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

TheGameguru wrote:
Middcore wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

but with OLED prices pretty competitive

The cheapest OLED TV at Best Buy is $1500.

And?? I'm comparing against comparable Samsung LCD not inferior cheap LCD. Sure you can get a $400 55" LCD but it won't be anywhere near the quality of an OLED but the $1200 Samsung 55" will be at least in the ballpark in quality.

Ah, so OLED pricing is "competitive" in the same sense Tesla's pricing is now "competitive" because it only costs Mercedes money as opposed to Bentley money.

Anyway, can anybody recommend an HDMI switcher with a remote that works well?

Middcore wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:
Middcore wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

but with OLED prices pretty competitive

The cheapest OLED TV at Best Buy is $1500.

And?? I'm comparing against comparable Samsung LCD not inferior cheap LCD. Sure you can get a $400 55" LCD but it won't be anywhere near the quality of an OLED but the $1200 Samsung 55" will be at least in the ballpark in quality.

Ah, so OLED pricing is "competitive" in the same sense Tesla's pricing is now "competitive" because it only costs Mercedes money as opposed to Bentley money.

Anyway, can anybody recommend an HDMI switcher with a remote that works well?

Yeah if your goal is to get the cheapest LCD you can get at whatever size you are looking for then OLED and a few models from Samsung and Sony are probably not what you are looking for.

I'm sorry you mistook price competitive to mean its cheaper than lousy LCD TV's.

For example the very excellent Vizio Quantom Dot 65" LCD TV is $2199 ($2099 from some places not Amazon as Vizio refuses to sell there)

https://www.vizio.com/tvs/pseriesqua...

But I can get a 65" LG OLED for $1900

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E1688900...

The OLED will blow away any LCD in picture quality... even the best of them like that Vizio... with no ghosting or blur.

Malor wrote:

One possible advantage to buying as stupid a TV as possible is that may be lower latency. The last of the Panny plasmas were that way: the lowest latency units were also the least featureful. And then I've never connected it to the network.

Things have evolved quite a bit since then. Some of the TVs with the lowest input latency have fully featured "smart TV" functions. The processing power being stuck into these TVs has improved significantly, and most of them have a dedicated "game mode" to bypass as much processing as possible.

There's pretty much no reason to associate these two things any longer. If a TV has poor input latency, it's because the manufacturer didn't bother to make the thing support low latency, not because the presence of smart TV functions made doing so somehow not possible.

OLED certainly seems price competitive to similarly high-end LCD.
Looking at a LG C9 myself, as "soon" as they get out of their initial extremely high price.

The 2019 Sony A9G TVs are shipping. The 55 and 65 are available now, the 77 next month. I'll be interested to see how they compare to their LG brethren.

After getting burn in on my Panasonic plasma and seeing rtings.com test results with OLED, I'm done with emissive displays until micro-led becomes an affordable display tech. Also LCD displays are the only ones getting close to hitting the Dolby Vision max brightness spec (while OLED can't even hit 1000 nits), which is important to me for HDR content. Last year's Vizio PQ series dropped in price dramatically, and I won't be surprised if we see the same thing happen this year.

The one thing I want - which made me postpone getting a 2018 model - which only LG has (unless they are going full marketing BS) was the HDMI 2.1 support. It isn't exactly needed just yet, considering pretty much nothing supports it. Which also means nobody seems able to really test if the full feature set is there :/

But when I buy a TV, especially fairly expensive ones, I sure want it to stay relevant for years, and not only until another console generation hits.
It has to last until micro-led takes over

Burn-in makes me worry a bit too. My current plasma has burn-in, that is very easy to see under certain circumstances. Going to take the risk though. Hopefully more modern TVs are better at preventing burn-in.

I've never experienced burn in with any of my Pioneer or Panasonic Plasma's.. I always enabled pixel shift and dimming for idle and never had an issue. IR which many people think is as bad as burn in was always an issue but never bothered me as much as others. True burn in thankfully was really really hard to do on a Plasma past the intial displays in the early 2000's.

