Television Set Recommendations?

[HoosierGuy]

I don't think videohelp.com has a discussion board on TV's. Can I get any recommendations here? I'm looking for a new TV. I want to pay around $1,200. No Plasma.
I've noticed more TV's are coming with the ability to stream internet. I want that. Of course I want an excellent image but it does not have to be the best. Size at least 42 inch.

I was reading the reviews in Consumer Reports. They seem to really like Samsung. I've never owned anything made by Samsung before. Do they build quality TV's?

Also, if we can't discuss this there is there another discussion board that is good for asking questions like this?

Thanks

[jagabo]

Orsetto thinks it's a crap shoot:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/331477-Plasma-LCD-LED-Big-Screen-TV-With-Direct-Ext...=1#post2054546

Counterfeit capacitors have been a problem for many manufacturers and many different electronic devices. I have a four year old Samsung LCD with no problems.

I wouldn't be concerned about getting a TV with streaming video ability. You can use external devices for that. Like the Western Digital WDTV Live Plus (~US$100), and similar media players. Many Blu-ray players include the ability too. Standalone players tend to be more flexible than what's built into the TV. And it's much cheaper to upgrade to a new player than a new TV if you find you need something new.

[ranchhand]

Before you go with Samsung, you might want to read this; note I have linked you to page one but it goes for 26 pages.
http://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=62360&sid=0b269cd2200a0f34b98a1a5a7f7a6f51

If you Google "Samsung capacitor failure" you will come up with an afternoon's reading material.

[jagabo]

If you google "capacitor failure" you'll find just about every manufacturer of every electronic device has had problems with it in the last 10 years.

[orsetto]

The overall best values right this minute in LCD televisions would be the Sony EX400/EX500 series and the Panasonic U22 series. These are basic 1080p televisions with above-average PQ, panel consistency and reliability histories. They are good with most gaming systems and very good at showing SD material. They are on the way out, so stores are offering very attractive prices, particularly CostCo on the larger Sonys (which they sell exclusively as the EX401/EX501 series with three year Sony extended warranty). The Panasonics have wider viewing angles and punchier, almost 3D color quality while the Sonys offer less punchy but more accurate color (especially in skin tones and the complex lighting in big budget movies). Both have matte/semigloss screen surface, good for bright rooms. The Sony EX500 offers the 120Hz motion smoothing option which some people really like for sports viewing, I notice very little difference on the 60Hz Panasonic (I own both) or the Sony EX400. The Sony EX400/EX500 series goes to very large sizes, the Panasonic U22 tops out at 42" but the 42 is now unbelievably cheap for the quality you get. All use the standard CCFL backlight technology which generally offers more even and consistent screen brightness than the new LED lighting.

Don't get sucked into paying lots more for the LED sets: while LED has great potential, at the moment its kind of a scam because it actually costs mfrs less to make than the old CCFL, but they currently position the LED as "high end" at much higher prices to reap higher margins from clueless consumers. Within a year or so, the "edge lit LED" sets now selling at a premium will take over as bottom of the line, while the now very rare & expensive "full backlight LED array" will become the common top-end model. You can't judge true image quality in the stores: in the showroom, LED tends to look much better because of the brighter, whiter LED backlight but when you actually get it home you'll discover LED still has quite a few bugs, especially the models in your price range which are all edge-lit. Edge-lit LED screens have little pockets of uneven light-dark blotches around the screen and what looks like flashlight beams fanning out from the four corners. Darker and black areas are highly variable with LED tech: depending on the source and scene, the blacks can look deep and rich or they can look glowy and uneven. Samsung is particularly funky in this regard because they use a weird non-defeatable automatic dimmer which shuts off the LEDs near dark areas, it makes the blacks look more black but also kills detail in adjoining lighter areas, especially in sci-fi or moody thriller movies. Note all LED-lit TVs have very glossy screens similar to plasma: they make the image look sharper and clearer but you trade that off with reflectivity.

I could not possibly care less about gaming performance, the last game I played was Donkey Kong Country on SNES. My number one issue is standard-def performance (DVDs and cable) followed by motion performance, color quality then HDTV performance. However my eyes are very sensitive to motion lag and I do have friends who are heavy gamers. If you are sensitive to motion lag (blurring in faces, not all facial features moving in unison when the head turns) or play a lot of games, avoid Samsung like the plague: it is the slowest LCD screen on earth. Panasonic is very fast due to its IPS LCD panel, Sony uses Samsung and Sharp screens but with much more sophisticated electronics that make them pretty quick. If your interest is primarily gaming, you may want to look at LG models because they are optimized for gaming with normal video being a secondary consideration. But LGs are quirky, not great for DVDs, and subject you to the insane "panel lottery" nonsense. If you get an LG with an IPS panel, its a great gaming screen, but about half the LGs in distribution come with crapola third-rate bottom-feeder screens instead of the promised IPS. The only way to tell which screen is by looking at the model number/serial number tag on the box, there are threads on Amazon and elsewhere that explain the code system.

