17" LCD for bedroom, looking for cheapest available!!

Hallsy

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Seeing as LCD prices have come down a fair bit now (saw a Beko 15" at RS for 230) I am thinking of getting one for the bedroom once we decorate it (after I've finished the kitchen, hallway, and fitted new d/stair bathroom!!) and wondered what were the cheapest on the market at the mo. I'd ideally want a 17" one, but would maybe settle for a 15". I'd probably run a basic 5.1 setup as well, something like the Yam RXV350 & NSP100 package that unbeatable were doing cheap.
Any suggestions?
 
You need to be careful with cheap small LCD TV's. I've had three in the past 10 days and have now found one I am happy with. First I got the Techwood 17" for £399 from Currys but got a refund after the screen had quite a large "glow" at the top and bottom of the screen, then I got a DMTech from Comet for £399 and the picture quality was dreadful, I returned that and finally I've ended up with a Philips 17" From Comet again but cost £499 and has outstanding picture quality and no glowing areas. So I recommend that you have a good look at the TVs in the shops and don't get weird makes you've never heard of before.

(Don't get one from Comet because you can only return goods that are unopened, had the lie through my teeth to get them to swap it from the DMTech to the Philips)
 
Thanks for the advice, luckilly as it is only a bedroom set I won't be expecting outstanding quality.
Well I was considering the Relisys one (RLT17 I think), but have seen it for 350. Does anyone know if it's available cheaper anywhere? I had read a thread on here saying it was available for 250 but that seems a little far fetched!!
 
The Relisys RLT1720 got a pretty poor review in What Hi-Fi FWIW. It was available for £247 a few months ago in BT Shop but that offer is over now. I can concur with Blob's experience- I had the 17" Mikomi from Argos (seems to be available for £299 every time there is a sale), which is identical to the Techwood, and found the picture to be quite noisy. E.g. feeding it with RGB SCART and just showing Sky menus you could see noise crawling all over it. Maybe it was just that set.

PRC Direct are doing the Toshiba 17WL46B for £378, it was as low as £363 about a month ago. Like the Mikomi/Techwood, it's made by Vestel in Turkey but it has a much better panel- 8-bit IPS, 176H/176V viewing angle vs. 6-bit TN, 140H/110V viewing angle on the Mikomi/Techwood. The Philips 17PF9946 also uses a panel with the same specs as the Toshiba.
 
Aldi were doing a 17" widescreen with dvi a few months ago and some stores still have them in. £329 :thumbsup:
 
I have a DMTECH 17" widescreen without the integral DVD which I'm running a Sony DAV-SA30 through. The picture is fine as long as you don't get up close. Sure the picture isn't pin sharp and due to the 25ms reaction time it blurs slightly when large objects move during fast action scenes but they are few and far between. I have watched "I Robot" and "2 Fast 2 Furious" so far with no noticable break up in the picture. The RF signal is not quite so hot but that's not what I bought it for as it's only a bedroom DVD system. I'd recommend it. As long as you remember that it's a £350 piece of kit and one gets what one pays for you won't be dissappointed. Comet are still the cheapest place to get it but John Lewis do it for £50 more but offer a 5 year guarantee for piece of mind.
 
i belive dmtech is the worst brand for lcd tvs out there and its their electronics/comb filters which make it so poor. watch a news anchor in a pinstripe suite and you know what the filter does, watch a tennis match and you see how slow the screen refresh is. regardless of screen size (17,20, 26) and built dvd or not. btw: when the dvd is built in and you watch the dvd, the filters are turned off and the picture is ok.

jvc, philips are much better in that category.
 
How about the Beko 20" - £329.99 at QED :thumbsup:

I've seen this at RicherSounds and it was a nice little set.
 
Cheers for the heads up! Probably a little more than I'd want to pay, but I'll have a look.
 
The Beko's only 640x480 though, not enough to display PAL (720x576) so the display will look a little soft. If you're after the absolute cheapest, Sainsbury's have a Digix 15" for £199.
 
christ, that IS cheap!!!
Really gonna be looking for a widescreen 17" though, not in a great hurry so will just have to see how the prices go overthe next couple of months.
 
