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

My mother bought a new TV over the summer, and ended up with a Sony. The HDR is pretty meh on that model, but the off-angle viewing is amazing, which was important for her, because she doesn't normally sit square with the TV. I think it was a 55" for about $900, and she's been very happy with it.

I'd suggest checking Costco; they tend to have excellent prices, and you can actually see the TV before you purchase. That was what led her to the Sony, because it was obviously wildly superior in that regard. It was neck and neck with the OLEDs, for a lot less money.

Getting eyes on the actual screen you want to buy, I think, never hurts.

Just make sure you don’t buy a TCL TV running Android right now. Roku ones are not affected by current security issues tho AFAICT.

I like our LG TV. It is probably the best TV in the house (which makes me think I should swap it from the bedroom to the gaming room since I think they are the same size). Despite being 1080p I think it has a better picture quality than the 4k HDR Samsung we have in the living room and it sure as hell has a better interface and apps. We got the Samsung for free with the purchase of our bed and it is 65 inches and those are about the two best things I can say about it

There might be a better thread for this but figured I would ask you fine folks,

I have a 55" Sony LCD TV. It is only a couple of years old (and this issue has been there since the beginning). During scenes where the color is onscreen is a natural white (not all the time, but like when clouds in the sky are shown for example) in those specific moments there will be what I can only describe as static-like-ant-looking things. They are tiny and appear to be kind of moving, hence the static'y description.

I have searched long and hard on the internet but never gotten any answers. Has anyone experienced anything like this? Am I nuts? I assume it is an incorrect setting or something. Any ideas? Also, I am sure I described that in the most confusing way possible.

Garth wrote:

There might be a better thread for this but figured I would ask you fine folks,

I have a 55" Sony LCD TV. It is only a couple of years old (and this issue has been there since the beginning). During scenes where the color is onscreen is a natural white (not all the time, but like when clouds in the sky are shown for example) in those specific moments there will be what I can only describe as static-like-ant-looking things. They are tiny and appear to be kind of moving, hence the static'y description.

I have searched long and hard on the internet but never gotten any answers. Has anyone experienced anything like this? Am I nuts? I assume it is an incorrect setting or something. Any ideas? Also, I am sure I described that in the most confusing way possible.

Look to see if you have any contrast boosting features enabled maybe.

Could also be too high sharpness maybe?

Okay, thanks! I followed what Rtings recommended for settings. I also figured it was a settings issue, but didn't even know where to begin. I will give it a look.

One other possibility is a borderline video cable. If it's not a big PITA, trying a new one might be instructive. I've seen similar weird things from cables that were ever-so-slightly off.

It's not a high chance, but it's non-zero. If swapping cables is a big pain, I'd skip it until later.

New TV is being delivered today. I am excited.

Is it weird that I always enjoy these opportunities to clean up whatever new cabling has occurred between when the entertainment center was first put into place and now?

It's gonna be so clean.

I was just thinking about exactly that for the new computer build... "hey, I can clean up that cable mess."

Malor wrote:

One other possibility is a borderline video cable. If it's not a big PITA, trying a new one might be instructive. I've seen similar weird things from cables that were ever-so-slightly off.

It's not a high chance, but it's non-zero. If swapping cables is a big pain, I'd skip it until later.

Good idea. Definitely a possibility. The wire fiasco is a big PITA, I agree. Wiring issues and detective'ing out the problem is never fun.

Trying another cable is a solid idea. HDMI cables can do some very bizarre things when they just aren't quite up to the task.

Best Buy has the Vizio 55” OLED for $899, 65” for $1499

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/vizio-5...

Malor wrote:
One: am I really missing out not gaming in HDR and will I be massively impressed if I have it?

I'd be interested to hear more about that, too. I have no experience with HDR gaming.

I’ve been trying a whole bunch of games over the last couple weeks and I am impressed.

Overall colors are better. Bright neon blooms on lights really stand out and look amazing in dark areas. Areas that are heavily bathed in one color of light look less flat than they used to.

