What do I need to know about TVs?

[ForeverAutumn]

Hubby and I have decided that it's time for a new TV. Our last TV purchase was an LCD about 10 years ago (give or take a year).

I'm sure that the technology has changed in the last 10 years, and I know that Smart TVs are now available.

What should I be aware of as I begin the search? I haven't set a budget yet, but I'm looking for around 46".

[Mr Peabody]

I'm not the expert, but, if I were looking for a new TV I'd get 4k, the discs are right around the corner and I know at least Sony & Samsung were providing small amounts 4k content with purchase. Netflix is supposed to begin streaming 4k. 4k streaming will depend a lot on your internet bandwidth.

I'd get an LED, which is really still LCD with LED backlighting. Get a "full array" lit display opposed to edge lit if can still be found. I'm sure edge lit has improved but it's as it says only the screen is lit around the edges which could be uneven as going into the center. A full array has the LED's covering the entire back screen more evenly. I paraphrase but this can easily be found with a search.

There are Smart TV's but that just means, mostly, internet connectivity. This can also be done via Blu-ray players and a host of external devices such as Apple TV, Roku or Fire TV. Either way you go much of the content is subscription or purchase viewing.

3D push has slowed but I haven't heard of anyone throwing in the towel and still see new releases in 3D, so maybe it will still be a nitch.

Some Smart TV's and external devices have a "speak it" feature so you can just talk to the remote. Another cool thing about the Smart feature, Apple TV or Fire TV, they will allow you to control your TV with a tablet or smart phone. You can even have the TV mirror what's on the tablet/phone as well as stream from it.

If you really want to get crazy you can rip all your discs to a media server, control it with a remote, tablet or phone, view it on any TV in the house. Look at QNAP NAS storage.

If your hubby still works at JVC I'm sure a brand suggestion is unnecessary. But, if not, JVC, it would be Samsung for me, really not even another contender, unless, possibly, LG.

[Smokey]

Mr Peabody gave good advice and here are couple of add ons :)

Sharp LC-48LE551U 48 inch non smart TV that got excellent review for $500
Sharp AQUOS 48" Class 4758" Diag. LED 1080p 60Hz HDTV LC-48LE551U - Best Buy (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/sharp-aquos-48-class-47-5-8-diag--led-1080p-60hz-hdtv/5420009.p?id=1219127076278&skuId=5420009)

And here is review for it:
Sharp LC-48LE551U Review & Rating | PCMag.com (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2456765,00.asp)

Also check out Sony 48 inch smart TV (KDL 48W600B) which sell for $580.
Sony BRAVIA 48" Class 4758" Diag. LED 1080p 60Hz Smart HDTV KDL48W600B - Best Buy (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/sony-bravia-48-class-47-5-8-diag--led-1080p-60hz-smart-hdtv/3418083.p?id=1219091130361&skuId=3418083)

Sony also got excellent review (little brother but same model number):
Sony KDL-40W600B LED TV Review - Reviewed.com Televisions (http://televisions.reviewed.com/content/sony-kdl-40w600b-led-tv-review-3)

[blackraven]

Great advice all around. TV is at a crossroads with 4K here and now and OLED around the corner. Prices have come way down on 4K sets and they will come down even further. There are 2 paths you can take. You can go cheap, $1K or less for a 1080P TV and there a some good ones at these prices and then upgrade in 3-4 years when technology is better and prices are lower on 4K sets.

Or you can buy the best 4K set you can afford now and realize that better will be available in a couple of years.

If you don't care about 4K then there are some excellent Samsung, Sony and LG 1080p sets for excellent prices.

If you have not seen a good 4K picture on a 4K TV you have got to go see one. The pictures are fantastic and unsettling because of the extreme detail and realism.

Be aware that they all have crappy sound and will need a receiver and speakers. I run my Samsung 55" through a cheap pioneer avr and a pair of Def Tech Promonitor 1000's and a sub with no center channel. It sounds great. I am too lazy to hook up my HT system.

[Mr Peabody]

Most TV companies have given up on OLED, I think LG and maybe one other no brand is the only ones still in the game. The big boys quit because they didn't see any way to bring the price down in the near future from what I've read. At the 5 digit price for most OLED today and possibly no future I'd scratch that idea.

[ForeverAutumn]

Thanks for the advice. I haven't seen a 4k picture. We haven't started looking yet, but will do so in the next week or two. My plan is to decide what we want now, and then wait for the Boxing Week sales after Christmas. Unless we can find a good deal now, then we won't bother waiting.

