head twisting lcd decisions

[dazzafact]

i am well and truly confused!!! After spending a month persuading her indoors that our current tv was broke and not worth fixing and that the way forward was quite obviously a hi def lcd; ihave now hit a brick wall!!! my choices are Tosh 37 wlt58,the samsung Le40r51b or an lg i saw in currys(hi def promo, so not a real test) Just wandering what you guys thought, whether there's much diffence in the 3 pq wise?? I'll be watching sports through sky, and dvds with a tosh 220 player(probably upgrade but thats another month persuading!!)

Any help please!!?

 

[dazzafact]

c'mon you have to help!! I'm tvless!!!!

 

[andrewfee]

Sorry, I didn't see your post. From a quick search online, the Toshiba is around £1600, so I will assume that is your budget. I would personally not recommend the Samsung LCD; I have the 32" and have had a lot of problems with it. (even if I hadn't, the image quality just isn't quite there with SDTV inputs)

Will you be adopting SkyHD (talk of £300-500 for the box and £50/month for only 6 HD channels) or HD-DVD / BluRay (talk of £1000 for a player and £30/movie) any time soon? If your answer to that is no, then you should look at the Sharp "P50" series. These LCDs give the best quality possible with Sky/Cable/Freeview and DVDs, and as a bonus, they're cheap. (relatively)

The LC37P50E can be had for around £1200-1300. (even from places like Currys online)

It's quite nice looking too, in my opinion:

 

[dazzafact]

cheers andrew.

Ive not considered the sharp, not sure why either, it seems that ive been suckered in by marketing and the fact every one is raving about the toshiba, but felt i needed a 2nd and third choice!!!

My telly at the mo is a sky integrated one which for football gives a very good pic, so i'm a tad worried that the lcd wont be that good with the fast moving stuff (i believe its a problem with lcd's???) so sky hd would probably be bought, much to the delight of my wife!! Blue ray and hd dvd is a while away, for me anyway, but a computer hook up is always an option!!

Have you heard/seen much of the lg lcd's that currys have on display?

I think i'm answering all my questions here and the toshiba is up there at the top!!! AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!! My head hurts!!

 

[richard plumb]

Will you be adopting SkyHD (talk of £300-500 for the box and £50/month for only 6 HD channels) or HD-DVD / BluRay (talk of £1000 for a player and £30/movie) any time soon? If your answer to that is no, then you should look at the Sharp "P50" series.

andrew,

With all due respect, I think 'soon' might be slightly confusing.

'during the lifetime of your set' would be a better comparison. If you are happy with high quality 'normal' TV, then the Sharp 'P' series looks great. If you think you'll be going HD even in the next 2-3 years, then I personally think you should seriously consider a HD ready set. The Sharp will take a HD input, so the issue is slightly clouded, but you need to weigh things up.

Sky HD won't be £50 a month and £400 for the box for long - look at Sky+, they're giving it away now. And more channels will be along soon.

 

[mitor]

I quite agree that the pe50 sharp, whilst a mighty fine picture for SD is not really the best purchase if you have even the vaguest intention of going down the HD route

(at the risk of sounding like a broken record, may I suggest the Xbox360?)

*ahem*

What was said regarding the smeary quality of SD sources is true (on the samsung) it is also true of the Toshiba and every other HD ready flat screen (barring Very expensive models with top scalers)


I think you'd be hard pressed to find a better value option than the 40 samsung, it's just wether you can live the fact that it exposes the horrible low res nature of SD broadcasts.


Good luck regardless, don't forget to demo!



D'oh almost forgot! on the subject of sports, if you love your footy (or whatever) you MUST test it on the screen you're thinking of buying, you won't be happy if you get it home and all the players are ghosting.

I own the Samsung but can't properly comment as the only sport I've watched on it is Martial Arts, I've never noticed Ghosting, but It's better safe than sorry!

 

[Dune]

andrew,

With all due respect, I think 'soon' might be slightly confusing.

'during the lifetime of your set' would be a better comparison. If you are happy with high quality 'normal' TV, then the Sharp 'P' series looks great. If you think you'll be going HD even in the next 2-3 years, then I personally think you should seriously consider a HD ready set. The Sharp will take a HD input, so the issue is slightly clouded, but you need to weigh things up.

Sky HD won't be £50 a month and £400 for the box for long - look at Sky+, they're giving it away now. And more channels will be along soon.

But the P50 is HD compatable which ought to mean, if you feed it a HD picture you would get DVD like quality from broadcast HD material. So you should see and improvement in picture quality over SD broadcast quality I would have thought.

It won't be true HD but if it is an excellent picture just the same then given the vast majority of channels won't be HD for some time it could still take the lifetime of set to come to pass before it is worth upgrading to a HD set of the future.

The way to test this is to get a demo of a P50 running HD against an alternative HD set running the same HD feed. It is my aim to try and get one from a decent dealer even if it means travelling a bit. Most HD sets are 1388x768 which isn't a native HD resolution anyway do they are having to scale HD pictures as it is. So it will be interesting to see how both technologies handle HD.

A few sets (like the 37 and above Philips) offer a true HD resolution so may look totally stunning on HD but have you seen the price of these things?

This is a TV we are talking about here after all and the content of broadcast material has me wondering why I pay the TV license at times so the thought of spending £2K plus on a set doesn't sit well with me.

By the time HD is common on the majority of broadcast material the P50 will be close to the end of its life and the sets around then will no doubt be offering 1080p at a reasonable price.

Dave

 

[neilmcl]

I agree, unless you're a gaming nut and thats not to say the P50 won't be OK with the Xbox360, this set should give you a number of years of qualiy viewing even with HD until the need arises to purchase a cheaper True HD set in say 5 years time when HD should be more mainstream.

 

[richard plumb]

Dune,

Fair point. I guess its really a sliding scale. perhaps better illustrated by something like:

"I will be interested in watching HD material (games, Sky, movies) a lot by"
2005---------2006---------2007------------2009---------2009--------2010------not bothered
HD ready-------------------HD capable-----------------------------SD set


Basically the earlier you want high quality HD, the more likely you should stump up a bit extra for a HD ready set.

 

[dazzafact]

cheers guys for this, but im still edged towards the tosh 37wl58 probably for the reasons mitor stated, i am just nervous that my precious football will look dodgey; but then i could stick my crt in the bedroom and be banished there whilst watching it, which of course would give me brownie points from the wife!!!