I’ve been giving this a lot of thought and talked to a few people who have HDTV’s and decided it’s time to get one. I don’t need a big one, something in the 22-36 inch category will do. The purpose of the TV will be mainly for regular viewing and my PS3, so I don’t need the internet on it or something like that.
There are a few things that I will require in my new TV. I’ll need:
2+ HDMI ports
1080p
Contrast at or above 8000:1
These requirements are pretty much set, I don’t want something that does not have the above. However, there are a ton of variations on the following that I do not understand. Prices for TVs with/without the following goes from $600 to over $1000. I just want to know that what I’m getting will be worth the money.
Refresh rates. There are 2 different ways that websites are listing it, by Hz or by milliseconds. What’s the difference in quality between a 60Hz vs. a 120Hz? And between a refresh rate of 8m vs. 5m? And how do the Hz and m compare to each other?
My friend says to get an LCD-LED or LED over a regular LCD. His reasoning was the LED aspect lights up the screen better. The Best Buy website also says that while LCDs perform good in well-lit areas, TVs with LED perform well in all lighting. I do a watch TV in the dark sometimes, so will this be a big problem? Will an LCD look faded in the dark?
Motion blurring apparently happens in some TVs but if I’m going to be ordering from a website, I can’t see the TV in action. Any way I can read the specs and tell if it has bad blurring?
There’s a ton of brands out there. Ideally, I’d like to stick with the more well-known brands like Sony, LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Viewsonic, Toshiba, or Phillips. I’ve also seen some from lesser known brands (lesser known to me I suppose) such as Dynex, Insignia, and Sylvannia. Anyone here have a lesser known brand or know of one and can tell me if it performs markedly worse than the bigger brands?
That’s the graph I was thinking of. If I read it correctly, a 36 inch 1080p only starts to become noticeable as you sit within 5 feet of the TV, and at a distance greater than 12 feet, 480p is just as good.
Well, I just got a nice **LG **32", 1080p 100Hz (32LH5000) - 4 HDMI, 2 SCART and Computer inputs. It looks really good, and was the cheapest 100Hz TV available (in the UK within a reasonable distance). I would have liked the 37" model with 200Hz, but it probably would have been a bit big for our lounge. It certainly looks better than the Sony equivalent.
The only HD device I have currently is an XBox360, but I will sort out a Blueray player and HD media box sometime soon.
Can’t help you with any of the other questions, but I think I understand this (if not, I’m sure someone will be along to correct me)…
The issue with brightness is watching TV in a brightly lit room. If the TV isn’t bright enough, you get glare from ambient light, especially in darker areas of the picture (I have this problem watching, say, a horror movie on my DLP during the day). If your watching the TV at night, LCD vs LED shouldn’t be an issue. If you do a lot of daytime TV watching, the LED should eliminate some of the glare.
The Screen. Go look at it. In person. Specs on a sheet are fine but look at it yourself. The setup will be all kinds of horrible at the store. Fiddle with it. This leads us to…
The Remote Control. Something you rarely see in a showroom. Think of having the hottest girlfriend and not having a common language with her. This is what many TVs are like. You fall in love with them in the showroom, bring them home and they turn out to be a usability nightmare. Are the menus readable, clunky, can you see the image while you see the menu or do they take over? Is the remote responsive? Are the functions you use the most easily accessible? Can you swap from a video source to the other without going through the 27 ports you don’t use?.
I have an Olevia. The screen is an LG screen. It looks great. The User Interface is a nightmare. I will never buy another or recommend it to anyone.
As for lamp vs LED lighting. It matters if you watch TV in the dark. In a dark room, the blacks on a regular LCD look gray because you can see the light behind the black. In a LED-lit LCD, there is no light behind a black dot so it looks black-black, same as it would on the TV turned off. If you will do your watching in daylight, you may not notice the difference.
I’d avoid Best Buy’s Insigna and Dynex house brands - they’re made by the lowest bidder and you can’t easily tell who made any particular product. I think the three most common manufacturers they go with are LG, Funai and Samsung.
Not that there’s anything wrong with these makers, but when your goal is to produce a TV to retail for less than your own brand name, you’re probably not going to use the latest technologies and best-possible parts. My experience with Insignia TVs has been mixed - we’ve had a 15-inch LCD TV that’s been perfectly decent as a desktop TV for the past two years. More recently, we had one of their DVD-TV combos. Within a month, the DVD player croaked.
