Buying a TV

flyingcheesehead

flyingcheesehead

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Hard to keep up with the latest in TV tech these days! What's out there, and what should I be looking for? What's the best kind of place to buy, or should I just do it online?

The stickers in the stores tend to show what technology is in use, the refresh rate, the resolution, and sometimes the contrast ratio.

Now that I think about it... I've never bought a TV before. And FWIW, this one is likely to be used mostly for watching movies/TV shows through an AppleTV (iTunes, NetFlix, etc) so I mainly am interested in good picture quality.

Thanks for any insights and/or recommendations!
 
I walked through the TV department of a super center last week. They all look the same now. Flat screen, wall mount, black frame.

We have two Samsungs and they are great.
 
HD can be 720P, 1080I or 1080P. If it is not a small bedroom TV or something (under 32"), do not get 720P. The I and the P differentiate interlaced or progressive. Progressive is better, but not all inputs will support it, but still, it future proofs you. There are a host of other features, like 3D and Internet enabled, that may not make a difference to you. I strongly believe bigger is better. Get the biggest size you can tolerate for the room.
 
The other major differences are in backlight and screen tech. LCD is probably fine for the vast majority of folks. Most are using LED backlight now. 1080p, good contrast ratio (if you're doing movies, you want black to be really black), and LCD with LED backlight and you're probably good to go.

Me, I'm cheap and usually just go find out whatever Costco is selling at the time. They're usually middle-low-end price-wise, and middle-high end quality... nothing stelar, nothing bad. Our last TV purchase was a Vizio from Costco a looooong time ago. It's still working fine. Costco has a flawless return policy if you don't like it... you just bring it back.
 
The quality of the line doubler can make a difference too, for non-HD content. It can make it look like edges are wavy (crawling), especially in motion.
 
I can highly recommend the LED backlit flat-screens. Ours is one of the first generation of Samsungs, 55" less than 1.5" thick and gorgeous. 120 Hz refresh rate.

IF you use something like Netflix and IF the TV has that, great. But crap like Facebook and the rest? Ours will do weather and a few other trivial little things. We have NEVER used any of that. Zero value added. We have a Blu-Ray player that does Netflix so the TV doesn't need to. If you're using an Apple TV, get what looks good and has a couple or a few HDMI inputs to spare. And yes, get the biggest screen you can fit in the room. :)
 
Everything else has been covered. I'm a fan of Samsung.
 
I still have my high def CRT 34" widescreen TV, circa 2002.

I've been tempted by some of the larger TVs and almost bought a 46" TV last year.

I tended to focus on the LCD (now LED) TVs with a maximum refresh rate. As I understand it, 1080p with a high refresh (now upto 240Hz) and very low response times can yield better pictures for rapidly moving video (e.g., hockey or football). The cheaper TVs may not be quite as good.

Samsung looked good (very good) but Sony was the one I would have picked.
 
I haven't looked at what's available, but in addition to what others have said, two things I will be looking for when I eventually shop for a TV will be natural-looking color rendition on flesh tones (don't ever buy a TV based on the way it looks on cartoons!), and the features that it has for correcting aspect ratio.

The aspect ratio problem is a result of the fact that with the introduction of HDTV, they changed the ratio of width to height from 4:3 to 16:9. When an HDTV displays program material that was originally made in 4:3 format, there are choices about how to display it. For example:

1. The 4:3 image may be displayed in its original aspect ratio, leaving black bars (unused areas) on the left and right side of the screen.

2. The 4:3 picture may be stretched horizontally so that it fills the 16:9 screen.

I don't like option 2 because it distorts the shapes of objects; for example, wheels will look oval instead of circular. Normal people with look short and fat. However, some viewers don't mind the stretching, and would rather have the picture fill the entire screen, so they prefer option 2.

Other modes, which don't make any sense to me, but they happen on some stations:

3. You may sometimes see a picture that doesn't fill the screen in ANY dimension.

4. I have seen 16:9 programs squashed horizontally into 4:3 format, so that you get the black bars on the sides, and normal people look tall and thin.

Different TV stations handle it differently, so I consider it important for the remote control to have a convenient method of changing the aspect ratio. The minimum list of modes I would hope to find are similar to ones that I have on an HDTV tuner that I currently use, as follows:

Normal - Displays whatever aspect ratio the TV station is sending.

Stretch - Stretches the picture horizontally, as in #2 above. This also is useful for correcting #4.

