New telly time, advice gratefully received!

Our Luddite family still have an old CRT monster, but it’s time for a new system as all our VHS tapes are getting tired from re recording stuff!
We’d like to be able to record onto hard drive while watching something else, use iplayer and other internet sources, and have worked out we want a 40″ ish screen. No interest in 3d or paying for content or subscribing to anything, currently have an old sky box with free sat, and normal aerial. We have an old DVD player and a few discs, not many. Kids are 5 and 7.

I’m guessing we need to choose a telly, and probably some sort of box to go with it for recording stuff, but as you can probably tell we are hopelessly out of date. Help?

Personally I like Sonys and Panasonics, and think Samsungs are sh1t, especially if you don’t feed them a full HD signal all the time and let their internal electronics attempt to scale the picture.

Buy from John Lewis for the warranty and price match – and you can get it delivered to your local Waitrose if that is more convenient.

Avoid Richer Sounds.

Conversely, I like Samungs and found my local Richer Sounds very helpful. They also include a 5yr warranty for a nominal sum.

I’m guessing we need to choose a telly, and probably some sort of box to go with it for recording stuff, but as you can probably tell we are hopelessly out of date. Help?

In relation to the DVR, you could always go with something like the Sky+ or Virgin Media Tivo boxes, if you were looking at signing up for a subscription service. Decent deals out there for new customers.

2 Samsungs in this house a LCD and LED both are very good the LED is superb as got one of the higher spec ones, we have a Sony at work that is also pretty good but not as sharp as the Samsungs.

Panasonic have lost their way with TVs some what these last few years.

John Lewis are very good to deal with, search the web for the TV you’ve decided on if they seller has a shop on a street ask JL to match them.

Conversely, I like Samungs

If you feed only an HD signal then they are OK, apart from their skin tones. If they have to do any upscaling they are spectacularly poor imho.

Regarding your recording requirements, assuming you’re not using Sky+ then go for one with both a Freesat and Freeview decoder – or a twin Freesat or twin Freeview decoder. That way you can plug in a USB HDD for recording and watch something else. The reason for ensuring you have both decoders is that you can’t watch something else while recording, so if you record a channel off Freesat then you can watch something else on Freeview and visa versa.

Buy from John Lewis for the warranty and price match – and you can get it delivered to your local Waitrose if that is more convenient.

Agreed.

For the recording etc. Although we’ve got Sky, in the summer I bought a Humax FoxSat HDR for another house which is good and a [freeview] Humax T2 HDR for the other TV in our main house.
Both are running custom firmware which allows all sorts of clever stuff such as sharing all recording progs via dlna, remote recording, etc.
Cost off eBay was £50 and £70 respectively.
Both are very good especially the T2.

We bought a 42″ Panasonic from John Lewis after recommendations from here , very happy with picture quality , more features than we really need but the John Lewis price and 5 yr warranty made it way better than PC/curry world .

Any decent 42″ Samsung or Panasonic will be fine. Definitely recommend John Lewis, if only for the demo – they do know how to set up their display TVs, and of course their warranty.

We have a 32″ Samsung in a room next to a 42″ Pioneer plasma (probably the best screen ever made). Both calibrated, and the Samsung has an excellent picture. You still can’t beat the contrast of a Plasma screen.

Signal feed is more important than resolution. We feed ours HD Freesat from a Humax box and a Samsung HD recorder. We also send to an XVGA projector for that full 108″ HD experience.

Thanks everyone, no john lewis nearby so will go have a look at their website.

Slight hijack. What about the tellys with the harddrive built in for the TiVo thingy? I’m getting confused with ‘smart tv’ does that just mean an internet connected browser for netflix/4od etc or it does recording as well?

Smart TV normally means it just has Internet. That’s often a pretty basic set of apps as well, not a full browser. IMO you are better off getting a basic TV then doing the smart stuff with a separate box. That said having iPlayer built in is pretty good. You certainly want a separate box for recording.

Our smartTV will record directly to any external usb harddrive and has a “proper” browser. It has a nice touch when you go multiscreen, of the browser screen defaulting to a google search of what is currently playing on the TV screen.

I wouldn’t worry about buying a Smart TV. Even the budget Bluray players have all the Smart features built in. We have a Sony BDP-S3100, which is an amazing piece of kit for only about £50. It will play all your old DVDs with excellent upscaling and has iplayer, youtube, netflix etc, etc all built-in.

