UKC

There have been a few threads on here, including one of mine, expressing confusion about how to choose a television, as there is a lot of potentially confusing "specmanship". 

Having gone through this process just now (and bought a television yesterday), I thought it might be useful to share my findings. These are by no means definitive and I am not an audio-visual expert!

1 - 4K. Most televisions at the sensible end of the market, are 4K (3840 * 2160 pixels, "double the resolution" of an "HD" television). A lot of what you watch, may not be this resolution. DVDs are 720 * 480, standard Blu Ray 1920 * 1080. BBC iPlayer broadcasts at 1280 * 720. Netflix standard is 1920 * 1080, Netflix Premium is 4K. etc. This can lead to a lot of overthinking especially if, like me, you get in a tizzy after reading that the "upscaling" of your old DVDs and Blu-Rays will make them look awful on your new TV. From reading around, this can be the case in certain combinations but generally you'll be OK. I took a punt, bought a 43" 4K, and tested a bunch of media on it last night. Basic old "bare bones" DVDs, better quality ones, some standard Blu Rays, and BBC iPlayer. They all looked acceptable. I will acknowledge that the larger screen does show the limitations of older lower res media but I am sure that outside of an abstract test scenario, if the (say) film you are watching is actually a good film, then within ten minutes you'll adjust easily to any slight "softness" and really, at a sensible viewing distance, you shouldn't notice it

2 - Online research. From all the forums, articles etc I read, I found https://www.avforums.com/ to be the most informative - especially all posts from "dodgexander" who I think is the owner or the most active moderator. Seems to know his stuff and is not elitist, biased or "opinionated". Ultimately my approach was - choose a screen size, choose a brand (I had numerous friends steer me away from Samsung, for example, and I didn't even look into the reasons why - I just thought "if that many of them have an issue with Samsung, that's enough for me". Your mileage may vary! Narrow down a few models based on price and availability etc, and then Google them specifically, to see if they are lemons. I came within an hour of decisively buying a £480 Panasonic but luckily a friend pointed me at a review he'd found that said it was actually a bottom-end "Vestel" TV (Vestel is the Turkish equivalent of Bush, Alba, Logik etc) that should be nearer £250 and even at that price it's still crap! Lucky escape!

3 - Budget. I can only speak for 43" as that's the size I chose. According to the above mentioned chap on avforums (and backed up with "wisdom" from elsewhere on the web), 43" is the "small" end (!!) and the manufacturers aren't putting a whole lot of R&D effort into them now. The upshot of this being that beyond the cheap and nasty threshold (£350-£380 ? ) you won't see much difference spending top dollar on a 43" so you may as well keep it reasonable. I set myself a budget of £500, as I didn't think the extras on an £800 TV would benefit me. 

4 - Specification. What's important is picture, price and user interface (I was able to reject a few models/brands by getting the vibe that they had an awful interface). Initially I was trying to get TVs that would sit on my mantelpiece on their stand so I didn't have to faff with a wall mount. I was looking for them having a headphone socket. I thought "more HDMI inputs is better". None of these are relevant criteria. Again your mileage may vary.

5 - Sound. It seems that you can't show interest in a television without having expensive "soundbars" and Dolby 5.1 kit flashed in your face. I was outputting my old (2008 model) 32" TV via phono-to-phono cable, into a cheap standard hi fi amp and speakers and whilst not perfect (no separation of audio tracks, a bit bass heavy) it was a decent cheap and cheerful solution. Prior to that, I think my even older TV was output via 3.5mm "headphone" jack to phono. Notably, both these televisions actually sounded quite good just from their internal speakers too. My new television sounds a bit feeble in comparison, from its internal speakers. It doesn't have a phono output to connect to my amp but I will get an Optical Digital Audio cable to connect it, and hopefully it should be OK. If you are used to having acceptable sound from your current television's in-built speakers, definitely bear this in mind (it was not a criterion for me, as I will be outputting as described).


Hope that all helps someone at least!

(I got an LG-43UN81006LB, a 2020 model originally £450ish, now £379 at Currys and John Lewis but I found a clearance one at Richer Sounds for £319, a barely-used return that they couldn't sell at full price. Winner!)

