Which LCD and surround sound system - need advice?

[harminder]

I have just brought my first house and so need some advice on which LCD and surround system to buy.

I want a 40" LCD TV and was interested in the following:

1. SONY KDL-40S2010 (within my budget)

2. SAMSUNG LE40R74BDX (very nice looking)

3. SONY KDL-40V2000

Not sure which one is the best all rounder and any advice would be appreciated! I dont want the TV size to be much bigger due to the size of the room!

Also I have seen the following 5.1 surround sound system:

SONY DAVDZ810 (can't find any reviews!)

With the surround sound I ideally want rear wireless speaker connection and as much power as possible for my budget!! I will be holding a lot of parties and so this will be my main music source!!

Budget is £2k!

[Colmartin]

All very good performers, I saw the Sony S and the Samsung R74 side by side the other day at Currys, both looked perfect against the ones close to them, both had fantastic viewing angles as well. One Plus on the Samsung is it has Optical Digital Outputs so if you are combining it with a Surround Sound system, you'll sort out the Samsungs one and only fault because out of the box, it's sound isn't good!

One final Samsung plus is it has Picture in Picture.

On the Sony side, the picture was probably just a touch better at wide viewing angles but it wasn't enough to worry about, both of these screens were in my opinion, the best I saw. (i've got both of my sofas to the side of the screen so looked at viewing angles quite closely!)

In my opinion, if the Picture in Picture and Optical Outputs are not important to you, the Sony was the better screen and from what I’ve seen, the Sony V is another jump again so should be fantastic, if not rather expensive.

I have seen special offers recently for the 40” Samsung with surround sound for about £1500 which would be well under your budget!

[silentandy]

I recently bought the 32" version of the Samsung so it's a good enough comparison.

I have to say viewing in store and then at home are two very different things.

Without going too much into it I'll just say that I thought the Samsung was a pile of pants considering the money I spent on it! I spent a week trying to get the best settings and get along with the really slow (and sometimes not working at all) freeview tuner. The sound was rubbish too. Pictures from any SD source were awful and even with power saving switched on the black levels weren't too good and reds made people look ill. The only saving grace was that the 360 looked great on it although there was a bit too much edge enhancement.

That wasn't enough to convince me though so I sent it back

I now have a Sony KDL 32V2000 which I absolutely love. The tuner works great, the picture is fantastic from any source and is just an all round much better and higher quality package. I think the S series just misses out on some digital trickery but is otherwise the same as the V series. The best thing about it is you can play around with a lot more picture settings including adjusting the backlight without having to go into any engineer modes and colour reproduction is far superior. Well worth the little bit extra I paid over the Samsung.

So I would go for the Sony from your list without hesitation.

Best place to buy is from John Lewis, they'll price match any physical store which has it on display and throw in a 5 year guarantee