Advice for buying a new TV

I am in the market for buying a new modern TV, I could possibly hook it to my PC as well, any advice, recommendation or new necessary tech I should keep an eye on?u
 
I've been researching as well, my early conclusion, as confirmed by some avs forum members, is that the big manufacturers are alike in denying some of the most advanced features of their largest sets to those looking for sets in the sub 50 inch range. Ten bit video processing, Dolby Vision HDR, wide color gamut, advanced local dimming, and 120 Hz refresh rate are the features that come to mind at the moment.

Lol, OK, now that I mouthed the buzz words I only dimly understand, and got the negativity out of my system, here's a set I'm looking hard and long at. If I get confirmation of 4:4:4 color space at 2160p over HDMI 2.0a, which the set has, then I'll be even closer to getting one.

The user reviews of the XBR43x800D at Best Buy and Amazon are very few in number, but very enthusiastic. I'll be following the avs forum thread closely as several members took the plunge. One person has a nVidia GTX 1080, he was helped out by a poster who told him which two HDMI ports he could use. It sounds like he got 4:4:4 color space enabled in the nVidia Control Panel but I want confirmation.

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/166-l...ony-2016-xbr-43x800d-x800d-owners-thread.html

Samsung has a very nice 40 inch model that I'd say competes with the Sony. I'm happy with my current 32" XBR6 from 2008 and it works great with my video games using game mode. So I lean towards trusting Sony with that.

http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/samsung/ku7000?uxtv=6019
http://4k.com/tv/samsung-ku7000-series-4k-uhd-smart-flat-led-tv-review-un49ku7000-un55ku7000/

Edit: So the Sony seems to be a 10 bit panel.
Q:
Is this TV 8 bit or 10 bit?
1 answer

2 weeks, 1 day ago
by
Curious
This question is for: Sony - 43 Class (42.5 Diag.) - LED - 2160p - Smart - 4K Ultra HD TV with High Dynamic Range - Black
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A:
Hi Curious. The TV is 10bit. -Mark
2 weeks, 1 day ago
by
SonyListens
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/4k-ultr...0707091.c?id=pcmcat748300707091&skuId=4801700
 
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I'm not buying Samsung ever again. Not only are their remotes a fucking mess with a sea of buttons (a number of which are completely redundant), the menu system is also very clunky to use. For example, any HDMI-CEC device attached to a HDMI port appears twice in the input selection window, even though there's obviously just one cable attaching to each HDMI port. Also, using the HDMI button on the remote to switch between inputs doesn't enable HDMI-CEC, even if the device you switched to supports it. All of this is fucking stupid!

Finally, my TV also has an annoying habit to announce to me that its smart shit has updated, prompting me to run it - at any time! Usually when I'm watching TV shows or a movie because that's what I mostly use the damn thing for.

Did I ask you to update your smart shit? No. I haven't even activated it. So why the eff are you telling me, right at the most inconvenient of moments?!

And when the announcement popup appears, the "run" button is highlighted, requiring two button presses to get rid of it. Jesus fucking hell.

So buy samsung at your own peril.
 
I ended up buying the Sony yesterday at Best Buy. That afternoon Amazon lowered the price. Happily Best Buy honored that price when I went down there today with my receipt and the page at Amazon open on my smart phone. Very nice.

Lol, great set, some adventures in setting it up and finding how to run it. The remote is ... lol, I sometimes use my older one to avoid hitting the wrong thing on the new one.
My adventures posted in the avsforum thread: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/166-l...x800d-x800d-owners-thread-4.html#post45701105
 
I remember reading about LG's 1080p OLED TV, expensive as heck but I think you'll hardly get better than that for most uses. Was thinking of Panasonic but that's for expensive 4K TV with yet a different OS.
I once walked up to an OLED in a store - store brightly lit, unkwnown or dubious settings so it didn't really look special sadly ; so I sticked my eye ball right to the screen surface and was impressed how it doesn't hurt eyes at all.

I am somewhat scared by the on-board computers : it'll just upload the list and date/time of all channels you watch (if using the built-in tuner), internet stuff and a list of every file on USB devices etc. to some unknown people in China or Korea. I remember when 15 years ago everyone would run software to scan for and get rid of such kind of software on Windows 98 PCs.
I wonder if you can open a TV and disconnect the Wifi antennas like you can do on a laptop.