I have tried four times to make a minor edit to this, and each time, it is rejected due to too long a thread title. A bug. 

Was just trying to add at the start - other people on UKC had already contributed useful advice on the other TV threads and I absorbed and appreciated that. 

And at the end - anyone is welcome to disagree with my OP. I am merely expressing my current thinking, not saying "do it like this"  

I wonder whether second hand is worthwhile? Presumably with everyone madly upgrading or releasing "pent up demand" perhaps there will be some bargains, or will they just go to the skip?

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on the sound quality one you've got your optical cable up and running. I wonder if you'll be able to detect any improvement from your old TV/cable combo. 

Hi Chris, I will let you know. Should have the cable by Friday (ordered online).
I am very much behind the times! I've never had an optical cable, and - true - this is because I've spent the best part of 20 years being uneasy with the word "optical" being used in an audio context what an idiot. 

How did you get on with TV shopping after I 100% hijacked your thread? I didn't notice if you came back to that one. 

Probably at the higher end it should be worthwhile. My previous TV, a Panasonic Viera 32", had retailed when new (2008) at £600. It was given to me by a total stranger (well a friend of a friend, but still!) circa 2013 when they upgraded and had no space for the Panasonic. You'd have thought they could have sold it for £200 or something. It still works fine now and I will wall-mount it in one of my spare rooms. 

In my case with my new TV, it is one that was £450 retail last year, and I have paid £319. Someone selling second hand, will have paid £450 and would probably want £230 or so. I was happy paying the extra for the peace of mind of having my own warranty with Richer Sounds. Point taken, about landfill. It is crazy that there are so many new models released (with the same specification! I am not talking about improved technology) each year. The "N" in the model name of my TV, denotes it is a 2020 model hence discounted everywhere, and replaced in LG's line with a very similar one just with "P" in the model name! It's like cars. Or ski-wear 

NB I think the sound QUALITY is OK, it's just not got much volume. 

I find the speakers on modern TVs to be poor, they prioritise how slim they can make them and how small the bezel will be all to the detriment of the speakers and they know people will buy sound bars.

My TV used to run to a 5.1 surround sound system via the optical out and it was good. Unfortunately the rabbits chewed the cables where they came up through the floor (I laid the cables then put an oak floor on top of them)

Not wanting to rip up the floor or have cables visible I got a cheap sound bar. Samsung TV, Samsung sound bar (about £200). I was very surprised. Obviously not as good as full surround sound but pretty damn good. The only hassle is Samsung have their own proprietory way of transmitting the sound from the TV to the bar and it doesn't work, something is interfering with it so I connected them with the optical cable (new one, rabbits ate the old one). In theory the TV remote controls the bar but that's only using their connection. Again not a problem though, I muted the TV and programmed my multi remote to do the bar. 

Just a spot of pedantry... UHD (3840x2160) is actually 4x the resolution of HD (1920x1080), not double.

Careful there. Major can of worms. Wars have been fought over this, or, more mildly, you can disappear down a rabbit hole! We are in 2D, not 1D. Pixels are (approximately) square. 

In a workplace scenario, I have two x-ray detectors the same size (400mm * 400mm). 
One has a pixel size of 0.2mm, an array of 2000 * 2000.
The other has a pixel size of 0.1mm, an array of 4000 * 4000. 
So we have gone from 4 million pixels, to 16 million pixels. 
Has our resolution increased by a factor of four? No. 
Now apply this to the televisions. 

 

Yes, pretty much what I wanted to say but I held back because I didn't want to come across as newbie who thinks he knows it all and is totally jaded  

If my existing set-up brings no joy, then I will look into it. Is the soundbar the only thing you have i.e. no additional left and right speakers? I am very much behind the times on all this and thought the soundbars were set up for dialogue, and "big sounds" from other speakers, but I am probably thinking of the original "Home Cinema" packages of 20+ years ago! 

Vestel is a contract OEM. They make equipment for many brands, as well as owning some old TV brand names.

My Sainsbury's 'Celcus' TVs are made by Vestel. I've got a 40", a 22", and a 23" with DVD that I use as a monitor; I found it on the kerb, with a (design) fault in the PSU. Fault fixed by replacing the parallel Schottky diodes in the PSU with a single package device, and it's been running all year as I work from home.