Zoom - expands the picture in all dimensions, which corrects #3.

The feature needs to be easy to use, so that channel flipping won't be too much of a pain.

Now what they actually have out there, I don't know.
 
Bob Noel said:
I still have my high def CRT 34" widescreen TV, circa 2002.

I've been tempted by some of the larger TVs and almost bought a 46" TV last year.

I tended to focus on the LCD (now LED) TVs with a maximum refresh rate. As I understand it, 1080p with a high refresh (now upto 240Hz) and very low response times can yield better pictures for rapidly moving video (e.g., hockey or football). The cheaper TVs may not be quite as good.

Samsung looked good (very good) but Sony was the one I would have picked.
Click to expand...

Yes, the higher refresh rates seem to be a new thing. I tried to see a difference and couldn't. It is supposed to make a difference in high motion video. You seem to pay a lot more for it. There are several good brands out there. You pay more for Sony, but they are great. Panasonic is decent, Hitachi has a great line doubler. Go out and look at them. If you are mostly watching sitcoms and football, you may not care to pay more for some of the high end stuff. If you watch a lot of movies, you probably want to sink some money into the audio, as well.
 
The March, 2012, page 34, issue of Consumer Reports has a thorough review of LCD and Plasma TVs. You may be able to read this at your local library if you don't have a friend that can loan you the issue. The article provides a lot of good information about the pros and cons of various sizes and technologies. There are significant differences in the products available.
 
We have a 20+ year old RCA rear projection TV, complete with wood grain finish. I bought it for $100 6 years ago.

It's the most awesome TV ever. :D
 
Ted DuPuis said:
We have a 20+ year old RCA rear projection TV, complete with wood grain finish. I bought it for $100 6 years ago.

It's the most awesome TV ever, and I have installed it in the Aztec so the dogs can watch Lassie. They think it's great too. :D
Click to expand...

FTFY:lol:
 
I bought a $600 Panasonic plasma for the bedroom and a $360 Toshiba LCD for the living room, both 42". The quality difference is barely detectable. The plasma has a very, very nice picture, but the cheap Toshiba is almost as good and much brighter. Also keep in mind that a 42" will look small in the store, but huge in a small bedroom.

Either way, you'll want to budget some money for a decent set of speakers and a multimedia receiver/amp. The TV speakers are terrible.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
And FWIW, this one is likely to be used mostly for watching movies/TV shows through an AppleTV (iTunes, NetFlix, etc) so I mainly am interested in good picture quality.
Click to expand...

That bolded part does not compute with streaming video. ;) At least not yet.

denverpilot said:
The other major differences are in backlight and screen tech. LCD is probably fine for the vast majority of folks. Most are using LED backlight now. 1080p, good contrast ratio (if you're doing movies, you want black to be really black), and LCD with LED backlight and you're probably good to go.
Click to expand...

Plasma vs. LCD is one of the biggest decisions to make, in how they render true blacks as Nate says. Movie snobs like the plasmas, because black is "off" while the backlight can bleed around a dark pixel of an LCD, so it is not truly black. Some will choose one or the other if it's going in bright, sunlit rooms, too.

kgruber said:
Buy your HDMI cords on eBay. Huge scam at retail stores.
Click to expand...

I like www.monoprice.com

Palmpilot said:
I haven't looked at what's available, but in addition to what others have said, two things I will be looking for when I eventually shop for a TV will be natural-looking color rendition on flesh tones (don't ever buy a TV based on the way it looks on cartoons!)
Click to expand...

And if you go to the store, you will never tell this from how they have the TVs cranked up. But don't worry, for just about any TV, you can mosey on over to AVS Forum and find out calibrated settings.

Panasonic supposedly has the best plasma (and I think they might be the only ones left making them), but I'm a big Samsung fan here. Their LED backlit LCD TVs are impossibly thin!
 
wabower said:
FTFY:lol:
Click to expand...

Unfortunately it won't fit in the Aztec. The in-flight entertainment for them is sniffing the butts of their neighbors, which seems to provide suitable entertainment for them. ;)
 
And probably preferable to some of the crew.:rofl:

Ted DuPuis said:
Unfortunately it won't fit in the Aztec. The in-flight entertainment for them is sniffing the butts of their neighbors, which seems to provide suitable entertainment for them. ;)
Click to expand...
 
rpadula said:
That bolded part does not compute with streaming video. ;) At least not yet.
Click to expand...

