HDTV Shopping Tips  -  Jun 18th, 2007 11:31am

I recently purchased a new LCD HDTV.  Actually I purchased several of them and then subsequently returned the ones that were either too small or lacked the picture/sound quality I desired.  In the end I settled for a 32" Sharp Aquos that was $650 after a $150 coupon at Costco.  For those of you in the market for such a device here are a few things I learned from the experience:

1) If you have standard cable (non digital) such as myself, make sure you learn the wonders of a QAM tuner before shopping.  It allows you to receive any non-encrypted digital signals through standard cable.  Your mileage may vary, but I get half a dozen perfectly clear HDTV channels and pay nothing for them.

2) If you want a TV that sounds good don't buy a Samsung.  For reasons of appearance, Samsung mounts their speakers on their LCD TVs behind the screen and the sound escapes through 2 plastic holes at the bottom of the TV.  This has the wonderful affect of making everyone on tv sound like they are talking into a coffee can.  I found this same problem on both their 26" and 32" premium models.

3) Vizio TVs have great sound, incredible features, and dreadful picture quality.  The 32" Vizio I bought and set up was my favorite of the bunch from a feature and interface standpoint (I love how it shows the resolution of the incoming signal) but everything looked muddy.  Whites were brown, blacks were brown and the colors really didn't have much punch.  They are however cheap as dirt so if your bottom line is your #1 issue then it might be worth getting.  If you do buy a Vizio make sure you get it at Costco though and not Wal-Mart or some other store.  Vizio apparently makes several quality levels of LCD TVs and I noticed while shopping around that the ones at Costco were the same price but had a different paint job, twice the contrast specs, and a few other niceties.

4) If price is no object, then just buy a Sony.  No matter which store I went to or how badly the floor staff had misconfigured them, the Bravia TVs were always the best looking of the bunch and are reported to have good sound to boot (can't tell about sound until you get the TV home).  Unfortunately they were usually twice as expensive as the next closest model.

Getting the right TV was a little more work than I expected and there were a few things like the QAM tuner that I didn't know about, but what was really a nightmare was getting the right wall mount for my tv.  I'll put up a separate post with some photos of all the mounts I tried and what finally worked for me.