What to buy for around £800

DanH84 · 11 Jun 2009 at 21:21

Hey, sorry about the 'spec me' thread but I'm a bit of a dumb ass when it comes to tv model numbers and so on and I don't really know where to look for reviews.

I've just moved back in with my mother and plan on staying at home for around the next 8-12months. However as I had moved out for a few years I've now been relegated to the smallest bedroom and it really is a box. 8x8 max, I've decided to spend a few bob doing it up as it's terribly cramped currently. So i thought i'd ditch the bed and get a futon and utilise some wall space for a tv and my pc monitor.

I've never had a tv in my room before so I'm fairly excited (don't really watch much). I'll be playing my 360 and PS3 through it, and watching a fair few tv shows (dvd's and through my pc -generally sd but not exclusively). In a few months i might also get another v+ box upstairs but that's not super high on my priorities.

If it had a cable to connect it to a pc display that would be cool but by no means vital as I quite like the idea of having my pc monitor separate. Has to be wall mountable though, preferably with 2 hdmi ports just in case i get this v+box in the future.

Also I've only ever run sound through normal tv speakers before, some crazy folk have informed me that this might not give quite the best possible sound so if anyone had an idea as to an audio setup for around the £250 mark that'd be cool as well. I'd need it to be compact though, so given the size of my room perhaps 5.1 would be impractical?

800 tv up to 250 anything else.

willy · 11 Jun 2009 at 22:26

I would suggest 32" Samsung LCD and for sound have a look Samsung 5.1 all in one range to keep the cost down as well. I think for both should be less than £800

mrmoose · 11 Jun 2009 at 23:10

Ditching the bed for one of those futons is the biggest mistake you will make. I had to sleep on one for a weekend and it was awful.

DanH84 · 12 Jun 2009 at 00:42

mrmoose said:
Ditching the bed for one of those futons is the biggest mistake you will make. I had to sleep on one for a weekend and it was awful.

I'm odd in that i find it really easy to sleep on any, relatively flat surface, carpet, wooden flooring etc etc.

crinkleshoes · 12 Jun 2009 at 01:50

Personally... with that budget, I would go with something along the lines of Panasonic/LG 50" plasma & a respectable amp with 2x bookshelf speakers

Would do a great job in a smaller room & if you're not worried about getting surround sound, you'll get much better sound quality from 2x reasonable bookshelf speakers compared to a cheapy (sub 250) 5.1 set.

If you've never really watched TV with non-inbuilt speakers... you're going to notice a HUGE difference

Obviously, a 50" plasma will appear to practically take over a room that small, even wall-mounted... but will make for some good viewing

-Ad- · 12 Jun 2009 at 08:21

crinkleshoes said:
Obviously, a 50" plasma will appear to practically take over a room that small, even wall-mounted... but will make for some good viewing

The plasma is far off the length of one of the walls, thought like a true man

I would ignore a 32, as they naturally just shrink over time as you get used to it. If you will be using it just to play movies through your pc (+ gaming) then do consider a 37inch panasonic plasma, they are very very good screens. There are also LCDs to consider.

Pop over to avforums and have a read through some of the tv reviews over there. Be sure to ignore reviews from whathifi, trusted reviews, and all other tards out there

DanH84 · 12 Jun 2009 at 20:21

thanks for the advice, I've just measured and I would be sitting about 7.5-8 foot from the TV, as a decent proportion of what I'm going to watch is going to be SD I am going to be looking mainly in the 37inch range although i may push up to 42 if a great deal is about.

I've decided to completely forget about using it as my main pc monitor as I love browsing the web even when watching tv/playing games so switching back and forth would just be a pain in the butt.

I'm kind of leaning towards a plasma currently as the room I'm in is South facing and gets a lot of sunlight so I pretty much always have blinds down during the day so light levels are fairly low. I would also say I don't game that avidly, only maybe 25% of total time I cared about what the image looked like (when I'm off work watching loose women I'm really not fussed about picture quality).

considering the panasonic 42inch s10?