Ten... 40-42in net connected HD TVs

Samsung LE40C650

The C650 is an inexpensive, mass market proposition with CCFL rather than LED backlighting. Actually, this is no bad thing as illumination is refreshingly uniform. You can manage power consumption through a five-setting Eco mode which dims the backlight, or turns the screen off altogether, but keeps audio. Freeview HD picture quality is crisp, blacks are deep and the screen offers reasonable motion resolution. 100Hz Motion Plus processing is provided to combat Blur and Judder.

Multimedia playback is generally good. While I couldn’t get MKVs to play from a Nas, all key file formats were supported when accessed from a USB drive. 

Samsung’s Internet@TV online content portal has a wide variety of streaming video and entertainment apps, including YouTube, iPlayer and Daily Motion. This model is soon to be replaced by the UE40C6505, a slimmer LED-backlit upgrade.

Sony Bravia KDL-40EX43B

The 40EX4 may be a tad more expensive than some similarly sized screens here, but then it does conceal an integrated Blu-ray player. This will appeal if convenience and space saving are premium requirements. However the EX43 is not suitable as the front-end of a Blu-ray home theatre, as the there’s no way to listen to lossless audio from BD movies.

IPTV access is the set’s secondary key attraction. Sony’s Bravia Internet Video portal offers YouTube, Daily Motion and LoveFilm, and there’s catch-up TV support from the BBC iPlayer and Demand Five. Network video streaming is limited to AVCHD files, although you’ll find broad support from USB, including MKV and AVI playback. Image quality is average. The set lacks MotionFlow picture processing and motion resolution is poor – however, this is balanced by smooth, artefact free movement.