I especially noticed it in games like Destiny 2 where I am very familiar with how things looked before. All those light emitting parts on armor/weapons/enemies now really pop.

I especially love the way bright purple neon looks now. I see this color used in more than a few games on overlays and interface elements. It really stands out and looks good.

Bright sunlight scenes in some games have way more detail in the sky without losing as much detail in shadowed areas that are visible at same time.

Games that were designed for HDR show the most difference however that Auto-HDR feature on the Xbox Series X makes a more subtle but still really nice change to some older games I love. I’ve been replaying Metro games and re-trying some of my Xbox 360 games.

That first dark area of Battlefield 5 really looks good. It has a lot of bright lighted areas and highlights in a night time map.

Videos are more of a mixed bag. Just because a movie or show claims to be in HDR doesn’t mean that it makes much difference at all. I compared a bunch between a non-HDR PC monitor and my new TV side by side and in a lot of cases it was subtle but it was slightly better on the HDR display and in a lot of cases it might just be that my TV has an overall better looking panel and not the HDR. It took me a bit to figure out which versions of which apps even support HDR. Turns out most Xbox apps don’t. I had to use the apps on my smart TV.

I don’t have any HDR blurays to test yet. Just ordered one but it hasn’t arrived yet. I’ve only been able to compare streaming video. I want to find a Blu-ray movie that really makes heavy use of HDR and see what that looks like at high bitrate.

I did download the some official UHD HDR demo videos from TV manufacturers and those are totally obviously better when I compare them side by side with the computer monitor. The difference is pretty big but these are videos designed to make that difference obvious.

Getting HDR to work on my PC wasn’t too hard but it seems like almost no games support it. At least on Xbox Series X basically everything is now HDR.

To sum it all up:
- yes I am impressed
- yes I will now choose to play all “pretty” games on my TV instead of my monitor but only ones that aren’t competitive because I’m not giving up higher refresh rates and lower input latency for HDR
- yes I am glad I paid a little more for a better TV
- no I probably wouldn’t have gone out of my way to upgrade just for this but since I was already in the market for a new 4k TV it worked out for a small increase in price

Thanks much, panda! Making sure my next monitor is HDR is now high on the priority list.

Now I’m really disappointed when my favorite games don’t have HDR. Auto-HDR helps in many cases on Xbox but I want HDR in things like Bloodborne on PS4.

New TV quick review (LG CX 65" OLED HDR)
This TV is absurd. Everything looks so good it's just ridiculous. It's such a massive leap forward in quality from the dead 4K LED SDR set that it is replacing that I feel like the difference is far greater than the difference in upgrading from 1080p to 4K. Far greater. The picture quality is also far, far better than my 2560x1080 HDR LCD monitor.

I am now spoiled and can never go back. RIP.

The first time you sit down in front of a good OLED in a darkened room and watch your favorite movie is a real experience.

120hz is nice and all but ... I really doubt that it will really be a thing until we have ''pro'' models of the new consoles, and then some.

Spider-Man Miles Morales is capped at 30fps with Ray Tracing... 60fps without

I'd say to someone who's thinking of upgrading specifically for 120hz that it really can wait right now.
Unless you don't have a 4k tv of course...

You can plug a PC into a TV!

interstate78 wrote:

120hz is nice and all but ... I really doubt that it will really be a thing until we have ''pro'' models of the new consoles, and then some.

Spider-Man Miles Morales is capped at 30fps with Ray Tracing... 60fps without

I'd say to someone who's thinking of upgrading specifically for 120hz that it really can wait right now.
Unless you don't have a 4k tv of course...

It depends on what you play. Single player graphics showcase games are likely to still trade framerate for nicer screenshots. If that’s all you play then don’t expect 120fps any time soon. CoD Cold War with ray tracing is running at a mostly smooth 60fps on both consoles right now so basic ray tracing is possible at 60fps on these machines.

