OK, so I had a look around, and it seems that HD-ready TVs have 
experienced a 10x price reduction since the last time I looked. In other 
words, they no longer cost more than a second-hand car, and it's 
actually feasible for ordinary people to buy them.

My mum's TV is... shagged. Both of the SCART sockets are defective, so 
you don't get any sound. (One of them only produces B/W pictures 
sometimes.) So I figured I might buy my mum a new TV for Christmas.

The existing TV is roughly 50cm x 50cm. (Obviously the *screen* has a 
4:3 aspect - but the *casing* doesn't!) After playing with my measuring 
stick, it appears that a device with a width of 70cm or even 80cm might 
plausibly fit into the gap. Depending on the aspect ratio and the 
styling of the casing, that gives me a 20" - 30" screen size.

It seems that LCD TVs go up to absurd sizes, with a price tag to match. 
But depending on where you shop, units of the sort of size I'm looking 
for seem to be much more reasonable in price.

There are, however, a few points I'd like to clarify.

- Some of the units claim a contrast ratio of 500:1. Some say 700:1. 
Others claim 1,000:1. Which is fair enough. But then some claim 
10,000:1. (And yet have similar or identical prices.) Am I *really* to 

*highly* questionable to me. And yet other units claim to have 15,000:1. 
One TV even said 30,000:1. Is that a typo or something??

- I _presume_ (since I haven't found one yet) that it is impossible to 
get a TV with full 1080 resolution that is only 30" across. Is that the 
case? (What, they figure you can't see details that small except on a 
larger device?)

- Trying to figure out which TV is going to give me a decent picture is 
maddeningly difficult. If you shop online, you can't *see* anything at 
all, so you just have the luminance, constrast ratio and response time 
to go at. (And the viewing angle - if that actually means anything.) If 
you go to a physical shop things are not much improved; all the TVs I've 
seen look terrible, most of them being driven by a simple RF signal over 
cheap coax cable. (!!) How the *hell* am I supposed to tell which ones 
are any good?

- What are the best brands to go for? (I have a Samsung computer monitor 
at home that works very well, so I've been tending to look mostly at 
Samsung. But I don't know if they're really the best.)

- Gotta love the way websites tell you a TV has audio connectors, but 
neglects to specify whether these are inputs or outputs! :-P

- What is HDMI? Does anything use it yet? Is there a specific reason why 


And of course, the million-dollar question:

- Are there any ways to obtain HD signals yet? (I gather BluRay players 
are actually on sale now, but still prohibitively expensive. Are there 
any other possible sources?)

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