New telly

Watcha,

I have a Panasonic Quintrix telly which has an outstanding picture without any HD as its an old TV.Its getting a little tatty now which is a shame but the picture hasn't changed in all the years we've had it.I'm looking to get a new flatscreen but just wanted to know which model to go for.

Would like to get something with a picture on the same level as our beloved Quintrix and am willing to shell out but not sure whats -what? Any ideas ? Thanks

Mid or top range Panasonic plasma.

Bear in mind that the new TV will probably be bigger than your old TV. A 32" CRT has a viewable screen area of about 28"~29" diagonal, so the actual picture is smaller than the quoted tube size. With flat screens the quoted picture size is the viewable picture. Going from 32" CRT to 42" plasma for example would be a big increase in picture area.

Standard Definition starts to show its limits on screen sizes bigger that 32". Digital TV (Sky/Freeview/Freesat) doesn't help either because of the pixelation of digital broadcasts; more channels = lower quality.

A 32'' crt is the same screen area as 32'' lcd or pasma(its a diagonal viewing area)
LCD V PASMA
Now theres a thing.
Decide what you can afford
Compare the physical size, i went from 32''crt to 42 lcd, the tv sits further back in the room.
Why get hd if you arnt receiving hd, ie if you are on virgin the picture is upscaled.
You do not need to spend £££ on a brand leader, ie Sony/Panasonic..
Unless you are going 46+ lcd will be plenty good enough & cheaper to run

Diyisfun said:

A 32'' crt is the same screen area as 32'' lcd or pasma(its a diagonal viewing area)

Click to expand...

Sorry, but that's wrong.
They are both measured in the diagonal, that's not in dispute. But a CRT tube is measured including the bit of the tube face that are hidden behind the screen bezel. The tube might be 32", but the bit that makes the picture will be smaller. That's what we call the "visible picture area".

Check it out for yourself with any manufacturer sites that hold pdf leaflets for their CRT ranges. Here's a Philips as an example, but it's the same with all CRT brands LINK

Diyisfun said:

Why get hd if you arnt receiving hd, ie if you are on virgin the picture is upscaled.
You do not need to spend £££ on a brand leader, ie Sony/Panasonic..
Unless you are going 46+ lcd will be plenty good enough & cheaper to run

Click to expand...

Hmmm... Personally I wouldn't trade my 32" CRT for any of the 32" consumer LCD TVs I've seen to date. They're all a backwards step IMO. And I say that as a professional calibrator who is paid to set up TVs and monitors in home cinemas, dubbing studios and graphics suites.

Conversely I have been impressed by the 50" Pioneers, and 50"-60" top end Panasonic plasmas I have supplied/installed/calibrated over the last 6 years.

Not all people have 20:20 vision.
People with HD or Blueray, rave about it, they would they paid for it.
Yet they have just published a survey on blueray disc that said very few were beter than dvd.
As far as not swapping a crt for lcd/pasma, when the crt breaks or you just need more room thats when you change.
I agree I would not change a 32 crt for a 32 lcd.

Thanks for all of your posts...mmm its a tough one!Seems that the picture on my current tv is a force to be reckoned with

I was looking for a bigger one-42" possibly and yes I'm not going to look into the Hd yet a while as its all extra money but the more expensive Panasonic might be favourite ...i'll have to think it through

Why not go to one or two retailers, and compare the screens side by side. Not all retailers have a decent signal running to each TV, so you may need to look around, but comparing side by side at least allows you to make a very measured judgement.

When I was last looking for a new TV, I was surprised at just how lousy some pictures are when compared to similar priced models.

My opinion is, that CRT TVs portrayed the SD picture very well, shove that SD signal into a higher resolution screen & it looks pants.

Shove an HD signal into the HD TV it looks great.

The jury is still out on whether HD looks better on LCD or Plasma, but there cant be any argument that SD looks better on plasma.

Case closed.

I mean - who can actually admit, that they have an LCD TV displaying SD & they can follow the ball in any sporting event?

firstly the comparison picture wise between a crt tv-regardless of make or model or age-is by far much better than any lcd tv you canbuy at present-a crt will provide excellent sharp well contrasted pictures-an lcd cant do this-there is another issue as well with both lcds and plasmas which for me as a service engineer(have been repairing crt tvs ,mw ,audio etc for the past 15 years to component level) is reliabilty
Any crt tv regardless of make or model that i have come across and repaired has been working for at least 10-15 years before any problems,i i did have a brand new crt set that failed after 5 years of use-an asda special-but most of these sets are easily repaired to component level and will go on working for many years to come.
The same cannot be said for an LCD or Plasma-generally the sets are coming in for repair after about 2 years of use-due to the cost of spares-some of the pcbs used are classed as non serviceable items(with the exception of the power supplies and some invertor pcbs depending on failure) the sets have been scrapped.So you buy a 200 400 pound lcd or plasma tv,use it for two years maybe a bit more but not much then either pay more than the sets worth in repairs after the so called 5 year warrenty runs out if the set lasts that long then buy another?
Until the manufacturers make an lcd or plasma that is reliable and lasts the same as a standard crt tv-10 ,15-25 years or so-i will not be buying one.

It's true that in general flat screen TVs appear to be less reliable than CRTs. However, CRT has been with us an awfully long time - over 45 years for what we think of as modern TV (PAL 625 line, UHF). So we've had a long time to iron out the bugs.

I wonder if we'd had 30-40 years product development in LCD and Plasma behind us that those sets would be running for 10-15yrs reliably too.

that may be true ,from a servicing and reliability veiwpoint these sets are now built to a price-and it seems that its (to the customer)cheaper to throw away and just buy new....as long as you have the money to do so....

I agree about the throw-away nature.

It still surprises me how far TV prices have dropped (and continue to do so) compared to CRT TVs. Go back 5 or 6 years and a 32" cheap budget CRT was £299 - £399. SD res, 50Hz, no digital, maybe Freeview. Now you get a reasonable brand 32" HD Ready/1080p for the same money - or actually less in real terms accounting for inflation.

Midrange 32" CRT at £600 has been replace with a 50" HD.

Diyisfun said:

A 32'' crt is the same screen area as 32'' lcd or pasma(its a diagonal viewing area)

Click to expand...

Not true

As someone else has pointed out LCDs are measured by viewable size while CRTs were measured by tube size. Depending on how close to the edge of the tube the CRT manufacturer went the difference between tube size and viewable size may be anywhere from half an inch to a couple of inches.

But that isn't the most significant difference. The most significant difference is aspect ratios. Most CRTs were 4:3, most LCDs and plasmas are 16:9. The further the aspect ratio gets from being a square the lower the screen are you get for a given diagonal. Worse the area at the sides often isn't used for anything significant because program makers want to keep their material 4:3 compabile (though less so than they used to)

To get a modern TV that feels as big (that is has the same height) as an old 4:3 CRT you need to go for a set with about a 20% higher diagonal.