What size of TV to buy

Traditionally television sets are measured on the diagonal in inches making it difficult to judge whether or not any particular size of TV will fit into your room. To help in this regard we have provided approximate screen measurements (screen width and screen height) in inches and centimetres for all the most popular LCD TV Screen Sizes and Plasma TV Screen Sizes sold in the UK. Please remember these sizes are approximate and represent the screen size only and each manufacturer will have a different size of border around their TV screen. Also all information provided by us is based on the widescreen screen aspect ratio of 16x9 (1.78) rather than what was the traditional screen aspect ratio of 4x3. The widescreen screen aspect is standard on DTV (digital television) and suitable for displaying both today's widescreen TV programming and films which were recorded on widescreen.

Optimal viewing distance

There are various views on this but very popular is as close as possible but not close enough to experience a pixilation problem i.e. see the picture scanning lines, pixels or other video artefacts that could lead to distractions and ruin your picture watching experience.

While a pixelation problem will of course depend on the quality of your own eyesight, it is generally accepted that the minimum viewing distance for HD TV is approximately 1.5 times the screen’s diagonal. Moving further away to about 4 times the screen’s diagonal, even with 20:20 vision, you will not be able to see all the picture detail. The generally accepted minimum viewing distance for SD TV (standard digital television) is approximately 4-5 times the screen’s diagonal, so if you watch a mixture of both standard and high definition programming, which is likely, a compromise will be require to be made which could perhaps include softening the image by making a small adjustment to your TV's contrast and colour controls - factory settings on HD TVs can be on the bright side and over saturated, simply to make the TV stand out in the shop.

What makes sense for your room might of course be the determining factor failing which we recommend letting your own subjective viewing distance test, guide your choice. Be prepared however to sit much closer to your TV than your parent’s did - old CRT tubes were designed for an optimal viewing distance of approximately 8 times the screen’s diagonal measurement, so for say a 24 inch television set they would have required to sit 16 feet away (almost 5 meters).

Buy a LCD TV, plasma TV, or a DLP home cinema projector?

A Plasma TV produces a high quality image again by exciting phosphor atoms but with a much narrower and lighter screen. Rather than firing a beam of electrons the screen contains thousands of plasma or gas filled glass chambers which, when excited by an electric current, emit an invisible UV light which activates coloured phosphors (in effect tiny fluorescent coloured lights) that are in groups of three (one red, one green, and one blue) forming pixels that combine together to create an image.

A LCD TV produces an image using liquid crystals which are manipulated using an electric current to control the amount of light passing through the crystal. The crystals, each of which are manipulated individually by a two grids of electrodes, are not luminous in themselves but are sandwiched between two glass plates and placed in front of a white fluorescent lamps. Because a LCD screen in effect comprises of thousands of individual blinds which work together as pixels to create an image by controlling the amount of light each lets through, this technology has limitation when it comes to displaying fast moving objects – the individual blinds have to open and close in sequence. Also liquid crystals always let some light through and therefore a LCD TV is unable to display pure black. Colour is produced by each blind or pixel having three sub pixels or coloured filters (red, blue and green), each of which can be manipulated separately to produce any desired colour.

While the quality of LCD TVs continues to improve, independent reviews show that for a larger screen, plasma TVs remain ahead on picture quality, intensity of black, image depth and perhaps more importantly, motion clarity - the image on a LCD TV is susceptible to motion blur. Also the image on a LCD TV screen will weaken when viewed from an acute angle.