I dunno, the AppleTV on a Visio LCD TV provides very good picture quality IME, for both streaming Netflix as well as iTunes content. YouTube, OTOH, leaves something to be desired. ;)
 
Kent, locally you may want to look at Flanners. They have higher end stuff, but the prices weren't much more than Best Buy, where I would never buy a TV.
 
Buy the largest screen you can afford. High Definition is best appreciated on large screens. I have a 70" Sharp and I am very happy with it. I also have a Sony home theater surround sound and boy what a difference. You should see and hear Avatar on this.

José
 
denverpilot said:
The other major differences are in backlight and screen tech. LCD is probably fine for the vast majority of folks. Most are using LED backlight now. 1080p, good contrast ratio (if you're doing movies, you want black to be really black), and LCD with LED backlight and you're probably good to go.

Me, I'm cheap and usually just go find out whatever Costco is selling at the time. They're usually middle-low-end price-wise, and middle-high end quality... nothing stelar, nothing bad. Our last TV purchase was a Vizio from Costco a looooong time ago. It's still working fine. Costco has a flawless return policy if you don't like it... you just bring it back.
Click to expand...

FWIW I recently picked up a Vizio 3d tv. Priced at many sources, the highest by far was....


Costco, more that twice what I paid at Vizio.com:yikes:
 
Yeah... I figure out what I want, then shop around for it. Costco, Sam's, Best Buy, local places, Newegg. The local place usually wins out on price, believe it or not.
 
DaleB said:
Yeah... I figure out what I want, then shop around for it. Costco, Sam's, Best Buy, local places, Newegg. The local place usually wins out on price, believe it or not.
Click to expand...

That's what I did, figured the tv I wanted, then shopped around. $1000 give or take 50 everywhere but Costco, Walmart and Vizio. Costco wanted $1950, while Walmart and Vizio were asking $850, Vizio included two extra pairs of glasses and shipped for free with no tax.
 
Sounds like Vizio used Costco to get their brand recognized and then cut them out as the middleman by charging less direct. It's been quite a while since we bought this TV.

Kent, the AppleTV stuff is highly compressed even if it is "1080p" on the third version of ATV. (Only 720p on my version, up converted to 1080p.)

If you compare a BluRay player version of a movie to an ATV streamed movie you will see a difference side by side.

Personally I don't get too wrapped around the axel over it, but purists will. You'll see macro blocks in fast action if you're looking hard for it. I grew up with one B&W 11" and later a 13" color. I programmed computers in 32 character glory by the light of that 13" Emerson. The family TV was something around 19"?

This modern stuff looks so good, even the cheap stuff, I just enjoy it. Haha.

Since you're a geek. (Hey, I've met you.) Don't forget to look for lots of inputs on your TV. Some lower end ones are chintzy in this regard.

Mine not only has HDMI, but it also has a VGA port amongst various other options on the back. I think there's eight inputs. Nice for hooking up laptops for various purposes. Cameras, etc.

Sure you can use HDMI for that too, but... you need adapters.

Someone mentioned calibration. Do it. Get the calibration DVD/BluRay and get the settings right. It really adds to how good these TVs look.

And monoprice.com for cables is great.

(Also a great place to get any type of cable really. My MacBook Pro mini-DVI cable to DVI to use a nice HP monitor at work was $5 shipped to my door.)
 
Oh, speaking of compressed. CATV and Satellite are also significantly compressed vs OTA live. Some CATV and satellite vendors are as low as 4Mb/s some of their "HD quality" channels. Nasty.

They cheat a bit by using higher bandwidth on popular channels and lower on less popular. Some upstream content providers (Discovery for example) don't allow heavy compression by contract.

If you watch local sports, (your Packers) throw up an outdoor antenna or if you're lucky enough to be close to your broadcast towers, good old rabbit ears and a UHF loop.

Hockey is a great example. It looks significantly different OTA vs through one of the regional channels on a satellite provider. Hard to describe, but you'll see little cracks in the ice whereas that same area will be a washed out white patch with compression.