They're built to the OEM budget, which varies, but, barring that design fault, they're not bad for the price (£180 for a full HD 40", a few years ago).

Thanks for the correction (actually I kind of knew that, so I have no idea why I said it's the "equivalent" of badge names!). Yes - ok for the price. Not ok for close to the top end of my budget  

Indeed, it's double the width and double the height...

And to add to the pedantry, as you quite rightly pointed out this is a UHD resolution, not 4k which is 4096 x 2160 though most televisions are marketed as 4k when they're actually UHD.

WTF? I run across lots of nice green fields and seldom see rabbits these days. Yet, your house is over run with them?

As to the Samsung sound bar, is it an Anynet+ connect, by any chance? I had issues with that, on one of their 5.1 systems. It would get confused and require a reboot every now and again.

OP: Glad you got it sorted in the end. Go and watch Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul in 4k.

Now about the sound system...

Richersounds always have some nice av amps on sale. The immersive nature of surround, means I'd never go back to stereo. Not so much spaceships flying around the room, but lots of nice little ambient sounds like city or jungle noise when you're watching something. Also handy for streaming spotify when not watching tv. Use your existing speakers if they're good and add the surround, sub and center.

Did I mention colour changing light bulbs and home automation to set the ambiance...

I have colour changing lightbulbs, an impulse buy at Dunelm, discounted to £5 each. No "home automation" but they are remote controlled and have different strobe/wave patterns if you want (obviously not talking to the screen like a Philips Ambilight!). I love them although it's a little bit of a shame that on white, they are not really bright enough for general illumination. 

I want to thank you again for your input on the other thread. It was that comment about clinging onto legacy media, that really gave me a kick up the bum (and reminded me that I can still keep my old telly!). Cheers  

No worries. As a geek and a wannabe hoarder myself, I know the pain of parting with old, yet serviceable, kit. (My wife has no such qualms.)

Linear vs area measurement of resolution.

If we're talking optics and resolution, then we're into Rayleigh criterion and stuff like that. In which case, it would be the linear measurement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_resolution

You must use the word resolution differently at your work. Your sensor 1 is 4MP and sensor 2 is 16MP. That's 4x the pixels, 4x the information and you can see 4x the detail. So I'd call it 4x the resolution. But that's the trouble with technical jargon, different fields use the same words to mean different things. It's certainly not an argument that anyone is going to win!

Hence my opening comment about wars being fought about it 😃

You don’t see 4x the detail when your pixels are half the size in each dimension though. You see 2x the detail in terms of the smallest speck or wire that can be visualised .

That’s before we bring contrast, noise and dynamic range into it. 

I can see your point now. The fundamental difference is that your field is sensors and mine is displays. We're looking at opposite ends. Your definition makes sense for sensors, but I don't think it does for displays. We probably shouldn't be using the term resolution to apply to displays at all.

We never did until 1080, 2K and 4K came along and even then, most of us don’t really know what any of it means in terms of practical viewing experience and visual acuity. “High Definition” is a phrase that started around 1991 with some cool Sony video cameras ... anyway I have a big f-off TV (defined as “at the small end”) to puzzle over, it’s complicated, I need an 11 year old child to explain it all 😃

My work is mostly in 3D CT data and we have voxels (3D pixels "volume elements", little cubes). Going from a 4MP detector to a 16MP does not mean we claim that the 3D "voxel resolution" is 2^3 times better! It's still a resolution of 0.1mm (although the resulting files ARE 16 times larger, which is "fun" when you can create a single image file 256Gb in size) 

It's a sound bar with a separate sub. It's not a surround sound one but it projects the sound well enough that occasionally I look for the rear speakers. 

Yep, we got a rabbit and then got him a friend because rabbits are very social animals. Then we ended up with 2 rescue rabbits too. They reside in the living room and have the run of the downstairs of the house. Excellent and very intelligent little critters. But (there is always a but) they destroy everything in their path. All our furniture has been nibbled extensively and I have had to armour all the remaining cables. I even cut up a dog cage and put it round the TV stand but occasionally they find a way in and you only find out when you see sparks coming from the nibbled through mains cables. People will tell you rabbits are very clean and use litter trays etc. Balls they are lying to you. 

