Upgrading my HD tv to 37".Some advice needed

pembssurfer

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Looking to upgrade my 1 year old bush 32" hd tv (i know bush but at the time its all i could afford for my xbox 360) and its served me very well. But imm starting to get fed up with the lack of contrast in dark scenes as it is only a poxy 500:1 ratio. Also just bought a ps3 with a few blu-rays so i want to get the best of them

Its going to be in my bedroom which is fairly small and i want a 37" now as thats the biggest i can go. My budget is strictly £600 and not a penny over.
Iv done a lot of hunting but can anyone recommend a good bargain buy. Lots of connectivity is a must for me as i have a need for 3 HDMI sockets now and a component and a VGA. 1080p is not a nessecity as to be honest i cant tell any difference between that and 1080i on a 37" set.

At the top of my list at the moment is the SAMSUNG LE37R87BDX which by all accounts seems the best all rounder...My local comets have got it for £599but i have a mate who works there who can give me a 10% discount bringing it down to under £550... Iv seen this set in action and imm really impressed by the style and picture performance..The question is Can i get a better set for the money. There was a toshiba 37" set in comets with full HD 1080p but to be honest the blacks did not look as good as they do on the samsung and it was 650 quids.
 
my post is forgotten already..sob sob
 
Looking to upgrade my 1 year old bush 32" hd tv (i know bush but at the time its all i could afford for my xbox 360) and its served me very well. But imm starting to get fed up with the lack of contrast in dark scenes as it is only a poxy 500:1 ratio. Also just bought a ps3 with a few blu-rays so i want to get the best of them

Its going to be in my bedroom which is fairly small and i want a 37" now as thats the biggest i can go. My budget is strictly £600 and not a penny over.
Iv done a lot of hunting but can anyone recommend a good bargain buy. Lots of connectivity is a must for me as i have a need for 3 HDMI sockets now and a component and a VGA. 1080p is not a nessecity as to be honest i cant tell any difference between that and 1080i on a 37" set.

At the top of my list at the moment is the SAMSUNG LE37R87BDX which by all accounts seems the best all rounder...My local comets have got it for £599but i have a mate who works there who can give me a 10% discount bringing it down to under £550... Iv seen this set in action and imm really impressed by the style and picture performance..The question is Can i get a better set for the money. There was a toshiba 37" set in comets with full HD 1080p but to be honest the blacks did not look as good as they do on the samsung and it was 650 quids.

never compare sets on their blacks by just looking.. If i were u I'd asked if u could take a look in the settings and adjust a few things, see if u can get the right image out of a TV u are seriously considering .. I really think u should consider the Toshiba as it has way superior specs it also has 3 hdmi connections as u prolly noticed urself .. also dont let the hdmi connections decide what to buy, a hdmi switch is cheap :)
 
Well after me searching around west wales and Comet giving me the run around regarding both the Toshiba and Samsung 37" sets (there were literally none in south or west wales barring display models) and comets also trying to get me to buy a manky display model with £15 off....i mean 15 quid off come on. I ended up getting one of their so called sales staff (although u would never think they were interested in selling a tv) to plug a blu-ray into a philips 37pfl7662d that had full 1080P and was pretty supprised how good it was next to the displayed toshiba 1080. So i settled for the philips 37pfl7662d for £699.

Got it home and unpacked it and everything is great seems reasonably well built and easy to use. 1080p content looks stunning on blu-ray my only bug-bear is the fact despite it saying it will process 24fps via the ps3 it indeed struggles with this and judders like a biatch to the point where certain scenes are unwatchable, fine without 24fps selected though. I always thought id struggle to get it to do 24fps without any problems at this price and indeed i was right.

As for the rest of it, black levels seem pretty good and contrast ratio is good at 5000:1. Saturation is probably average (not as good as a sony w) and iv just watched some football with no apparent motion blur which is always good.

SD Freeview looks fine and a lot better than my old HD LCD via a set-top box ever did.

Sound is probably about average compared to the others i heard today in this price range...no better no worse.

Connections....could be a lot better...only 2 HDMI and no VGA,...but fine for my needs at the moment.


SO just to re-iterate....HD material from Blu-ray and xbox 360 looks pretty stunning for the price in some parts, although 24fps via the ps3 is a no go with frame stuttering all over the place, although at this price im not really supprised.

SD material pretty good

In short my first impression of this tv is that its pretty capable in most areas but not a ground breaker by any strecth of the imagination. But then iv only had 4 or 5 hours with it.
 

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