Lab

LCD TVs

If you've been waiting for the right time to invest in a flat-screen TV, the wait is over. The televisions on test this month are more affordable and higher quality than ever. Even the worst performers look pretty impressive, and the best are simply jaw-dropping.

There's a greater choice of high-definition sources, too, with Blu-ray players, HD video cameras, a few HD TV broadcasts from both Sky and Freesat, games consoles and PCs ready to show off what these TVs are capable of. With sizes ranging from 26in to 42in and prices from £361 to £822, we unearth the best buys for people who want great value as well as a great TV.

The television is the centrepiece of most living rooms. You might wish you watched it a bit less, but while you are tuned in you may as well enjoy it. Besides, not all TV rots the brain - there are plenty of educational and thought-provoking programmes to be found. Connect it up to a DVD or Blu-ray player for movie playback, and you can experience perhaps the most important art form of the last 100 years.

Most people are going to choose a TV by comparing specifications online or by going into a shop and picking their favourite. However, regular Shopper readers will know that there's much more to buying consumer electronics than comparing specifications or going on first impressions in a shop showroom. This is particularly true of today's TVs, because they are expected to handle so many different functions.

Source of confusion

A TV needs to be able to accept a video signal from a variety of inputs and show the right colours in the right place and at the right time to display the picture. This sounds simple enough, and by and large most modern TVs can do it well. However, things are complicated by the wide variety of input sources with which today's TVs have to contend.

All the TVs in this Labs round-up have built-in Freeview tuners, allowing them to receive over 40 TV channels via an aerial with no subscription charges. Freeview broadcast quality isn't great, though. It uses the same MPEG2 format as DVD Video, but it uses much higher compression to fit lots of channels in the available bandwidth. As a result, the picture can look blocky and messy, particularly when it's blown up on a large TV. One of the big challenges for today's TVs is to clean up the Freeview picture to hide these so-called compression artefacts.

DVDs and most cable and satellite TV broadcasts are generally much better quality than Freeview broadcasts, but they too fall short of the capabilities of modern TVs. This is due to their standard-definition (SD) resolution, with each frame made up of 720x576 pixels. Most high-definition televisions (HD TVs) have resolutions of 1,366x768 or 1,920x1,080 pixels - that's two and a half and five times more respectively. Therefore, these TVs need to upscale the resolution of each frame to match the screen's resolution. Some just repeat pixels to give a blocky picture, while others create intermediate shades to give a smoother image. The best TVs analyse the incoming signal, smoothing colours where necessary, while sharpening high-contrast areas to give the impression of greater detail. Good examples also suppress noise, compression artefacts and interference picked up along the cable.

Displaying HD video from a Blu-ray player is much easier than SD playback. The source video is already packed with as much detail as the TV can show, and the HDMI digital connection used is largely resilient to interference. Therefore, the TVs just have to show the pixels on the screen. Most Blu-ray discs use a 1,920x1,080 resolution (known as 1080p), which is more than many of these TVs can show. In these cases, the TV must downscale the image to its native 1,366x768 resolution while losing as little detail as possible.

Smooth operator

Another issue for video playback is smoothness of motion. Hollywood films are shot at 24 frames per second (fps), but this can look quite juddery on a TV. TV broadcasts and home video cameras are interlaced, with each frame made up of two subframes. TV manufacturers make grand claims about motion on their TVs, but in this round-up we rarely spotted any variation in this respect. Colour accuracy also varies, but all the TVs here include extensive options to change default (usually garish) settings to colours that are more faithful to the source image.

Today's TVs can also act as displays for PCs and games consoles. All the models in this review include multiple HDMI inputs plus a VGA input for this purpose, but not all can produce a pixel-sharp image at the screen's native resolution over both connection types.

The big picture

One of the main choices you have to make is what size screen you want. Be careful when judging this if you're in a high-street retailer, as they tend to have large display areas filled with massive sets. This has the effect of making regular-sized televisions look very small. As a general rule, 26in televisions are about the right size for bedrooms or small living rooms, but most people will be happier with a 32in TV instead. The larger picture will be easier to see in most lounges.

If you're serious about movies and want a bigger picture, the 37in or 42in models are a good choice. These are particularly useful if you want a TV with a 1080p resolution, as you'll be able to see the extra detail. The 32in 1080p TV doesn't look much different to the 720p models, as the screen is too small.

If a TV can get all this right and produce high-quality sounds, offer friendly controls and a smart design, then it gets a thumbs up from us. Very few sets do all these things, though, so turn the page to find out which do.