Hubby has not worked at JVC for two years now. I'm not even sure that JVC still sells TVs in Canada. They are now part of Kenwood and sell mostly cameras and car audio.

We have Apple TV and use it to stream Netflix and iTunes through our stereo system. I can connect my computer to the TV through Apple TV, but when I try to stream sports it's very choppy and there is a sound delay. Will that be smoother with a good smart TV since it would allow me to connect directly to the TV without the Apple TV in the middle?

[Mr Peabody]

I'm not completely sure but I don't think a Smart TV fully replaces Apple TV. The issues you describe sound more like an internet speed issue.

[ForeverAutumn]

I'm not completely sure but I don't think a Smart TV fully replaces Apple TV. The issues you describe sound more like an internet speed issue.

Could be internet speed. But everything runs smoothly on my computer. It's only when I stream to the TV that I have a problem. I can watch them consecutively and the computer runs smoothly, while the TV is slow and jumpy at the same time.

[blackraven]

Samsung, LG and Sony will have 55" 4K TV's on sale from $1200-$1500 for Black Friday. Go to the BEST BUY web page.

I have a smart TV and rarely use its function. It also has voice command which is flaky at best. LG's voice command is better than my Samsung.

[ForeverAutumn]

55" is too big. The couch is only about 6 feet from the TV. I want to go 50", but Hubby thinks we should keep it around 47".

Also I'm in Canada so I'm not sure what the Black Friday sales are here. Some stores have started jumping on the BF bandwagon and other's not. But I'll take a look at the Best Buy Canada website. Thanks for the reminder :)

[ForeverAutumn]

We were in Costco today and they had a nice Samsung 50" for $689.

They also had a Haier TV. What a total piece of shiit! They were showing a soccer game on it and every time a player moved they blurred. I've never seen a picture that was so bad. Even when flat screens were new and a little blur or shadowing was not uncommon, they were never as bad as this Haier. I can't imagine why anyone would buy one. Yikes!

[ForeverAutumn]

We went shopping tonight not really expecting to buy anything (Black Friday is only recently a thing here, and only to keep people from cross-border shopping), and fully expecting to look for a 1080p TV.

Well, all it took was one look at a 4K TV and we both knew that we couldn't live with 1080p. :)

After hitting four stores, we actually ended up buying a TV at the end of the night. A 49" LG 4K with 3D (that we'll probably never use). Here's the link (http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/lg-electronics-lg-49-4k-120hz-3d-ips-led-smart-tv-49ub8500-chrome-49ub8500/10292471.aspx?path=0908ac42517fc8fa2526245933ff61e 3en02) although we didn't buy it at Best Buy.

After reading a few reviews, the only real concern seems to be the black and greys in low lighting, but we're more sports people than home theatre people and we never watch TV in the dark, so I don't think that will be a huge issue for us. Since we had already doubled our budget for this TV, we weren't prepared to go an extra $300 for the comparable Sony, which fared slightly better for the blacks in reviews.

After a long conversation with our cable provider this afternoon, we'll also be upgrading our satellite cable and our DSL internet to fibre optics later this month. That should take care of the internet issues that I was complaining about earlier in this thread. We'll have five times the speed and 4 times the GB, for an extra $5/mth. :)

[Mr Peabody]

That's cool FA, LG is a good brand. Now that you said that about 4k, I'll be sure to look into it before upgrading. Did it come with 3D glasses? You might find yourselves having a blast :)

[blackraven]

Congrats on the 4K TV. I knew that once you saw a good 4K picture you would be hooked. They are spectacular and kind of unsettling at first due to how crisp and clear the pictures are. 4K will create more headaches for hollywood. 1080p already is causing the use of diffusion lenses to hide poor skin and wrinkles on actors. Even special effects can look cheesy with 1080p. With 4K it will be even worse.

Nature scenes however look fantastic though.

Smart TV's are still slow and cumbersome, even the good ones with the quad core processors.

[ForeverAutumn]

That's cool FA, LG is a good brand. Now that you said that about 4k, I'll be sure to look into it before upgrading. Did it come with 3D glasses? You might find yourselves having a blast :)

Yup. Two pairs of glasses.

The remote also includes a mic for voice commands. But that's another feature that I just don't see myself using. I don't even use Siri on my phone. Honestly, it just never occurs to me to use voice commands.

