Recommend me a good ?300 LCD TV

[EDDIE M0NS00N]

Ok it looks as tho my 20 inch Sammy CRT is starting to die. I'm getting a blue smudge of colour on the left & a yellow smudge on the right. Such a shame as its been a top quality TV for gaming .

Anyway it looks as tho I'll have to go LCD, & theres been some pretty good 32 inch deals from Panasonic, Toshiba, Samsung, LG & I think SONY on HUKD's for under £300, but what would u guys recommend?

It'll be used for gaming - 360 & PS2 mainly, but also Xbox, GC. Regular DVDs (not blue ray/HD) too so i hope the pictue quality will be ok.

[abigsmurf]

I've a 32inch samsung and I think it's great. Shows up the jaggedness of the PS2 pretty badly and when connected to the VGA, it loses the signal when windows changes display modes (just flip through the channels again to get it back). I'm chuffed with the quality of it overall though. No noticable input lag at all.

[Lyris]

Recommend me a good £300 LCD TV

A what?

Kidding Look at the 32" Samsung Series 5 displays. I recommended my dad get the 40" version and it's a total bargain for the price. It has full controls so if you want you can have someone calibrate it within an inch of its life.

They also have Samsung's SPVA panels, which are the best LCD panels in terms of black level and contrast.

Oh, and they have a Game Mode so you can cut input lag down.

OH! And they have Samsung's new video processing circuit which does gorgeous scaling and deinterlacing, so SD stuff looks its best.

[anephric]

There's also a 32" Toshiba Regza floating about for about £280 online.

[donpepperoni]

I wouldn't go with a Samsung myself. I've had a 26" R7 for a couple of years now and although the picture is pretty damn good, there are also a lot of "quirks" when it comes to older consoles.

There is a lot of picture rolling for anything RGB (PS2/Saturn etc) and S-video for stuff like the SNES has horrible diaganol lines rolling across the screen constantly.

No doubt the later models are better though

[Super Monkey Balls]

My parents recently got this Samsung which I picked as their best bet in the price range. The Sonys and Panasonics are better but you're looking at ?400-600.

HD picture is good, no 1080p but thats a gimmick on 32". Picture was a little soft for SDTV but looks decent with some tweaking. The speakers aren't great so I'd suggest a seperate amp/hifi.

[Lyris]

Samsung have improved a hell of a lot, yeah. I wouldn't touch their older stuff with a long pole (I had a Samsung LCD for one week during 2005 and it was dreadful). But now they're the natural LCD choice for one reason: SPVA (Super Pattern Vertical Alignment), the panel mode they use. It gives the best black level and contrast performance this side of Plasma or LED LCD.

I disagree that the Sonys and Panasonics are better, but that depends on what you're looking for. Panasonic's TVs use their IPS Alpha panels, the benefit of these is that for LCD, they have a wide viewing angle so the image doesn't wash out as much from the sides. The down-side is that their black level is a lot greyer than the Samsung SPVA panels.

Sony are using SPVA as well (on most of their TVs), but their video processing isn't as good as the new Samsungs. I wouldn't have believed this if you'd told me a few years ago either. The Samsungs have wonderful suppression of interlace jaggies (diagonal interpolation) so can make even SDTV look unusually clean. The Sonys and Panasonics are both behind in that regard.