I’m a college student looking to bring an LCD flat panel TV back to my dorm room. So that means, I’m in the market for a TV 20″ or less.

The problem is that there seem to be so many different brands of TVs that size which I’ve never even heard of. And even the good brands have numerous models which have different specs that I can hardly understand.

Do you have any advice?

It can definitely be overwhelming when shopping for TVs! A great place to start narrowing down your search is TechSelector. It’s a site that walks you through questions about TVs (also Cameras, PDAs, Printers, DVD Players, Cell Phones, etc) to understand what you’re looking for. It gives you suggestions based on your answers. It’s a very useful tool. You can then do further research if you want based on the suggestions.

Vizio is a company that has low priced HDTVs. Take a look at this Vizio 20″. We have their 37″ LCD and we’re very happy with it.

When you’re looking at specs, just take it one line at a time. If you don’t understand what it means, you can either move on (it probably won’t affect your decision anyway), or you can look it up on Wikipedia.

Here are a few important things to consider:

Connections: Think about how you’ll use your TV. Do you have a DVR? Will you use the TV’s speakers or plug in outside speakers? Do you want to be able to hook up your camcorder and watch your homemade videos on your TV? Then choose a TV that has the appropriate connections.

Contrast Ratio: This is important. It’s how dark the blacks are and how white the whites are. Set a budget for the TV, then get the highest contrast ratio that fits in that budget.

HD Tuner: Not every HDTV has a built in HD Tuner, so that will be important to look at if you want to receive OTA (Over the Air) HD.

June 7th, 2007
Categories: hdtv, tv . Author: Cali

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