As for OLED's again its really really hard to get burn in.. you basically have to manually force it to happen.. sure there are horror stories but most of them I feel you are not getting the entire picture on what the end user actually did. I have used on a daily basis for hours at a time on occasion a 55" LG 2016 OLED as my main PC monitor at home with zero burn in. If you can't get burn in using your OLED as a monitor I'd say the fear is overblown.

The upside of OLED far exceeds its downside (same thoughts I had with Plasma)..

In terms of brightness for HDR this is true.. OLED's are never under their current tech achieve high end LCD brightness levels.. but again thankfully I watch more material where black levels are more important so overall PQ even under HDR is better than LCD tech... as well watching my Fashion Souls character dressed all in White run through a level on a local dimming zoned LCD is terrible compared to an OLED.. You have this halo effect of white against a dark background as your character is running around.. is super distracting and annoying.. then on an OLED the contrast and difference between white and dark is super clean down to the pixel... no LCD will ever match that.

As for micro-LED it appears to be the holy grail but we are looking at a decade if not more before we reach any critical mass. IF you want micro-led development to accelerate then by all means buy more OLED TV's.

The thing that has burned in on my plasma (Panasonic) is our equivalent of CNN or whatever (5 signs you watch too much News?). Their big "breaking news" bar at the bottom, and their logo. It is not a huge problem, it is only noticeable, if very white backgrounds appear in those areas, but when that happens, it is very noticeable. My TV is ~8 years old, but I think it appeared after the first 4 years or so. Been happy with my TV overall though, the burn-in was worth it
At least I wish broadcast channels would move forward with the tv tech and not have bright, static stuff everywhere.

Shadout wrote:

At least I wish broadcast channels would move forward with the tv tech and not have bright, static stuff everywhere.

To combat burn-in, all chyron graphics will now bounce around the screen like the old DVD player logo screensaver.

I wish I had never returned my Panny Z65 plasma for burn-in. I was home for a month due to surgery and played the hell out of Diablo 3 during that time. The bottom status bar got burned in and you could see it clearly during very bright scenes :(. Ended up getting a larger LCD in the exchange (no one had any more Panny Z's by then), but the picture quality (not to mention how clear the 3D was) was far better on my Z.

Middcore wrote:

To combat burn-in, all chyron graphics will now bounce around the screen like the old DVD player logo screensaver.

Make it like a music visualizer. It moves depending on the severity of the news.

I noticed a 50" 4K TV at Walmart this weekend for $199 and I was close to buying it but a quick look at reviews told me I should hold off.

However it got me thinking 200-300 is a range I am wiling to pay to go to a 50" TV. Does anyone have a recommendation in that price range?

I know it won't be the "best" but I also only play the PS4, Switch, and Wii U with some occasional Netflix viewing so I really don't need a great. I just think it would be nice to play on such a large screen.

You can get this Sharp one for $280 on sale at Best Buy and it has Roku built in. I have the 40" version (or 43" I don't remember) and it is surprisingly decent for the price. I know Sharp is just a rebrand of a low-tier maker but for a bedroom TV that is rarely used I went with it.

LeapingGnome wrote:

You can get this Sharp one for $280 on sale at Best Buy and it has Roku built in. I have the 40" version (or 43" I don't remember) and it is surprisingly decent for the price. I know Sharp is just a rebrand of a low-tier maker but for a bedroom TV that is rarely used I went with it.

For that price you can get this TCL, also with Roku, that's 4K: https://www.amazon.com/TCL-50S425-in...

Good call, yes Best Buy has that one too for the same $280, or the Sharp 4k version for $300. I would prefer to pick it up in person than risk Amazon shipping just from some of the stories out there.

Last summer I bought a 43" TCL with Roku for my office, to watch the World Cup, and I loved it. It's funny how much positive feeling I have for that TV compared to some that were much more expensive.

