new apartment, new stuff, need advice!

[urbanpanda]

ok, i am in the process of buying a new apartment and managed to negotiate a deal with my girlfriend where she can choose all our furniture as long as i got to buy a new telly. Apart from the obvious television/dvd watching it'll also be used for the 360, ps3 and wii. i quite like the look of this one but would value any advice.

I would also like some sort of surround sound, however as the apartment is open plan i don't have anywhere to put any rear speakers, would a 2.1 system be any good? what would I be missing out on compared to a 5.1 system? Again, i know nothing about this sort of stuff so any help is really appreciated!

many thanks in advance guys, i'd like to put these decisions to bed so all i have left to worry about is whether the wallpaper we've bought will look decent or not!

[Keith]

Do you have a picture of the floor plan? I've had some funny-shaped living rooms myself but never found one yet that couldn't accommodate 5.1 without a bit of clever positioning.

[Escobar]

I wouldn't bother with Samsung, too many niggling things with the set-up (like that bloody motion smoothing that I had to turn off everytime) and terrible remote.

Check out the Panasonic 42PX70 or PZ70 (latter has native 1080p).

2.1 is more than adequate for what you want, personally I just use the built-in speakers.

[Salsa Party Animal]

Also you don't have to spend a lot of money on decent sound set up. I mean I bought a Sony Floor stand home theatre kit which is basically AV receiver, 5 speakers and a subwoofer for 300 pounds and it work great in a room 11ft x 11ft (October 2006)

You could plug in stereo sockets for wii, SA CD for XBOX 360 and optical for PS3 and co-axial for DVD Player.

Just make sure you don't cut corners on buying a TV.

Just buy one which have
those things

2+ HDMI input
VGA input (If needed)
Component input
RGB Scart socket for Sky or retro gaming (If needed)
1080P
24 fps support for Blu Ray / HD DVD
Good remote control
bigger enough for you so don't go below 42 inch if possible.

Test the TV with
HD stuff, Normal football, DVDs and Retro gaming (if possible)

Remember shop often have bad settings or bad signal feed for all TV.