Best Flat Screen for Non HD use

[Nailhead]

I'm asking this for my stepdad who wants a flat screen TV for his vacation home. Since this is a vacation home, he is not interested in getting HD cable or satellite, or a Blu-Ray player. He doesn't seem to really want to spend more than $1000 since it's a vacation home, but at the same time he wants the best picture for the money. Here are some of the things he is looking for in a flat screen:

• SD video looks good
• Must be flat to hang on wall
• No larger than 40" (37" is probably a perfect size)
• Black bezel (outline), nothing goofy looking
• He'd really like a memory card slot to show pictures from his camera

Any help? Thanks in advance.

[seto]

You could try this: Panasonic TC-32LX700. LCD, 720p, has slots for secure digital media for pictures and has a black bezel.

Or you could try: Philips 42PFP5332D/37. Plasma, 720p, and has a USB 2.0 port for digital media connections.

Both are available at Best Buy.

[Nailhead]

But how do those sets display SD video? Some do SD well, many look terrible, since he won't have an HD signal this is pretty important.

[BluWave]

Considering I have worked for and still do Contract Project Management for a single Mom and Pops shop, you can get some really great deals on old stock or open box models hanging around as they need to free up the capital as much as any. Id call around If I were you.

[Toptube]

Originally Posted by Nailhead

But how do those sets display SD video? Some do SD well, many look terrible, since he won't have an HD signal this is pretty important.

without some HD content, its probably a waste to get an HDTV. that Panasonic though is probably as good as it gets with SD content. or checkout a Philips, they have some pretty amazing SD playback.

[Nailhead]

Originally Posted by BluWave

Considering I have worked for and still do Contract Project Management for a single Mom and Pops shop, you can get some really great deals on old stock or open box models hanging around as they need to free up the capital as much as any. Id call around If I were you.

I do try to check on the deals Best Buy and Circuit City have on their open box deals, especially for an LCD so you can test it out and see if there are any dead pixels before buying, can't do that with a brand spankin new set...but so far the only deal I found was still above his price (it was a really nice Sony, if I had the money myself I would have snatched it up in a heartbeat)

The reason he wants an HD set is because he wants a flat screen to mount on a wall, I'm not aware of any SD flat screens that are 37", (which is the ideal size). I'll keep looking but I was hoping someone might know of a particular set that does SD video well, or know of any brands that, in general, are good at showing SD video and which brands are not so good.

Currently he has a Phillips at his home and it does SD video terrible, so I'm going to try to keep him away from any more Phillips HD sets for that reason, but I wouldn't know how those compare with other sets such as Visio, or some other lesser known brands that he might be attracted to for price.

[gvortex7]

I disagree wholeheartedly with Philips LCD's having bad standard def pictures. I bought the 42PFL7432D for my parents which is a 1080p LCD TV and it has excellent standard def video processing. Most Sony, Samsung, and Sharp LCD TV's I've seen so far have had very bad looking standard def images. Especially Sony's. Go figure.

The best flat panel TV's of any type to process SDTV are probably the Pioneer plasmas.

[Toptube]

non HD LCDs can be had in pretty large sizes, but they are harder and harder to come by nowadays because HD is really moving in finally. a friend of mine has an EDTV 42 inch in his living room that is only a year or two old. but, as cheap as HDTV is getting, it may be smarter just to get one anyway, if a flat panel to hang on a wall is needed.


also, a note about HDTV and SD content.

I've never personally seen SD content on a Philips, but I've read several reviews and they always get high marks for their SD playback. why you say it looks like crap is probably because even the best methods for SD playback on an HDTV aren't going to make it look amazing. in probably every case, SD content on an HDTV is going to look "worse" than you remember it looking on your SDTV. but some brands look better than others. like Philips, Panasonic, etc. also, running SD content like a DVD through an upscaler makes all of this moot becuase its being upscaled, so your TV sees it as "HD" so the quality then of the image is Dependant on the upscaler. we are talking about SD that is going straight into the TV, in this case.