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If its a while since you last bought a television the massive choice available, specifications, screen sizes and ad on gadgets will be enough to make your head spin.

High Definition is the word you will keep hearing, but not just any HDTV will do, your new flat screen TV needs to be able to deliver quality standard definition pictures too.

Also do not forget about sound, some manufacturers scimp on sound as they try to cram all the bits and pieces into the TV casing, pointless having great pictures beaming into your living room if the sound is pathetic as your enjoyment will be severely curtailed.

Watch out for the sticker too an “HD Ready” logo is no guarantee that a television will be able to give the best results will high definition content or do justice to you spanking new HD dvd player no look out for the logo “HD Ready 1080p” to ensure the best standards.

Which? Magazine recently published a report about popular flat screen televisions here are some of their findings.

Best HDTV on test.

32″ Panasonic Viera TX-32LXD700 LCD Digital TV HD Ready

This set has it all a super crystal clear 32″ widescreen with awesome sound with a deep resounding bass which is often missing from flat screen TVs.

Also incorporated is a memory card slot so you can view your holiday snaps in fabulous high definition.

More details can be found at Cheap Telly.

Best Buy

32″ Panasonic Viera TX-32LXD7 LCD Digital TV HD Ready

We stay with Panasonic for the best buy, if your budget doesn’t quite stretch to the LXD700 this is the next best thing, brilliant picture quality, and the sound is pretty good too, less of the frills of big brother, (fewer HDMI sockets), got plenty of plaudits from Which? testers.

More details can be found at Cheap Telly.

Future Proofing

32″ Sony Bravia KDL-32D3000 LCD Digital TV HD Ready
The Sony Bravia KDL-32D300 won the Which? award for most advanced flat screen, it has every feature you can imagine, can handle high definition video at 24 frames per second which is fantastic for the new generation Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

Slight negative with this set is the sound, not quite as crystal clear as the Panasonic but not far behind either.

More details can be found at Cheap Telly.

Best buy big telly

37″ Toshiba Regza 37X3030DB LCD Digital TV Full 1080P HD Ready

A 37″ giant of an LCD TV which won’t break the bank.

Not the best resolution TV available and the picture has been described by some as slightly soft, however in line with many Toshiba television sets the sound quality is simply excellent.

More details at Cheap Telly.

Worst on test

The worst television on the test was the own brand Marks and Spencer 3210DVB.

The Which? report said

“The sound quality is barely acceptable, but not as bad as its standard definition pictures, described as ‘hideous’ and ‘ugly’ by the expert viewing panel.

” The jerky high definition images manage the distinction of being the worst of any HDTV we have tested this year.”

More Televisions can be found in the Cheap Telly catalogue.

Some really good set top boxes are available from the Freeview service. A very nice set top box by Goodmans can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk for only £49.99. The GDB15HD model is advertised as including such features as HDMI, and also 1080i Upscaling. The GDB15HD offers upscaling support of all the way to 1080i for the sharpest, clearest picture possible. Also the GBD15HD set top box offers the capability to view television shows in the upcoming week by its seven-day electronic guide. With this function, you’ll never miss your favorite shows.

Another excellent, though more pricey, set top box from Freeview is the Sagem 62160SL-T. The Sagem 62160SL-T offers what’s called a “twin tuner” that allows the recording of two programs at the same time. Recording two shows at once won’t hurt your 62160SY-T set top box at all, because it comes equipped with a 160 gigabyte hard drive, allowing you to save shows and watch them whenever you like. The 160 gigabyte hard drive gives you the option to save up to eighty hours of programming. With that much space available at your disposal, it’s quite hard for competitors to beat the 62160SL-T from Segam.

Choose a Set Top Box

Operating in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and the USA, Setanta is a leading provider of premium television channels to subscribing customers.

Setanta broadcasts can be obtained via digital satellite, digital terrestrial, digital cable and analogue cable.

Setanta also provides sports video services via Broadband Internet.

In the UK, the Setana Sports Pack consists of 9 great sports channels:

• Setanta Sports 1
• Setanta Sports 2
• Setanta Sports Ireland
• Racing UK
• Racing World
• NASN
• Celtic TV
• Rangers TV
• LFC TV ( Just launched – September 20th)

A 10th channel Arsenal TV will be available by Christmas.

