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

LeapingGnome wrote:

Yeah I would recommend a TV with Roku built in as well for anyone that wants decent picture with very easy to use built in streaming options.

TCL is a Chinese owned company, if you care. Other similar Roku TV brands aren’t, for example Philips (Dutch) and Sharp (owned by Foxconn which is Taiwanese).

Philips is focusing on healthcare solutions & lightning since a few years, most of their monitors/tv's (aka consumer electronics) are now built by TPV Technology. They pay Philips a licensing fee, but manufacturer the TV's themselves. They're Hong Kong based.

So what's the benefit of of paying 1,000-2,000 dollar or more for a TV every couple years to get the newest technology?

Does it look a bit better? Sure, if you have a source that can utilize it. Am I happy watching on a 5 year old model but still has breathtaking picture quality. Yep. Do I use that money I'm saving every 3-4 years on not buying the newest and shiniest overpriced gadget to go stay a month in the Virgin Islands and spear fish and snorkel. I sure do!

Hell, I've been using a Samsung 42" 720P Plasma downstairs that we bought in early 2000's and it looks great and I bought it for $600. When we moved into our new house 5 years ago, we bought another Samsung, a 65" 1080 LED for about $600, and most people think it's a 4K.

dejanzie wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

Yeah I would recommend a TV with Roku built in as well for anyone that wants decent picture with very easy to use built in streaming options.

TCL is a Chinese owned company, if you care. Other similar Roku TV brands aren’t, for example Philips (Dutch) and Sharp (owned by Foxconn which is Taiwanese).

Philips is focusing on healthcare solutions & lightning since a few years, most of their monitors/tv's (aka consumer electronics) are now built by TPV Technology. They pay Philips a licensing fee, but manufacturer the TV's themselves. They're Hong Kong based.

Good to know, thanks! I know Philips has licensed out their name for various things but I didn't know that about the TVs.

Sydhart wrote:

So what's the benefit of of paying 1,000-2,000 dollar or more for a TV every couple years to get the newest technology?

Does it look a bit better? Sure, if you have a source that can utilize it. Am I happy watching on a 5 year old model but still has breathtaking picture quality. Yep. Do I use that money I'm saving every 3-4 years on not buying the newest and shiniest overpriced gadget to go stay a month in the Virgin Islands and spear fish and snorkel. I sure do!

Hell, I've been using a Samsung 42" 720P Plasma downstairs that we bought in early 2000's and it looks great and I bought it for $600. When we moved into our new house 5 years ago, we bought another Samsung, a 65" 1080 LED for about $600, and most people think it's a 4K.

Good for you? Everyone has different preferences on what they want to spend money on and a different personal value for money. Maybe I just took this the wrong way but it seems like you came into a thread of TV enthusiasts helping people and said you guys are stupid why are you spending money on TVs when you could be doing this other cool thing I like instead.

Also what can you tell me about staying in the Virgin Islands and snorkeling for a month for $2,000? I could get on board with that.

TheGameguru wrote:
Shadout wrote:

Do you know of any good guides on how to set up C9 as a PC monitor - which settings to use etc.? Have had it for months now, but haven't really dared jumping into that.

I havent done anything beyond setting the label for the input for PC.. The C9's now auto enable HDMI Deep Color when it detects the ability from the output. I settled on 150% scaling.. 100% is doable but the text is super small even on a 55" from a few feet away.

One unfortunate caveat here (although maybe I’ve missed something, and if so I’d love to know).

When connecting my PC directly to the my new LG C9, my PC refuses to see the TV supporting more than two audio channels, and thus I can’t pass surround sound back down to my new receiver through eARC.

This passthrough behavior IS working beautifully with my Xbox One X and Chrome Cast Ultra — both are plugged directly into the TV, and sending clean 7.1 signals down to the receiver through the eARC channel. However, with the PC even when using an HDMI 2.1 (48Gbps) cable the PC still see the TV as only accepting two channels.

Now, it’s quite possible that it’s something that could be sorted out via a driver update from Nvidia, because if I instead plug the PC into the receiver (a Denon 3500H) it properly recognizes that as a device that can accept a surround sound signal. In fact, it’s also successfully passing though an HDR signal — and let me tell you, on games that support it, such as Red Dead 2 and Forza Horizon 4, it looks and sounds glorious — so this is the option I’ve stuck with for now, but at least for the time being it seems I’ll have to choose between Gsync or surround sound support.

Not the worst thing in the world, and in nearly every other respect I’m absolutely delighted with this new setup, but a tiny bit of a bummer.

