But it's here. For anyone who's interested, this is what I bought:
37" Toshiba LCD HD TV, model 37X505DB
-- HD 1080P / 24fps compatible
-- 3x HDMI ports
-- 2x SCART sockets / 1x RGB-compatible
-- 1x component input
-- 1x PC input
-- Integrated Freeview
Yeah, I ended up buying one of the few TVs I already had my eye on. I just couldn't beat the price, really. I had a budget of £700 and this was just under that. It has everything I wanted, although with "budget TVs" like this you always take a hit on a few things. So, reviews said the black levels and contrast was poor – but it's comparable to my old TV, and not really that terrible if you ask me.
The sound is fine, but when watching DVDs it struggles to give you much of an experience. It all sounds a bit hollow. But that's okay. I have surround sound speakers, it's just that my old TV had an inbuilt DD5.1 decoder. This one doesn't. So I'll have to buy an external decoder at some point. I expected that. TVs with inbuilt DD5.1/DTS decoders cost a bomb. And you can get decent speaker systems for under £200 these days, with decoder, speakers and subwoofer all in one.
All said; I'm happy. I particularly wanted to future-proof myself by getting 1080P HD, and the bonus of getting 3x HDMIs (2 is the norm on sub-£800 TVs) was brilliant. And there are times when connecting a PC would be handy for stuff, and I've never been able to do that – but now I can! Result!
The only thing that did surprise me was how awful the factory default settings were for sound and (particularly) picture! People were like glowing oranges when I first turned it on, it was frightening. I thought I'd made a very bad choice at first. But the TV has an extensive menu system to allow you to tweak all kinds of things (too many options, in some ways – confusing!), so I got it adjusted to an acceptable level after awhile.
All I need now is a component video lead to connect my DVD (as the RGB-enabled SCART socket is being used by my digibox) and standard SCART doesn't give such a great picture. It's not unwatchable, but connecting via component would be an improvement. Oh, and I'll keep my eye out for some good speaker system deals on Ebay, probably.