Well, started browsing again over the last couple of days - christ the prices have come down in just a few months. It seems that it is more than possible to get a widescreen 17" for around £250, just above.
On ebay a Relisys RLT1720 just finished at £230 plus p&p, also seen some cheap ones on there from DMTech, the ones without DVD as possibly mentioned above, and also a Bush one that I've seen before, it's got LCD written on the top left.
Bearing these sort of sets in mind, which would be the better of teh bunch? Are the Relisys units as bad as the WHF made out? I think the buch & relisys sets look the nicest as far as aesthetics go, but no point buying one if I can't watch it, even if it is only for the bedroom!!
 
jon2099 said:
The Beko's only 640x480 though, not enough to display PAL (720x576) so the display will look a little soft. If you're after the absolute cheapest, Sainsbury's have a Digix 15" for £199.[/QUO

I owned the 15" DIGIX for a month before swopping it for the 26" Sonix at Sainsburys.

Its a nice little portable and has vga input too. I was using it with an indoor loop aerial from an old crt portable. The picture wasn't too good I must admit but dvd was watchable. What my Sonix did show up in that little Digix was that it did not have a very powerful tuner/rf decoder in it because the Sonix was amazing in comparison with such a weak signal.

I think the Digix is exactly the same tv as the Logic supplied by Currys £199 except for a minor cosmetic difference. :hiya:
 
Hi,

Just a word of caution regarding the rlt1720 prices you spotted on ebay. I did similar research, but noticed quite a number of this unit the auctions had vat added on afterwards, ie auction price + delivery and then VAT added on top. Be carefull and check the details of the auction, but you may have spotted a couple of cheap units, good luck.

I went for this unit for a widescreen computer display with decent sound for a computer running MCE 2005. And as a display for this it is very good and I can use a native resolution of 1280*768 which is what I was after. But if your into games the response time will be too slow.

As a TV I havent tested.

I eventually went for DABs who had the unit in black at 298.99 and thats including VAT and then delivery I think was about 6.00 including VAT. Must say service was great ordered 6pm on a monday and arrived midday the next day. Note silver unit is more expensive on dabs about +100.
 
Well spotted Derek, the one that ended at £230 is indeed plus vat, so if that was plus vat on both item & shipping it would have come to around £287, still not bad, but not quite as cheap as first thought!!
 
i also use the RLT1720 as a computer monitor as does Derek22.One thing to bear
in mind is that it has no scart input,just 1 x component,1 x composite,1 x s-video,1 x vga and the RF input.Currently available on E-buyer for £283.99 + delivery.TV wise it is not exactly jaw dropping but is adequate,although i only tried it the once through a bad RF feed.
 
Is that bush one a 20" version of the LCD17TV ? The 17" one was meant to be a failry good unit, just suffering on audio. I'll run a small surround sound with it anyway so don't care too much about audio.
Besides I would like to stay the right side of £300 really as I'll have plenty else to pay for once the room is decorated, furnished, etc :)
 
Has anyoone mentioned the Videoseven LTV17d at £233.18 available atTechnoworld or

Viewsonic nextvision n1700W @ amazon for £249 or

Umax yamada L171 £234.34 @ ebuyer
 
I have seen those screens mentioned before, the Umax one is not 16:9 , or so I believe.
I will have alook at the others also.
I think at the moment though I'd be looking between the Relisys RLT1720 or maybe the Bush LCD17TV that you see on ebay at cheap prcies sometimes, I think the look of the Relisys is nicer, even maybe in black, but I'll have to get out and try to look at the actual picture quality seeing as some people have reported bad PQ.
 
Mikomi 17in Widescreen LCD TV £249 (with £10 additional 'refund' by way of a voucher against any future purchase at Argos) :thumbsup:

Spec:

Silver.
42cm visible screen size.
Nicam digital stereo.
2 x 2w RMS power output.
Resolution 1280 x 768 pixels.
Brightness 450cd/m2.
Fastext.
UHF/VHF hyperband tuner.
Auto setup.
Auto search tuner.
Auto search sorting.
Auto search labelling.
On screen display.
Sleep timer.
Child lock.
Back panel AV socket.
Headphone socket.
PC input.
1 SCART sockets.
Remote control (batteries supplied).
230v AC mains.
NTSC compatible.
Size (H)32.8, (W)44.5 (D) 6.5cm
 
The specs for the Mikomi are inaccurate (it's Argos' fault)- it's actually got 2 SCARTS, both RGB capable.
 
and its bloody good too

got one for bedroom and very impressed by picture

only tried DVD via scart but picture was gorgeous - very colourful and chrisp
 
Got my Mikomi yesterday and it really is very impressive indeed.

I've always been a sceptic of LCD TVs as the ones I have seen running had abysmal picture quality (including the Sonix 26 inch one from Sainsburys) but this is excellent.

Just the right size for a bedroom TV as well.
 

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