A question for 4K TV owners

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TheKrell said:
For what it's worth, many years ago I bought an HP scanner from Costco for $400. Imagine my surprise when, after a week or thereabouts, I got a mailer stating that it was on sale for $60 less. I was able to take my receipt to customer service and they agreed to take it back (virtually) and then sell it to me again at the lower price. Worth a shot!
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In my case it was Vizio TV that went on sale for $600 less 3 weeks after purchase. A simple phone call brought $650, including tax, back into the account.
 
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Remember, the TV manufacturers also make money by tracking and reporting your viewing habits. Cuts the price to us. And you can block reporting at your router.
 
navychop said:
Remember, the TV manufacturers also make money by tracking and reporting your viewing habits. Cuts the price to us. And you can block reporting at your router.
Click to expand...

Well, my old school TV's have no Internet, so that is impossible. But my Roku TV's probably do, and I'm guessing all my FireTV Sticks do as well. How do you block this traffic w/o preventing these streamers from working?
 
This is worth mentioning. For the last 2 weeks I've been watching 4k and hdr demos on YouTube via the Roku Youtube app getting what I thought was true 4k. It was not. I needed to check the quality of service as it is set to Auto. It turned out the best I was getting was 1440p. The Roku reported buffering problems at any higher rate.

It could have been my router. But first I decided to up my bitrate from 25mb to 50mp at my isp. This did the trick and I don't have to upgrade my router yet.

Sent from my SM-G965U1 using Tapatalk
 
navychop said:
I used to be an OLED “BELIEVER.”

Read everything I could find. LG’s OLED system, basically, once the kool-aid wears off, is a kludge. Samsung has the “purer” approach. Too bad they can’t really get it working.

Other technologies have marched on. OLED is better for visual quality, WHEN NEW. It still has something of an aging problem. YES, it does. That great, expensive TV simply won’t keep looking great. 5-10 years down the road, will you be as happy with it as the day you bought it?

I have a 16 year old JVC RPTV that I am still happy with. Granted, it is little used today. But I also have flat HDTVs well over 10 years old that I am still quite happy with. No picture deterioration.

When I bought my last TV, I had to hold myself in check. Great looking OLED sets were available. REALLY wanted that. But the cost was WAY more. Sorry, I don’t remember how much. OLED contrast was soooo good! Blacks were soooo black! Colors POPPED (mostly due to deep blacks, IMHO, but there is a better color gamut with OLED). But from my reading, I KNEW the “blues ( bit of a story how they make blue )” would start to go. And the built in automatic color adjustments for that had limited effect, and would have other adverse effects (possible brightness reduction, etc). And the OLED sets quite frankly aren’t meant for sunny rooms. My intended location will have some sun, and further darkening it just wasn’t practical. I just couldn’t justify the extra money for a set I knew I would not be happy with years down the road. And maybe not today, in a sunny room

Sure, OLED is great. If you can spare the money, and don’t mind replacing it in five or so years, by all means go for it. But go with open eyes.

If I had to do it over, I’d buy the Sony again, although maybe in the 75” size.

Maybe OLET will enter the market. Theoretically cheaper to manufacture.
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I'll take the Sony OLED every day of the week ....
Each persons set up is different, you have Light to deal with .... your better going the other route.

My 65" Sony A8 has been Incredible for picture and has the built in speakers in the screen, makes a Much better audio performance than most other TVs, keeping in mind, you can't do a whole lot with sound with a less than 1/4 thickness of a lot of these TV's ...
Sound bars are good and getting better, but a HT set up is what I use when I want to watch a movie or stream stuff, or watching a game.
 
HobbyTalk said:
Just to note. All 4K TVs upscale lower resolution signals to 4K. Some just do it better then others. If it didn't upscale the lower rez signal would take up just a fraction of the screen. That is nothing new, even HD TVs with 1080 displays would upscale 720 signals.
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True ....
That is where the Processors come to work, the better the processor the bettor the picture ...
Sony is the King when it comes to Processors ... the higher end Sonys that is. (900's and up thru the A , Z and Master series).
You'll pay for them, but they will look phenomenal and as far as lasting, looking good so far.
 