There's also some calculators for room size and viewing distance. All us males think bigger is always better, but sitting a few feet from a 60" monster means you'll be turning your head to follow fast action which isn't the best viewing experience for most content.
 
denverpilot said:
There's also some calculators for room size and viewing distance. All us males think bigger is always better, but sitting a few feet from a 60" monster means you'll be turning your head to follow fast action which isn't the best viewing experience for most content.
Click to expand...

wrt screen size, note that a 42" 1080p screen will have the same number of pixels as the 80" monster 1080p screen. So a bigger screen means you need to sit back from the screen lest you see the individual pixels.
 
denverpilot said:
Kent, the AppleTV stuff is highly compressed even if it is "1080p" on the third version of ATV. (Only 720p on my version, up converted to 1080p.)
Click to expand...

It's not noticeable to me though... I'm not going to specifically go looking for compression artifacts, I'm just going to enjoy the show, and while watching in that mode I've never seen any lack of quality on the AppleTV.

If you compare a BluRay player version of a movie to an ATV streamed movie you will see a difference side by side.
Click to expand...

I have no desire to buy yet another player and have to collect everything in yet another physical medium that the MPAA won't let me copy to the next thing when it comes along.

For content that I want, first I'll look for it on iTunes or Netflix. Second, I'll look for it for free on the Internet. A distant third is to buy the overly-locked-down crap that they want us to buy (and then buy again in a few years the next time they come out with a new format, etc.) It's a sad fact that these days, they actually penalize you for trying to be legal and to buy their stuff.

Since you're a geek. (Hey, I've met you.) Don't forget to look for lots of inputs on your TV. Some lower end ones are chintzy in this regard.
Click to expand...

Yup. Looking for at least two HDMI, two component, and a VGA. Probably at least one extra of each, since I tend to have a lot of "stuff." ;)

Someone mentioned calibration. Do it. Get the calibration DVD/BluRay and get the settings right. It really adds to how good these TVs look.
Click to expand...

Where do I find a calibration DVD? Is that something supplied by the manufacturer, or is there a generic one? Would stores have this?
 
denverpilot said:
Oh, speaking of compressed. CATV and Satellite are also significantly compressed vs OTA live. Some CATV and satellite vendors are as low as 4Mb/s some of their "HD quality" channels. Nasty.
Click to expand...

Not going to do cable or satellite. The prices are absolutely ridiculous unless you're spending several hours a day watching TV, which I don't. I'm going to use this maybe 2-3 times per week for cuddling on the couch with my girlfriend and watching an episode of Big Bang Theory, Firefly, Flying Wild Alaska, Pan Am, etc. which I have on iTunes. Anything I want to watch that's on cable is available via iTunes or Netflix or online for free, and I simply don't watch enough to ever make cable worthwhile. All I'm going to miss is the Packer games that are only on cable, and if I want to watch 'em that bad I'll just go to a sports bar or something.

There's also some calculators for room size and viewing distance. All us males think bigger is always better, but sitting a few feet from a 60" monster means you'll be turning your head to follow fast action which isn't the best viewing experience for most content.
Click to expand...

The living room is pretty much 9 feet from the eyes sitting on the couch to the wall where the TV will be. I haven't found a "calculator" but I did find a grid that seemed to indicate anything from 40" on up would work. Based on the size/price curve, I think I'm going to go with a 46" one. I'm not gonna blow four figures on this thing. :no:
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Where do I find a calibration DVD? Is that something supplied by the manufacturer, or is there a generic one? Would stores have this?
Click to expand...

Don't bother. Just go here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/) and look for the Plasma or LCD TV sections, and search for the model # of whatever you end up buying. There are plenty of people who will have already done it. Copy their settings.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
It's not noticeable to me though... I'm not going to specifically go looking for compression artifacts, I'm just going to enjoy the show, and while watching in that mode I've never seen any lack of quality on the AppleTV.
Click to expand...

BTW, Kent, which version of the AppleTV do you have? 2 or 3? Since most TV's are now 1080, it might be worth going to gen 3 for another $100 smackers. If you have a gen 2, sell it to someone stuck on a 720 TV.

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/03/09...own-file-sizes-on-1080p-itunes-store-content/
 
Eye level or slightly above. Don't go hanging it real high, like over a fireplace kind of high all the "Cribs" have. Very uncomfortable to watch.

Get as many HDMI ports as you can, just in case you want to add games, satellite, blue-ray and stuff that that hasn't been invented yet. Wii tennis is pretty cool on the big screen.

Wal-Mart has publicly stated they want to be the biggest volume seller of HDTV, and they price accordingly, brick and mortar and online. I got a 46" Visio a couple of years ago from them and have been very happy with it. Invariably, when I put in a blu-ray, I say "I just can't believe that picture". Wife is getting sick of hearing it, but it's true.