Yeah check AvS forums. I recall a good article about eARC on the LG 2019’s and it’s basically quasi useful right now until the new HDMI spec becomes final as it’s a bandwidth limit right now. My understanding is that only the streaming services can pass Atmos level surround sound down current eARC because it’s quasi Atmos. While not directly your issue it could be the key in the greater issue that your PC can’t tell what the TV to send back down the eARC channel. I’m sure someone has come across it. I don’t mess with ARC so I can’t help.

Still digging around on the HDTV idea, and another issue came up: if the TCL smart aspects are good, my mother might use them. But I understand that it's a bad idea to hook up modern smart TVs to a network, because they can and will download updates and start running their own ads on your screen.

Is that still true, does TCL do it at all, and if they still advertise, will keeping them off the network do anything? It would be easy to integrate a cell modem in a TV so that ads couldn't be shut off, period.

The only ads on the TCL are in the home screen. And you can set it to start on antenna channel on power on, so you don't see ads unless you press home.

Remote has dedicated Netflix and Hulu buttons, so using those you don't see ads either.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Good for you? Everyone has different preferences on what they want to spend money on and a different personal value for money. Maybe I just took this the wrong way but it seems like you came into a thread of TV enthusiasts helping people and said you guys are stupid why are you spending money on TVs when you could be doing this other cool thing I like instead.

Also what can you tell me about staying in the Virgin Islands and snorkeling for a month for $2,000? I could get on board with that. :)

Lol, you are partly right LeapingGnome, but I don't think you guys are stupid in the least, just maybe a little crazy. I consider myself the stupid one on this because I don't keep up with technology anymore. I do wonder what I'm missing by not paying attention to the newest tech anymore but at the same time, I do love me some adventure. As I've gotten older, I realize that all my happiest moments were those in which I made lasting memories with others.

I don't want to hijack a thread too much, but the secret to vacations is finding the right location at the right time with the right people and the right host. I never use a travel agency or stay at a resort type place. We use airbnb or referrals from friends and find places where you can rent say the bottom half of an entire house where the owner owns the other half and usually doubles as your host.

For instance, this place in St. Croix I'm eyeing sits away from the main tourist part on the East side overlooking the ocean. You can rent the entire bottom half of the privately owned house (1,700 sqft) which is 2 full bedrooms and 2 full baths plus kitchen and living space (actually sleeps 6 with a pull out if you want). I can book the entire month of January (you get a 48% discount for booking a month) for 4 people for $5,960. That's $1,490 per person for a month. That's less than half what it would cost to stay at a resort or hotel. If I book a flight right now I can fly in and back for $480. Total is now $1,970 per person.

In the description of the property, look at the reviews and the host. For instance, this is what caught my eye on this location and host. "I am your host during your stay. I'm an experienced snorkel and scuba diver, expert lobster hunter, spear-fisher, and a great cook. I've been on the island for 13 years and from Chicago. I also do sushi catering on the island." Then in the reviews look for support of the host: "If you are looking to get to know a local, and want to have somebody to interact with and show you around, stay here. He took us to several East End beaches, many of which we would have never known were there if it weren't for him. He makes delicious, fresh sushi for several grocery stores/markets on the island and would frequently set some aside for us (read: free dinner). It seems that everywhere we went with him, we ran into someone he knew. And in his spare time, he goes spearfishing and hunts lobster -- and he was always happy to take us with him and share some of the catch. Basically, he is an all-around good, fun person to know."

Of course that doesn't factor in food and based on this location we'd need a vehicle but we usually don't eat at the touristy places and prefer making our own meals or eating locally. So probably for this vacation it will be around $3,000 to $3,500 or cheaper depending on how much time we spend with the host. In another description it says they basically went snorkeling for lobster and spearfishing every day with the host and then cooked everything they caught and they never paid anything to eat. How amazing would that be?!

Sorry, I got all passionate and crazy and totally hijacked. If you want a link to this place send me a PM and I'll gladly send it. I haven't stayed there personally YET but I have no doubt it's awesome based on my other experiences.

That's cool, though it's an easier lift for a lot of us to spend $1500 (and frankly, probably a bunch less) on a TV every 5+ years vs the vacation you described. It sounds great, but you're describing $8000 on travel and lodging, plus another $3000 on food, plus activities. That doesn't even get into the fact that most people couldn't get a full month off for a vacation in the first place. If you can do all that and it makes you happy, that's awesome, do the hell out of that. It's just that the math isn't as simple as "if you just didn't buy a new TV, you could afford a month long vacation instead."

