What's the best LCD brand to buy

[EricaKane70]

I'm in the process of buying items for my apartment that I hopefully will be living by next march. The tv I definantly will be buying in late Nov-early Dec. Whats the best LCD out there and what size should I buy. I was thinking 32" or 37". Take into consideration that I will be living in a one bedroom apartment and the tv will be in my living room area. Thanks in advance for your help. Also if you have any apartment tips they are also welcome.

[Cheap21]

Samsung make the best ones IMO. I have a 32" and absolutely love it.

[EricaKane70]

Funny that you should say that because thats the one I'm thinking about getting. I like the brands samsung, sony and vizio. If I do go for the Vizio it will be a 37" because that brand is cheaper but it gets rave reviews from people that have bought the brand.

[Soapsuds]

Sony of course. You can never go wrong with a Sony product. I own a Sony TV and love it. Sharp is good as well. I am eyeing a 40' TV by Sony.

[Wales2004]

I have a couple of Samsungs and they've been great so far. You probably can't go wrong with Sony, Sharp or Vizio. Check out the picture quality on in store display and maks sure they have the number of a/v, HDMI, and/or component connections that you need for whatever units you plan on connecting. You might want to get familiar with features so that when you are ready to buy the tv, you don't have a salesperson convince you to buy more than you need.

[EricaKane70]

I've been shopping around at several stores, target, best buy, and wal-mart, and everytime I go to walmart which has Vizio LCD's there picture quality seems to be the best with Samsung running a close second. I'm a little dissapointed in Sony's pictue quality compared to Vizio, which is suppose to be the cheaper brand. I really like sony's products(I have a sony laptop/PSP) but I think I'm slowly crossing them off my list for an LCD.

[Wales2004]

I've never had a Sony tv but I do have a Sony turntable, vcr, walkman, phone, Vaio and playstation 2. As far as customer service goes they were great with the playstation and terrible with the Vaio. I went through a never buy another Vaio again stage but I'm over it now. I ended up discovering on my own what none of their customer service technicians could tell me.

I don't like their dvd/vcr products and I haven't decided on their blu ray products but I'm less likely to get either Sony or Samsung when it comes to recorders. I bought a Samsung dvd recorder combo and took it back right away because it wouldn't let me record anything on CBS....everything came up as copyrighted which makes no sense. I ended up with one of LG's combo which has so far only blocked me from recording a couple of movies on DirecTV.

I generally watch local stations using an antenna but there are some stations that are hard to get even with HDTV.....however, if you're going to use an antenna don't be fooled into buying anything expensive since a basic one works just as well. It all depends on where your tv is located as to how good of a signal you receive. We have identical brand sets in different locations and one picks up most channels with no problem and the other picks up certain channels better than the other. We still have a standard tv and the converter box even picks up certain stations better.

I read this morning that prices on tv sets are likely to go down even within the next month or so possibly half price on 32" flat panels.....naybe as low as $350. I don't think you can go wrong with a Samsung or Vizio. I had aesthetic issues with the Vizio (I know it's silly but I didn't like the speaker trim under the black frame). Get an ESP and you should be fine.

[EricaKane70]

Really their customer service for my vaio was great, and I had problems with my vaio 3 weeks after I bought it, but they repaired it really fast so all was forgiven. I was more pissed at bestbuy for not letting me return the vaio, because I still think they should of just let me exchange it instead of having me deal with sony customer service. I was up really late last night so I too caught that all 32" computers and under were going to be like $350, which is why I knew it was wise to try to buy a LCD around christmas time. But I bet they are talking about the low-end LCD's being $350, but hopefully samsung will be like $450 instead of $650 for a 32". Imo they would be smart to have all brands half-off since we will be all digital in feb. I think more people would be more inclined to buy a LCD if it was half off and I might be inclined to buy a bigger LCD if the price is right.

The only thing I don't like about the vizio is the design, I think they have had better looking designs in the past and don't understand why they changed it. Samsung buy far has the best looking design of all the LCD's that I've seen.

[Wales2004]

My issue with Sony is that my dvd rw drive stopped working out of the blue. I wanted to replace it and all I needed was information on how to remove the pc faceplate since I didn't want to break it (which is what I need with my old HP out of frustration). I don't like when things are designed to keep you from accessing it in order to try and force you to get their service. When I contacted Sony all they could say was I needed to have them service it. They were also of no help when I contacted them to ask about the power supply unit. I ended up buying an external dvd writer and maybe a year later, I decided to upgrade the ram and while I had the pc open, I just started pulling things apart until I discovered how to get the faceplate off without breaking it. I ended up replacing both drives and getting over my issues with Sony, though I still don't see myself buying another Sony pc or even laptop. I rhink Sony's too extreme in the ways it goes about trying to enforce copyright infringement...in that they sometimes keep you from copying things that you have a right to copy in terms of maintaining a backup.

I've never owned a Vizio product. I didn't like the contrast between the black frame and the grey bottom speaker panel. I probablly would have been the only one in the house that would have been okay with the picture quality since I'm not all that picky as long as it's clear. A few of my friends have gotten fooled into thinking having an HDTV automatically means they're watching everything in HD. One has a 32" Vizio HDTV and a 26" Samsung HDTV with DirecTV service. She thought she was getting HDTV because of the sets but she has regular DirecTV receivers. The picture is fine on both sets though if you have HDTV, you can see a difference between the standard signal and the digital signal. The analog signal tends to be seconds ahead of the digital signal and the digital signal sometimes freezes the picture. Hopefully those kinks get worked out before they cut off the analog signal in February because it's sort of annoying when that happens at a critical moment in a game or a movie. Right now, if you have both you can easily switch to the analog station but that option will soon be gone.