OT: which 26" telly to buy?

Dunno, but our Evesham developed a vertical stripe near one edge[1] shortly after the guarantee ran out. Though Evesham have gone bust anyway.

And another thing - why are they all shiny black? Go into most retailers and there's a great sea of glass black, with the occasional pink one for the girlies.

Far too dark and oppresive for our room. I resprayed ours a rather natty two-tone with silver and metallic grey. Looks a lot less obvious in the room now. Perhaps that's what people want - a telly that shouts "LOOK AT ME. I'm VAST!"

Having recently been through the process of choosing a new TV, I suggest you have a study of the reviews of your candidate TVs on the Amazon website.

Don't forget to check up on the sound quality, after all you listen to the TV as well as watching it.

Comments and my offspring's experience suggest that the sound on some Panasonics can leave something to be desired - as a result some people add a simple audio system fed via the HDMI sockets.

Choosing a TV these days is a bit fraught.

TF

The quest to get ever thinner boxes has meant the built-in speakers also get smaller. I have a 22inch Sharp LED tv in the kitchen and the sound can only be described as worse than a tinny transistor radio of the 80's. The picture of course is excellent. It does have one HDMI socket though and if there was an easy way to provide an external speaker system that switched on only when the tv was on, I would buy it.

To the OP, I think the power consumption is better on the LED's rather than the LCD's, but you may get a better deal on the latter as it seems most retailers are heavily discounting them. Try and get a 5 year warranty because if the tv goes t**s up after a couple of years you may as well bin it.

Dave.

The quest to get ever thinner boxes has meant the built-in speakers also get smaller. I have a 22inch Sharp LED tv in the kitchen and the sound can only be described as worse than a tinny transistor radio of the 80's. The picture of course is excellent. It does have one HDMI socket though and if there was an easy way to provide an external speaker system that switched on only when the tv was on, I would buy it.

To the OP, I think the power consumption is better on the LED's rather than the LCD's, but you may get a better deal on the latter as it seems most retailers are heavily discounting them. Try and get a 5 year warranty because if the tv goes t**s up after a couple of years you may as well bin it.

Dave.

LEDs are LCD. It is just that the illumination behind the LCD panel is an LED array rather than a discharge type tube arrangement. (Power will be low as well)

Unfortunately manufacturers are hoping that people will 'upgrade' in the expectation that LED is radically different. There is no such thing as a domestic "LED" TV - only LED Backlight LCD TV.

Yet. They're coming, but not here yet.

You've got more than enough model number details to go fishing around for the instruction manuals for the items in question. Especially if you are trying to find specific features like VGA ports.

Viewing angle maybe an important consideration for you. Some cheaper sets (well, the 'no names') might not be too good at this as they use old panels, and if it's for somewhere that you are in a variable position (kitchen) rather than sat in the sofa, these sets won't work for you.

snipped-for-privacy@ntlworld.com=20

So now when you watch TV you're constantly distracted by a screen = surround that demands attention?

Give me black over grey, silver, pink or any other colour any day.

Tim

that demands attention?

I find a dense black rectangle round the screen very obtrusive. And since the telly's off more than it's on, downright ugly the rest of the time.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ...

There's a thing called a "Lime" plug that you can get (sometimes for free, I've ordered one for my old mum) that learns your TVs remote control power on/off code. Then when you turn your TV on or off, the Lime thingy switches on everything that's connected to its mains outlet. It's designed as a power saver, but is crippled by only having one single mains outlet. You'd have to supply your own 2 or 4 way extension to simultaneously switch on external speakers as well as your TV.

That sounds very similar to the TX-L26X10B which I bought a year ago - except that it cost me £360 then :-( . If the TX-L26X20B is anything like as good then I'd say go for it, especially at today's prices. John Lewis are advertising it £249.95 with a 5 year guarantee - when they get it back in stock.

Mine adjusts the brightness to suit the ambient light level. I had my doubts at first because I didn't see any noticeable change when I covered the photocell but then I realised that it only changes gradually with a change in light level, which is probably a good thing otherwise it would flicker every time a shadow passed over it. I think they regard it mainly as an eco feature to reduce power consumption when full brightness isn't needed and it's referred to as 'eco mode' in the setup menu.

Don't rely on retailer's sites for specifications. The Panasonic site quotes the TX-L26X20B as 20,000:1 contrast, 15-pin VGA input from PC's,

The sound quality on my TX-L26X10B is pretty good as TV sound goes. I also have it hooked into the AUX input of my HiFi system. The sound from the TV speakers obviously isn't as good as via the HiFi but the difference isn't all that great and we normally just use the internal speakers.

Wrong (well partly)

You can get a 14" (o)led TV from one of the far east manufacturers. However it costs something like £2500 Scaling that up to a 42" screen would need a mortgage.

FWSE... They have come down in price, but not up in size:

I'm fairly sure the offspring's audio setup goes this, inasmuch as it comes out of 'standby' automatically.

They are due round tomorrow evening so I'll ask about the details.

TF

Not in my case it wouldn't. I've got a pair of these:

Had them since 1974. Fed through Quad kit, nothing compares.

I knew that - which is why I used the word "domestic" to imply commonly available - in the context of the OPs posting. LED TV is not commonly available - TVs labelled as such are LCD with LED backlighting.

One of those trailing blocks with a master and several slave sockets, which powers up the slaves when the master draws power, might do the trick. (More commonly used for PCs + peripherals which would have much the same characteristic of the PC drawing minute amount of power when 'off'.)

Are you joking? Are your seriously suggesting that one has more than a snowball's chance in hell of getting useful information out of manufacturers' websites after the pointy-haired marketing types have been at them? :-(

I went looking for a Potterton manual I didn't have in my collection a couple of days ago. Even on the 'installer' and 'merchant' parts of their site there was nothing but consumer glossies and patronising weenie brainless-consumer-oriented stuff (like Why You Should Choose A Gas Safe Registered Installer).

Even some top names had surprisingly narrow viewing angles. Though that might not be an issue in my proposed location in the corner of a room where you wouldn't get more than 45 degrees off axis from it.

Yes, those would probably sound a little better than the built-in ones ;-)

An iMac. Great TV and it does other stuff too. Also the screen is way better than any TV on the market.