[Mr Peabody]

Yeah, voice command is one I don't understand unless maybe physically impaired, are we so lazy we can't move our fingers when the remote is in our hand, LOL. I am trying to use Siri for simple questions but sometimes it's just as quick to do your own search by the time you get her to understand :)

I may be Mr. Obvious, but to watch 3D your player has to be 3D as well as the disc, and your receiver as well if the video goes through that. I'm thinking this may make 4k adoption slow. Who wants to scrap their system to upgrade everything for 4k. Then I'm wondering what will happen since standard DVD is still being sold. How many hard disc formats can manufacturers to retailers support. Even now we are forced to buy these 3 disc versions of movies whether you need the other discs or not, now it will be like buying a box set, LOL.

[ForeverAutumn]

It's not really the move to 4K that excites me about this TV. We rarely use our blu ray player. It's the higher resolution and upscaling that we both felt made it worth the extra money. We were walking down an aisle of 50" TVs that were all showing the same video feed and there was a TV at the end whose picture just stopped me dead in my tracks. I called Hubby over, and we then realized that was the 4K TV. That was the first time we saw a 4K picture.

We realized that there was enough of a difference in the picture that we could actually walk around the store and point out the 4K pictures from 1080p with just a glance. We were sold.

I would not have paid full price for 4K, but the $500 savings put it close enough to our budget that we felt it was worth the upgrade. It was a question of buying old technology or buying into the new technology. Hopefully we didn't just buy a Beta player. ;)

We were early adopters with our first LCD TV, paying about $1200 (employee pricing) for a 42" at the time. And now we seem to be early adopters with the 4K. Apparently we like to overspend on TVs. :)

[blackraven]

My TV has voice command and it is cumbersome at best. It has trouble recognizing phrases and is slow. I think the voice recognition technology has a ways to go on TV's. We use Dragon voice recognition at work for chart dictations and while it is much better than previous versions it is still slower than using a Dictaphone and it makes mistakes which are some times very funny.

FA, enjoy the TV and don't look back!

[Feanor]

We went shopping tonight not really expecting to buy anything (Black Friday is only recently a thing here, and only to keep people from cross-border shopping), and fully expecting to look for a 1080p TV.

Well, all it took was one look at a 4K TV and we both knew that we couldn't live with 1080p. :)

After hitting four stores, we actually ended up buying a TV at the end of the night. A 49" LG 4K with 3D (that we'll probably never use). Here's the link (http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/lg-electronics-lg-49-4k-120hz-3d-ips-led-smart-tv-49ub8500-chrome-49ub8500/10292471.aspx?path=0908ac42517fc8fa2526245933ff61e 3en02) although we didn't buy it at Best Buy.

After reading a few reviews, the only real concern seems to be the black and greys in low lighting, but we're more sports people than home theatre people and we never watch TV in the dark, so I don't think that will be a huge issue for us. Since we had already doubled our budget for this TV, we weren't prepared to go an extra $300 for the comparable Sony, which fared slightly better for the blacks in reviews.

After a long conversation with our cable provider this afternoon, we'll also be upgrading our satellite cable and our DSL internet to fibre optics later this month. That should take care of the internet issues that I was complaining about earlier in this thread. We'll have five times the speed and 4 times the GB, for an extra $5/mth. :)

That's sweet. Less expensive than the Panasonic 50' 1080p plasma I bought four years ago. Who says there's no such thing as progress.

[ForeverAutumn]

Watching Toy Story on regular TV, not even Blu Ray, and the picture is spectacular!

[ForeverAutumn]

I tried to stream something from the TSN website (CDN version of ESPN) yesterday and found out that my new TV does not support Adobe Flash. This really sucks as one of the reasons that we bought a smart TV was so that I could stream sports from the internet. I can probably still do it by connecting my laptop and using the TV as a monitor (haven't tried yet), but it kind of defeats the purpose of the upgrade and it's annoying to have to take that extra step. It also means that I can't use my computer while I'm watching something.

After doing some research, it seems that LG has no plans to add Flash capability. So I'll have to live with it. I never even considered that I wouldn't be able to stream the content that I wanted to. It's not an insurmountable problem, just one that I feel shouldn't even be an issue condering what we paid for the TV.

Oh well. First world problem. :)

[blackraven]

You might want to look into a Blu Ray player that connects to the internet and supports adobe flash

Amazon.com: Samsung BD-F5900 3D Wi-Fi Blu-ray Disc Player (2013 Model): Electronics (http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-BD-F5900-Wi-Fi-Blu-ray-Player/dp/B00BFDHVAS/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top)