Jim Holden Blog

I just bought an LCD TV

December 26th, 2006

I took the plunge and got a Samsung F71 Series 40″ 1080p LCD TV.

If you know me then you’ll know that if I’m interested in anything then I will make it my mission to understand it all and really try and get good at something before I proceed. I may not spend the most possible but I try to at least get a grip of it so I can make a better decision than just turning up at Dixons and buying something.

Buying a TV is HARD. There isnt any other way to describe it. The gigantic choice currently available makes buying very difficult and the conflicting opinions throughout the web and via the specialist HD TV magazines doesnt help. Up until a week a go I had decided than a Panasonic 42inch Plasma (600 series) would probably be the TV I bought. It has rave reviews and it’s consistantly liked. I had a nagging feeling about it (and I do still have one with the samsung) but the Panasonic is Plasma - which to be truthful I didnt want. Aside from the usual pros and cons of Plasma the one thing that got me was the resolution.

Standard television singles in the UK run at 576p which essentially means than vertically there are 576 pixels. HDTV runs at 720p and can go up to 1080p. You can easily deduce that as the vertical pixel count goes up so to does the horizontal and subsequently the resolution and picture quality increases.

If we look at the Panasonic Plasma we can see that it’s resolution for a 16:9 format screen is 1024×768 pixels. This is the classic 4:3 scape used on many PC monitors and I believe that it’s turned into 16:9 via the shape of the pixels used, in this case Panasonic use “rectangular” pixels. Additionally if you look at the resolution chart on wiki (here) you’ll notice that 1024×768 is considered an XGA resolution and not HDTV of which 1280×720 and 1920×1080 are. This is probably easily disproved but when you’re researching a new subject this is the kind of information you base decisions on.

For me, i wanted three core things out of the purchase.

First, I wanted a decent TV which would play well with current Satelite content.

Second, I wanted a TV which would be good enough to cope with Blu-Ray/HD-DVD at high quality and HD television. I realise that this isnt economically possible for me yet (blu-ray players are £1000) and HD television is in it’s infancy. I at least wanted to set myself up with something which would be good enough for the future until SED comes out .

Lastly - I want a decent PC monitor - something which will turn playing games via a PC or and XBOX into something amazing.

The plasmas just dont cut it. They have poor overall resolution which kills the PC monitor aspect and they dont cater (yet) for the high quality HD players. Since I wanted the TV now I had to get what I thought was the right one.

So there we have it. Ill put up with the possible motion blur and such - overall I am happy about it but it will take a while to decide if I made the right decision - yay!

Entry Filed under: Technology