The big "How do I choose an HDTV?" thread.

Agreed on all points. Beyond the consoles it seems even Netflix/Vudu have issues implementing hdr consistently, with dramatic differences showing up between their versions and uhd blu-ray.

My tv at least has a torch setting that works in hdr mode and that rtings actually recommends using. It does a pretty good job in brighter situations, but then it's painful to look at at night.

I usually watch in a dim or dark room. We recently watched Planet Earth II and Kingsman II on UHD Blu Ray and they were both jaw dropping. Much more so than any of the 4k Netflix shows I have watched.

However the time we noticed most was when streaming failed us. We rented atomic blond on Amazon 4k HDR and the stream would freeze at the same place every time. We ended up returning it for a refund and watching the 1080p stream. Back to back it felt washed out and grainy to the point where my girlfriend even mentioned it and she is not picky. It was that feeling of going back to DVDs after getting used to Bluerays.

I could see the average person not caring much about 4k HDR but couldn't the same also be said for Blu Ray and the first few years of 1080p? I mean cable companies still don't stream their channels in 1080p and I don't see too many people complaining.

I use a dim hue bulb in the room next to the family room so it’s pretty close to dark. I find that makes HDR content pop a bit more

Chairman_Mao wrote:

Beyond the consoles it seems even Netflix/Vudu have issues implementing hdr consistently, with dramatic differences showing up between their versions and uhd blu-ray.

We recently began rolling out HDR support at work and my coworker, who is a support specialist in video conversion, put it best: "HDR is a mess."

I imagine it's a little easier with studio-produced video for Netflix or Vudu, but on the user-generated video side building HDR support has been difficult to explain and understand from end-to-end; from figuring out what color spaces/profiles "qualify" as HDR to determining what devices and displays support HDR.

The escalation in resolution over the years was much easier to conceptualize versus color spaces.

/work-ish related rant

True glasses-free 3D enters the realm of possibility. Still a ways to go to enter the realm of affordability, though.

I want a 55" or 65" tv that'll be for gaming and movies that the wife doesn't want to watch. I want at least 4k HDR, but is OLED worth the extra?

OLED
non-oled

I would probably pay cash for the regular vs. 0% financing the OLED option. For reference I'm not usually the bleeding edge tech type but I've gotten a $18k salary increase in the last 6 months and want to treat myself a little.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I want a 55" or 65" tv that'll be for gaming and movies that the wife doesn't want to watch. I want at least 4k HDR, but is OLED worth the extra?

OLED
non-oled

I would probably pay cash for the regular vs. 0% financing the OLED option. For reference I'm not usually the bleeding edge tech type but I've gotten a $18k salary increase in the last 6 months and want to treat myself a little.

Yes.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I want a 55" or 65" tv that'll be for gaming and movies that the wife doesn't want to watch. I want at least 4k HDR, but is OLED worth the extra?

OLED
non-oled

Please don't buy a non-OLED LG.

You gotta go 65" imho.

If you want a real answer, go to rtings.com.

Personally, for no-OLED, I'm happy as hell with my Sony X900e.

Jayhawker wrote:

If you want a real answer, go to rtings.com.

Personally, for no-OLED, I'm happy as hell with my Sony X900e.

This is a good recco, and display lag must be considered!

Thanks for the responses.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

You gotta go 65" imho.

The room this is going in is pretty small. I'll be sitting about 7 feet from the tv, and I tested my 65" Samsung living room tv in there and it felt a bit too big. The wall the tv will go on is less than 9 feet wide, and there are a couple shelves in the corners, so 65 is a squeeze.

Kurrelgyre wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

I want a 55" or 65" tv that'll be for gaming and movies that the wife doesn't want to watch. I want at least 4k HDR, but is OLED worth the extra?

OLED
non-oled

Please don't buy a non-OLED LG.

See that shows its pretty good for gaming and that'll be 90% of the use. For a third of the price, and considering I'll only be using it an hour or so per night, it might be good enough.

Regarding that Sony, I feel like for that price I might as well go whole hog and get the OLED.

Edit: was looking at the $1500 Sony. $1k is pretty attractive for comparable performance.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Thanks for the responses.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

You gotta go 65" imho.

The room this is going in is pretty small. I'll be sitting about 7 feet from the tv, and I tested my 65" Samsung living room tv in there and it felt a bit too big. The wall the tv will go on is less than 9 feet wide, and there are a couple shelves in the corners, so 65 is a squeeze.

Kurrelgyre wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

I want a 55" or 65" tv that'll be for gaming and movies that the wife doesn't want to watch. I want at least 4k HDR, but is OLED worth the extra?

OLED
non-oled

Please don't buy a non-OLED LG.

See that shows its pretty good for gaming and that'll be 90% of the use. For a third of the price, and considering I'll only be using it an hour or so per night, it might be good enough.

Regarding that Sony, I feel like for that price I might as well go whole hog and get the OLED.

Edit: was looking at the $1500 Sony. $1k is pretty attractive for comparable performance.

And to be sure I went with TCL's P605, which is pretty incredible for the price point. This year's equivalent model is likely even better. But if the OLED cost is not an issue and you're not watching in a bright environment, I'd go with the OLED.

Me, after buying a 52" Samsung LCD about ten years ago:

Day 1: My god, it's too big!
Day 3: This is fine.
Day 7: I could go bigger.

After replacing it with a 65" Panny Z:

Is this TV any bigger than the last one?

Fedaykin98 wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

If you want a real answer, go to rtings.com.

Personally, for no-OLED, I'm happy as hell with my Sony X900e.

This is a good recco, and display lag must be considered!

