What are you viewing on it? Sound quality is best delivered by external speakers or a surround sound system. The frame will take up about 3", so the screen will be about 17" tall × 30" wide for a 34" 16:9 wide screen that is what most TV stations are using to broadcast at a 1080-I or 1080-P resolution. A 17" tall × 39.5" wide screen would be a 43" 21:9 ultra wide screen, or the aspect ratio that movies are made in. There are also 4K ultra high definition TVs. That can be great for watching movies if you also have the right aspect ratio, but is overkill if you rarely watch a movie from a hard copy. Movies over cable are not going to be broadcast in a manner to take advantage of 4K.

Fred S,

Thank you for questions. And the information I garnered from them. Mostly I learned that I know very darn little about this technology and what I need or can use. Perhaps I should have waited until I could get to a store and actually look at sets.

Our main TV watching is in my small den where i have a fairly big (48?"--can't remember) 3-year old flat screen and a bose surround system with Tivo and Time-Warner cable service. This is where I also have my Mac computer and printer. This is where my husband and I watch tv of an evening and where I check out email and do the morning crossword and ken ken and soduko puzzles as the cable and local news and weather stations buzz by. Evenings we often watch a Netflix movie or a Tivo-saved favorite. We very seldom watch hard copy movies. If I get a Netflix movie on disk, we will watch it here, not on the new tv.

The new set will be in the family room where it will largely be "background" noise. It It will probably not be connected to Tivo, because when I bought the Tivo, I bought a life-of-the-Tivo-box contract. If I upgrade to whole house, I have to start paying again. Don't want to do that yet. I really do want good sound and a wide viewing angle. Not Bose quality (although I have an old Bose CD/AM/FM radio in there), but better than any over-the-counter tv I have ever had. However, there is no reason at all to buy a set that has more resolution than we will be able to see. I can't buy side bars that will improve something that isn't in the sent information.

Do I have to have a frame? I have not yet gone looking at actual sets. (I sprained an ankle when my garden tractor bucked me off. One foot was caught between the pedals and I am temporarily limited in range. First time after nearly 10 years of using that sucker all over our hilly terrain). On Amazon some sets look almost frameless. The one I have has a 1 1/2 to 2 inch frame around it. I would love to have none at all--or at least the minimum frame and the absolute minimum depth.

I hope this isn't uselessly wordy. I would appreciate any guidance that will help me when I go in to talk to salesmen.

By frame, I just mean the black plastic outside edge of the TV. I don't think it would be cost effective to have a frame under 1.5". The screen size is measured more by the glass. I was just doing the math as to what the screen size would be called. It sounds like you have no reason to spend extra money on "the best" you can actually get. The best that you would actually need is a 34", 16:9 ratio, 1080P resolution. I find that sound quality tends to be more in the speaker quality than the inner parts, and that if you can plug speakers in, it will usually improve, but certainly don't get one that sounds bad in the first place. Sound and viewing angle seem to be more something you have to experience and compare side by side, than just going by what it says in the manual, but you should be happy with one that is under $500 these days . Unfortunately, I have no idea which brands are the thinnest, and that may be where you end up spending more money.

Also, most sound systems for TVs don't use any part of the TV to produce sound. You can just plug two speakers into most TVs, but that is a different story. The broadcast signal will usually go directly to the sound bar, and then split off just the video to the TV. But most have more than one way to wire it.