Full HD or HD ready - talk to me about TV's

[PeterN]

I have a 40" Samsung smart TV bought about 18 months ago and its brilliant, got it from John Lewis with a free 5 year guarantee and keen price with free delivery. Its the first new TV that I have ever bought for myself as I was a TV engineer for over 50 years and always took a stock set indoors for our own use. The 5 year guarantee appealed to me because there is not much you can repair on flat screen sets except possibly the power supplies, of which I have repaired a couple.

Peter

[benczuk]

I actually learnt (why doesn't Firefox recognise that spelling?)

Because you're using the stock US dictionary?

Didn't know Americans don't use learnt, new one on me. But yes, I work for a US Company so everything has to be spell checked to American I "apologize" for all the "zees"

[steve_earwig]

Damn shermans They did it on purpose you know

[Bailes1992]

When the other half and I bought our TV we put our sensible heads on and decided that a 40" would be a good compromise.
We bought a Toshiba 40" smart TV.

The screen itself is superb! The smart side of things make the TV almost unusable, it's worse than my Mondeo and my iPhone 4S (since I updated it to IOS8) for glitches.
Once a week it won't switch on. You have to switch it off at the wall before it will switch on. Everything takes a few second, even starting up the guide! It's so slow it's unreal.
Thing is we have a BT YouView box and that has all the 'smart' features we need and if not we also have a PS3, an Xbox 360 and a 'smart' home cinema system.
I really wish we just bought a normal TV.

[PeterN]

The 'smart' side of the Samsung works well in the main but very dependent on broadband speed which is not good here at the best of times, some features don't work at all which is apparently quite common, but the ones we use mostly such as IPlayer and YouTube work fine when the speed is good enough. It does get confused if you make the mistake of giving it more than one command at a time, it completely freezes but it will work its way through them very slowly and eventually come back on.

Peter

[Welly]

It does get confused if you make the mistake of giving it more than one command at a time, it completely freezes but it will work its way through them very slowly and eventually come back on.

Not very 'smart' then?

Like many things I normally only buy equipment that does one thing only; these things that do many functions don't seem to do any of them very well. The Washer/Drier is still a sore subject in our house

Still on the hunt for the TV......

[PeterN]

I would get one with valves in it then, always does as its told and much easier to repair.

Peter

[Welly]

Bailes reminded me that our 40" 'Celsus' TV (made by Toshiba I believe) sometimes refuses to play ball and needs switching on/off at the wall.

Bit random I know but when will house builders wake up to the fact that we need at least 3 x double sockets behind our TV's now

[Doggy]

....when will house builders wake up to the fact that we need at least 3 x double sockets behind our TV's now

I put 3 double sockets behind our telly, then changed it for a 42".

Result: - Mrs Doggy can't reach behind it, so has everything running off a 6-way socket extension, plugged into the other side of the room.

[Welly]

Ha ha, we can't reach our sockets either, well not without some serious gymnastics.

[Welly]

I'm aiming this one square in the face of Highlander cos he pointed me at Richer Sounds (I have an account with them already, how cool am I?).

You might turn your nose up at this one but austerity made me do it, I think now a 32" will suffice for the small room as it'll only be about 10 feet away from my eyez:

http://www.richersounds.com/product/tv- ... -141-one-i

[Captain Jack]

My old new-build flat had 2x 2x double sockets near the "TV area". So I had 4 sockets on one side of the wall and 4 on another. Still had to use additional power strips though...

TV's... sigh, it's all a load of shite these days. The best TVs of the modern era are plasmas for picture quality, especially with crappy standard def sources that the majority of people still have. Sadly, you cannot buy these new any more and they have complex power supplies making them trickier to repair than their LCD counterparts.

"Smart" features don't appeal to me at all. I use a 5 year old laptop with XBMC installed on it for every "smart" feature I need. It's little more than a gimmick*, just like the 3D malarkey is that no-one ever uses. And did you see the "smooth motion" features on the latest and greatest? Makes The Godfather look like a Mexican soap opera. But TV manufacturers have to shove something in your face to shove the prices up, right? A bit like car manufacturers really...

The best bit of advice I can give you is to find the best quality panel (read reviews - lots) with all the features that you will never use absent. That means 3D, smooth flow etc. LED backlighting helps with the blacks (plasmas didn't have this issue). Do take a stroll to your local TV store but it's very difficult to judge. On most TVs, decent HD content will look good and very similar. If you watch a lot of SD content (and you will, with Freeview), then you really need to judge the TV on its SD performance, so request a demo.

*Samsung Smart TV features are streets ahead of others, so get that if you are set on using Smart stuff

[Welly]

Cheers mate, who'd have thought buying a poxy TV would be so difficult

[OllieNZ]

Cheers mate, who'd have thought buying a poxy TV would be so difficult

You could say that about anything. For me my smart telly was well worth it and I only use a small amount of what it's capable of. Things like streaming videos from my computer without ever having to pick it up or browsing YouTube on my phone and throwing the video directly to the telly are neat features that I'd have never bought a telly for in the past but I now consider them must haves. As for 3d I have it and must say after watching a movie in 3d(well made that is) it's just not the same watching it normally, even the wife has remarked on this and she couldn't really care less what sort of telly we own.
I think the main considerations are price, quality and features you'll actually use. As everyone knows opinions are like arso's everyone's got one.

[KozmoNaut]

Keep in mind that even if you buy a "non-smart" TV, you can still get smart TV features through devices such as Apple TV or Google Chromecast (depending on your allegiance), so the presence of smart TV features should never take priority over picture quality and usability.

And of course there's always XBMC/Kobi running on a small form factor PC if you're a bit geeky like Captain Jack. More features there than any smart TV will ever have.