Help me choose a TV?

Will mainly be used for watching DVDs and DivX/mpegs, etc, and will eventually have sky digital.

It will be in my bedroom.

Budget is $500-$750.

I get Philips,Panasonic and Pioneer at wholesale, but the savings are not huge when compared to specials at big stores.

Any thoughts on brand and form for this price range?

Flat tube or curvy? 25" or 29"? Wide screen or conventional?

definitely 29" if your goig to be more than ~1.5m from it, the flat tube is a bonus where theres glare. If your going to be watching at night then it might not be so bad.

How does picture quality on a flat tube compare to a curvey tube?

I have tried to find info online but couldn't see anything helpful.....

curved used to be better as theres the same distance between the raygun and the surface but these days theyve mostly sorted it out unless youre buying a 100+hz digital when they still seem to favour the curve. but on your budget im not sure thats a consideration.

go wide screen

wide sceen... teh other screen just dont cut it no more

I just brought a 2nd hand flat screen Sony Wega 25" for my room that was only a year old for $500. The picture quality is amazing, it has all the components at the front so it makes it easy for me to connect up my laptop to it so i can watch divx and dvd's

If you have the $$$ get a 100Hz digital TV, i have the Philips one also in the lounge, the picture quality is amazing, u cant beat the clarity out of those things.

Only get wide screen if 75% or more of your viewing will be wide screen DVDs, otherwise a lot of space gets wasted, and you pay thru the nose for nothing. It might still be better value to just buy a bigger standard-ratio TV, as wide screen's quite expensive.

I just bought a Philips 29 flat screen and i'm happy with it. The only problem I have is the svhs output of my laptop is black and white on the TV, and neither Acer not Philips tech support can figure out why - they just pass the buck.

My Acer did the same thing but i figured out how to get around it, you have to play with the TV settings on the laptop (in the advanced video settings)
I will take a look and give u more specific details when i get home if u cant figure it out

Nanz, I have played around a fair bit but didn't work it out, so i'd love to get hold of the details. You can email me on commando at kiwirant dot com if you like - cheers!

Have you tried TV Tool?

That's only for NVidia cards - my laptop has an SiS card. I can upgrade to a GeForce4 mobile for about $400, but the technician said that wouldn't make any difference to the TV output as it doesn't go thru the video card.

www.auctioncity.co.nz


i got my tv from there

I just tried something - I got a radioshack s-video to rca convertor from dick smith, plugged it all in, and it came out in color instead of black and white If anyone else has the problem, it's worth a try

Cheers ollie - I had forgotten about auctioncity.

Anyone know anything about the Haier and BlackDiamond brands? Or a way to find reviews that comes up with actual reviews instead of electronics shops?

BlackDiamond are meant to be awful, stay away from them. Go for a decent brand, they only cost a little more and should be more reliable.

I have access to consumer online, so i'll go have a quick look at their TV testing results in a few minutes for you.

Excellent - cheers commando

Here's a very quick summary of the results. Sorry about the formatting, but it should be understandable

Brand, Price, Picture Quality, Sound Quality
LG RT29FA33RQ 1299 8.3 8.4
Panasonic TX68PS72Z 1199 8.0 8.4
Toshiba 29VZ6DA 1400 7.9 8.1
Sony KV-XJ29M31 1200 8.2 8.1
Sharp SX68NF8 1199 7.9 5.5
Philips 29PT2252/79R 1199 7.1 6.4
RCA 29DF17EA 999 7.0 6.6

Reliability % (how many need to be fixed)
LG (near 100%)
Sony 95
Panasonic 94
Philips 90
Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp - 85%
Transonic 80

The recommend LG in the big TVs, and Philips in the small ones. The recommendation was based on features and price, and since then prices have come down a lot. My suggestion is to go for one of the more reliable brands that have a good overall score.

I just bought a Philips 29 inch TV for $900, and it's great - I really like it

Notes about big TVs

Picture quality
All the sets in our test had picture flaws of one type or other, but none were serious enough to mar viewing pleasure in normal use.

