I finally moving into the world of HD and will be buying a new TV soon. I’ve started to look in a couple of shops but am a bit bewildered by the options. I’d rather not spend my time reading endless reviews about the differences between every set so I was hoping someone on here could point me in the right direction.

Budget – about £500
Size – 37″
Use – watching TV and film (no gaming etc)

I would also like to get a cheap home cinema sound system – one box with a DVD or blueray player and a set of speakers ideally for about £250.

Cheers in advance for any advice.

Thanks

Rio

Top tip – don’t pay more than £5-£10 for an HDMI lead.

Panasonic do some great plasmas, some with HD Freesat built in.

If you want some ‘no fuss’ cables, go to http://www.markgrantcables.co.uk – no affiliation, just used his products in the past and am very impressed.

If you need to connect by HDMI, then spend what you can (as much as you can) but if you can connect with component (YUV(RGB)) then the belden 1694a cable from markgrant is excellent (this is what I use when building up connections)

At that screen size, i’d look at LCD – plasma is a better option, but its becoming increasingly difficult to find anything less than 42″ at the moment (that’s any good)

I’m afraid I don’t have any experience of the ‘one box’ dvd/amp type packages, other than an old Sony system that I had in a bedroom a few (lots!) of years ago – it sounded pretty good but I feel may blow the £250 budget.

Have a look on avforums.com to see if there is anything 2nd hand at the £250 mark, you may also find a better spec plasma at that price too???

at 37″ all this HD 1080p nonsense is just that, you physically will not see any difference from 720p, so please don’t be fooled into a numbers game that ‘1080 is better because its a bigger number’.

As pompous as it may seem, we don’t get involved with any kit from this end of the spectrum, it’s not that there is anything wrong with it, I just spend my time looking at a much higher price point and what the client demands for his/her cash.

But yes, Panasonic kit is fantastic, the older (commercial range) Plasma’s are still bloody good kit and I’d suggest those all day long, the Viera is getting a little long in the tooth now, but some recent revisions have pushed it forward a little. Samsung’s LCD’s aren’t too bad either, but running Digital Video Essentials on it when you’re ready will offer a much better improvement than a better spec TV without running DVE as colour reproduction will seem more accurate and vibrant etc etc etc 😉

Good luck with it all and hope you’ll get it sorted.

If you want a colour touch screen remote control, or the tv recessing into a wall with an picture moving out of the way when you want to watch tv, or music around the house, whole house lighting control – let me know 😉

jt

Yeah – seen some Panasonic plasmas for £500 (down from £700).

Bargain and great sets too.

Jontawn, can you explain why you would pay any more than £5 for an HDMI lead?

The signal’s digital, it either gets there, or it doesn’t, it’s not like an analogue signal that’s affected by the quality of the cable.

I would second Panasonic. I have a commercial 50″ panel with no tuner or anything and just use my Sky HD box for the tuner. Mind you it was bloody expensive when I bought it a few years ago… 🙂

I have a Panasonic Industrial Plasma I’ll be looking to sell soon. Its a TH-42PHD8 with HDMI input board, Scart and extra RGB board. Plus table top stand. Think I have a wireless board for it also – to enable images from a laptop to be sent the plasma.

Spec – 1024×768 – so it’s only 720P, but it beats some of the newer 1080p PDP’s or LCD’s hands down.

Bezel/Stand is in silver – just remember this is monitor so will need a Sky box.

Also have a JS Technology RGB to Component convertor to improve Sky images.

PM if interested.

In your price range it would be hard to better Panasonic, and you can find a 37″ Plasma for that money. I don’t know anything about the “home cinema in a box” stuff but there’s a fair bit around for £250 or under.

I bought my gold plated connector lead for £1.99 and it’s been fine!

I wouldn’t spend too much as new tech always comes out.

LG do some nice widescreens.

Panasonic take some beating and yes don’t go silly on HDMI cables there’s been loads of test and it’s shown like said above as it’s digital there is no noticeable difference.

Jon – cheers for the info, I do want all of that stuff but my budget won’t run to sliding pictures and touch screen remotes.

Leeph I can’t see a mail in your profile. I’m interested in the screen, currently got virgin so should suit my needs – let me know what sort of price you are after?

Cheers

Rio

Some great advice from JT as always on this matter, just to add a one box solution for your sound, don’t bother with bluray, it’s not worth it unless your going home cinima.

That NAD box looks very nice but sadly out of my budget. I think I need something at the cheaper end of the market. Is 5.1 worth it over 2.1 sound?

2unfit: thank you, most kind!

Yes, i’ll explain as to why I would (and do) spend ‘loadsa money’ on any interconnect.

the thing with HDMI is that the frequency of the data running along the cable is “very high” (not sure off the top of my head, it is 1am!) and as such, that info uses the wire as a wave guide, as opposed to a cable that carries your electricity using it as a ‘pipe’ (full of electricity)

The quality control needed to produce a cable that is capable of carrying hdmi 1.3 and above (they are dealing with 1.4 at the moment) is stupidly tight as the signal is divided up into individual parts such as:
image colour
image size
audio (hdmi 1.3 & above)
digital handshaking information
device information

and no doubt some more stuff I forgot about, and because of the frequency of that data on the cable, if it’s a cheapy one, that data will be susceptible to interference from all the other bits and as say the colour information bit of the signal will end up not being as accurate as it ought to be.

think of it this way, if you use a DAB radio and the aerial is not positioned correctly the audio tends to go a bit squiffy, move the aerial and it is correct – and that’s just a fairly low frequency, low amount of data being pushed across. or even like a cat5 interconnect, try sending gigabit data down it and it will have errors, use a cat5e cable and so long as standards are adhered to, you’ll end up with pretty good gigabit networking, use some cat6e and again follow standards, and gigabit is easy 😉

sorry its a poor explanation, I really ought to sleep but I’m reading about compression testing on diesel engines 😉

You don’t have to spend 00’s on a cable, 40quid or so (rrp) will give you a nice bit of cable (qed hdmi stuff isn’t so hot, same for monster, markgrantcables will see you right, i know i keep banging on about him, but for vfm they’re spot on)

the 8 series plasma for sale should be cracking bit of kit (so long as it hasn’t been on sky tv for 4 years constantly with a little red mark burned in the corner of the image!) ;))) (said tongue in cheek really, i know stw folk are pretty sensible!)

not sure what to suggest re: the 5.1. we’re working on a job at the moment where the client only wanted 2.1 for his bedroom, however, our buy price on the speakers is twice your budget! … have a look at anthony gallo kit, if you want any, drop me an email and I may be able to look after you a bit on the price 😉 (shhhhh!!) you’d need an amp too. have a look in richer sounds – there own brand kit is pretty damned good and certainly a marked improvement over most stuff at the same price point.

jeez, im waffling.

time for sleep

jt 😉
p.s.
let us/me know how you get on, would be interested to hear!