TV Screen Sizes
The seemingly neverending quest to select a new TV continues. To help make sense of all the various screen sizes available for the new HD ready panels I've created a quick image (click to enlarge) showing the most popular sizes and how they compare to each other.
The 28" and 32" are included as I feel these are the sizes a lot of people will be upgrading from by replacing their 16:9 CRT models. Certainly, I'm looking to replace my old 28" Toshiba 28Z13B (bought in time for the World Cup 2002) so it's helpful to compare the difference in scale of my existing set.
The diagram does not take account of actual available diagonal size but instead quoted panel sizes, for example a 28" CRT usually only displays and actual 27" of image while the 56" Sagem HD-D56B has a quoted viewing size of 55.4".
Obviously, as you can see, a 56" screen has 4 times the area of a 28" screen. Nice. The Sagem HD-D56B got a very good write up in this months Home Cinema Choice magazine and interestingly, as the speakers are in the base unit, is actually slightly smaller than the 50" Samsung SP50L7HX I identified earlier as a possible contender. Hmmmm... woof!
I'm starting to lean towards the 56" screen, particularly as DLP technology seems to allow viewing at much closer distances without any drop in quality. The manual for the SP50L7HX mentions a minimum viewing distance of 5.5 feet! A couple of magazine reviews also seem to back this up mentioning that picture quality remained stunning even at a very close distance. Opting for the Sagem HD-D56B with matching stand would solve the problem of where to put the Sat box, DVD player etc that I'd have with the pedestal design of the Samsung SP50L7HX.
Much to think about.
Update: April 2008, I've added a new post to reflect the common LCD and Plasma panels available today.
posted by Ricky Dee at
5:22 PM
4 Comments:
Something you really notice when you go a new screen, is the poor quality of some broadcasts. A fine display really highlights any issues, the bigger you go, the more this is magnified, the pixels are simply bigger (until there is some Hi-Def TV available). Hooked to a computer exploiting the higher resolutions shows what they are capable of, but watching TV and even DVD is often disappointing.
56” is a huge screen, I have been in big open plan Texas houses with that size of TV, and the screens seem big there. I highly recommend you make something in paper/card the size of the screen and hang it where you plan to put your TV. I am all for big techy type stuff, but at that sort of size you might end up feeling that everything else is dwarfed by it.
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Lewis
By
Anonymous, at 16 August 2005 07:35
I'm just thinking out loud in all of these posts, putting my thought process down in black and white as it were. I haven't even got around to looking at these sets in the flesh yet, then there's the "Rainbow Affect" which if anyone is going to be prone to it'll be me. I will not be making a rash decision, I will not be buying a set that doesn't fit, and to be honest, the set I will end up buying yet probably hasn't been announced yet never mind released. This is all part of the fun.
By
Ricky Dee, at 16 August 2005 12:19
What I want to know is this, when I buy a new carpet, the measurement that I use is from side to side, why cant tv manufacturers give their sizes the same way instead of trying to kid us with these false measurements.
By
Anonymous, at 10 March 2008 12:56
Exactly anonymous !
More bullshit to baffle us with. I went into a TV shop the other day and asked the salesman how to measure a screen. He said 'diagonally'. I asked him to measure the length and height of the visible screen on each of the sets I looked at as well as the diagonal.
It is so annoying and I don't think the manufacturers realise how they alienate the public with their marketing smoke.
By
Anonymous, at 28 August 2008 11:37
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