I'm going to have to go out and buy a new tv. I'm not really into home theater so I want something basic but decent. I want at least 2 scarts, pc input and HD ready and I'm not bothered about built in freeview or DVD. Any recommendations?

jcs, given that the tv's purpose is to give you the best picture it can my advice would be to look at the current Panasonic range. They have LCD and Plasma offerings. I think most of them have the freeview tuner built in but you'd need to check that.

Sharp LCD is an option. Good enough panels that Pioneer have signed up to use them... quite an accolade.

37inch is an X20 series screen - 8 bit panel, no 100hz, 3 HDMI's Two Scarts, VGA in & a patridge in a pear tree.

At 42 it'd be the XL2 series.... probably a big price jump going to the 42 (they don't do a 42 in X20, or a 37 in XL2, so you have to go from one series to the other between these sizes).
XL2 adds 100hz, & 10bit panel.

Pig to get the colour balance right, but when you get it right they're bloody fantastic. Not many dealers can get the best out of them, so be picky when you're looking around.

I think Sharp does good LCD panels. But the electronics to deinterlace, scale, upsample (100Hz), pull-down, dejudder, ect. does a great deal to the final picture quality. Problably even more than the raw panel itself.

Having just changed from a Sharp to a Philips myself, I think the built-in electronics are clearly better than before. Being an european company, they probably know our PAL standard better?

So you may want to have a look at the Philips range. Be careful, there is a new series with 4 HDMI inputs coming. If you don't need that, you may probably find a good deal for an "old" one...

happy watching
Adrian

Adrian, how old was your Sharp?
Mine's a 17 month old XD1 series and when fed 576p from my n-Vi it does an absolutley beautiful job of processing that image up to 1080p.

Mike

Mike. It was the 45" GD1 series, about 3 years old I guess. One of the first full HD displays, costed a fortune at the time... technology moves very fast in that area.

Colors and scaling where fine, even with 576i RGB analogue. But I had problems with juddering when the camera swiveld or panned over (difficult to explain in a foreign language). The motion was not smooth, more like a series of still pictures (exaggerated).

The actual Sharps with 100Hz are better than my old, but not as good as my new Philips. Even analogue TV is halfway bearable (e.g. not quite as bad as before, despite it's bigger size). And on the other end of input quality, it does not have to do 3:2 pull-down on blurays from 24 to 60 pictures. Native 1080p/24 from my PS3 without scaling/overscan and natural motion has almost real depth (bought the BBC planet earth series - gorgeous).

The 100Hz system with the calculation of the additional pictures in between the standard 50Hz on my 52PFL9632D/10 is very smooth. And you can tune it in the menu in multiple levels (not only on/off). Too much "pimp up my picture" can look artificial. The Sharps and the JVCs overdone it a bit for my taste. The only one that came close in this matter was the Sony KDL-52X3500, but it was much more expensive.

jcs. Sorry, don't want to hijack your thread I evaluated 52", fully featured, top-of-the-range, homecinema stuff. But you may look at those characteristics at the more basic models too. As usual: you have to go out see it with your own eyes. Not everyone likes the same, or this forum would be empty (and boring).

happy comparing
Adrian

I can recommend the Panasonic 7 series range. I haven't seen the 8 series but we looked far and wide and settled on the Panasonic 1080p 37" LCD (sorry can't remember the catchy model number!).

The others we considered were 37" and 42" plasma models. I think the 42" was a 1080p, not sure about the 37".

I would say however that garbage in garbage out. Even with a Virgin+ HD box you get very very average channels.

Jay

I bought a 40" Sony Bravia at Christmas and I still can't get over how beautifully sharp, detailed, bright and colourful the picture is. And with a high def source it's better than a cinema picture. It also goes blacker than any other TV I've ever seen although I've not seen it next to a decent plasma. Thoroughly recommended.

A friend of mine bought a Bravia, and I'm impressed with the picture, but my similarly priced Samsung plasma blows it away with a good source IMHO!

djftw,
When was that? I get the impression that recent LCD TVs are substantially better than older models. Certainly some of the comments I've seen on this board regarding picture shortcomings would just not apply to this TV. My new Bravia is by a long way the best picture I've seen. But then again I've not had a chance to compare many others in my own living room! Incidentally I've had a few bad experiences with Samsung gear so frankly it's a brand I'd not consider buying now.

Really? First time I've owned a Samsung TV, but have owned quite a few other bits and bobs, including a now 13 year old laser printer, and had made the assumption that the brand as a whole were quite reliable. Bob's Bravia was bought over the summer, don't get me wrong, it is fantastic, I would agree that compared to what LCD pictures used to look like it is unrecognisable! I do still think plasmas have a slight edge though, contrast, movement and realism, most noticble when feeding upscaled DVD or hi-def.