalent was over £1500 at the time, plus really good service, hot dogs and big jars of skippy super chunk 😉