sktrus said:
Thanks to all who took their time to share their opinions. I will probably compare tvs at Costco ( they give u extra protection if u use their Visa card, and that is unbeatable). although I am not on super tight budget, I can’t justify spending several thousand dollars for a tv.( pls don’t get me wrong. This is not a criticism at all to big spenders.) So, the big kahuna tv will be in my finished basement with plenty windows, and some afternoon sunlight. I am already using Vizio brand sound bar with 2 Bluetooth rear speakers. obviously tv speakers will be muted. I hardly stream from Amazon since my Internet is provided from a cell phone tower. ( Living in sticks, no problem streaming, but I have a data cap, 250 GB from AT&T. ) I know that 4K programming from Dish is currently
very limited. I will keep checking Costco’s web site and choose a model among LG, Samsung and Sony.
Click to expand...
Sony is very limited at Costco, however they have got a few pretty good sets in there ... I think the 900 series (90 on thier tickets) is around $1350 ...
if you can go that route, you'll be very happy.
 
bookworm370 said:
You are correct on the model numbers, to hit a reasonable margin and 'lower' the sale price TV maufacturers make specialized bulk TV and AV sets for them. They look almost identical but when you check the specs you might find the refresh rate may not be as fast. Or the core CPU they used is a slower chip, or skimped on speakers quality. The most I've noticed is in the input catagory.

One time I had 2 sets that looked exactly the same, one from Best Buy Magnolia and one from Costco. When I looked, the one at Costco had one less HDMI input and did not have fiber audio output on the user facing side. I gave up on looking deeper into the specs. And all that was different from what looked to be the same TV on the front display card, was the reordering of the last 4 characters.
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Yup, thats how they get you, not only Costco, but its more by the brand ... they all have a Lower level as well as a higher level ...
I know the Sony lines .... they go 5000, 6000, on up to the 9000 and then the OLED's and on up , Z and Master.
Also, the Sony and the Samsung will tell you the Year made in the model number as well ... thats another way Costco and others work, they may have last years model that your buying ... does it really matter, probably not, depends on how picky you are about your TV ... typically they lower levels also have less features, maybe only 2 HDMI's instead of 3 or 4, or no Optical audio output ... just have to look at what you need and how good you want.
 
Jimbo said:
I'll take the Sony OLED every day of the week ....
Each persons set up is different, you have Light to deal with .... your better going the other route.

My 65" Sony A8 has been Incredible for picture and has the built in speakers in the screen, makes a Much better audio performance than most other TVs, keeping in mind, you can't do a whole lot with sound with a less than 1/4 thickness of a lot of these TV's ...
Click to expand...

When I got my 77 XBR Master series OLED, it was eye popping, considering that it was replacing a Samsung Plasma which was no slouch at all. Plasma went upstairs to the bedroom, and all the TV's in the house did a round robin.

I came with a free Geek Squad calibration after the burn in period. They recommend 100 panel on hours for the period but I waited until 250 when I called them and had a little over 300 when they showed up. They had ton's of very sophisticated equipment that injected their own signal right into the TV, so no calibration from a DISH or Blu-Ray.

I thought the previous picture was the best I ever saw, he setup new settings the custom area. We switched between the out of the box settings that I was using and used to, to the calibrated settings on both DISH and also 4K Blu-Ray. I had to sit down, least I fell over in amazement! I just got a brand new TV 1 month after buying a brand new TV!

He looked at all the light levels in the room, asked a series of questions like, if we normally watched TV with the shades drawn, which family room lights normally on and if we normally want to see the best picture during the day or evening. Now that's precise.

He calibrated it to evening viewing with our background Family room lights. This was during the day, that night when we put on the Aqua-man 4K Blu-Ray, you couldn't tell where the TV picture started or ended. I walked up looked closely. Couldn't even see the pixels much less any artifacts!

If you get a new TV or even have a current TV and haven't had it professionally calibrated, throw those home DVD calibration discs away as they use multiple light can color analyzers that they hang from the top of the TV to certain parts. At the end, he left me with a calibration report on what the curves were like before and after plus all the numbers in case I accidentally mess them up.

As a feebee bonus, he also calibrated the 7 year old 65 inch Samsung Plasma.
Same thing. NEW TV!
I made some sandwiches for him, gave him lots of cokes and forced a tip on him for being so nice in doing that. They are not allowed to accept but I stuff it into his pocket. He didn't have to do that. It took twice the allocated time.

Very professional.
 
