The High-end TV Thread

There are a few TV threads, but interests/home layouts/budgets vary a lot, so I thought I’d make a dedicated thread to discuss some of the latest and greatest TVs – not the extreme high-end 100’ OLED types, but basically stuff that’s $1500-2000 up to the reasonable consumer OLED models. Lot of good TVs coming out this year, although not sure that any have rolled out yet. Is there a typical rollout period during the year?

One big news item - the current, amazingly beautiful OLED model from LG just had a price drop of $1000, so it’s now down to $2500 (after debuting at close to $6k) which is a great trend: http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/lg-drops-price-on-1080p-hd-oled-tv-to-2500-55ec9300/

Wirecutter’s current recommendation (http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-tv/) is the Sony X900B series, which is kinda crazy given its price, LCD display which is nice now but will be significantly surpassed by this year’s LCD, and large speakers which most purchasers of such an expensive TV wouldn’t use. But Wirecutter recently updated that TV page to say WAIT.

The price is great but the review on the same site mentions a huge caveat: distracting motion judder. However, the review says it’s worst with Blu-ray movies due to 3:2 pulldown which shouldn’t exist if you enable 1080p/24 transmission which according to the spec sheet, this TV does support. Is the review site really that clueless that they don’t enable 24 fps output on their Blu-ray player?

Mistakes like that seem really common online. You really need to stick with the better known sites. On those sites, it’s considered the best TV available, if price is no object.

Wirecutter:

The image is better—it’s more lifelike and “window-to-another-world” than you’ve ever seen on any technology.

My Samsung H6400 had atrocious judder from factory - until I turned all their bullshit image processing off. Most of that crap does more harm than good and any decent reviewer will disable it all from the get go and hopefully discuss in their review.

Note, this is still my third Sammy in 2 years, all replaced under warranty, so I have serious reservations about recommending it as a brand at this stage, despite the general raving about their image quality and value.

I have loved my Samsung 65" H6400 since I got it at the Future Shop VIP sale day before Black Friday. I have a 55" in my man cave, but the 65" in the living room has been a wonderful set. Admittedly, we don’t use the 3d all that often, but the TV and AV Receiver Onkyo NR-636 with Take Energy Classic 5/2/1 has been all I had hoped I would be. Using primarily an Amazon Fire TV with SPMC sideloaded and rooted for most streaming off of our NAS.

No regrets at all. Sure, I’d prefer the Sammy 75", but not at twice the cost. I’m pleased.

I noticed HDTV Test has a thorough review of the LG 55EC9300. As expected the Blu-ray playback has no judder when 24 frame mode is enabled; however, they unfortunately noticed an array of other issues. OLED black levels are phenomenal but LG doesn’t seem to have a good handle on display electronics. Personally I’ll hold off for now.

As a result, we give the LG 55EC9300 a Recommended rating through gritted teeth. Its multitude of problems left us considering the lower “Qualified Recommendation” but owed to its outstanding and unique contrast performance, its current uniqueness and its revolutionary price, it pulls itself into “Recommended” territory.

Awesome. I love HDTV threads like this one. I’m probably not going to be in the market for a long while, but I get the same buzz just reading about them like some get about cars or boats or whatever. It just about killed me not to be able to take advantage of the last generation of plasma, so I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next.

What’s the story on Quantum Dot? Better or worse than OLED?

Probably not better, but a significant improvement for LCDs, and likely more affordable and more competition.

That Wirecutter model from Sony looked amazing in real life. Better than the LG imo.

Oh really. On what technological basis do you make this assessment?

Just based upon CES coverage, Spock. Looking forward to the indepth reviews when available.

As a long-time plasma TV fan, I do love the contrast levels of OLED, but right now I have too many concerns about the tech – I don’t really trust LG as a manufacturer, although they (like Samsung before them) have definitely been evolving in the right direction, and the fact that nobody else is similarly focusing on the tech is disconcerting, and there are still question marks concerning longevity. So quantum dot and other LCD improvements, and the fact that the tech is just overwhelmingly dominant right now and will likely remain the future indefinitely, seem to make it a safer choice.

But if OLED prices continue to drop, it seems more and more worth the risk. Plus who doesn’t need more than 1 TV, heh (I still have a now quaint Sony Wega CRT in my home office as a secondary TV, so I don’t exactly pull the trigger lightly, lol).

For this year’s 4k model the same site has indicated those issues are fixed and it’s best in class TV: LG 55EG960V/ 55EG9600 4K OLED TV Review Still super-pricey ($8k here for the 65" and $4500 for the 55") and doesnt support HDR (the 9500 models do, and they’re flatscreen which might be preferable, but not available anywhere in Canada yet that I can find).

I finally upgraded from my ancient TV to a probably-too-big-I-might-actually-return-this-thing 60" Samsung 4K set and… my god, I can now see every single freaking compression artifact clear as day. Every banded gradient, every DCT block, every pixel of edge noise. When the picture is good, it’s really good, but when it’s bad, I wish I was back in low-res blurry make-believe land.

Is this just the price of doing business in HDTV-land?

Depends. How close are you sitting to the 60" screen?

That’s the problem we had switching from SD to HD too. That’s why I’m nervous about switching to 4K. When doing SD to HD switch, the first TV my brother bought was fine for HD content, but SD content looked horrible on it. So we returned it. Got a Sharp Aqous instead, where the SD content scaling made it look good, which was more important at that time than the HD content looking good. We’re in a similar time now. It’s way more important that HD and SD content look good on a 4K TV than the actual 4K content, which of course will look good. That part is a no-brainer. The real test should be, how good will my old DVDs look?

get a 120" projection unit for ~$500, pretend your eyes are happy with 1080P (they probably are), and wait a couple of years until huge 4k screens are actually worth the money or other technology (let’s assume that there’s something new around every corner) catches your bleeding eyes.

Very good point. We’re thinking (again) of upgrading from our rather long in the tooth 40" Bravia XBR to, well, something in the 50-55" range. There are a lot of affordable and well-reviewed 4k TVs out there, but there are a lot of really affordable HD LED TVs that aren’t 4k as well. We watch HD stuff and some SD (Game Show Network, of all things, is still totally SD it seems), and both stream and get DVDs from Netflix. I’d hate to have a TV that was only good for the teensy amount of 4k content we’d actually be interested in.

Until there is enough 4k content, why bother? We are a few years away from that, so a better 1080 screen for your money is better value, IMO.

Mind you, the tech is being forced upon us, so YMMV as to as to overall picture quality. It could well be that the cost of the panel itself is rather moot at this point already, in comparison to supporting electronics and software.

Closer than I should be (about 5 feet), but I’ll be rearranging my living room soon to put it at a more appropriate distance.

I didn’t even want a 4K model, but manufacturers have apparently decided that 1080p is now old and busted, so for the best features and build quality, 4K is rapidly becoming the only option. Doesn’t help that I’d originally set my sights on Samsung’s highest-end HD model, the J6300, yet for some insane reason all the stores around here only stock, if anything, the lower-quality J6200.