I finally did it. I just ordered my first ever HDTV, the Samsung LE26R41B. It set me back £616 from Novatech which is a little more than some online stores but this TV seems to have exploded in popularity and they can get it to me this week when everyone else is sold out, so I went for them. I’ve had good experiences with them in the past so let’s hope that they can deliver (literally and figuratively) because I can’t wait for this baby.

Incidentally, if you ever need proof that it’s better to shop online, I saw the same TV in Dixons on Saturday for over £200 more. Why they act shocked that more and more people are starting to buy things over the Internet I have no idea.

It’s a bigger version of the ones on the Xbox 360 demo pods so I’ve been able to give it a little test for gaming, which is pretty much the application that will make or break an HDTV by showing up any ghosting and stuff like that. Obviously it had to be good for gaming if I’m using it, and since MS chose it to be representative of their new system we can assume that it’s a nice gaming display. It’s hard to get a straight answer on response time but it seem to be 12ms at the most.

Specs-wise, they haven’t skipped on them here considering the relatively low price. Most importantly for future use it has an HDMI input which means I’ll be able to view HD DVD and Blu-ray in high definition (they’ll only output 480p over component) and play the PS3 over a digital connection whenever that turns up. It also has all the legacy connections like component, VGA, SCART (x2), composite, S-video, etc, and a resolution of 1366×768. I checked some impressions and non-HD sources are handled without any lag from upscaling, so retro consoles are playable on it.

So now I have a great DVD player, a great TV, a console that can show it off, and a shitty 5.1 system. Whatever should I buy next?