One day someone will hack the servers for a TV brand, find a million outdated TVs to infect then automatically take HD pictures of people who're watching porn
 
I am really looking forward to having 4K on the desktop for sure. Just saw it again in the store the week. It looks fantastic. But I'll wait it out a bit, let prices come down a bit more ... Let's buy that PS VR first - not that that's a great priority, but I'm sure I'll start getting annoyed not having 4K on all those other screens I have to work on. ;)

I came across a little app called Duet, by the way. It allows you to hook up your iPad to your PC and use it as a touch capable monitor. It's not perfect yet (can be a bit laggy), but it allows me to test how software handles the different dpi very well. It has been a tad unstable with my Windows 10 / Nvidia 970 though. Worked well on the Mac Mini and my old Windows 7 laptop. Not tried yet on my work laptop (Win 8 with AMD Video). But pretty neat for instance for displaying the Android or iPhone emulator :)

EDIT: Turning off Nvidia Shadowplay (which I still had on for no really good reason) solved my problems on Windows 10 ...
 
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Some months ago I was forced to replace my 60" DLP due to chip failure. Prior to my hand being forced, I had determined to wait for the situation around 4K and HDR to stabilize a bit before I made the jump to 4K. Once I had no choice though, I decided to buy a cheap 50" 4K TV as a temporary solution with the idea that I could move that TV into a second room (to replace a 42" Panasonic plasma) once I was comfortable enough with the value of a product to invest in a more long-term solution. I ended up getting last year's Hisense 50H7GB1 for ~$600 from Walmart. This TV ended up presenting some problems for me due to my TV use being almost exclusively as a PC monitor and the chipset in the TV not being able to handle displaying 40k60. It accepted the signal, and actually accepted 1080p120 also, but in both cases it dropped every other frame on display. Have you ever tried to use a PC desktop with the refresh rate set to 30hz? Not pleasant. So, I was effectively limited to using my desktop at 1080p so I could get it to display 60hz. This, unfortunately, exposed the TV's inadequate scaling capabilities (at least when it came to displaying PC output).

Well, my temporary solution ended up being a lot more temporary than I planned. Just last week Hisense's successor to the 50H7GB1, the 50H8C (reviewed here and here), was being heavily discounted by Best Buy at $380 and, having agreed to sell my H7 to a friend for $250, I rolled the dice again. This time the result was much better. This one *can* do 4K60 with 4:4:4 , has a full-array backlight with local dimming (10 zones) and even handles HDR. The impact of the latter isn't as dramatic as you see on higher-end HDR-capable sets given the performance limitations of the panel, but at least it tries. Plus it has a 4yr warranty. It immediately addressed all of the issues I had with the H7 and looks like it will get the job done until I'm comfortable enough with the state of 4K and its surrounding standards to drop the cash on the 65" I ultimately plan on getting.
 
I am in the market for buying a new modern TV, I could possibly hook it to my PC as well, any advice, recommendation or new necessary tech I should keep an eye on?u

To address your request for information a little more. Check out the TV section of the site rtings.com. They do a pretty good job of evaluating from the standpoint of specific use cases and explaining the strengths and weaknesses of each model in each area.
 
I remember reading about LG's 1080p OLED TV, expensive as heck but I think you'll hardly get better than that for most uses. Was thinking of Panasonic but that's for expensive 4K TV with yet a different OS.
I once walked up to an OLED in a store - store brightly lit, unkwnown or dubious settings so it didn't really look special sadly ; so I sticked my eye ball right to the screen surface and was impressed how it doesn't hurt eyes at all.

I am somewhat scared by the on-board computers : it'll just upload the list and date/time of all channels you watch (if using the built-in tuner), internet stuff and a list of every file on USB devices etc. to some unknown people in China or Korea. I remember when 15 years ago everyone would run software to scan for and get rid of such kind of software on Windows 98 PCs.
I wonder if you can open a TV and disconnect the Wifi antennas like you can do on a laptop.

One day someone will hack the servers for a TV brand, find a million outdated TVs to infect then automatically take HD pictures of people who're watching porn

Wouldn't the easiest solution be to just NOT connect your tv to your network?
 
