How much do I need to spend for a half decent LCD and which one is right for me?

[crazzy kopite]

I am looking to buy an LCD set mainly for the xbox 360 but also to watch dvd and sky on. I am a football fan but I have read people have had problems watching football as half their screen has remained green after watching a game of football.
I would like a component output as I have a sony 900 player and this is also supposed to be the best connection and 2 rgb scart sockets would also be a bonus though I have a scart control box where I can add more scart sockets rather than just keep changing them at the back of the tv.

I dont know what resoloution to look for or what fram rate to look for and I know sony are changing to blue ray to rival HD-TV will this have any effect on HD-TV's at all?
As I say I want one to watch football, sky, dvd's gaming etc. How much will I have to pay for a half decent set? I dont need a stand because I have a 3 tier LCD stand and a 5 tier matching AV rack.

[crazzy kopite]

Anyone offer me any advice

[tscotsman]

I wouldnt go near a LCD if you really like your football, just my opinion but whenever ive seen football on them, with a fast panning shot it really blurrs. Just my thoughts

[crazzy kopite]

Here is my shortlist
Samsung LE26R41BD £600
Hitachi 32LD7200 £1200
Panasonic TH37PV500 Plasma £1800
Samsung LE32R41BD £880

My bedroom is about 12ft lengh and 10ft width. I say bedroom but this is just a spare room when my brother and his kids come over I sleep in here. I want it mainly for gaming Xbox 360, football, dvd's and sky.
I have heard a few bad things said when watching football which has put me off. Maybe I can just watch football on the downstairs tv lol.

[bayards]

The Panny TX-32LXD500 (LCD) does the job for me - football is fine(ish) from Sky Digital - the grass is blurry as Sky use apalling bitrates to squeeze more channels into each slot. Watching the odd footie game on Channel 5 shows what can be achieved. Even the built in Freeview is not bad! I viewed a lot of LCDs and plasmas before going for the above set - it also got glowing reviews from tech mags. The plasma sets I looked at had dot problems - and the final straw was the news from Sony that they were dropping plasmas to concentrate on LCD.

However when I play a DVD from my upscaling player - astonishing picture. So it comes back to that old adage "rubbish in, rubbish out".

I would hope that Sky HD footie will shine....

H

[ehr]

Look for a response rate of 20ms or less. Look for a contrast ration of 1000 or better. Look for a resolution of 1368X768 or better. If you get all three, its just a question of price.

There's a jargon buster here on my site:
http://www.cleardragon.com/support/jargon

[scarty16]

you need a response rate below 8ms for fast moving objects on LCD, otherwise you will get ghosting.

Also some reports/observations suggest that by using component rather than scart to connect to an LCD tends to minimise the ghosting effects (on the better LCDs)

I bought a V40 (40" V series Sony LCD) and took it back due to the terrible picture with SKY (particularly with football). There's a lot of information on this forum regarding interlaced (SKY) viewing on LCD TV's. I'm pretty fussy when it comes to viewing. I've since ordered a TH37PV500.

[marty2005]

I have an 19" 12ms monitor and have seen no ghosting on it.

I don't think it's just the refresh rate that matter, it's the hardware and software that are in the machine.

I've heard that Samsung 25ms monitors had hardly any ghosting and where better that some 16ms monitors.

[Northerner76]

This is a cut and paste from a techie journal - shoudl shed some light on response times:

The Myth of the 8 ms Panel
The techie in all of us wants a monitor with the fastest possible pixel refresh rate. After all, the faster the better, right? Well, it turns out it is not quite that simple. It’s obvious that if your pixel refresh is too slow, there’s too much blurring. It’ll interfere with your gaming. However, when the motion blur reaches a threshold point, it’s no longer a hindrance to your gaming performance and actually helps to smooth out the framerates. On the other hand, monitors that are too aggressive with the pixel refresh times don’t have anywhere near the same color or contrast.

The real problem is that rated pixel refresh times are rarely quoted as “averages.” They’re often quoting the best-case scenario. This is further complicated by the fact that there are different types of LCD panels on the market: S-IPS, TN-film, and PVA/MVA. Think of them as being different CPU types (like a Pentium 4 vs. Athlon64). Depending on the type of LCD panel, there can be large differences in the pixel refresh depending on whether it’s going from black to white, or rom gray to gray. It can actually be slower to transition from black to gray than it is to go from black to white for some panels. That can be a bit counter-intuitive.

What this means for you is that a 25 ms S-IPS LCD panel works as fast as a 16 ms “TN-film” based LCD technology for the wide range of black to light gray. Only when a pixel is going from pure black to pure white is the TN-film actually faster. So in nearly every real-world application including first person shooters, the difference in smearing will be minimal. On the other hand, a PVA or MVA monitor that may be advertised as doing 25 ms when going from black to white may very well need 80 ms to transition from black to dark gray!

Speed isn’t everything. IPS panels typically offer better viewing angles with more accurate color, however contrast is poorer. TN-Film technology (the 8, 12 and 16 ms) panels only display 18-bit color. PVA/MVA panels on the other hand are famed for deep black levels and superb contrast ratios that typically come the expense of speed.

So, while pixel refresh is important, the way it’s advertised, it’s about as useful as megahertz ratings for CPUs or watts for amplifiers. It’ll help you decide within a panel type only. That is, an 8 ms TN-film screen is better than a 12 ms TN-film screen, but a 20 ms MVA screen will have significantly worse ghosting than a 25 ms IPS panel. In addition, all things equal 17-inch LCD panels tend to exhibit less smearing than 19-inch panels with the same advertised pixel refresh.

[BenchyUK]

So the D500 suffers from ghosting? I mainly want this screen because i am getting an XBOX 360 aswell but also want superb pictures on DVD and Freeview

[crazzy kopite]

In the end I have decided to go for the Philips 32PF9830. I pre-ordered on last week hopefully I should have it here November 16th.