I'm looking at 40 - 42 inch lcd tvs and wondering what I should be looking for .. 240hz? Dynamic Contrast Ratio? I have to be honest and say i don't know much about them having never owned one. Looking to spend around 700-900 + tax.

Here's one I was looking at recently.
http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/ ... bbb9ceen02

This samsung looks good .. i like the connect share movie feature.

http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/ ... 427b01en02

Cant go wrong with Samsung. Looks like a good choice.

*EDIT* I just realized this was an old thread brought back.

I'd avoid Phillips for now. The panels I've seen from them lately have been pretty bad but they've also been cheap so I'm wondering if they have this really low end line they sell specifically to Walmart, and now FS and BB, but in either case they're not very good.

I wouldn't worry too much about 240Hz either. *Most* displays that use it don't process the motion of the image enough to really make it worthwhile and the ones that do (Sony XBR9's for instance) do it so well that it actually makes movies look worse. It's hard to describe really but when you add that much of a refresh rate and remove the blurring between frames so much you end up getting an image that looks like it was shot on a camcorder rather than a film camera (film vs movie).

I was in FS one time and I walked by a display with this and I thought it was a behind the scenes extra on a Bluray movie for the making of Pirates of the Caribbean but after 30 seconds or so I realized it was the actual movie. I messed with some of the setting to see what it took to make the movie looking like a movie again and the fix was to reduce the image processing on motion to the point where it looked like a 120Hz display. My father was with me at the time and he made the comment that "Well with some calibration you can get it looking right" but my argument was "Why spend $2000 on a display with these features when you end up toning them down and/or disabling them?".

As for my recommendations, Samsung is usually pretty safe and even if you don't get one it would make a good benchmark to compare others against. I think in the most recent flyers I saw a 42" LG that was LED backlit for $999 (I think?) so you might want to check that one out. It would be edge lit lighting instead of localized dimming, so you won't get the crazy contrast ratios that most LED displays can offer but it will be thinner and use less power.

As for dynamic contrast ratio I wouldn't worry about it. Some manufacturers (LG is one of them actually) will often use the numbers from that to cover the fact that their regular contrast ratio numbers aren't that great. Even the regular contrast ratios I would only take with a grain of salt so if the display looks contrasty enough for you I wouldn't worry.

A bigger concern of mine is how the panels image processors handle motion. I find this is where I notice most of the difference between something good and something dirt cheap. You really just have to see it in person to notice that though but watch for choppyness when the scene is moving quickly. I really dislike that personally.

Hope that helps.

Find one with the features you want, then go see it first hand in action. A lot of the spec.s are just marketing voodoo. Sammy's are pretty good. I should have waited a year to make the move to LCD, you can get a 40" now for what I paid for a 32". 1080i looks like crap and 720P doesn't give a lot of vertical space if you sometimes use it as a monitor (HTPC)

The samsung has all the features I want .. I especially like being able to connect a thumb drive or hard drive to it and play videos. Right now I'm just waiting to measure the living room of the new place i'm moving to so see what size to get .. either a 40" or 46".

I picked up a sony 40" Bravia on sale for $600.00 about 2 months ago that i really enjoy.It needed a firmware update to use a ps3 with it or the sound would cut out.

There are charts online that will let you know what size display you should have for a given viewing distance so as you won't notice the jagged edges of pixels, and basically once you hit 1080p the distance is cut down dramatically. So much so that these charts are basically pointless as most average livingrooms would call for an 85" display or larger... so my point here is if you have the wall space and the money, the bigger the better.

I have a very small living room and I ended up going with a 46" but I think the guide was telling me I could do 60" or something. I guess it also doesn't account for SD sources like non-HD cable etc too so that's something else to keep in mind.

Still debating on a 40 or 46 inch ... how far from the tv do you sit? 9-12 feet here in this tv room of mine. I'm sure at 1080 or 720 that distance is fine but I'm wondering about the sd broadcasts from that distance.

As long as it's digital SD and not analogue, most TV's are very good at smoothing the stuff out.

Bigger is better, get a 52" if it will fit.

I sit like... 8 feet away. Like I said, I have a small livingroom and my panel is wall mounted with a low profile mount so it really is a small space.

As for SD content I find it looks pretty bad, but I'm not sure adding more distance between you and the display will help much unfortunately. As for a 40/46" display I think for the distance you're sitting the 46" would be better of course, but some of the best deals seem to be on 40" displays right now, so if you could get away with it you'd probably save a wad of cash, or get something much nicer (LED-lit lets say) for the same price as a regular 46".

What kind of room will this TV be in? Will there be a lot of ambient light? Can you/will you mount the TV to the wall?

I have no issues with that Samsung unit.

I picked up the 46 inch Samsung LN46C610 and so far it's looking to be an great purchase. Perfect for the size of the room I have here. I just love the ability to stream videos, movies and tv downloads from a network drive. So far it's played Xvid, divx, my HDV cameras captures, h264 mp4's,x264 mp4's, mkv, wmv, asf .. pretty much everything I've thrown at it. Picture quality is amazing.

Pics or it didn't happen!