Click here for more about Setanta Sports and how to subscribe

Often times, two sets of numbers you’ll come in contact with are 3000:1 and 800:1. These numbers are the ratio between white to black colors on the screen at one time. Having said that, 3000:1 means the white colors are 3000 times brighter than the black colors. Likewise, 800:1 means that the white colors are only 800 times brighter than the black colors. In easier terms, the lower the contrast ratio number, the higher likelihood the coloration will be much different than the video source, versus a higher contrast television.

Another option to consider when it comes to buying an HDTV is the type of connection that will be used. The most popular type is called HDMI, which is short for High-Definition Multimedia Interface. HDMI is a 19-pin connector that supports 10.2 Gigabits per second at 340 Megapixels per second.

Another type of popular connection is the type used mostly in France, called SCART. SCART is an acronym that means Syndicat des Constructeurs d’Appareils Radiorécepteurs et Téléviseurs. The 21-pin SCART connector appeared originally in 1977 on French television sets, and it became the standard in January of 1980.

Its called “Pay Once Watch Forever” and for a £75 one off payment, you get over 200 free channels plus you receive Sky’s most popular Entertainment Mixes, ‘Variety Mix and Knowledge Mix ’ free of charge for 6 months.

Sky Pay Once Watch Forever gives access to a fabulous choice of great TV and radio programmes all in digital quality.

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If you like digital radio there are over 95 Digital Radio channels included in the package and in case you were wondering you also get the Sky Box, Minidish, Sky Remote, Channels and standard installation included in the one off £75 price, which makes it dead simple if you want to upgrade your sky package at a later date.

In total with Sky Pay Once Watch Forever you get your mits on over 200 free digital TV channels which is four times more than what is currently available with Freeview.

Click here to purchase Sky Pay Once Watch Forever.

Click here to get more details about Sky Pay Once Watch Forever.

Other Sky Digital Packages.

Freeview Set Top Boxes

HD televisions are measured by the amount of lines that fit vertically into a television: that means if the TV specifies “720,” 720 vertical lines fit. Likewise, “1080” means that 1,080 vertical lines are present. Another indicator of resolution is the letter that most of the time follows the number. You may have seen HDTV’s advertised as “1080i” or “720p.” The letters indicate the type of scanning the television performs. The “i” means interlaced and the “p” means progressive. Progressive scan is the process of when a frame is taken, transmitted and displayed on the TV in a path from top to bottom, left to right, individual line by individual line. Interlaced is similar to progressive in that the lines are displayed the same way, except every other odd line is displayed first, and then the display goes back and shows the even lines, from top to bottom.

The numbers 720 and 1080 denote how many lines there are vertically, but what about horizontally? In order to answer that you have to think in terms of pixels; which are the smallest portion of a picture on a television. A pixel can be thought of as the point at where a horizontal and a vertical line meet, and the amount of pixels are read from horizontal to vertical. For instance 720 has 1,280 lines running horizontally, so the number is read as “1280 x 720,” therefore there are 921,600 pixels possible in every frame. 1080 has 1920 lines, giving a rise in the pixels amount to 2,073,600. Each pixel is a different color, and that will cause the picture to be much more crisp, more clear and much more brighter than a regular television.

SkyHD

Sky’s investment in high-definition broadcasting is the single largest since the satellite company first launched. Not many details have been revealed, but they’ve certainly made a name for themselves in the TV industry. Sky is one of the companies that require your television to have HDCP-compliant inputs so copying any broadcast is impossible. In order to receive SkyHD, you’ll need to purchase three things: 1) A SkyHD Box that is priced around £299; 2) There is also a monthly subscription fee of £10, and 3) you must have an HD ready television.

BBC HD

The BBC, just now, has gotten through their Freeview launch, and the next major project for BBC HD is the analogue service switch-off. Therefore, while an expensive HD rollout is a long ways away, the BBC still faces problems. HDTV-enabled countries like America and Japan won’t pay as much for programs that are not in high definition. The BBC has committed to film all of their content in HD by 2010. Unfortunately by that time, other services such as SkyHD should have made a bigger impact in the market.

Freeview

During the time I was doing research for this article, all the sources say there are no plans set in stone for HDTV to be available through Freeview. Television broadcasters are questioning and consistently asking the regulator company called ‘Ofcom’ for bandwidth in order to provide HD, unfortunately their answer is, “…there’s no available space.”

In May of 2006, an exclusive trial began in London on the Crystal Palace transmitter in order to test the service. However, being an exclusive test, this is was not available to the public and special decoding hardware was required. Results of the test in November of 2006 were encouraging; unfortunately there are no published plans for Freeview HDTV appearing any day soon.