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bookworm370 said:
When I got my 77 XBR Master series OLED, it was eye popping, considering that it was replacing a Samsung Plasma which was no slouch at all. Plasma went upstairs to the bedroom, and all the TV's in the house did a round robin.

I came with a free Geek Squad calibration after the burn in period. They recommend 100 panel on hours for the period but I waited until 250 when I called them and had a little over 300 when they showed up. They had ton's of very sophisticated equipment that injected their own signal right into the TV, so no calibration from a DISH or Blu-Ray.

I thought the previous picture was the best I ever saw, he setup new settings the custom area. We switched between the out of the box settings that I was using and used to, to the calibrated settings on both DISH and also 4K Blu-Ray. I had to sit down, least I fell over in amazement! I just got a brand new TV 1 month after buying a brand new TV!

He looked at all the light levels in the room, asked a series of questions like, if we normally watched TV with the shades drawn, which family room lights normally on and if we normally want to see the best picture during the day or evening. Now that's precise.

He calibrated it to evening viewing with our background Family room lights. This was during the day, that night when we put on the Aqua-man 4K Blu-Ray, you couldn't tell where the TV picture started or ended. I walked up looked closely. Couldn't even see the pixels much less any artifacts!

If you get a new TV or even have a current TV and haven't had it professionally calibrated, throw those home DVD calibration discs away as they use multiple light can color analyzers that they hang from the top of the TV to certain parts. At the end, he left me with a calibration report on what the curves were like before and after plus all the numbers in case I accidentally mess them up.

As a feebee bonus, he also calibrated the 7 year old 65 inch Samsung Plasma.
Same thing. NEW TV!
I made some sandwiches for him, gave him lots of cokes and forced a tip on him for being so nice in doing that. They are not allowed to accept but I stuff it into his pocket. He didn't have to do that. It took twice the allocated time.

Very professional.
Click to expand...
We have similar tastes in TV's.
I went from my Pioneer Elite TV's (had a 60 and 2 42" at one time) the 42's are in the bedrooms, sold my still looking great 60" to a friend, because I wanted to get back into the Sony line ups, OLED specifically ... Sonys were great years ago, then dropped off when they were making like 7 levels of each tv, not concentrating on thier top of the line stuff ... (thats when you started seeing the XBR line in Best Buys) they eventually come to thier senses and are back to making TOL TV's again.
 
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Jimbo said:
We have similar tastes in TV's.
I went from my Pioneer Elite TV's (had a 60 and 2 42" at one time) the 42's are in the bedrooms, sold my still looking great 60" to a friend, because I wanted to get back into the Sony line ups, OLED specifically ... Sonys were great years ago, then dropped off when they were making like 7 levels of each tv, not concentrating on thier top of the line stuff ... (thats when you started seeing the XBR line in Best Buys) they eventually come to thier senses and are back to making TOL TV's again.
Click to expand...

I agree, the Sony Trinitron TV's and monitors were the best you could buy. They used 3 electron beams (one for each phosphor) instead of a single scanning one. I had the Sony Trinitron component TV series where the monitor was separate from from tuner. Bleeding edge even in those days. Nothing could touch them. They were the gold series in TV studio production monitors. But then they lost their way after the conversion to LCD. Now with oLED they have come back strong.
 
sktrus said:
wow. bestbuy is selling 70' 4k Hisense for $500. Yes, it is a budget tv. Tempting though!;)

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hisens...-uhd-smart-android-tv/6404002.p?skuId=6404002
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Some of the best advice I've see in the past few weeks is, in spite of all the arguing about brand loyalty, when you go to the store today most of the TVs looks about the same!

I'd make sure the menus do what you want as far as app availability. If you use Roku or other external service this isnt as much of an issue.

Sent from my SM-G965U1 using Tapatalk
 
My dad just purchased a new LG CX model OLED (55") from a local store for $1400. I have a Panny 65VT60 plasma myself. The blacks are to die for on my dads new TV but the menu system sucks, stuff is nested and not very intuitive-especially compared to my Panasonic. Took me a while to find all the picture related menus and turn off all the extraneous processing/features. Definitely menu system is something to think about. You don't use it often but you have to be able to find what you want to adjust.
 
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I guess expectations and wishes r all different. All I care is picture quality and life expectancy. The sound is irrelevant since I love a sound bar. And all the apps r useless to me since I live in the sticks. Unless Elon Musk's future satellite service will solve this rural area broadband issue.
 

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