My wife and I had more or less made up our minds to buy a LCD TV. Looked at all the reviews and came to the conclusion that a Samsung LE32R41BD was the best possible for about

go to somewhere like richer sounds, they will demo stuff for you so you can actually see things for yourself

decent prices too

As far as I can see both LCD and Plasma have a long way to go before I'd buy one -- takes a lot to beat a good quality CRT TV

I've looked at a lot of flat panel TVs , and the only ones I've seen that had a better picture than my 32" Sony CRT were a couple of panasoni Hi-Def sets costing over 2.5k

Everything else has looked very poor indeed. You'll notice that most shops use disney cartoons to demo stuff , but feed them with a pciture from Sky fo example and they look really bad with obvious pixellation , blurring and bad colours

A friend of mine just bought a Panasonic 42" plasma and I was pretty surprised how good the picture was, even compared to my own 32" Toshiba which I consider to be pretty good.

My mate told me that the settings used in the store to demonstrate the TV is often very high brightness and contrast due to the harsh shop lighting. When he demo'ed the picture to me like this it looked horrible, all the digital artifacts and picture noise were visible, switched back to normal settings and the picture was sooo much better.

For me, the morale of the story is to try out other's TV's, or at least try adjusting the picture settings in the store. Oh, and try to view the picture from the correct distance, otherwise every little nasty will be visible!

Matts comments are true about the stores, many dont set them up properly and feed them with a rubbish source thats often split many times leading to appauling quality.

LCD TV's arent really that great though, they are getting better. Watching sport on a LCD is truely terrible due to pixel response times.

I bought a 42" Plasma a year ago, and after many months of fiddling with the settings, both the normal ones and in the service menu I now have a picture I am happy with. I feed it from a HTPC running Microsoft MCE2005 connected via DVI, and run it at 1920x1080i. The picture is truely superb, very crisp and colourful. See the images below.

The artifacts you can see round the edges are from the jpg compression of the image.

I got a 30" Sony LCD a couple of months ago and to be honest my previous CRT had better picture quality. We watch it mainly with Telewest cable and some programmes are better than others. Older programmes (UKTV Gold for example) can be really poor, but most stuff is OK.

The main reason we bought it was to get a decent size screen without the huge, heavy case that you get with a CRT.

With the advent of HD TV, I hope you are going to purchase and HD ready TV.

my plasma is fine thanks

gets a perfectly fine picture from sky and i have a dvd player with dvi and watch things in either 1080i or 760p(i think) and i'm happy with it.

however i am more than welcome to suggestions of how i could change settings to get a better picture quality any help anyone?

What we did notice was that the Samsung was better than most other makes.

I've had 3 Samsung products in the past, 2 of which broke down & were repaired under warranty, which again busted shortly after. The 3rd one broke down a short while after the warranty period! :thumbdwn:

From my dealings with Samsung ,,,,,,,,,,, I'd rather not trade with them any more.

It's your choise 'buster', but Samsung is a no-go in my area. :(

samsung make nearly every plasma panel thats on the market and my current samsung plasma has worked perfectly for the nearly two years i've had it and my previous samsung DVD player is now about 6 years old and still going strong with no problems what so ever. sorry you had trouble but all i've had is good quality and service from them, they even sent me a free camera for asking some questions about my TV

Best plasma tv I have seen, and recommended to me is the Panasonic range.

As yet, CRT picture quality is still ahead of LCD, but having seen a Panasonic 42" plasma running at 750 lines or something midway between standard and true HD, the results were excellent for a 42" screen.

I think that comments so far have mostly reinforced my feeling that LCD screens are not yet up to the quality of a good CRT. We were certainly attracted by the idea of changing the monster CRT for a smart LCD which occupies much less space (and can actually be lifted!). A plasma screen is out because the room is too small. I think it may be a case of 'wait and see' for the next few months.

My local Dixons has a 55" Plasma in pride of place at the front of the shop - but frankly the picture is rubbish and I certainly would not pay the £4,500 required to

own it -- I'd have to knock down all the walls in my house to get enough distance to watch it properly

My local Dixons has a 55" Plasma in pride of place at the front of the shop - but frankly the picture is rubbish and I certainly would not pay the £4' date='500 required to

own it -- I'd have to knock down all the walls in my house to get enough distance to watch it properly [/quote']

Same with my local curries, but its fed with a really poor composite input resulting in a terrible picture. The TV needs to be fed a decent source from RGB, DVI or component to show its best, and also as I said earlier be setup properly. Just taking it out of the box and plugging it in isnt really good enough.