Toshiba and Sharp make some great sets and a lot of bad ones, also their model series change so quickly no one can keep track of them. Same with Vizio, which makes some amazing high-end bargains but also a lot of junk. Samsung is all over the place, with huge variations from model to model and then within each model depending which production run you end up with. Unless you catch a good sale, Samsung tends to be overpriced. They are all dead slow, have poor motion handling and blur, are terrible for gaming, and subject to "panel lottery" bait-and-switch (even worse than LG, because there's no ID code on Samsung cartons: you have to drag the thing home to find out if you "won"). The cheaper non-LED Samsungs are hopelessly bad at showing anything but BluRay and HDTV cable: regular cable or DVD-R looks unwatchable. The LED Samsungs at first glance look great, but after using them awhile you notice the uneven lighting, weird shadow handling and other traits. For the money Samsung charges, they need to have much better consistency and quality control. The only Samsung I've seen with a tolerable tradeoff of PQ issues is the 40" in the 6300 series (owned by my parents): it has very little motion smear, fantastic vibrant/accurate color and detail, and very wide viewing angles. It is being phased out now for under $900 at larger dealers and is a great buy if you can live with 40". All the other LED Samsungs are ridiculously expensive and full of bugs.

Note all this commentary applies to current models only, the market has been changing every year and whats good this year may stink next year ( a couple years ago Sony was pricey and crappy, Panasonic was murky, Samsung was great, and LG was beyond pathetic). Also note that ruling out plasma is never a good idea: it simply cannot be beat on price/size/performance. You can go to Sears today and pick up a Zenith-rebranded 42" LG plasma for under $400 that will wipe the floor with any of these LCD sets, or a Samsung 50" plasma for about $579. The only strikes against plasma nowadays are poor showing in rooms with a lot of bright windows, and image retention if you play a lot of games with static status displays or watch mostly old 4:3 TV shows. Balanced against these drawbacks is price: if you get image retention you can just ditch the damn thing after a year and buy two more new ones for what a similar-size high-end LCD would cost. And LCDs are not all they're cracked up to be in bright rooms: don't believe the hype. You still get a washed out image unless you can turn the set, and the LED models with glossy screen are as reflective as plasma.

The best advice is to buy from a store with a liberal (and I mean really liberal) return policy, like Best Buy, CostCo or Wal*Mart. I took home three Samsungs and had to return each one before moving on to Sony/Panasonic, others on TV-centric forums will tell you they endured multiple exchanges/returns with almost every brand. Because the panels are so fragile, the slightest bump in shipping or storage can result in different performance for each individual TV as the panel gets shifted or pressured in the frame. There is nothing worse than being stuck with a TV you can't return, so make sure you can with no questions asked and no restocking fee. As far as the web connectivity features, forget it: they carry an insane price premium and are actually less convenient than simply connecting a web-enabled BluRay player, your laptop, or a media player/streaming box. The built-in net features on these sets are hopelessly clunky and a bitch to keep updated.

TWO IMPORTANT TIPS WITH NEW TVs:

Many come with electric-eye light sensors that supposedly match the screen brightness to the room brightness, but all they really do is make the picture look dim and flat. Before making any other settings, go into the picture menu and turn off this sensor. You'll need to look for it in the instruction manual, because each brand uses some stupidly obscure name for it (like "Ambience" or "A.I Picture"). Every TV I've seen has the sensor turned on by default and looks like total crap out-of-the-box until you switch the feature off.

Be careful with "scene" or "picture" buttons: each TV has three to seven image quality "modes", if you select the wrong one it can make the TV look like hell, especially the "Cinema" setting that is inexplicably recommended by every tweaker on every forum. Its easy to not pay attention and start modifying one of the preset modes, only to realize you can't figure out how to get back to your starting point. Instead, begin by turning the TV to "standard" and writing down what those settings are, then switch to "custom" and fool with the settings all you want. If you ever want to start over, you can refer back to the "standard" settings. Its helpful to leave the "canned" picture modes as-is until you've owned the set a few months and fully understand how its controls interact: then you can modify the canned profiles to suit your personalized needs.