As for TVs, just read reviews for all the latest Panasonic, Samsung and Sony 42″ models and take your pick. LED seems to be the prevailing screen technology, but we have a Pioneer 5th gen Kuro plasma, which is better than most of the newer stuff that I’ve seen in shops (although most shops are clueless on setup so beware).

Loads of recording box choices too, but we just have Sky HD which is very good and simple to use but quite expensive.

3 x Panasonic Tv’s in my house. 1 x plasma and 2 x LED. With a Panasonic set up properly they are hard to beat. It’s just a shame that they no longer make plasma TV’s anymore as they were just as good if not better than the Pioneer Kudos and despite what some people think, for picture quality the plasma beats the LED hands down. Will be interesting to see if the OLED screens take off as they have the potential to be better than the plasma’s.

Agree that Smart TV isn’t necessary. It’s a nice to have rather than a requirement and i certainly don’t use the functions very often.

Sony’s Triluminous screens are getting close to Plasma.

I watched one vs a Panasonic plasma in Sevenoaks for ages trying to decide which was better (both were set up well), and the the Sony was pretty close, close enough that I went for it when considering other things like power usage and also screen burn-in (which does happen on plasmas even now, and I often leave a media player screen running so would run the risk).

Sony’s Triluminous screens are getting close to Plasma.

I’m surprised plasma is still on top for pure picture quality after all this time. Never had screen burn-in issues on our now quite old Pioneer Kuro. Picture quality is still top notch and not seen anything to convince me to change it – apart from maybe a larger screen which would be nice for movies.

get a plasma, night and day for picture quality over lcd technology (don’t be fooled about LED either, it is usually lcd with led backlighting)

Slight hijack but I fancied a new tele but sounds like I’m best sticking with the 37″ Panasonic Plasma we bought five years ago then.

IF you buy a samsung buy a soundbar too as the sound in my less than a year old one is absolute shite!

+1 for Panasonic via John Lewis, plus SCE-HTE80 soundbar thing it sits on to compensate for the tinny sound from most flat tv’s. The soundbar is bluetooth too, great for music off your phone/ipad etc.

Slight hijack but I fancied a new tele but sounds like I’m best sticking with the 37″ Panasonic Plasma we bought five years ago then.

Depends what model it is. There is a BIG difference between the low and high end Panasonic Plasmas of that era, especially when it comes to upscaling non-HD content, which is less of a problem today. My in-laws have a cheap 42″ Panasonic (about 2 years old) and it’s a bit crap to be honest. Poor colour reproduction, very poor scaling and blurred motion. It does a bit better with HD feeds, but not much. The higher spec models are miles better in every respect and much closer to the legendary Pioneer Kuros. You wouldn’t believe how much better they are until you experience the difference first hand. But then again my father-in-law has slightly dodgy eyesight and honestly can’t tell the difference!

night and day for picture quality over lcd technology

not so much now, or otherwise Panasonic would have been able to keep the plasma range going at anywhere that had decent demo facilities.

TBH, the writing was on the wall for plasma despite it’s superior picture quality. Panasonic were the leaders in plasma technology but plasma only works well in larger screen sizes (>37″). The larger size screens don’t sell as many as the smaller size screens so they were losing money on them.

Also throw in the fact that they use more power than LED’s and have to have a thick glass screen meaning they could never be as thin or light as LED’s the futre was never looking good. It was also going to cost a fortune to develop plasma’s to display 4K and with uncertain sales it wasn’t worth the risk. It is a shame but that’s the price of progress!!!

Another vote for using John Lewis, good service and they will price match with UK store and give 5 year warranty as standard.

Also don’t worry too much on the smart features. Most DVD, Blu Ray players and recorders come with smart features built in. So if a particular feature isn’t present in the TV then you may be able to get recorder with that feature instead.

I also recommend getting a separate box to do the recording. This will give you more flexibility and its cheaper and easier to upgrade at a later date. They all integrate reasonably well with each other using the HDMI cable so you often use the TV remote to control the DVD player.

If you know in advance exactly what shows you want to watch and record then I’d recommend a Humax box. Usually have good reliability, good picture quality and reasonable prices.

If on the other hand you use a scatter gun approach and record a lot of stuff just in case you may want to watch it later, I’d recommend a You View box. These have a innovative feature where by you can scroll back in the TV guide up to 7 days and select a TV program. The box will automatically find the program on the correct on demand app and play the program. I think currently it only works on BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 at the moment. But more and more channels are bringing out watch later apps and services so I imagine the You View service will expand in the future.

