Advertizing for HDTVs is crammed with impressive-sounding features. But does it make any sense? Well, for many buyers, very little - the technical jargon and marketing slogans combine to form an impenetrable haze of quasi-fact.

Marketing professionals are paid to be inventive, and therefore spend their days coming up with new and increasingly overblown ways of saying things. It's reminiscent of investment bankers, hot on the trail of ever more complex and ever riskier investment packages - until, as we now know too well, they trigger a global financial meltdown.

While marketing specialists might not take things that far, as a rule their bold statements obscure more than they illuminate. Here, we explain which features your new TV actually needs - and what you can live without.

An optimal solution: TVs that come with all tuners built-in, such as this Panasonic TX-P 46 G 15.

How to choose an LCD or Plasma TV based on features

First things first: To display TV pictures, your TV will need a tuner. As ever, today's standard TVs include an analog tuner for conventional terrestrial-TV signals (those received via antenna). But, in general, the signs all now point towards digital TV reception - and this makes a lot more sense in the new world of digital devices. Even the cheapest flat-panel TVs often provide a tuner for digital terrestrial (DVB-T) signals. How many channels this will receive depends on where you live. The technical quality also varies from one location to another, and the supplied mini-antennas can often lead to reception problems.

Another free option is digital satellite reception using a DVB-S tuner. Some manufacturers offer TVs with an integrated DVB-S tuner - ideally, a DVB-S2 tuner that can also receive HDTV channels, since these are likely to appear on the satellites in growing numbers. But these TVs can cost a great deal of money, and separate tuners are often significantly cheaper in comparison.

Nevertheless, a built-in satellite tuner brings one major advantage: you can change channels with the TV's remote. If, instead, you choose to use a separate sat-receiver, you'll have to fidget around with two remote controls. In addition, the separate receiver will take up space. Read all about satellite reception in our article Satellite TV Explained.

Satellite dishes provide the signal with the highest technical quality.

Cable offers a further possibility for TV reception, but it's well known to be costly. Some manufacturers, such as Loewe, integrate suitable DVB-C tuners into their TVs. There's even an increasing number of series models with integrated tuners for all signal types (a so-called multituner), such as the Panasonic plasma TX-P 46 G 10.

Which tuner you should choose depends on several factors. The best picture in terms of technical quality comes via satellite, since the bit rate is generally higher. Furthermore, you must take your location into consideration - satellite dishes aren't always allowed, and DVB-C and DVB-T aren't universally available.

Whether you call them sockets, interfaces, or inputs, we all want the same thing: that our TVs connect as perfectly as possible to other devices. At this point, we're just going to come out and say it - your new TV simply cannot have enough connections. Indispensable, to start with, are the modern HDMI interfaces, which transmit video and audio to the TV digitally from a DVD or Blu-ray player, for example. This connection alone allows you to input high-definition pictures in the best possible quality, and - unlike with analog YUV signals from Blu-ray players - reliably in the highest resolution. There should be at least two HDMI connections - three or even four would be better.

Minimum requirement for your new TV: Two HDMI connections.

Of course, this depends how many and what type of devices you want to hook up. Just a Blu-ray player and an up-to-date sat-receiver will already fill two HDMI sockets - leaving no room, for example, for a PlayStation 3. So it's better to stay on the safe side - pay the extra, get more inputs - than to find yourself cursing the lack of sockets later on. If, on the other hand, you're planning to integrate your TV into a home-theater, the situation isn't half as critical: Here, just one cable need attach to the TV.

The remaining connectivity depends on what you want to connect. A USB input is always useful, but watch out: Sometimes, these sockets are only for maintenance purposes. We mean a real USB input - one that allows playback of photos, for example, from a digital camera. Whether these photos then look any good depends on the TV's internal image-processing, and there's no single answer to the question. Our comprehensive TV reviews will tell you how well a TV performs in various respects.

For an older S-VHS recorder, of course, you'll need an S-Video connection and traditional audio inputs. If, on the other hand, you're an amateur movie maker, the TV will need to accept your digital camera or camcorder's memory card, so that you can admire your recordings on the big screen in the blink of an eye. Ethernet sockets are becoming increasingly fashionable, allowing access to the Internet as well as playback of multimedia files across a PC network.

The latest attraction: TVs that can surf the Internet. Pictured here is the Philips "Net TV" start page.

As you can see, the options are wide, and they keep becoming wider - but this makes choosing more difficult. Ideally, you should make a list of the devices and storage media you'd like to be able to connect to the TV, and then check in-store which devices offer the necessary connections.

A few highly expensive TVs offer luxury connectivity via a separate box, which houses the tuners and connections. This hugely simplifies positioning and wiring up the TV: Only one cable leads to the display, meaning you won't need to fumble around on your hands and knees to connect everything up.

The box also makes the TV look more attractive: Because no space is needed for sockets, the casing can be more slender than that of competing models. Read more about all types of TV connections in our article Understanding TV connectivity.

Pictured here is the separate connections box of the Pioneer plasma KRP-500, one of the best TVs ever built.

We're sticking to what we've said in the past: Here, again, it all depends what you want to do with the TV. If you're the type that loves to tweak and experiment with picture settings, there are plenty of TVs out there that'd keep you going for weeks with their extensive setup-options (also see the Operation TV Buying Guide).

But even for normal users, a few picture controls are indispensable. Besides those for basic functions such as volume and brightness, the backlight adjustment is also essential. This is because the factory settings of most TVs are way too intense. Reducing the backlight to some extent results in not only a better picture, but also significantly lower power-consumption. A light sensor can be helpful, but isn't absolutely necessary - these measure the ambient illumination and automatically adjust the backlight to suit. There are also picture settings that allow professional calibration or adjustment to match studio standards. Read more in our article Datacolor: Color and Calibration.

There's no lack of image-enhancement technologies in the world of flat-panel TVs - from noise reduction, to anti-aliasing, to motion-improvement, manufacturers offer just about everything possible. To add to the confusion, they all give the same (or very similar) technologies different names; it's almost impossible to keep on top of them - sometimes even for us.

The goodies: Picture settings on a Panasonic TV.

But we don't care in the slightest about all of these gizmos: The best setting in our opinion is the one that turns them all off in one. After all, while these digital tricks might iron out one picture error, they can also occasionally introduce new ones - so you gain nothing, and definitely not extra "picture quality" in the true sense of the term. Our advice is therefore: don't worry about the particulars. Instead, make sure that your new TV can turn the technologies off. A TV that's worth its salt won't even need these settings.