I am soon moving into a new place and for the first time in 25 years I am looking to buy a telly. Things have moved on since I went to Curry’s and came out with a Sony Trinitron, so I’d be grateful to know what to look for. My instinct is just to go into the shop and buy a well-known brand based on size, appearance and price. Do I need a more sophisticated approach?

A review of 10 Freeview TV’s from The Register:

clicky

Discount all TVs with less than full-HD, pick a price range and short list of good manufacturers, then ask what features you want – 3d ? Web connected ? etc.

Finally, buy it from John Lewis for the free 5 year guarantee.

Panasonic everytime for reliability and quality!

If you want the absolute best picture quality Panasonic plasma is still a couple of years ahead of anything.

Size is everything. Don’t go too big for the room. How far will you sit from the screen?

Less than 42″ – Cheapest Samsung LCD that comes under budget
42″ or above – Panasonic plasma (formerly Pioneer 😥 )

Samsung TV’s really are excellent, not just based on price. Like the iMac screen? That was made by Samsung. Calibration settings from avforums.

One last point. If you are used to a large CRT, then sound-wise, you are in for a shock. That cabinet was able to incorporate a variety of horn loadings for good sound. A flat panel can’t do that. Although the bigger TV’s try.

Just got a new Samsung, very pleased

Good picture quality, sound ok, free view HD is good fun.

They seem good value pretty much wherever in the price/size range you look

I hadn’t realised how annoying a bad electronic program guide could be until I’d lived with the last one for a number of years (Philips). The one on the Samsung is superb.

Panasonic. Fantastic tvs, as all the reviews show. Choose your size, set your budget, pick the 2011 Panasonic that those determine. Done.

We have a GT46 and it’s as ace as we had been led to believe it would be!

Don’t listen to ordinary consumers who are comparing their new TV to, well, probably just their old one. Read the reviews of experts. Don’t judge the picture in the shop.

Argos are doing some 3D HDTVs for less than 400 notes here.

Be a brand snob if you want, but this is 1/3 of the price of my old-skool Samsung 40″ telly, and probably 3 times as good.

Freecycle.

Top quality CRT TVs are just given away. And the picture will be way better than anything other than a top-dollar flat screen.

Then spend the £800 you save on…

A holiday?
New carbon wheels?
New fork?

A whole new bike?

That’s what I’d do anyway.

APF

Whichever Samsung fits the budget.
Would this man lie to you?

recommend? – no, sorry.

but don’t get an LG, they’re utter crap.

LG#1 went pop.

Lg#2 went pop.

now on lg#3, which i wish would go ‘pop’ – sometimes the remote works, sometimes it doesn’t.

apparently is a problem inside the tv itself,…

Mr palace fan talks sense.

I recommend this one,

Free telly on STW.

APF

Don’t get charmed by internet TV’s. IME they’re great when new but as the services landscape shifts around the applications don’t, so you’ll probably end up without the services you want in the future.

This is my experience with Samsung and Sony. Neither offer the Netflix app as I guess it’s a selling point for newer TV’s.

Oh that and they have a more complex software stack with infrequent updates. I.e. bugs don’t get fixed very quickly at all.

Make sure you get ‘freeview HD’, freeview + HD TV isn’t the same as many full HD sets aren’t capable of picking up the UK HD signal.

One useful thing is PVR if it’s the type that allows time shifting. It does on the Samsung but not the Sony. Pretty useless as a PVR, but for the cost of a cheap USB key you get to pause TV.

I could go on but tbh I’m sure you’ll be happy with most of what’s out there now. Just be careful of the really low end stuff as whilst there are some gems there are some pretty horrible sets too.

i got a 32″ Samsung earlier in the year. the picture quality is fantastic, compared to my previous crap telly the sound is alright too.

I leaned towards Samsung because they have a good reputation, but there are a few annoying things about it that I am disappointed with

firstly the remote control occassionaly stops working, and you have to remove the batteries to revive it

also, don’t get too excited about the smart features. perhaps today’s newest models will be an improvement, but on mine it is a slow, painful process to do anything. most of what’s available (apps etc.) is just gimmicky, but the useful stuff (iplayer, youtube) has a really poor user interface. i can also stream music, videos etc from my PC, which is cool, but just clunky.

it’s annoying because the technology is there, but Samsung haven’t implemented it that well (my phone is faster to use than my TV). you just know that when Apple do this, they will wipe the floor with the competition.

It’s the UE32D5520 for reference, and was about £380 in January

basically, if you want more than just a good picture, make sure you have a good play with the TV while in the shop. don’t just take the salesman’s word for what it can do

What’s the DLNA like on the Samsung?

I have a Bravia KDL32w5500, but you need to run pretty much everything through a transcoder (ie. Xbox) to play it.

I’d like the convenience of not having to start up another device to do this, the work around of installing PS3 Media server on my NAS looks like a lot of hard work…

DLNA on the Samsung is best described as finicky and badly implemented. It works well with Serviio once you’ve found and implemented the correct profile, but I wouldn’t rely on it as a replacement for whatever you have now.

See my earlier comment about updates though. It might be better now but this is my experience on my 2 year old set.

My 32″ Samsung (5500model), has DLNA and it is excellent. It is great being able to access a song/picture/film on my NAS using my phone, and just sending it to the tv!

This plot might help

to make it easy, go for Sony or Samsung LCD with LED backlighting. And go for the biggest screen your viewing distance will support: no one regretted buying a bigger TV 😀

BTW, the plot seems American – the diagonal screen measures seem to go very high. If you don’t like plots then there is this simple table. There’s also this simple calculator which reminds of a piece I read on HP’s website before I bought my TV. My immediate response was ‘how big!?!’.

If you want to think more then this old CNET article has a bunch of info in it

Of course there are the review sites too.

If you’re getting a swish TV, make sure you can get Freeview HD via some service or other. Have you budgeted for aerial installation if you’re not planning on VirginMedia or Sky?

Have fun. I was astonished when I replaced my old panasonic 32″ widescreen CRT with a Sony a few years back. Aside from the non-faded colours, HD made a nice difference.

Internet TV is a pretty cheap add-in for the manufacturer I suspect. As some folks have wisely suggested, it’s a nice to have and if you want things like movies on demand, You Tube etc you’ll be as well, or better, off plugging in something like a PS3, AppleTV or a computer if you want that sort of thing easily without TiVo or Sky.

4 Bravias on this house, happy with all of them.

BTW, the plot seems American – the diagonal screen measures seem to go very high

And the viewing distances – 40 feet puts me across the street, not in my armchair waiting for Coronation Street to start!!

A client of mine was telling me yesterday that he had bought a new 3D TV set. He wanted to get a Panasonic because he’d heard they were the best but in the shop he was amazed by the picture quality of the Toshiba. He went to four different shops and was told by the sales assistants in all of them that the other manufacturers are behind the game to Toshiba atm. If it’s true or not I can’t say.