I’m quite lucky. I bought Best Denki’s extended 5 year warranty for the Panasonic 42″ projection TV I purchased 5 years ago. Two weeks why of the warranty expiry, the TV died. According to Panasonic, the TV is irreparable, because one of the faulty components is no longer manufactured. As such, Best Denki is offering me compensation of 20% of the original purchase price.
I sounds like the “expiry timer” of my TV had been set wrongly. Good for me, of course. Had this happened two weeks later, I’d be stuck with a spoilt irreparable TV and no compensation.
So I’ve recently educated myself on the latest technological developments in the world of television. Some of the LCD TVs nowadays are really cheap, but the “in thing” nowadays is LED TVs, and these are very costly. I’ve been worried about LCD, as in those CCFL backlit variety, because they are said to loose their brightness and light qualities pretty quickly. Or perhaps that’s just the marketing speak of the LED proponents. For example, the LED proponents have said that CCFL loose half their brightness in 1 year. I’m not sure if they mean a whole year of always-on. A whole year of always-on is very long for a home TV.
But as with all other technology things, new and better things will always come along. It may be LED now, but OLED is coming. So I think it is not such a bad thing to go for a cheaper more affordable LCD now. Even if you spend a bomb on LED now, it will very quickly get outdated too.
I’ve decided to go for conventionally backlit LCD TVs, and I have a few simple requirements:
- Full HD (it seems to me that there are some “Full HDs” that are fuller than others…)
- 1920 x 1080 resolution
- High-contrast of at least 20000:1
- Brightness at least 500cd/m2
- Less than 10ms response time
- At least 2 HDMI inputs
- PC input
Of course, for as small a price tag as possible. I have some models in mind already. Big question now is 37″ or 42″. Some possible candidates: Sharp Aquos LC42A66M, Toshiba RV500E, Sharp LC37A65M.