If you only intend to watch terrestial and freeview but not sky or virgin which type tv would it be best to buy HD ready or full HD?

Answer 1

The difference between HD ready and full HD is fairly subtle. To display standard definition signals, there will be little difference between any model of HD television but the difference is described here...

Normal HD resolution uses 1080 lines to build the complete picture. Most HD signals are broadcast in that format (the alternative is 720 line but it rarely used). A full HD television should have a native screen resolution of 1080 lines and will be advertised as 1080i or 1080p native resolution. By contrast, other HD ready televisions may not use 1080 lines for the display and the incoming signal will be processed and resized to fit the lower resolution. Typical line counts are 768 or 900. The end result is still good quality but the effective resolution is reduced to the number of lines on the display.

Freeview (The British digital terrestrial television service) is currently broadcasting in standard definition only. Therefore, with a line count of 576, the native display resolution will be higher on any HD ready or full HD television. The resolution of the image is NOT increased by displaying it on a higher resolution screen.

However, Freeview is planning to begin HD broadcasting during 2010. Current Freeview receivers will not be compatible and will need to eb replaced with HD compliant receivers. Likewise, British televisions do not currently have HD Freeview receivers built in. No doubt they will incorporate HD Freeview during 2010. If the television is to be used for HD Freeview in the future it may be worth looking at 1080 line displays as they are potentially the best image quality.

Before buying any television, it is worth looking at them first. Regardless of the specification, some look better than others. As we tend to spend many hours looking at our purchase, it is only sensible to make sure it is the picture that we like best.