Just had a bit of a nightmare, spent £1300 on a nice new laptop and now my old 36" samsung tv has gone splat and it looks like I need a new one.
Price range is up to £500 ish.
Not looking for 3d, smart tv would be fine, not curved up to 50".
Thing is I am not in the loop at all with tv’s, the good news is getting rid of the whole desktop pc has made loads of room in the lounge so can go bigger but not really sure what, its so damn confusing with so many brands and choice.
This has been my problem looking for new TV’s. Pretty hard to find them now without some B.S. like 4K or curved screens or some other crazy 3D do-hickey making a 50 inch TV cost like 1000 bucks.
I recently picked up a 60" 1080p vizio for $700. Very highly rated, direct-lit, great picture. Supports adaptive refresh rate changes in Kodi to eliminate 3:2 pulldown. It costs a bit more now, but not too bad. The 50" model of that same TV is $609. No problems at all, it’s just a good cheap TV.
I don’t use the “smart” functionality, but it seemed to work OK when I tried it out. Suggest picking up a fireTV.
My experience with a “smart” Sharp Aquos TV (otherwise a great set) was that the apps were limited, non-upgradable, and performed poorly. Good thing they can be ignored without consequences. Better off with a Roku or Fire TV. Or the app functionality of a console.
Netflix and youtube are the same HTML5 clients used everywhere else, but yes they did run much slower. Smart TVs are bunk, just ignore the smart functionality. I don’t even have the network cable plugged in, and I never configured the wifi. Some of these manufacturers sneak advertisements in firmware updates, and recently it turns out that Samsung could potentially listen to everything you do. Creepy.
How old was the Samsung? If it was the old square shape then make sure when you get a new widescreen that the new tv is at least as tall an image. I’ve heard complaints from people who didn’t think about this and bought TVs that were bigger but gave the impression of being smaller since all the increase was in width.
My standard advice (without claiming to be an expert, but doing a lot of research whenever I buy a new TV), particularly in the £500 to £700 range, is to get the biggest flagship Samsung you can afford (and in the UK, probably buy it from Richer Sounds). They’ve consistently had the best bang-for-buck in that price range, audio aside (and presumably you have some external audio set-up anyway, as almost all TV speakers are crap).
I am hanging on till the end of the month where I may have more money.
I am having trouble convincing the wife we need a 48" up from 36" as well, I may just have to buy one and say oh no i didnt realise it would be this big.
I recently bought a Sony 40" which works and looks great. It also connects easily with my phone which is also a Sony, which is pretty fun. It has a ton of apss, but I use only two of them, Youtube and Netflix, and that works beautifully.
I suppose one consideration would be a PVR. I assume you alreaydy have a box of some kind, but if not, it would be worth allocating part of the budget to one.
I’ve got a 40" ‘dumb’ LED Samsung hanging over my desk for console gaming. These are nice sets, and 48" will serve you much better than 36" for a living-room TV.
No way! I bought the exact same set just under 2 months ago! I’m loving it, and so are the wife and kids. I do use the built in Netflix app regularly, and it’s easily as good as the one on the PS3 that I used to use, and far superior to the crappy Netflix app on the Apple TV.
My only complaint is that it took awhile before I was happy with the colours. The Computer default was pretty good for my OpenElec Kodi setup, and I tried some of the other calibrations that people have posted online, but I had to tweak a bit before I truly liked what I saw. Picture quality, however, with 720p or 1080p sources is amazing, right out of the box.
I see that Reemul is in the UK, and a cursory Google search shows that Vizio is either completely unavailable in there, or available in limited options (and high prices) from Amazon.co.uk. Sorry for suggesting a set you can’t get :(
I use a “smart” Blu Ray player (N 2.4), and it seems to work fine for my Netflix and Amazon Prime needs - no stuttering or anything like that on a 1080p screen. It updates the apps as they come out. Am I missing out on anything by not using a dedicated device like fireTV or something like that?
