OT: TV choice

[stuart noble]

IME the customer feedback on Amazon is the best indicator.

[dennis]

Save your pennies.. have you seen the ultra high def one in currys for only £34k.

[Terry Fields]

Don't forget the sound quality!

Some modern slim TVs have better audio than others...

[harryagain]

Watch the wattage, they vary hugely, plasma is highest I think. Biggest user of electricity in my house is the TV. Bought the wrong one (Plasma) :-(

[harryagain]

Yep, this is true. I can only get HD on Freesat. Freeview has no HD on mine.

[F]

Though there are a lot of the 'I haven't used it yet but it's wonderful and worth five stars' kind.

[Martin Brown]

You can also find things with reviews that are extremely bimodal but average out to 3* when experts who know what they are doing give it 5* and muppets with no clue can't figure out how to use it at all give 1*.

There was a really good geologists hammer badly marked down for not being any good as an ice axe by some deranged survivalist, and I have seen several important reference books on JPEG marked down by people for containing "too much maths and equations" - what did they expect?

It is always worth taking a look at the spectrum of reviews there. Any lemons tend to stand out a mile, but you can't rely on the star rating absolutely - some really good kit gets only 3* because beginners are overfaced by it and cannot figure out how to use it properly.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Haven't used the internal speakers on a TV for 40 years. ;-)

I would want a decent line level output - though. It's one of the 'problems' with the current set - it's not as good as it could be.

[Martin Brown]

You won't get one on a modern set. You get an optical DAC output which means you have to buy an aftermarket SPDIF to line audio addon for it.

[Terry Fields]

Even worse are those that give it 1-star because "the carrier didn't deliver it on the right day" or "the box was damaged so I sent it back", but these are easily filtered out as being useless.

The trick is to assess each review, ignore the uninformative ones, and form a view based on those that seem to know what they are talking about. Look for common problems - if only one reviewer mentions an issue, it just might be peculiar to them, such as eyesight or hearing problems they might not be aware of, but several mentions of something could indicate a problem that you don't want to live with.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yes - I'd noticed this. Seems very cheapskate given they still need analogue for the internal speakers. But I do have a convertor - use it with the current set.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've never much liked Sony - including their pro products. Over hyped and overpriced, with merely average performance. With the sole exception of DigiBeta. See no reason to change that view now.

[Richard Tobin]

And I've been finding that an HDMI socket on the front or side is increasingly useful for plugging in laptops, camcorders etc.

-- Richard

[Richard Tobin]

Another possibility, depending on your audio equipment, is the HDMI audio return channel. I use that with an Onkyo receiver.

-- Richard

[newshound]

Samsung, Sony, Pany (in no particular order). Which were very scathing about the no-name "bargains".

Read the reviews on Amazon. Best value might well be "last year's model" provided it still has the features you want.

[Richard Tobin]

31,000 hours is 3.5 years. Do you really have it on 14 hours a day?

-- Richard

[JoeJoe]

+2

[Scion]

Martin Brown put finger to keyboard:

I bought some 7" work clamps despite them having distinctly average overall reviews. I took out the two that gave them one star because they were "not as big as they looked in the picture" and the average went up.

(I measured them and the jaws opened to slightly more than 7")

[michael adams]

If an item needs to be returned under guarantee to the manufacturer via a retailer then it presumably has more chance of success if it's returned in its original packing including the polystyrene which are specifically designed to resist damage in transit than it has if it turns up in less than immaculate condition having been wrapped in a few layers of shrink-wrap and corrugated cardboard and/or a black dustbin bag, held together with parcel tape. With a big hand written "Fragile Handle with Care" notice stuck on one side.

michael adams

...

[Jethro_uk]

At the Apollo 2000 in Cannock (of all places) there's a £16,000 84" 4D ready TV ....