I absolutely LOVE the built-in Roku interface. I will prefer that in the future, all other important features being roughly equal.

I strongly recommend the TCL as well. Decent picture quality, very low input latency, and the built in Roku. Still Rtings' pick for best value under $500.

Done! Should be to me on Thursday.

Thank you all.

Another rec for the TCLs with Roku. I got one last year and I love it. It looks good, was pretty cheap, seems to work well for gaming, and I like the UI.

I wish some of the better makers would come out with Roku built in. I have used Rokus for many years and prefer them and it is just nice having it built in.

The airbnb we rented as we sought out a house had a TCL Roku TV in it. I initially had our own Roku hooked up to it, but gradually migrated everything over because that damn TV was a bit better at everything (even wifi speeds were a ton better). Now that we're in a house with our old TV, I miss it.

LeapingGnome wrote:

I wish some of the better makers would come out with Roku built in. I have used Rokus for many years and prefer them and it is just nice having it built in.

I'm not sure why they don't unless it's just stubborn pride from having their own smart interface. Are Roku's licensing fees that much more than what they're spending on R&D to make their own software?

I just saw an Best Buy advert for "8K TVs!!!!!"

Had to laugh. I've had a 4K set for years, and I don't think it's seen a single piece of 4K content. Amazon claims it's streamed me 4K stuff, but I know that while watching at least some of that, hiccups in my bandwidth have dropped it sub-1080p, so I'm skeptical that I've really seen anything in 4K.

The 8K set you buy today is going to look like crap compared to the much cheaper 8K sets you will be able to buy when there's actually enough 8K content to make it worthwhile to have.

Which might be never. Even 1080p looks awful good for moving images.

A big percentage of the content I view is still under 1080p. I have no plan to rebuy blu-ray version of like 99% of the DVDs I own.

The only things I view that I would argue look like actual 4K is the stuff I view on disc on my 4K disc player (and specifically 4K discs...those look amazing). The stuff I've streamed has always looked good for the most part, but never had that pop that others have had.

Garth wrote:

The only things I view that I would argue look like actual 4K is the stuff I view on disc on my 4K disc player (and specifically 4K discs...those look amazing). The stuff I've streamed has always looked good for the most part, but never had that pop that others have had.

Interesting since at a codec level there is no difference between 4K Blu Ray and what Netflix and others use.. H265(HEVC) Codec. Bitrate is probably the biggest variable since streaming requires a certain level of consistent bandwidth to deliver a quality image.. obviously having a physical disc will give you the highest bitrate possible on a 100% consistent basis.

I've found that with Verizon Fios I'm good with 4K HEVC streams from Netflix and other streaming services..

TheGameguru wrote:
Garth wrote:

The only things I view that I would argue look like actual 4K is the stuff I view on disc on my 4K disc player (and specifically 4K discs...those look amazing). The stuff I've streamed has always looked good for the most part, but never had that pop that others have had.

Interesting since at a codec level there is no difference between 4K Blu Ray and what Netflix and others use.. H265(HEVC) Codec. Bitrate is probably the biggest variable since streaming requires a certain level of consistent bandwidth to deliver a quality image.. obviously having a physical disc will give you the highest bitrate possible on a 100% consistent basis.

I've found that with Verizon Fios I'm good with 4K HEVC streams from Netflix and other streaming services..

I get really distracted sometimes with Netflix stuff when the bitrate can't keep up with the detail on the screen and it turns into a mess of macroblocking. The worst moment I can remember recently was Altered Carbon when he's under water at some point and there's a million bubbles floating through the screen. It's a bunch of bright color and fine detail and even with Netflix's bitrate maxed out at ~16Mbps it just isn't enough.

Part of your point on discs kind of stands for a lot of them though, since a whooooooole bunch of them are mastered from 2k sources and then just slapped on disc at 4k anyway. It's not actually 4k if it's scanned in from a 2k source.

For me it's just the bitrate part. 4k discs often run at more than double the bitrate of a maxed out 4k HDR netflix stream.