My wife ordered me to replace our old TV so I can tell you what I discovered in
my research.
1. You probably already know what size you want but for anyone else- you have
to pick your size first. There are online guides that will tell you what size
is recommended depending on how far away your eyes will be from the screen. We
are 12' away and picked a 55" screen, which is the smallest recommended for
that distance by many of the guides. 55 looks good to me and 42 seems too
small to me, but other people might be OK with a bit smaller.
2. Depending on size you then have to select plasma vs. LCD. Plasma is
cheaper and provides the best picture quality, but it doesn't work as well in a
room with a lot of lighting and it uses a lot more electricity. Plasma is not
available in the smaller sizes and LCD is not as easy to get in the really big
sizes. Unless you are going for a top end TV, LED does not provide much
advantage and has some disadvantages. For instance a good low end TV can beat
an LED TV that costs 40% more in terms of picture quality.
3. If you have a large TV with respect to viewing distance, then go for 1080,
otherwise you won't be able to tell the difference between 720 and 1080. At
some sizes around 32" the 720's are probably more common than 1080.
4. You may or may not be happy with the factory speakers. For some DVD's we
have to turn the sound up almost all the way and we aren't listening that loud.
Also voices are not as distinct as they could be, so my next mission is to get
a soundbar or other form of added speakers.
5. You can get "up-convert" DVD players that do a good job and the picture
quality looks really good, but if you have a 1080 TV then a blu-ray is still a
bit better.
6. You can get TV's and blu-ray players that will connect to the internet and
allow you to watch netflix movies directly on your TV. Netflix charges
$8/month for this service. Some of these devices connect through cat5 cables,
some connect through wifi. A good one with wifi built in is about $150.
7. Samsung is still one of the top brands in the consumer price range although
you may not want to consider them now. LG and Sony are up there too. I didn't
feel comfortable looking at Sharp, and I wasn't going to spend that much money
and buy a store-brand TV. As it turned out we picked Sony over the similarly
priced LG and Samsung because the Sony had a non-glossy screen and we wanted to
minimize problems with reflections. OTOH we bought an LB blu-ray player
because it got the best ratings. I'm currently looking into Sony sound systems.
I don't know anything about projectors but it seems that in a dark enough room
they might provide an advantage. Our old projection TV was very difficult to
see if there was any other light on in the room so that's why my wife decided
it had to go. I don't know much about the 5.1 or 7.1 sound systems. If you
can position all of the speakers in optimum locations and you don't mind
running the wires then this is probably the way to go. Some wives are
resistant to this so YMMV.
If you can fix your TV then you can save a lot of money. About 10 years ago
our old 26" Mitsubishi TV stopped working. I took it to a repair shop and they
told me that the power supply was out. They said they could fix it but it
would cost nearly as much as buying a new TV of that size. They would not
warranty their repairs but a new TV would come with a warranty. I threw out
the TV and we picked out a 36" Panasonic tube TV. Before the store got them in
they put their 46" projection TV on sale for close to the same price and that
is what we bought. We liked it but it was never real bright and over time it
decreased in brightness to the point where it was difficult to watch.
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