Input latency is 90% of what I care about in a television. I won't buy a TV now unless an rtings.com review exists for it, because they have accurate (and consistently applied) latency testing.

I'm eyeballing a TCL TV for a secondary room TV, because they're super cheap and are in that excellent sub-20ms class of input lag in rtings testing, sometimes even sub-15ms.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Me, after buying a 52" Samsung LCD about ten years ago:

Day 1: My god, it's too big!
Day 3: This is fine.
Day 7: I could go bigger.

After replacing it with a 65" Panny Z:

Is this TV any bigger than the last one?

Before I moved in with my wife I had my 65" Samsung in a normal sized bedroom and often felt it was too big, so.

I'm actually leaning toward the Sony now. I play sports games and watch sports and I don't want to worry about image retention. That website downplays it, but it's a good excuse to save $600.

I also just got reminded that the Vita had an OLED screen, and don't remember being blown away by it. I want to see them in store, maybe this weekend. The Sony is only on display at a store an hour or so away. Wife and I can include it in a day trip.

The Vita OLED (or any smartphone OLED) have nothing on the big OLED LG TV's. The only downside of an OLED TV is that if you have more than one TV in the home you won't want to watch on the other TV after you get an OLED.

I ended up going with the 55" LG B7A. Seeing it in person next to other TVs really pushed it over the edge. So that TV goes in the "mancave", 65" Samsung stays in the living room, and I'm gonna end up buying a cheap projector for our bedroom.

First impressions: I'm glad I went with 55" -
the clarity and smooth motion actually strain my eyes a bit and I can't imagine 65" in such close quarters. The built in speakers are offputting, more than the usual TV speakers. The high and mid ranges sound very hollow while the bass is quite booming. I'll have to keep an eye out for affordable surround sound. Now that I own rather than rent I can hang them or mount if I want.

Noooooooooo! My really nice plasma TV is busted. I have a nice vertical pixel line going through it on the right side. I won't be able to replace it till next year. I'm not too sad because things have come so much further with 4K and HDR. Not sure if I'll end up going LCD or OLED because I really hated worrying about image retention with plasma since I like to do retro games and whatnot which are 4:3. I'll probably shoot for an LCD with the best balance of color reproduction and input lag that I can find so I can just leave it on with things in 4:3 for hours and not have to worry.

Yeah my plasma is also screwed up. It is constantly power cycling for some reason. I don't see any obvious damage to the internals (blown capacitors and the like), but I found a cheap replacement power supply that I'll try installing before I give up on it.

My wife finally gave the go ahead to get a new tv. I had planned on an OLED but the QLEDs look very impressive as well for a much better cost and I’ve had a Samsung we’ve been very happy with over the last several years. Anyone have any experience with these?

obirano wrote:

My wife finally gave the go ahead to get a new tv. I had planned on an OLED but the QLEDs look very impressive as well for a much better cost and I’ve had a Samsung we’ve been very happy with over the last several years. Anyone have any experience with these?

No experience but reviews of this year's QLEDs are very positive. The only downside is paying the Samsung premium. Meanwhile you can still buy last year's OLEDs at a very competitive price. How bright is the room you're watching in?

It’s prety bright. The living room is a big rectangle and on one end is French doors with door sized windows on either side leading to a sun room. So it gets plenty of light during the day.

obirano wrote:

My wife finally gave the go ahead to get a new tv. I had planned on an OLED but the QLEDs look very impressive as well for a much better cost and I’ve had a Samsung we’ve been very happy with over the last several years. Anyone have any experience with these?

Remember it’s still an LED. The whole QLED is made up marketing. In general based on rtings.com it seems like Sony’s are the way to go if you don’t want an OLED. But all LCD’s will suffer from the same flaws they all share. OLED IMO is the only TV worth buying if you are spending $1500+

Yeah Dell will do that. It’s a Dell GC so it’s not worth it unless you know what to do with it at Dell. I use mine to get Xbox Store credit.

I’d probably just put it towards an Xbox one x.

I did end up buying an LG B7. It’s beautiful. I did buy a refurb and after the first had a huge crack in it, I was kind of worried. This one appears to be in pristine shape though. I was able to get an employee discount and a 3 year warranty (since it was refurb wanted the extra insurance) and came out under a grand.

Well one of my 65 inch 2015 Samsung TVs (UN65JU6500) is developing a purple spot towards the center of the left upper quadrant. Apparently this isn't unheard of for Samsung TVs around the 3 year old mark.

It doesn't show that much unless the screen goes mostly white. I first identified it when I came out of a cave in Witcher 3 with a Cat potion active.

So it really disappoints me that a $2,000 TV only lasted 3 years before having issues. I can live with it for now but others with the issue report it spreading over time. Also I hate to bust out a nagging wife cliche but once my wife notices it she is going to drive me nuts pointing it out every time she sees it.

So budgeting wise I'm trying to get an idea of what to set money aside for. I've been thinking of these options:

1) Get a cheaper Vizio for the basement and bring the Samsung (same size and model but no purple spots yet) from the basement to the family room. Basement TV is rarely used.

2) Go expensive and replace bad Samsung with a 65 inch LG OLED

3) Replace the bad Samsung with something bigger. The room could handle a 70+ inch TV but a 77 LG OLED is way too expensive so probably just a regular LED. Maybe cheap Vizio

None of these options would likely involve buying a new Samsung TV as I'm feeling burned. I'm more likely to go the cheap route if these things aren't going to last from any brand. I have a 55 inch Samsung LED (one of the earlier LEDs) from 2009 that still works great so maybe I should cut them a break.

Yeah, you never know. I moved the Samsung we’ve had for 5 years or so into the other room and it still works perfect and it was the daily tv for that entire time. I also had a Samsung die within a year.