Echoing what **Sapo **said about remotes - the remote for the Insignia DVD-TV combo drove us nuts as well. The shape and balance of the thing led to picking it up backwards more often than not.
Speaking of inexpensive, yes, Vizio is the big dog in LCD TVs for two reasons - they’re cheaper than well-known brands like Panasonic and Sony, and they’ve been pushed heavily at mass-market places like WalMart and Costco.
Asking for an opinion about which HDTV to buy is tantamount to asking for who knows the most about TVs. As with a similar opinion for a car, the answer you get may not be the one you need even if the advice really was from the most knowledgeable individual.
Some guidelines:
Buy the largest size that will fit. Very few people ever wish they had bought a smaller one.
Pay attention to the viewing angles you will need. A plasma TV will often have a better viewing angle than LCDs.
Pay less attention to numbers such as brightness and contrast, which can be comparative within an manufacturer line but not across them.
Pay attention to reflectivity of the screen. Plasmas and LED-backlit LCDs are more reflective than most LCDs and therefore windows or bright lights in the background can become very distracting.
Nearly all newer–even cheaper–TVs are 1080. This will not be a difference-maker over a 720 set if the 1080 set is otherwise weaker. It is a factor (and the closer you sit, the larger a factor) but it is not a primary factor at this size.
Refresh rates only come into play for fast-action sports and sequences on LCD TVs. Faster is better. If it ruins your viewing experience to see a momentary jitter, pony up for a faster refresh rate.
Plasmas have a denser black, usually. But you won’t necessarily miss it and I don’t think the reflectivity is worth it.
You are buying an inexpensive small HDTV. Don’t obsess over it. As soon as you choose someone will be along to say you could have gotten a slightly better TV. The step up from non-HD to HD is so broad that HD diffferences themselves have become trivial. Compared to what you used to have it will be fantastic and compared to the best on the market at any price it will be plenty good. It’s fun to obsess over small differences but it’s like the guy who is extra pleased with his Lamborghini and ends up driving it 98% of the time on the same roads you and I drive on. Most of his satisfaction comes from having a “better” car; his driving experience itself is only trivially better;
Computers can output at those refresh rates, but where it really matters is that at 120 Hz, both 30/60 Hz and 24 Hz divide evenly. If your source is 24 frames per second, like a blu-ray disc, you can draw every frame evenly. Each image is up for 5 Hz. If your TV only supports 60 Hz, you need to alternate 3 Hz / 2 Hz.
It matter for 3D. The reason for the higher numbers is that 3D will require shutter style glasses which turn on and off. In order to achieve a shutter rate of at least 60 for both eyes it is necessary to have 120 cycles or better.
Can someone look over this TV and tell me if anything “wrong” about it stands out? I realize that this is apparently Best Buy’s house brand, but it seems to have everything I want and is at a good price.
We just got an Insignia. We got plasma for the viewing angle. The one problem is that it only has two HDMI inputs - other than that, we’re very pleased. The picture’s gorgeous. Ours is much bigger, though.
OK this is a huge mistake, Oh you can order online but you need to somehow see it in action. Go to Best Buy or some other store and see a model. If you can’t do this I suggest going to AVS Forums and look around. Spend a few hours reading other people’s post there and you’ll get an idea what is involved.
Remember the TV is only one factor. How you have the set hooked up, how the TV station is broadcasting effects motion. How big the TV is to the distance you sit, to the lighting in the room. It’s all so individual you can’t really tell till you get it home.
I would find a model that looks good to you and go to AVS Forums and see what is said
As to your other questions, this TV will be in the bedroom. I will be sitting no more than 3-4 feet away at the most. It’s a dim room, with a small light. The only window is behind and to the side of the TV, so it won’t glare off the picture. Since the TV’s close, I can just reach out and make it face me if the viewing angle isn’t to my liking. The TV will be sitting on top of a cabinet, on top of a VCR at about eye level. Yes, I said VCR
Currently, I have a tiny 15" flatscreen from some company I’ve never heard of. Got this 4 years ago to replace my even smaller 14" regular box TV.
Anything you play on that VCR is absolutely not going to look good at the distance you mentioned. In fact, if it does, you may want to have an eye exam.
I’m happy with my LG except when I use it with the Wii. It has a noticeable video and audio lag. I can calibrate it for Rock Band, but for Wii fit and other games you cannot.