If you play multiplayer games expect 120fps to start to become the norm. CoD Cold War runs at 120fps on both new consoles. CoD Warzone runs at 120fps on Xbox now. Rocket League will have 120fps mode on Xbox in December. Expect that to be patched into a lot more competitive games on Xbox soon too. PS5 would have more 120fps games soon as well if Sony hadn’t hamstrung how PS4 games run on the PS5. It requires a full port of a PS4 game to PS5 to get new things like 120fps so it is taking devs longer to add that to existing games.

Keep in mind that the Nvidia 2060 RTX in my desktop PC is not as powerful as the video hardware in either new console and yet I’ve been playing ray traced games at more than 60fps for a while now and I can play competitive games at higher than 120fps. Console game devs will figure out how to hit that performance soon if they try to. This is especially true if AMDs DLSS alternative actually ends up working on consoles. Add variable rate shading and other new techniques and graphics on new consoles will look better than ever while using less hardware resources than previous gen consoles would have had to. That will hopefully result in higher framerates.

TheGameguru wrote:

Best Buy has the Vizio 55” OLED for $899, 65” for $1499

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/vizio-5...

I wish I’d seen these sales earlier. I’ve been really disappointed in my X900F and debating getting a different TV.

Alternatively, should I just disable HDR on the console? I think the picture on the Switch and non-4K Apple TV are both fine. I’m mostly disappointed with actual HDR content.

The whole HDMI 2.1 tech feels like we are in a beta testing phase. In 2 years this will probably settle down and become more functional but right now its a mess. By then hopefully everything will support the full feature stack at full bandwidth so any links in the chain don’t just break things horribly.

I typed this with a straight face.

TheGameguru wrote:

I typed this with a straight face.

I LOLed.

It probably will all work out, eventually, but earlier HDMI generations were painful and difficult, with lots of people wasting lots of money on gear that didn't quite work.

I suspect it's all happening again. You'd think they'd have learned the lesson the first time, but maybe they learned the wrong lesson: if you sell someone a subtly defective item, that puts them back in the market to buy another sooner.

Since it's not like I'm going anywhere soon at the looks of things, I reached into my vacation money pocket and decided to upgrade my setup for Black Friday. I went with the 75" X900H which is all the rage right now, but was too late on deciding to do it so have to wait until early January for delivery from an online order as in-store stock was gone. Was considering the X950H or the Q80T but in Canada at that size, the difference in price means I could also get a good quality stand (mounting not really an option where I am) or a non-scalped PS5 at some point. Plus, we always watch the thing straight ahead in a room with little natural light so the deficiencies of the 900 compared to those other models aren't really that big of a deal to me. Not to mention that coming from a 6 year old 1080p LG that was the cheapest I could find because my Dad accidentally smashed my other one when I was broke means that I'll likely be blown away no matter what.

Agree with interstate. VRR sounds nice, but for the most part, I think some people are putting too much weight on HDMI 2.1, especially if they are only console gamers. Devs always go for the prettier image even with these performance mode options - a decision justified by how many people balked at the sacrifices Halo Infinite looks like it's making. Based on previous console generations, I suspect it will be more likely that by the time a lot of TV's can support HDMI 2.1, current games will be far more likely to be struggling to hit a solid 60 FPS with an internal upscaler faking 4K than they will have a 4K@120hz option.

You are gonna love HDR.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

You are gonna love HDR.

Funny. I came here to this thread today to ask the following question.

Is HDR just bogus technology? Does any TV manufacturer get it right at the lower price points?

As I said earlier, we've had a 4K HDTV for a couple of years now (Sony Bravia X900F) that we mostly watch content on 1080P SDR. Recently I started trying out watching actual 4K content and I found I really liked it. HDR, however, has almost universally been really dim and really flat. I'm wondering if that's just my TV or the state of that kind of content on TVs.

At what price point do TVs start doing HDR well?

I'm not sure. I don't know what movie content actually has HDR, if any of my 1080P blu-rays do or not. I've only streamed a few 4k things from Amazon Prime and Netflix (free month trial of 4k), and don't remember it saying one way or the other.

The games definitely looked better on PS4 when I switched TVs, and they continue to look good on PS5 with HDR.