back to article The year's best... HD TVs

2010: it's a wrap The past year has been an interesting one in TV land with many new technologies making their debut on high street models. The more obvious features have been 3D and Freeview HD, but techniques to enhance image quality, such as LED backlighting, have gone mainstream too, along with more TVs offering Internet …

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  1. /dev/rant
    Thumb Down

    wtf? Biased or what!

    The article was meant to be about HD TVs yet the author shamlessly plugs Panasonic 3D TV AND rates the highest. Talk about apples and oranges.

    I am not even suggest there were an ulterior motive for the author. It is pretty obvious!

    1. Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: wtf? Biased or what!

      So what brand would you have preferred that we rate the highest?

    2. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge
      FAIL

      WTF indeed.

      I have no idea what could possibly have triggered that outburst, but suffice to say that since the Panasonic does 1080p, it is by definition an HDTV, and you are an idiot.

    3. Nigel Whitfield.

      3D sets are HD too, you know...

      Just because a set has 3D capabilities, that doesn't mean it can't be considered in a look at HD sets, surely?

      From my recollection, seeing all the Panasonic sets at their convention in Munich last year, the 3D ones did also produce extremely good HD pictures as well, and were certainly some of the best quality panels on display there.

      They may cost a fair bit, but I'd say that if quality of picture is important, regardless of the 3D functionality, they are definitely worth a serious look.

  2. Arnold Lieberman
    Stop

    Think I'lll stick with my last-gen Pioneer for a while yet

    It may not be 3D or internet-enabled (what happens when standards move on and the manufacturer has lost interest in supporting 'old' sets?), but the picture is better than anything I've seen since and more importantly the upscaling makes SD look as good as HD on other TVs.

  3. Steven Jones
    Headmaster

    Oh dear...

    "here are those that literally, caught our eye"

    Really - is it a glass one which fell out and got stuck in the stand? Repeat after me, literally is not a word that you can use to strengthen a metaphor...

    nb. Ken Dodd has a joke about catching a a glass eye which plays on the metaphor. But then he knows how to use language...

    1. Youngdog

      Objection!

      True you can't use 'literally' to strengthen a metaphor but I am not sure that 'caught my eye' is a metaphor. If you read 'caught' to mean 'trapped' or 'ensnared' then the use should be valid - the reviewer found his vision (eye - still not a metaphor, look it up) drawn to it in such a way that all attempts to look away resulted in failure. I am being quite generous here and assuming this impasse was resolved when the manager of Richer Sounds did the decent thing and pulled the plug on the offending telly - hopefully by diving at it in slow motion yelling "NNOOOOOOOOOOO!"

  4. Chz
    Happy

    Sony/Samsung conundrum

    The two of them even share a panel factory, that's how similar some of the sets are.

    Whilst the Samsung C650 series lacks Five Live from its internet services, it's *far* more compatible with a variety of file formats over a DLNA connection than the Sony is. That's what sold me on the Samsung. It was down to either that or the Sony for me.

  5. Richard 81

    Alert: general Tuesday moan

    Although Reg Hardware is pretty good at talking about features and what-not, I find these articles largely useless without an approximate price. Particularly for laptops and other systems that tend to vary greatly. I don't know about anyone else, but when shopping, I have a Venn diagram in my head of stuff I want, and stuff I can afford, and I buy the intersection. I have a feeling all the TVs in this article are out of my price range, but it'd be nice to know for sure.

    I suppose I could look around at various shop sites myself, but if the numbers are easy to find why aren't they in the article.

    Note: To be fair, you do tend to put the prices on the some articles, like the recent run-down of MP3 players.

    1. Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: Alert: general Tuesday moan

      Fair point. These are round-up articles covering what appealed to us most in the past 12 months. We've provided links through to the original reviews, and you can read more about the products and get pricing details there.

      Pricing is problematic here because we can't quote prices for every single version of a given product, be it TVs, laptops or whatever. In any case, whatever price we put down can only be a guide - internet prices vary so we always suggest you do your own price research when you're ready to buy.

      1. Mark 65

        Whilst you're at it

        In these recessionary times it might also be handy to flag the power draw on these beasts - I've seen some modern TVs that seem like you'd need three-phase power linked up to the house (LGs I think). You could call it a green credential but I prefer to look on it as running costs plus how much does the heating need to be adjusted by?

  6. Craig Chambers
    WTF?

    Sony sets and XViD/DiVX

    The article states that the Sony sets support XViD and DiVX via DLNA (over ethernet). This is not correct. MPEG2 and AVCHD are the only natively supported video formats. If you were watching either XViD or DiVX video, then your server was transcoding it.

    1. Annihilator
      Happy

      and yet..

      http://www.sony.co.uk/product/t32-ex-series/kdl-32ex703/tab/technicalspecs states the TV can play AVC/AVCHD/DivX/MPEG4 from a USB stick, so I'd be very surprised if it didn't extend that ability to streamed videos.

      1. Craig Chambers
        Stop

        Then be very surprised

        Your assumption is perhaps understandable, but it is false. As you state the above mentions USB, not DLNA which *is* restricted as I mentioned above.

        From the same page that you posted:

        DLNA Renderer: Photo (jpeg)/Music(LPCM/MP3)/Video(MPEG2/AVCHD)

        I could go further and link to the the DLNA certificate, but I think that I made my point. I have one of this series of TVs and the DLNA and USB support do not match.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Sony Bravia KDL-32EX703 is obviously popular

    it's been showing as "temporarily out of stock" on Sony's UK website for about a month. This is frustrating: I want one.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    All I want...

    All I want is to repalce the old ageing 16" widescreen CRT in the front room with a nice small (20"ish) freeview HD LCD, how long till these are available?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Tesco currently

      sell a 22", 1080p TFT screen for about £200. It's available with black, blue or red bezels and has a DVD player built in- which could be useful since if that's your main TV you're probably pressed for space.

      Oh, wait- did you mean FreeviewHD? Or a Freeview-enabled HD LCD? 'cos it's the latter not the former. Whatever, on a 22" screen you'll probably not notice the difference between SD and HD at 22" - it's a pretty good picture.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    Surprised to see no B&O here

    I'd assumed they'd be at number 1 in your list.

    Tried viewing the article with Firefox, Chrome and Safari in case of compatibility problems with your site, but still no B&O. Strange.

  10. me 13
    FAIL

    The elephant in the room....Kuro anyone?

    And yet there still isn't a flat-panel out there that can match, never mind exceed the PQ of a Kuro.

    Think I'll be keeping my 2008 Kuro for a while longer then.

    1. deathchurch
      Thumb Up

      Kuro Beater

      You might wanna check out the Sony XH903 range for a Kuro beater, and where was the HX903 range in this review?

  11. annodomini2

    Why only 6

    You have recently been making lists of you favourite tech, most of these were top 10's, why only 6 here?

    Also you missed the 40" sony off the summary list.

  12. Jamie Kitson

    erm

    and what about those of us who are having a bad recession? Anything for under half a grand?

  13. Kevin Bailey

    Where's the CRT models?

    I have a Samsung CRT HD TV - the slimfit model - and the SD images as fed from a Sony Freeview box via (upscaled) HDMI is superb - certainly better than most early LCD tv's.

    In fact, I'd say that given a HD input it would probably match fairly high-end LCD's for picture quality.

    And the tv only cost £369.

    Since most reference monitors as used by the broadcast industry as CRT's why don't the UK wholesalers sell CRT TV's? - apparently they sell in europe quite well.

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