My new TV is getting delivered on Thursday. I can't unbox and set it up until I take down the one it's replacing and move the wall mount over. I don't know that I'll have the time or energy to do that until the weekend. So I'll have a massive TV sitting in a box for two days, taunting me.

Unless I take a half day on Thursday. Hmm...

Chaz wrote:

That's cool, though it's an easier lift for a lot of us to spend $1500 (and frankly, probably a bunch less) on a TV every 5+ years vs the vacation you described. It sounds great, but you're describing $8000 on travel and lodging, plus another $3000 on food, plus activities. That doesn't even get into the fact that most people couldn't get a full month off for a vacation in the first place. If you can do all that and it makes you happy, that's awesome, do the hell out of that. It's just that the math isn't as simple as "if you just didn't buy a new TV, you could afford a month long vacation instead."

Yes, the whole trip would be $10,000-$12,000 but not per person. It's would be $2,500-$3,000 per person with 4 people. Friends always make things better.

These kind of trips don't happen every year. This is every 3-4 years. I have to save up vacation by only using up 3 out of my 4 weeks of vacation. Now if I were European, I would get a full month every year. "By law, every country in the European Union has at least four work weeks of paid vacation. Austria, which guarantees workers the most time off, has a legal minimum of 22 paid vacation days and 13 paid holidays each year. The average private sector U.S. worker receives 16 paid vacation days and holidays." This is one of the biggest reasons why most Europeans are happier and healthier than Americans. I really need to move to Europe.

Sydhart wrote:

I really need to move to Europe. :)

Got 6 weeks paid vacation. No complaints here
Still rather buy a new TV instead of going on vacation though...
People like different things. My sister has a routine going; work 4-5 years, travel for 1 year, repeat. I could never do that. She could never not do it.

My mother ended up buying a Sony Bravia, which had really amazing off-axis performance in the store, and was otherwise enough of an improvement to make her want to buy it. The TCL screens looked really nice, and if I were buying one for me I might well have gone that way, but for her uses the Bravia looked like a better bet. It was about $750 for a 55-inch screen. That was bigger than she wanted, but she should be able to make it work.

The OLEDs did just as well off-axis. It was kind of funny, looking sideways down a row of monitors, because exactly two stood out, in almost exactly the same way: the OLED, and the Bravia. The rest were washed out and dim.

OLEDs look great from any angle, but they're still very expensive. Under the harsh store lighting, they don't otherwise look *that* much better than an LCD/LED set, but I imagine they'd be remarkable in subdued lighting in a house. Sadly, the least expensive of those was about $1500, and that was just not going to happen.

I might eventually be interested in one, though. Man, they are gorgeous. Wonder how they'd work as a computer monitor?

OLED works great as a PC monitor. I’ve used a 55” since 2016 as my main display driving two PC’s and 2 consoles. No motion blur is an understated advantage for PC use vs LCD tech and the biggest one is that OLED doesn’t use PWM to dim the screen. PWM is one of the bigger reasons many people can get eye fatigue and headaches from looking at their PC screens for too long.

Near perfect color uniformity with no banding. (Use the all grey background test to see the difference). Downsides are image retention which can leave the impression of burn in but goes away in a few seconds. For the most part it’s subtle and when gaming you won’t really see it. It happens though but it’s getting better and better. I just swapped my 55” C6 for a new 55” C9 and the IR has almost disappeared.

Hrm, I like the idea of less eye fatigue and headaches from a night of gaming. I could really get into playing PC on something like this.

https://www.samsung.com/us/televisio...

Christmas is just around the corner so maybe my wife will be EXCEPTIONALLY nice and allow me to get this.

TheGameguru wrote:

Downsides are image retention which can leave the impression of burn in but goes away in a few seconds.

For all the complaints I see online about "burn-in" with OLEDs, I really wonder if those people know the difference between burn-in and temporary image retention.

T-Prime wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

Downsides are image retention which can leave the impression of burn in but goes away in a few seconds.

For all the complaints I see online about "burn-in" with OLEDs, I really wonder if those people know the difference between burn-in and temporary image retention.

You don't really believe people would go on the Internet to complain about things without knowing the right terminology for what they're complaining about, do you?

TV arrived today. OMG is the box huge. Of course, the kids were kind of crazy, and work was actually busy, so I didn't have a chance to move the mount and hang the new one. So it'll sit there in the box until the weekend, teasing me.

TV's mounted. Man, putting in the lag bolts is SO MUCH EASIER now that I have an impact driver. Seriously, this thing is absolutely massive. Like, ridiculously massive.