Front panel
TVs ought to have basic controls on the front, for temporary use if the remote is missing or out of batteries. We really liked the Sharp's approach - it has the controls on a sloping panel at the top of the set.

On-screen displays
The LG and Toshiba had the best displays. The RCA, on the other hand, had no text labels for its functions, only symbols. The Sony wasn't much better. It had no menu structure - you have to step through all functions in turn by pressing the select button.

Remote controls
The LG's remote (left, in our picture) was the best. The RCA, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba also had pretty good remotes. Worst was the Panasonic (right, in our picture). Why is the LG better? It's well organised. The volume and channel buttons are distinct, with good placement, for example, and the mute button is apart. It also has VCR functionality and Teletext controls.

The Panasonic, however, has lots of buttons the same size and shape, and it does not control a VCR. Even the channel and volume buttons (circled) are the same as the rest and are not located in a distinct position.

Notes about smaller TVs (big is 29 inch, small is 21 inch)

Pictures
Flat screens give a better viewing angle and fewer reflections. But when these sets were unpacked, we found they all needed considerable adjustment to obtain a realistic-looking picture. The factory settings had too much contrast, colour and sharpness.

We scored each set for 18 possible picture flaws - things such as picture geometry, grey scale and colour errors. All had flaws of one type or another.

Even the best (Philips) was still five percent below the best score in our recent 68 centimetres viewable (cmv) tests. That five percent is telling, because it should be easier to produce better quality pictures on smaller screens.

Sound
Our testers were especially critical of the sound quality of these models, and they pinpointed the problem to poor quality speakers. Perhaps the makers think users don't expect good sound from a set of this size, but we don't think that's justified. Better speakers would make a big difference.

To be fair, all models had audio-out connectors, so they could be cabled to a home stereo for better sound - but the Panasonic, Samsung and Sony offered this in mono only!

Features
As our test table shows, there are also some quite surprising omissions in the features. These days, shouldn't such things as a headphone socket be standard? And what about features like "zoom" and "compress", that allow you to manipulate the image of a wide-screen movie to fit your screen the way you want it? Only two models in the test had either of these.

And while all the sets could be wired up to a DVD, games console, digital camera and the like, most had only a basic connection for this.

Ease of use
The Samsung and Sharp had the most user-friendly remotes, while the Sharp and Philips had the most helpful instruction booklets.

As for the others ... the Black Diamond, LG, Panasonic and Sony booklets had no contents list. The LG's also had dense wording and small diagrams. The Samsung's covered several different models, which provides great potential for confusion. The Sony instructions consisted of a single sheet of paper and contained references to features not fitted to the model we tested.

Tuning
All sets had auto-tuners. For tuning convenience, the LG, Panasonic, Philips and Samsung had both channel skip and channel rearrange functions, which let you set up your favourite channels (and omit others) in the order you want them.

Menus
All the models had old-fashioned and rather unhelpful menu systems, complete with obscure names for various functions. Some appeared to have changed little in the last 10 to 12 years. The manufacturers could do better, especially in providing good on-screen explanations and pop-up help facilities.

What's in a name?
It's common in tests of TVs, VCRs and the like, to find the overall scores are quite close, but one or two models noticeably trail the others. This test is no exception, with the Black Diamond rating poorly in all criteria. But don't be fooled by the name. This is not the well-known Mitsubishi Black Diamond - Mitsubishi no longer makes televisions. The distributor has used the name on another product line.

I bought a 21 inch flat Panasonic, originally wanted to get a Sony one, but that one had no Teletext and only Mono speakers, got mine for $515 at Harvey Norman, the sales rep was nice enough to gimme an unexpected 15% discount

commando - be careful posting that ... :/

I am a subscriber to the Consumer Online too but I think they might have issues with you copying from the paid section of the website.

I have no problems with it but if someone reads this website from consumer :o

Yeah, I probably should have read it and posted my conclusions, but oh well. If a mod would like to remove it then go ahead