LCD TV'sFollow

We are quite happy with our Samsung.

I love our LG. Best way to pick is check the display model, see which on looks good to you and buy it.

I will strongly suggest also getting the maximum warranty length no matter which television you choose. We snagged the 5 year warranty for ours, which means that if it breaks they'll send a service tech out to fix it or replace it. Well worth another $300 for what is essentially a major appliance.

(Just had some great warranty experience with Maytag - we bought a new microwave and the LCD panel was all washed out. They sent a service tech out, he confirmed it was a mess and unreadable, and he ordered a part. Within a week, it was fixed.)

I have a 42" Sharp LCD, 1080p TV in the living room. It's nice, bright, clear, but unfortunately it's only receiving a 1080i signal from the satellite. I have a 32" Vizio LED, 720p TV in my bedroom, and it looks better than my Sharp. I would recommend the Vizio.

@Kaain I could've told you not to buy LaCie.

I'd be hitting that guy with a shovel each time he'd mention not owning a television.

While there's nothing wrong with doing side-by-side comparisons of display models in the store, this is far far far from the best way to pick a good TV. In fact, it's often listed as one of thing things "not to do" when buying a TV (or at least, don't rely on it alone). Check the actual stats on the range of brands/models you're looking at *first*. The display model examination should really just be about looking at the style of the bezels, colors, controls, where the inputs are, whether the stand will match the drapes, etc.

Unless your living room is lit by high powered florescent lighting, you cannot possibly get a good comparison of the actual visual qualities of the TVs while on a display room floor. Not to mention, you have no clue how whacked out the settings on each TV are. It's a common practice for stores trying to get rid of back stock of older or lower performing models, to deliberately crank up the colors on the crappy TVs and turn them down on the good quality ones. This makes the cheap/crappy ones look "great" under florescent lights, and if you don't come armed with some actual information about the sets themselves, you'll think you're getting a much better deal than you really are.

And that's beyond the common tactic in stores of chaining a whole bunch of TVs on a single signal line. Even with no intent to deceive customers about the relative quality of the TVs themselves, this will change the actual picture quality dramatically based purely on where the TV happens to be in their display area.

Look at the stats. Read reviews. That's the best way to make a decision.

Edited, Oct 31st 2011 5:30pm by gbaji

3 1TB drives in a raid 5 array would be theoretically slightly faster than a single 2TB, plus have the added advantage of allowing for a drive failure, assuming equal drive speeds to start, etc. Most motherboards can do at a minimum of Raid 0, Raid 1 and Raid 5. Some won't. You'll want to check which options you have before proceeding. At a minimum, getting two drives in a Raid 1 array mirrored for Data backup is critical. A single drive will fail. Two drives are less likely to fail at once. you could mirror 3 or more drives as well, but if you mirror a drive, say a 1TB drive, you still have a 1TB drive even if you add more drives to the mirror. More redundancy, less available space.

Raid 5 is a compromise between speed and redundancy. You would still need 2 of the 3 drives in the array to survive to have a valid drive, but its faster than Raid 1.

For my computers, particularily my main, I like to build out a Fast operating system drive (in this case a 6GB / sec 256GB Solid state drive) and then a large Raid 1 array for data. A movie on a raid 1 array will play just as well as a movie on a single stand alone drive. It's basically games and programs that you would start to see any performance issues with a Raid drive. If you get a large enough fast OS drive you can put all your commonly used programs on it.

One other thing to be aware of when dealing with Raid arrays, is that installing windows on a machine with a raid array can be annoying due to a persistant bug microsoft has never fixed. If you have a hard drive, and a raid array plugged in when you install windows. windows will install all the data files on your hard drive correctly, but it will write the boot records to your raid array. The workaround is to only have the one hard drive plugged in when installing windows.

I'd go with 2 2TB in a raid 1 array if I were building out a backup array for an existing machine.

Raid 5 is what I was shooting for. I wanted the externals to be a dumping ground basically for older media, programs, etc. so I could keep my internal HD nice and clean. I picked up the Lacie because it was a 2TB on sale for $89 while even just the 1TB of other models were similarly priced. I have a RadioShack friend that just let me know they have three 1TB HDs on clearance for $29 each so Raid 5 seems to be the best bet for what I'm wanting.

I know Raid 1 would be more secure, but it's not THAT big of an issue as most of this is just disposal personal stuff.

ETA: I forgot about needing a controller for a Raid 5 setup. I don't care to spend that much for something not all that important. I'll probably just get two 2TBs and Raid 1 like you suggested.

Could I later add two more HDs in a Raid 0 setup for gaming on the same mobo?


Edited, Nov 1st 2011 11:55am by Kaain

I priced the High speed HD's and the price gouging has begun! Most are doubling in price already. I guess I can wait till
things get better and the plants back up and making them again.

I've been looking into getting our first HDTV lately. I've found some that I like but have been reluctant based on some of the prices. We are also trying to decide whether to go Samsung SmartTV or go with a Wifi built in blu ray. We want a "smart" device just because we probably won't have cable for awhile and that way we could get stuff like hulu+ and/or netflix and just stream our shows and what not until we decide to actually get cable. To me a wifi built in blu ray is smarter than a samsung smart tv as you still need to buy an $80 adapter and you still don't have a blu ray player.

I may have to look more into Vizio. My #1 option right now was just the LG 32lk450. It's 1080p60 and not LED but all the reviews I've seen have been great and I think it's one of the top rated on consumer reports.

Why is the TV stand bigger than the TV itself?