Had some strange configuration things with it. My previous setup involved an HDMI switch box, and I was planning on using that to handle any 1080p only devices on the new one, with 4k devices going directly into the TV. Turned out that the TV saw the switch box as an ARC sound device, so if I had it connected to the TV at all, even unplugged with no devices hooked up to it, the TV would stop sending audio to the sound bar via the actual ARC port. It was real strange. I ordered a new switch box, got it set up last night, and it doesn't have that problem, so yay.

The size and picture quality I'm very happy with. I can actually see the difference between 1080 and 4k, which I wasn't actually expecting. The built in apps do the job, but not well. The UI on Amazon and Plex make you have to hit play/pause or fast forward/reverse twice to actually get the command to go (once to bring up the on screen UI, again to actually do the command), and if you're rewinding or fast forwarding, hitting play doesn't stop it and start playing, it backs up the transport speed by a notch. It's real bad. Also, Disney+ doesn't have a native app, but does let you chromecast to the TV, but only seems to go at 720p, so screw that. I picked up a fire stick 4k for half off over the weekend because I'm dumb, and will probably get a roku ultra on friday for half off, then maybe sell off the fire stick at work.

I'm pretty happy with the way a base PS4 looks in HDR, but I'm really excited to get the Xbox One X hooked up on Christmas when my wife lets me have it.

One real downside to that Sony Bravia: it's an Android TV, meaning it desperately wants to connect to the network and advertise at you. But, an upside to all that Android nonsense: it can play movies off flash drives, which is pretty cool.

Well the purple spots I noticed 1.5 years ago on my 65 inch 2015 Samsung TV are now visible all the time rather than only on white images. Time to upgrade to a 75 inch and a newer model.

I'll probably look closest at whatever Costco has. Won't spring for OLED at 75 inches. Samsung left me with a bad purple taste but I will still consider it. Vizio I'm not sure of and everyone seems to be a fan of TCL. I always disregarded Sony due to cost but are they still riding on their name as a premium?

I'm quite happy with the 75" Vizio we just got from Costco. It's the highest rated TV in that size that's not OLED, according to Rtings.

Fair warning, the size of the a 75" is one thing in the store, it's a whole different thing in your house. I like it and it's the right size for our room, but man, I wasn't ready for the sheer size of it.

My mother ended up with a Bravia from Costco, mostly because the off-axis performance was outstanding. The HDR on that set is kinda meh, but the resolution and view angles are about the best you'll find short of an OLED. The built-in media player is only so-so, however, and VLC from the Google Play store says it's not compatible.

Narrower-angle sets can give you substantially better HDR, and then OLED gives you everything at once.

Good point on the 75 inch size. The wall is big enough but I'll definitely need to move the wall mount higher. I know the mount can support a 75 inch TV but it'll be too low. 65 inches are super cheap too... may just do that and skip the hassle.

I just picked up an 85" Samsung Q70, upgrading from our 2014 70" Vizio.

We got used to the size in like a day. I would even take something bigger.

I sure can read smaller text in games a whole lot easier now though.

Yup, text size in Death Stranding is way more readable on the new TV than it was on the 60". Hell, I might even be able to actually play Xenoblade Chronicles 2 now. Once it was on the wall, we got used to the size immediately. It's when you first get it in the house and are actually handling it that it's kind of overwhelming. Hell, the box is wider than I am tall.

Make sure you don't move the mount before you get the TV in. On mine, the mount holes were lower than the actual center line of the TV.

*Legion* wrote:

I just picked up an 85" Samsung Q70, upgrading from our 2014 70" Vizio.

We got used to the size in like a day. I would even take something bigger.

My man!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarc...

LG finally releasing a 48” OLED. Which honestly I’m getting right away to replace the 55” C9 I just got. 48” might be the ideal size for a 4K monitor. The improvements over the 2019 sets sound impressive

So LG managed to screw the pooch over New Years Eve.

New Years Day my wife comes to me to tell me that our new 65" C9 is stuck in an upgrade-loop and none of the apps work.

Turns out they upgraded the TV software during the night and then their application download server went down. So all the apps needed to be upgraded but could download. Instead of giving a nice error message (which would suck but at least be communicative), all the TV did was say "application needs to be updated."

Servers finally came online during the night of the 1st, so I could upgrade everything on the 2nd.

Fortunately, none of our 55" C9s had the issue, so wifey could still spend NYD binging NCIS

Vizio is offering OLED now, so hopefully that puts a downward pressure on the price point.