Any TV experts on here?

[GC2012]

Currently in the process of buying a new house and need a couple of new TV's, thinking of going for a curved one in the living room as there isn't much difference in price compared to your standard ones.
Having a quick look online and came across this which seems remarkably cheap for a 4k 55" http://www.cramptonandmoore.co.uk/te...-tv-black.html

Can anyone offer some advice on this, is it worth a punt or poor quality?

To be honest it will probably only be getting used for a few hours an evening, not massively in to tech so no blu-ray etc. Just Sky Q and Netflix.

Thanks in advance.

[smokey99]

I'm certainly no expert but I wouldn't concentrate on whether its curved or not as a factor into the value for money discussion?

Most tech commentators seem non-plussed about whether there is any advantage at all about the 'cinematic' curve and whilst can be attractive is certainly less convenient for wall mounting or finding matching soundbars etc.

If you really want a curved 4k TV of that size then it probably is good value but usually for a reason i.e. the tech in the screen isn't the same as with a £1000+ screen.

I would just do the rounds of all the usual tech websites What Hi-Fi, Trusted Reviews, AV Forums, HDTV test, Techradar, Home Cinema Choice and come up a short list of what is in your budget.

Then go and seem them in the flesh which is the most important thing.

Good Luck.

[Rob153]

Not a TV expert exactly but have a bought a few in my time-

My advice would be to definitely buy the set either from John Lewis or Richer Sounds, both offer 5 year warranties (FOC) will pricematch bricks and mortar companies, most importantly aftersales from both companies is second to none.

[snowman]

Go out to your local Richer Sounds and see which picture you like best.

TV pictures are far too subjective for any of the specs to really be conclusive.

I ended up buying a Panasonic 37" Plasma TV nearly 7 years ago and I've yet to see a picture I LIKE better...

M.

[GC2012]

Thanks guys. I have purchased from Richer sounds in the past and always had good experiences with them so will pop to my local shop over the weekend.

[robcat]

TV pictures are far too subjective for any of the specs to really be conclusive.

M.

I agree with this (with the proviso that I nearly always change the settings from the factory setup anyway - so does this mean I could make any picture look the way I want?).

I've always liked the Samsung "look", but having seen LG's OLED recently, I'm just trying to decide which if their models to go for. (I'm half-tempted to pick up a 1080, as these are often on offer, and I view my TV from 10'+ away.

I'm also quite sensitive to judder and motion artefacts, and LG seem to handle these very well (although this may just be a setup issue as well).

[IAmATeaf]

From what I've read curved is most likely on the way out, consumers and now the manufacturers have realised it was just a "fad". Even Samsung now offer their top range TVs in both.

Not an expert like others but you really need to go out and view with content that you're most likely to watch. I just purchased a 55" Samsung for my sons room and I'll be honest I was left disappointed with it as 4K stuff looks stunning, HD stuff is watchable but SD stuff looks naff due to the amount of upscaling the TV has to do.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Brighty]

Are Goodmans still going? For that price i think i'd rather have a decent well regarded and reviewed 50in Sony or Samsung rather than a 55in model no ones heard of by a budget manufacterer

Brighty

[smokey99]

4K stuff looks stunning, HD stuff is watchable but SD stuff looks naff due to the amount of upscaling the TV has to do.

This.

Whilst it might just be our eyes getting used to a regular HD feed I'm always surprised as to how fuzzy much of the SD content looks these days and my TV is not a 4K.

[GC2012]

Cheers. I will view various brands and see what in my opinion is the best, I was hoping to go for 4K and to be honest would prefer something like a Samsung, LG or Sony as I have had them in the past with out any problems.

[rico]

Goodmans have always historically been the budget brand for electronics. Read some reviews but I wouldn't hold your breath.

[sdb123]

A 4K screen s only worth it if you are going to feed it a decent source (IMO). I am considering a 55" OLED, either the LG B6 or E6 - sources will be Blu-Ray (eventually moving to UHD Blu-Ray), PS4/XB1 for gaming, Netflix and HD via Freesat.

[robcat]

This.

Whilst it might just be our eyes getting used to a regular HD feed I'm always surprised as to how fuzzy much of the SD content looks these days and my TV is not a 4K.

It's more down to the size of the sets - if you get far enough back, SD looks OK on 4K sets, but with 55"+, that's probably in the garden. (It's the flipside of the fact that you need to view a large TV at a short distance to see the difference with 4K).

To me, much of the perceived improvement with newer sets are colour/contrast/motion handling rather than resolution.

[robt]

From what I've read curved is most likely on the way out, consumers and now the manufacturers have realised it was just a "fad". Even Samsung now offer their top range TVs in both.

This is true. I've always struggled to understand if there was an advantage to curved screens if the screen is not absolutely massive (like a cinema screen - then there is an advantage). I did a bit of research and it seems, as I suspected, there really was never any advantage for the sort of TV sizes that were being marketed. In fact it makes things worse because you have a much tighter "sweet spot" where everything looks OK, but outside that, the curve makes everything much more distorted than just looking at a normal flat screen from an angle.

The real reason curved screen came into existence was simply because the technology existed. It's taken years to be able to make a curved LCD panel, so of course as soon as it became viable, it was suddenly a solution in search of a problem. Enter the marketing department...

To me, much of the perceived improvement with newer sets are colour/contrast/motion handling rather than resolution.

Very much this.

1080p looks great on my 55" TV. There is genuinely no way I'd be able to tell the difference between that and 4K at my normal viewing distance, and I work with computer graphics and have excellent eyesight, so I know what I'm looking for. The size of the pixels is not the problem. I cannot differentiate individual pixels at 1080p, so 4K isn't going to add a major improvement there (and any marginal improvement is probably not for the reasons you might expect). Colour gamut and accuracy, contrast, black level, refresh rate and compression artefacts however, are real issues.

I will draw some attention to that last one in particular because what people tend not to realise is that 4K will sometimes look worse than 1080p, because in order to fill that many pixels you need 4 times as much data. Or, if you don't have that much bandwidth (as is almost always the case), you need to compress the images more, leading to more artefacts and those actually are visible. Usually when you see blocky things in a digital video, those are not pixels, those are the boundaries of MPEG blocks (which are 8x8 pixels). This is especially true with streaming because the bandwidth can be extremely limited, especially if it isn't consistent (and internet connections, even the best ones, are not perfectly consistent, especially due to contention at peak times).

Going back to the "because we can" technology argument again, the reason 4K TVs exist is not because it's a good idea, but because yields on LCD panels have been increasing along with pixel density over the years. In other words, in the past it was insanely expensive to make these panels, but now it's really cheap. They are actually useful for monitors (where your face is really close to the screen) and the factories don't want to have lots of different manufacturing processes, so they think "let's use these for TVs". Plus marketers know that people like to buy things with bigger numbers (see the "megapixel wars" of digital cameras). Of course the real problems with TVs, as noted, have nothing to do with pixel density.

The most important advance in TVs since the shift to flat panels is HDR (high dynamic range). This gives you a wider range of colours, so actually can improve the picture, unlike most other "advances". That is worth paying for, and if the TV happens to be 4K, that's fine because it's unlikely you'll find a good HDR TV that isn't 4K. My TV is 3D, for similar reasons (I really don't care about 3D on my TV).

Quick additional edit since I forgot to mention it: another issue with 4K screens is that most content is in 1080p and 1080p looks worse on a 4K screen than it does on a native 1080p screen, unless the TV does 4K upscaling. Another thing to look for, and also make sure the upscaling is done well because it isn't always.

[IAmATeaf]

From what I've read Sony high end TVs are supposed to have the best upscalers but their OS is shockingly bad.