32" TV, approx £200 budget. Advice would be appreciated.

JonJ678 · 21 Jan 2011 at 16:50

Hey. I know so little about TV's that I'm considering buying an off the shelf one on the high street, but I suspect this is not the best approach to take. Specifically I think they'll lie through their teeth and I wont realise until later. So buying from a shop would be good, buying based on the salesmans recommendation not so much.

I'm looking to replace a terrible 26" Goodmans TV with something slightly larger and less crap. I imagine 720p is significantly cheaper than 1080p, so I've been looking at 32" 720p screens. I'm not convinced I'll be able to tell the difference from 3m away.

It would be convenient for it to offer a vga input but this is not essential. I've no interest in freeview, but it seems to be compulsory. For that matter I've no use for a built in tuner either, I'm merely assuming that TVs are cheaper than monitors.

Screen size is flexible, budget is flexible. Second hand would be fine too for that matter. I'd like it to last at least a couple of years, so 2/3 year warranty would be nice. Where should I be looking?

Many thanks

Grimley · 21 Jan 2011 at 18:45

Have a look at refurbished/graded TV's on the auction site for that budget. Some come with a full 12 month warranty.

Deleted member 77746 · 21 Jan 2011 at 20:17

Grimley said:
Have a look at refurbished/graded TV's on the auction site for that budget. Some come with a full 12 month warranty.

Grimley, you not thought about putting your site into 2011 and updating it with something like wordpress? I like your setup.

JonJ678 · 24 Jan 2011 at 18:13

Well, after spending some time searching I've decided the best solution is altering the budget. 32" @ £300 is readily available online and on the high street. Convenience + substandard eyesight has persuaded me that local is the way to go.

I fear and mistrust the auction site.

Cheers

agnes · 24 Jan 2011 at 18:17

I got my 37" Samsung series 6 for £230 on fleabay.

Waited a while to pick up a bargain, but was worth it. Only issue with it is that the base (stand) has a defect, basically it isn't flat against what ever the tv is stood on... Hard to explain, but the plastic is warped for about a inch. At the back of the TV, and makes no difference structualy due to there being a metal base within which the tv uses for it's actual stand.

In other words, shop sold, defect, returned and sold on at dirt cheap

ags

Grimley · 24 Jan 2011 at 19:10

iDroid84 said:
Grimley, you not thought about putting your site into 2011 and updating it with something like wordpress? I like your setup.

Never heard of it but I'll give it a try.

Deleted member 77746 · 25 Jan 2011 at 11:28

Grimley said:
Never heard of it but I'll give it a try.

It's basically very easy to setup. If not someone would be able to do it for you. You can edit the pages directly from a back end web gui system that can create content extremly fast.

Check out the main wordpress website.
http://wordpress.org/

Martynt74 · 25 Jan 2011 at 11:40

JonJ678 said:
Well, after spending some time searching I've decided the best solution is altering the budget. 32" @ £300 is readily available online and on the high street. Convenience + substandard eyesight has persuaded me that local is the way to go.

I fear and mistrust the auction site.

Cheers

Tesco had a Samsung one for £250 the other day

Firestar_3x · 25 Jan 2011 at 13:10

I watch the low end Samsung stuff some i looked at had horrid picture quality.

JonJ678 · 26 Jan 2011 at 16:51

I've ended up with a 32" LG model, the 32LD490. I was convinced by the presence of an ethernet port, which is working out of the box with iplayer. I haven't persuaded it to find a samba share yet, but we'll see. It will play video files from a usb stick.

Anyway, the picture quality is good, sound is reasonable. Very happy. Thanks all

edit: It's still unhappy about samba, but is working fine with "mediatomb" which if anything is a rather nicer interface. Video files on a NAS can now be played through the TV, without using a playon hd / wd tv / htpc. I think that's brilliant.