Even "over the air" HD is 780p. Unbelievably clear for sports. Watching a hockey game, you can actually see the puck!
 
rpadula said:
BTW, Kent, which version of the AppleTV do you have? 2 or 3? Since most TV's are now 1080, it might be worth going to gen 3 for another $100 smackers. If you have a gen 2, sell it to someone stuck on a 720 TV.

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/03/09...own-file-sizes-on-1080p-itunes-store-content/
Click to expand...

I've been watching an AppleTV 2 on a Vizio TV belonging to one of my roommates. I'm going to buy myself an AppleTV 3 to go with this TV, which is gonna live at my girlfriend's so that we don't have to watch stuff on my laptop any more... She's got an old CRT analog TV and no converter box, so it's only good for Wii and DVD's right now.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Not going to do cable or satellite. The prices are absolutely ridiculous unless you're spending several hours a day watching TV, which I don't. I'm going to use this maybe 2-3 times per week for cuddling on the couch with my girlfriend and watching an episode of Big Bang Theory, Firefly, Flying Wild Alaska, Pan Am, etc. which I have on iTunes. Anything I want to watch that's on cable is available via iTunes or Netflix or online for free, and I simply don't watch enough to ever make cable worthwhile. All I'm going to miss is the Packer games that are only on cable, and if I want to watch 'em that bad I'll just go to a sports bar or something.



The living room is pretty much 9 feet from the eyes sitting on the couch to the wall where the TV will be. I haven't found a "calculator" but I did find a grid that seemed to indicate anything from 40" on up would work. Based on the size/price curve, I think I'm going to go with a 46" one. I'm not gonna blow four figures on this thing. :no:
Click to expand...

Pilots don't cuddle.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
Even "over the air" HD is 780p. Unbelievably clear for sports. Watching a hockey game, you can actually see the puck!
Click to expand...

Actually different networks are using different standards and all are messing around with sub-channels and "robbing" a little bandwidth here and there out of the "HD" main broadcast channel. CBS, NBC, and PBS are 1080i@60fps. ABC and Fox are 720p@60.

http://usjvc.com/blog/?p=263

And one guy's prediction is that everyone will drop back to 720p@60fps as the OTA standard due to the math of wanting to run the additional bandwidth for sub-channels or other data services, and only Fiber to the Curb will ever offer 1080p "broadcast" content by 2020.

http://www.coax.tv/EXEC_NAB2011.pdf

Figuring out what "HD" truly means gets even stranger when you find that most content isn't shot at 60fps.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
Even "over the air" HD is 780p. Unbelievably clear for sports. Watching a hockey game, you can actually see the puck!
Click to expand...

Some stations transmit 1080i.
 
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I do not have cable, satellite or internet TV. I just have my 70" TV connected to the attic antenna. I get 47 channels over the air here at Fort Lauderdale which is plenty for me. All the channels looks crystal clear with no problem when it rains. No need for converters on every room. Just connect the TV antenna connector to the wall connector.

José
 
kgruber said:
Buy your HDMI cords on eBay. Huge scam at retail stores.
Click to expand...
There's a local supplier in my area that has good deals on all sorts of cables:

http://www.mycablemart.com

When buying a LED backlit TV you should know that there are two different technologies available and many retailers don't understand the difference or even try to pass the lesser one off as the same as the better one.

One type simply replaces the CCFL backlights (originally used with almost all LCD displays) with LEDs which provides very little if any improvement. The other uses a large number of leds with each led individually controlled. This allows the display to operate with a much larger contrast range across the display.

The latest thing in LCD TVs is "3D without special glasses" but I'm told that the current versions aren't very effective and the result is adversely affected by changes in the location of the person watching as well as any head movements.

Unless you intend to watch TV from less than 2ft away, 1080 resolution is a waste of time on anything less than about 36 inches on the diagonal. Also worth noting is that the advantage of 1080p is lost on any DVD, off the air, cable, or satellite viewing. IOW a BlueRay disk is the only source that supports 1080p AFaIK.

Finally, there's a lot of content out there that's only available in 480i (NTSC) or 720i/p and the quality of those images as rendered on a higher resolution screen is very much affected by the type of signal processing used to upconvert the images and that varies considerably between models and manufacturers.
 
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