DF has a good piece on HDR TVs:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-the-best-4k-screens-for-hdr-gaming


Outside of gaming, there's the issue of how HDR content is actually authored, and how this effects the experience across various viewing environments. HDR material itself is mastered to be displayed in a low light environment, making it unsuitable for viewing in bright daytime conditions. When HDR content is displayed, the backlight needs to be maxed out in order to display the increased brightness range for specular highlights, while the baseline white level is capped at a much lower 120 nits.

This is fine when viewing in a dark room, but in bright environments it's impossible to bump up the backlight any further in order to raise the baseline light output for normal details - essentially, all the headroom available during standard range content is being used to display highlights, so cannot be used to create an overall brighter image. As such, outside of bright highlights, HDR content with look dimmer than a standard range presentation when viewed in daytime conditions. To cut a long story short - if you game a lot in the day-time, the chances are that HDR will actually produce a worse image based on the technology currently available.
 
Ouch.
Ever watched a movie where you can't hear the dialogs, followed by thundery, extremely loud music that has you scramble for the remotes while you're afraid neighbors will call the cops?
That's audio with a high dynamic range. Although it's usually awful due to the use of very bad 2.1 or 5.1 sound hardware, or pirated movies or both. Or you need good EQ settings or even a sound compressor, etc.

HDR is very interesting but I can predict a lot of forum threads, press articles, specialist advice, new products and comparisons will arise from it.
 
That's audio with a high dynamic range.
Yeah. You turn up the volume to hear what people say, turn it up some more, then a bit more still and then it's okay-ish, and then the Space Aliens attack with asteroids and your own ceiling comes crashing down from the explosion of sound effects through your speakers. :p

Hate it when that happens!
 
That is why everyone should have a media setup that uses an Audio Video Receiver (AVR) with Dolby Dynamic Range Control (DRC).
 
Audio with high dynamic range? Or just a crap setup (center channel too low for instance which is where speech typically comes from) or channel downmixer?
 
Audio with high dynamic range?
Dolby digital is a floating-point format IIRC, with allegedly ridiculous dynamic range. Back when I watched movies on my PC using PowerDVD, it was really hard to get a good balance between SFX and dialogue.

PS2 and onwards handled that much better, so as soon as I bought a DVD-based (and later BR) console, I started watching movies exclusively on them.
 
Ouch.
Ever watched a movie where you can't hear the dialogs, followed by thundery, extremely loud music that has you scramble for the remotes while you're afraid neighbors will call the cops?
That's audio with a high dynamic range. Although it's usually awful due to the use of very bad 2.1 or 5.1 sound hardware, or pirated movies or both. Or you need good EQ settings or even a sound compressor, etc.

HDR is very interesting but I can predict a lot of forum threads, press articles, specialist advice, new products and comparisons will arise from it.

Issues with both high dynamic range video and audio can be dealt with by having user options to compress dynamic range in situations where the extra capability is not beneficial. In both cases this is trivial to do in the digital domain. However, when I am in a situation where the extra capability *is* beneficial I want to have that extra capability.
 
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Dolby digital is a floating-point format IIRC, with allegedly ridiculous dynamic range. Back when I watched movies on my PC using PowerDVD, it was really hard to get a good balance between SFX and dialogue.

PS2 and onwards handled that much better, so as soon as I bought a DVD-based (and later BR) console, I started watching movies exclusively on them.

You always want dialogue to be compressed. This is easy on surround systems, which usually offer an option to compress the center channel.

The problem is bad stereo down mixing, where dialogue is drowned out by SFX. This is a lot more common that one would think, from DVDs to streaming services.

I only have a stereo speaker setup, but always bitstream surround sound to my receiver, which then compresses the center channel, adds LFR channel at +10dB and downmixes it to stereo for the PA.

Cheers
 
You might be better off just going with a projector. They're getting so cheap and lightweight these days, and the resolution on them is also pretty high. I think it beats a TV any day. I mean, all you really need is a white wall or a sheet and you're set.
 
You might be better off just going with a projector. They're getting so cheap and lightweight these days, and the resolution on them is also pretty high. I think it beats a TV any day. I mean, all you really need is a white wall or a sheet and you're set.
I'm sorry but that's just stupid. There's so much more involved in setting up a projector than just a white wall or a sheet.
 
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