If on the other hand you use a scatter gun approach and record a lot of stuff just in case you may want to watch it later, I’d recommend a You View box. These have a innovative feature where by you can scroll back in the TV guide up to 7 days and select a TV program. The box will automatically find the program on the correct on demand app and play the program. I think currently it only works on BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 at the moment. But more and more channels are bringing out watch later apps and services so I imagine the You View service will expand in the future.

That sounds like an interesting feature. But then I thought why not just look for the specific program you want directly on iplayer or whatever catch-up app. They all have decent search engines and easy program browsers. What makes scrolling back on the TV guide any better? Is it not a pointless feature in reality?

The problem with this is that I’ve read in many places that the you View box is fairly crap.
Also, if you didn’t know the program was on in the first place what help is being able to scroll back through the last weeks programs?

If you use a Humax T2 with the custom firmware you can use the free and very cool Remote Scheduling website/package.

You enter a full or partial program name or keywords and the web app searches the EPG daily for any matches and either emails you when there’s a match, or sets up your Humax box to record the program and emails you to let you know.
Once set up the searches remain in place indefinitely (or until you stop them) and can be limited to certain channels or any channel.
So you could set up a search for ‘Guy Martin’ or ‘cycling’ and it will find any matching programs even if the words are only in the program synopsis.
Really good.

Not all of the catch-up services are HD though.

Not all of the catch-up services are HD though.

Not usually a show-stopper though, especially if your telly or box upscales nicely. SD on our Pioneer is almost as good as HD to be honest, the upscaling is that good. But some screens are rubbish with SD for sure.

my 55″ Samsung is good BUT the sound isn’t great and EPG/remote responsiveness is rubbish. we haven’t used the Smart TV functionality.

Not usually a show-stopper though, especially if your telly or box upscales nicely.

some of the SD sources are not very good though and there is a limit as to what upscaling can do.

You are also really restricted to viewing distances if you rely on upscaling, SD does not look anywhere near close to HD if you are too close to the screen.

We got one of these this year and are very happy with it. We also looked at Samsung as everyone raved about them as they have better catch up TV. But the higher end Samsungs are expensive, and don’t look very nice IMHO.

http://www.johnlewis.com/sony-bravia-kdl55w8-led-hd-1080p-3d-smart-tv-55-with-freeview-freesat-hd-2x-3d-glasses/p1491213?kpid=233633100&s_kenid=2ee16bbe-36ef-3e68-ba59-000054790df3&s_kwcid=402×31138&tmad=c&tmcampid=73&kpid=233633103

Regarding the You View, its only useful if you don’t know what to watch. Same as you use the EPG to have a browse to see what’s on now but now you can go backwards in time too. The EPG makes it easy to browse through many channels at the same time rather than going into each app and having a search.

I agree its not a essential feature at all and won’t suit everybody. Doesn’t suit me for example, I watch a limited type of programs on the same few channels so not a big deal for me to have search for anything that takes my fancy.

But my friend and his family have an eclectic tastes so if there isn’t anything interesting on at the moment they have a scroll back to see what they missed and at a click of a button the correct app and program are launched.

I’d definitely recommend having a look at some in person if you can. Comparing technical specs and price is good to narrow choice, but you might find you just don’t like the picture or build quality. A couple of years ago I found higher end Sony and Panasonics to be similar but Samsung colours didn’t look natural (and that’s after turning off the shop ‘max brightness and contrast’ settings).
Also worth considering the sound side. A lot of the thin screens sound awful – hence soundbars etc.
With standalone PVR boxes I’d think about how much stuff you like to keep long term (possibly a lot if you’re used to VHS). With my oldish Digistyle box I can move SD & HD recordings off the internal drive to an external (SD play back on a PC but HD need to go back on for replay); I think some Humax models allow this too.

And don’t stress about having edge-lit panels – it is only there to allow the screens to be very thin and it doesn’t work as well as proper backlit – you only have to look at expensive mac laptops to see that they can’t get it to work properly there either.

I think some Humax models allow this too.

Yes, I can move move recordings from the internal drive to either a USB drive or over to a network using ftp.
Interestingly I can also move downloaded/ripped videos onto the Humax from the network via ftp. This is quite handy as the Humax now operates as the DLNA server for the entire house/network. Daughter #1 loves this as she can lie in bed and watch seemingly endless amounts of Big Bang Theory on her iPad 😐