LED LCD or plasma, please help =)

Hello!

I have decied to buy a new tv. At the moment I have a Philips LCD with matt screen 47" which is about 5 years old. It was one of the first LCD with full HD 1080. I decied to buy a new tv since it has really bad black levels I mean it doesnt have black levels at all its more like grey. Its very disturbing to watch movie scener happening at night =)

So I am choosing betwen LED lcd or plasma. When it comes to the brand of the Plasma I have made my decision that it should be Panasnoic Viera 55" VT30 or VT50. Tell me please if it is worth buying the new VT50, I mean is it much better than Vt30. I heard that panasnonic plasmas are the best that's why i chose panasonic. Please correct me if I am wrong. The only concern i have about plasmas is the burnt pixel, if you plug computer on your tv and then you leave one image that doesnt move etc.

When it comes to LED LCD important for me it is that it has something more than EDGE LED (for instance edge led with local diming, or dynimc edge led, or edge led with micro diming etc.) I really like a good contrast (at least 5 000 000 : 1. The second thing I admire is Anti glare effect or glass, because more and more LED LCD have one sheet of glass desing over the front. I heard taht Sony has anti glare effect. Again please correct me if I am wrong and there actually are very good lLED LCD with matt screen.

So when it comes to LED LCD i am thinking about Sony, Philips, Lg and Samsung. Which models do you prefer or which brand

I have looked at sony HX and NX seried 55inch
Samsung: 8000 series, 7000 series 55inch

Philips: 9000 series 52 inch

Its also imporntat that the picture is smooth, meaning it has good motion. The design for me is not so important

The price should rang from 1900-2500 EUR, a.k.a. 1600-2050£, I calculated that price.

Thank you all for helping i know I wrote a lot but please help me chose the right TV

P.S I am from Europe

You've had two posts in two years both asking about which TV you should buy this is forum is about what we we see on TV not what we use to see it... However I have heard that LCD is better than plasma when I bought mine a few years back and however that was before the LED era.

Should also add that all the LED TVs on sale at the moment to consumers are themselves LCD displays...

The LED refers to the backlighting system that generates the light that goes through the LCD display, which has replaced CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent) illumination systems that were used on earlier (now cheaper) models.

So there are two types of LCD (direct view) displays on the wider market at the moment - LED backlit LCDs and CCFL backlit LCDs - but they are both LCDs...

If you can afford it, LED. It abolishes the negatives that LCD has against plasma.

Buying a TV from paper specs where you expect the numbers to achieve a certain level to decide whether or not it's good or using other people's insights can be a very hit and miss affair.

Most of the numbers quoted by manufacturers are of little relevance - there is no standard way for measuring contrast ratio, so different manufactuers could measure identical panels and come up with different numbers, and also the numbers can be easily massaged. A viewpoint of 'I need at least xxxxxx:1 contrast' isn't where I'd start. And the only important thing to consider when it comes to things like '800Hz ultra amazing scan technology with stupid trademarked name' is whether or not you can turn it off as picture enhancements of this type are often more trouble than they're worth.

Even whether or not a screen is 1080p is IMO not as important as how noticeable the scaling is when showing content at resolutions which don't match the display - I'd rather have a 720p set which can do a good job at showing standard def Freeview or a noisy old scart source than a 1080p set which turns anything not 1080p into unwatcheable mush.

During the 5 years that I spent in electrical retail, I've seen numbers games and pointless features used to massage many crap TVs into sounding amazing, whilst many excellent TVs got under rated because their spec appears so much more conservative on paper.

When it comes to screen technology, neither LCD nor plasma is intrinsically better than the other, there are advantages and disadvantages to both (although in fairness to LCD the introduction of LED backlighting has brought it on a long way in recent years, overcoming a lot of the disadvantages it's traditionally had compared to plasma). Oh...and contrary to whatever half-baked 'experts' on the subject might spout, if you do find yourself looking at a plasma remember that they do not need to be 're-gassed' (never been sure what that even means), nor do they use appreciably more electricity (and in certain situations they can even use less than a traditional fluorescent backlit LCD set).

So how do you choose? Simple. Don't worry about paper specs. Simply go to a store and actually view some sets working. Ask to see it displaying different sources (any TV looks stunning displaying a 1080p uncompressed source from a specially prepared demo box, but 'real world' sources can often be a different story). Have a play around with the controls. Don't forget to turn it up and see how good the sound is (beware of Samsungs with downfiring speakers) Whichever set has the best picture and sound in your own opinion, is the best set. As long as it then has the required level of connectivity you desire (and any other features you might desire...like do you want a Freeview HD tuner or would you be happy with standard def? do you want it to have internet connectivity? etc etc) then it's a sound choice.

Once you've made your choice, don't be a scab and waste the salesman's time viewing his TV only to then buy it from Amazon, actually be grateful for the help you've received and buy it from the shop. Then go home and feel warm and fuzy that you've helped to preserve high street retail so that future generations of TV buyers can do the same and not have to spend hours pawing through incomprehensible specs and 'Which?' reviews of models which are discontinued by the time said review is printed, only to end up with something which doesn't meet your standards.

I like my samsung with downfiring speakers - what is the issue with them exactly?

I have to agree however, paper stats are useless. Go into Tesco / Currys and look with your eyes. Buying it online often doesn't give as massive savings as you get on other things though. Certainly I only bought my TV from Amazon because Tesco hiked their price back up again the day I went down to get it.

I can't speak for anyone else, but my Samsung's downfiring speakers sound horribly tinny, so much so that I nervously took it apart and wired in external ones. I've always thought Samsung had the best upscaling, though (rendered moot by my stupid Freesat box which insists on deinterlacing and upscaling everything).

David

I concur about the speakers on Samsung TV's. My secondary set is a 22inch Samsung LED backlit LCD model I bought
from Comet about a year ago A Samsung Syncmaster XL2270HD to be precise. While the picture quality is excellent
from HD sources like my Humax HD-FOX T2 Freeview HD box, XBox360, or my media centre PC, and even standard
definition channels upscaled via HDMI look good, the sound quality from its speakers doesn't sound much better
than the el cheapo mini speakers I used to use on my old Walkman!

Well I am from Slovenia and we don't have shops that you previously mentioned. And also I would buy tv on the amazon.co.uk or any other amazon.

At our retailers shops the prices for tv are usually about 400 eur higher as you can get it online in our "Slovene shops" on the internet. There also I a shop where they don't have Tvs out in the open but its like a storage or something and you go there say which tv you want and then they delivered it to your home and that kind of "shop" is usually the cheepest. For instance the ES8000 samsung 55 inch you get for 2120 Eur which is a really good price.

Thanks for your help!

Likewise with the 42" Samsung plasma I have.

Very good screen, terrible speakers. The tinnyness I can deal with, it's the distortion and rattle. Eurgh.

I run it as a full-time monitor now and never run the sound through the speakers, instead listening through the HC amp at all times.

TV broken already? That's appalling. I assume you've reset everything? Anyway we've a Panasonic Viera (web enabled) which is edge light LED and so far is fantastic. Had it about a year now. We use an ethernet cable for the web stuff ratherb than the expensive dobnle from Panasonic. It has plenty enough HDMIs, audio sockets and such like. We run sound through a standard amp as we don't have surround sound and it's still amazing. But as has been suggested elsewhere try a variety before making your choice.