To not buy a new TV

[LynetteScavo]

Yesterday MIL pointed out (after I admired her maga huge Sony HD/3D TV) that our TV was rather...old. (About to to have it's 10th birthday).

Until now I thought it did it's job, it worked, I could watch the news and East Enders, and the kids could watch Deadly Sixty. We only have Freeview, as we don't see the need for Sky/Virgin/whatever.

So today, in PC world I looked at the TVs.

They are big. Much bigger than mine.

And where to start deciding which one to get???? Surely in two years, better TV's will be on the market, so I should wait until mine dies?

If I did buy I would need to rearrange my living room, which I don't want to do. DH suggested taking down the over mantel mirror and hanging it over the fire place !

Much as I would like some mega TV (the Panasonic one which was very big and cost £1.5K was very nice), if I can't easily fit it into my house, I'd rather not bother, and will continue to wait for my antique, but beloved TV to die. Even if it means I am causing great embarrassment to my DC when tier friends come round.

No one needs a massive tv I think they look awful. If you have a big house and living room its not so bad . You can get smaller ones (up to 40') that ate flat and have great picture. If the size of it doesn't bother you just check out the picture in new tvs. It's so clear it takes a while to get used to. It feels like you're watching a film set. Eventually you adjust and it looks normal again. It's also nice to have i player and things like YouTube love film piped straight to the tv.

I notice several comments here about how a big TV spoils the look of a room. For me this seems like the wrong priority. I spend more hours with my eyes on the screen than on the room in general, so it is the TV experience and not the room appearance that should be optimised. (Having said that, I do care about room appearance, but don't consider large screens ugly.)

If you watch HDTV and care about picture quality, the size of the TV should be determined by viewing distance.

From wikipedia, the THX recommendations for screen size versus view distance.

35" 3.5' ? 5.0' (1.0 ? 1.5 m)
40" 4.0' ? 6.0' (1.2 ? 1.8 m)
50" 5' ? 7.5' (1.5 ? 2.2 m)
60" 6.0' ? 9.0' (1.8 ? 2.7 m)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimum_HDTV_viewing_distance#THX_ranges