Sony KDL40EX403, Sharp LC40LU700, or Samsung LE40C530?

Skeeter

Skeeter

Skeeter

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If you had £400 to spend on a 40" TV for BluRay, PS3, Freeview and soon Sky or Virgin HD, which of the above would you choose, or would you go for something else?

The Sony looks like the solid safe bet, the Samsung cheaper with less features, and the Sharp the bottom end of the LED market (but looks to be backlit instead of edge lit LED).
 
The Sony has 40ms input lag, which will affect fast paced games (CoD etc). The Samsung has only 16ms, so it will be great for pretty much all your needs, although as you say it has less features.

No idea on the Sharp I'm afraid. If gaming isn't your main reason for buying, then personally I'd go for the Sony.
 
Richer Sounds is doing the Samsung C580 for £430, pretty much the best gaming LCD you can get in this price range for input lag/picture, much better pic than the 530 you listed. Is worth looking into if you can stretch your budget!
 
I ignored the 550 over the 530 as it didnt seem to offer much more for the extra £40. Will look at the 580.

Gaming isnt a big thing for me at the moment, I mainly use my PC. I plan to buy a PS3 for GT5 and to take over BluRay playing soon though, but HD TV and BD content going to be higher use than gaming.

No thoughts on the LED Sharp?
 
I've gone with the Sony personally, didn't realise the C530 was only 16ms though. It should arrive tomorrow so I guess I'll find out first-hand how it performs.
 
Didnt realise how complicated the HDTV market was! Now I've learnt about 24p True Cinema I'm less interested in the C580 as (strangely) the higher spec Samsung doesn't do it while the C530 and C550 do :confused:?

The Sony looks to have the best features and reviews suggest does the best with Movies and both SD and HD TV, but I dont know what the 40ms response time will translate to in real terms for gaming. What will you be using yours for Voice?
 
Its a shame about the input lag on the Sony, or else I'd be all over it!

Think I'm gonna have to go with another plasma if I even do another TV. The LG 42PJ550 is £349.99 somewhere, which seems pretty good, although I can't seem to dig up any figures on input lag.

Seems I lucked out with my Panasonic PX80 has it seems to have zero lag. Didn't even research that before I bought it.
 
From what I can gather response times on LCDs are going up as manufactures use the time to reduce motion blur...? Older TVs arent affected.

How noticeable is 40ms in a racing game? I use my PC for gaming, especially FPS games. Ill only play racing or such on the TV.
 
Skeeter said:
From what I can gather response times on LCDs are going up as manufactures use the time to reduce motion blur...? Older TVs arent affected.

How noticeable is 40ms in a racing game? I use my PC for gaming, especially FPS games. Ill only play racing or such on the TV.
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From reviews its mainly 60fps games like COD that are noticeably affected. Platformers and such shouldn't make a difference really.

Again it probably depends on which racing game it is! Anything that requires fast reflexes, then I would look at the C530 since its only 16ms.
 
Skeeter said:
Didnt realise how complicated the HDTV market was! Now I've learnt about 24p True Cinema I'm less interested in the C580 as (strangely) the higher spec Samsung doesn't do it while the C530 and C550 do :confused:?

The Sony looks to have the best features and reviews suggest does the best with Movies and both SD and HD TV, but I dont know what the 40ms response time will translate to in real terms for gaming. What will you be using yours for Voice?
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PS3, 360, some DVD/BD and a lot of playing video files via the PS3 itself.

Perhaps the Samsung C530 would have been the better choice if the input lag for both is true, but I was swayed towards the Sony simply because it's a higher-end model than the Samsung and comes equipped with much more as standard. They'd have both cost me almost exactly the same anyway - £340. :)
 
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I've had the sony tv for months now, Never had a problem with any gaming. It's fair to say it's been used A LOT for gaming also. My best mate has the slightly older model also and never had a problem with any games either (He has a degree in games dev)

Played a hell of a lot of COD MW2 on it, and Wipeout HD.
 
I saw the Sony and Samsung in Comet the other day. I'm not sure if it was the setup, but the picture on the Sony was much better over the Samsung.

Darker blacks. After seeing both side by side, I got the Sony.
 
Starting to wish I hadnt started looking now! Every good review is met with a bad one!

But, it does look like the Samsung is a good bet IF you get the right panel, and the right firmware, and set it up correctly, and dont get one that judders the screen, and dont mind poor quality blacks, or ghosting...

Whereas the Sony appears to be rock solid with a poor response time.

Considering the reviews are by people who specifically look out for response times im not that concerned, especially seen as I dont even own a PS3 yet, and if I do it will be for GT5 and BluRay. Think I will go for the Sony.
 
Assuming mine arrives tomorrow, I'll report back once I've had time to play with it and give it a decent run on various games. It is a bargain at £399 at the moment though, considering where I work we sell it for £649!
 
I have the Sony KDL40EX401 and have been rather impressed by it so far. Picture is really good and I like the fact there is in-built display settings depending on what is on the TV (sport, movie, game etc). TV is also used for pc/xbox 360 and I haven't noticed the 40ms input lag being a problem.
 
The EX401 doesn't have 40ms input lag. It's lower than that of the EX403 since it uses the Bravia Engine 2, whereas the EX403 uses BE3.

For some reason its the general trend with LCDs atm, the newer they are the higher the input lag becomes!
 
Nymins said:
The EX401 doesn't have 40ms input lag. It's lower than that of the EX403 since it uses the Bravia Engine 2, whereas the EX403 uses BE3.

For some reason its the general trend with LCDs atm, the newer they are the higher the input lag becomes!
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Ah right I see.

Seems the Sony series now come with in-built Freeview HD whereas ours only came with normal Freeview (was wondering if a software update would mean we could get HD or not, or would it be something else we'd need?) Can't justify buying a Freeview HD box seeing as there are only 4 HD channels on Freeview anyway but would be nice to get the best out of our TV.
 
Just a though... is the lag the time taken between the TV getting the image signal, and actually displaying it on screen?

If I was to get an AV Reciever to run a 5.1 system, and then plug all my stuff into that through HDMI then on to the TV, would the fact that the audio never reaches the TV and instead goes straight to the speakers while the image is delayed by 40ms mean the delay would be visible on anything I watched as it would be slightly out of sync with the sound?
 
Skeeter said:
Just a though... is the lag the time taken between the TV getting the image signal, and actually displaying it on screen?

If I was to get an AV Reciever to run a 5.1 system, and then plug all my stuff into that through HDMI then on to the TV, would the fact that the audio never reaches the TV and instead goes straight to the speakers while the image is delayed by 40ms mean the delay would be visible on anything I watched as it would be slightly out of sync with the sound?
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Potentially yes, but any decent receiver will have a delay option. My Onkyo does for sure.
 
Which Onkyo do you have? I have been looking at the speaker/reciever sets which come with the TXSR308 Receiver.

Starting to see why the increasing response time is becoming such a concern for people now.
 
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