I don't know to be honest, sometimes their system works and other times it doesn't but the optical link works every time so I don't bother anymore. I fancy getting a dolby atmos sound bar but not until this one dies. 

Rabbits. Have you seen “Night of the Lepus”? 

No but having looked it up I'm going to try find it.

Ours are more like the one in Pythons holy grail. They look all cute and cuddly to draw you in. 

Left field question: when you power the TV on, is there any indication that it has received the signal from the remote? Our little telly sits there black as pitch until something has warmed up and suddenly we get pictures. It would be nice to know this was happening, because if you're impatient <cough> you end up pressing the button on the remote, thinking it didn't get the start signal, which then turns it off (not that you'd know)

After 1 second the screen goes from pitch black to "glowing black" (i.e. no image etc but you can see that it's "on") and within 3 seconds it is showing some white text (in my case, "Sony HDMI" which I think means that the last input I was viewing, was my Blu Ray player. Within 5 seconds, the whole menu is showing. 

While waiting for my optical cable to arrive, I realised I could mackle something via my little Bluetooth receiver/transmitter. Bluetooth audio out from TV into to receiver. Receiver feeds the amp via a 3.5mm jack to phono lead. Result - GOOD! I think it's clearer audio than my old setup especially given my comments about that setup being a bit "bass heavy" and needing to balance with TV internal speakers to try to help the dialogue sound less buried. With my new television, if you output audio by Bluetooth, it disables the internal speakers, yet it all sounded OK. I tested with a few scenes from Avengers Assemble (also comparing iPlayer to my basic DVD - iPlayer easily a more crisp picture) and then watched about an hour of Ghost in the Shell (the live action 2017 one with Scarlett Johannsson) and it was clear audio. Happy! 
With the optical cable I can choose whether or not to have the internal speakers on. 

I also found that the internal speakers are better than I thought, when you find the "Sound Settings" and go to ANYTHING other than "Standard". In fact it was quite acceptable, to be honest! Although still better when it goes through the amp. 

Still on a learning curve here  

Ok thanks. I think when the time comes I'm going to try a few in the shop.

From a friend buying a TV a while ago, I get the impression there are specialise in selling second hand ones. I'm about 20 years behind most things technology wise, in only getting my first smart phone circa 4 years ago. My Dad and a brother embrace new technology in excitement, while I seem to be happy as I am until I'm left behind in what I can access, and then I catch up if it's important (a brother set up a family watsapp group after moving down south). 

Technology can't give you a hug or some such, after all.

Thanks for this input. 

my cable arrived much sooner than expected. Using it now. As per the Bluetooth, I think it is an improvement on the previous set-up, and I am trying to be “scientific” or honest here, and not just kid myself into some placebo or confirmation bias kind of self hypnosis. I was ready for any result including any need to upgrade my audio but this seems fine. As per my previous reply, with the Optical, I can combine TV internal speakers with the external system and I think this does help. The whole thing is more clear, less bass-heavy, than on my previous set up. So I don’t need any extra equipment. Hurrah.

One negative observation is that for some reason my Blu Ray player when connected to this television, is more strict about what I can’t skip on a disc (you may know that some discs have “unskippable” content, maybe as trailers or copyright warnings, you can usually bypass them by pressing “Top Menu” or similar on the remote, but I got the sense that I was getting more “this operation is not permitted” messages than I expected. ) 

Also with the amplifier set to the Optical input, weirdly I can not remote control the volume. Time To read the manual I think! 

Sounds like 'Sampras' problems to me

I don't get it.....and I feel excluded  

https://fatherted.fandom.com/wiki/Sampras

Thanks!

Final update on this hot topic - without me doing anything, now the remote control for my amp DOES work with the optical cable input. Must have been "just one of those weird things".

Proper First World Woe though - the standby button on the remote for the television, transmits at the same frequency as the "green" button on the remote for my multicoloured LED bulbs, so I always have to reset them after turning the TV on (or enjoy "ghost train mood lighting")

VHS looks absolutely fine on this screen, too, although when doing a rewind or fast forward picture search, the TV goes blank as it is rejecting the messy signal!