Plasma TV's are based on a simillar technology to CRT's, they both Use Phosphers to display the colour. Plasma is activated by Gas, and the CRT by guns at the back of the tube.

Same with my local curries, but its fed with a really poor composite input resulting in a terrible picture. The TV needs to be fed a decent source from RGB, DVI or component to show its best, and also as I said earlier be setup properly. Just taking it out of the box and plugging it in isnt really good enough.

This is the problem,there seem to be less and less "Proper" television shops.by that I mean run by people who know what they are talking about and how to match these units with other equiptment and set them up.

The local currys/dixons/comet etc may be able to buy in bulk to save a few quid - but there is rarely if at all anyone there that really knows what he/she is talking about,

Plasmas use too much power and LCD's are not yet up to standard with CRT's so i'll hold off until HD Sky receivers are available and affordable and LCD performance gets better. Standard Sky feeds are trully awful on LCD and Plasma sets.

The best LCDs are now much better than CRTs but you need digital input to appreciate them. After some research I have just bought a 32" Sony with built in freeview. They do 2 types (expensive and very expensive being Sony) and the better one definately is brilliant. We went for Sony because they are very reliable and normally good quality too

It was very difficult to appreciate it in the shops. They have one aerial and it is split between maybe 30 TVs, which definately looses quality. However we are very pleased with the picture quality, which is much better than any CRT we have seen.

I have a 17" LCD in the bedroom and that's great. But I am going to wait for LCDs to catch up with CRT then I will consider a larger screened one for the living room.

I bought an LCD for the livingroom, primarily to save space as the CRT television which it replaced was fairly bulky. I agree that most shops don't have either LCD or plasma units set up correctly. To counteract the glare from most shop lighting, the set's controls are usually set up towards maximum, which results in an awful picture. As if to add insult to injury, they're usually fed a common co-axial input along with all the other sets. No wonder they show cartoons most of the time, that's the only picture that looks half-way decent!

I bought mine from a supplier who assured me that their money back guarantee applied if I wasn't happy for any reason. I took it home and set it up for the lighting conditions in my livingroom. The signal is fed via DVI from a HTPC running Showshifer. I've connected a standard aerial to it, but the picture from the DVI connector is so much better that I seldom use the aerial input apart from a quick look at Ceefax now and again.

As you can probably guess, I'm well chuffed with the setup. The only thing I would say against LCD technology at the moment is that areas of black on the screen are not quite as dark as you would acheive on a conventional CRT, but that's only noticeable if you're watching the set in complete darkness.

Oh and before I offend anyone, the comment about shops above doesn't apply to all stores - only the ones I've visited!

I have been looking lately at lcd tv's. The latest ones I have seen have been mostly good with a few that stand out. Things to make sure they have are HD ready, a dvi port for the pc and a HDMI port for later.

The new JVC ones are very nice and was impressed by the picture on the samsungs that are being used for the xbox 360 stands in game etc....

Most currys and dixons are overpriced too. the 32" ones I were looking at went for about £1400 in all high street shops. Dixons website and currys website (same company) you can pick them up for under £1000.

Only advice I can give really is to look in the shops and once you have made up your mind come home and buy it off the internet.

if your using sky.dvd/games etc then don't buy a plasma TV. buy a plasma panel instead, its basically the same thing but without the tv tuner

they normally have more inputs too

This is the problem' date='there seem to be less and less "Proper" television shops.by that I mean run by people who know what they are talking about and how to match these units with other equiptment and set them up.

The local currys/dixons/comet etc may be able to buy in bulk to save a few quid - but there is rarely if at all anyone there that really knows what he/she is talking about,[/quote']

Try Euronics centres, you can find your local one here:

http://www.euronics.co.uk/

These tend to be small local retailers who will provide a better service than the big chains, and being part of the Euronics groups allows them to buy at the same sort of wholesale pricing as the big boys.

Try Euronics centres' date=' you can find your local one here:

http://www.euronics.co.uk/

These tend to be small local retailers who will provide a better service than the big chains, and being part of the Euronics groups allows them to buy at the same sort of wholesale pricing as the big boys.

The euronics partners I went into to look were selling their tvs for the same price as evryone else on the high street. big banners everywhere saying the jvc was reduced from

carblack your not supposed to watch tv in toatal darkness try putting a small daylight bulb behind your tv and the blacks will be much much better

all you need is a small glow around the tv thats it