TV < £500 buying advice

[Deleted member 15344]

Prices are broadly similar but different shops have different promos on at different times. JL didnt have the one we wanted which in the past wouldve meant we found a different set in there to get the 5 yr guarantee, this time we bought elsewhere with the guarantee.

Found JL staff quite poor this time round when looking, certainly compared to Richer Sounds

Cheers will pop in there when we will be looking again soon :thup:

 

[Smiffy]

Bought a 49 inch Sony recently, been very impressed so far, not had any of the supposed problems with android that a lot have had.

I got the same telly in July Fundy. Love it to bits, possibly the best TV I've owned.
Had a couple of little "niggles" with it when I first bought it, but these have been rectified with a recent software upgrade.
HD picture is stunning, what little 4k I have watched has blown me away.
Really chuffed with it.

 

[Crazyface]

Nope, plasterers result of buying a house that needs doing up and finding uneven filler and a place where a dartboard used to be in the lounge when I stripped the wallpaper. Needs skimming but having a nightmare finding a decent plasterer

Do it yourself. It's a bit messy and you may not get the first time finish a skilled bloke can, just run a hand sander over the lot with a very fine grade paper. Job done !

TV? LG £250 brilliant !

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

And so containing my travails. After much discussion yesterday with lad at Currys who did seem to know what he was talking about I still have my Sony HD TV. Anyway.

I had mentioned that I felt the TV picture was subject to some 'motion blurring' when watching MoTD on BBC1 HD that I didn't experience when the TV was plugged into my Sky Box and connected with an HDMI cable. I noted that the picture from a BlueRay player plugged into the TV using an HDMI cable is brilliant.

He said that this was because the only connection that I had bringing the TV signal was via coaxial cable traipsied all round the house via the loft (where I think the Sky digital signal from the Sky HD Box is combined with the terrestial signal from the rooftop aerial) - and coaxial does not support 1080p HD at all well. Is this the case or is he talking tosh?

 

[Rooter]

He is talking tosh Hugh. Co ax can handle 1080p.

 

[williamalex1]

He is talking tosh Hugh. Co ax can handle 1080p.

Your aerial might need adjusted , upgraded or a booster fitted .

 

[ScienceBoy]

Handy thread this, never been impressed by smart TVs. We have an Apple TV instead which is getting better all the time.

I'm all about picture quality, for £30 you can stick in a chrome thing and stream anything from a tablet or iPad.

TV makers should stick to the hardware and leave the software to those with a bit more experience.

Looking back I've yet to see a decent EPG from a hardware company but sky, TiVo etc all looked superb

 

[Pin-seeker]

I've got a Chromecast,you can't stream everything from iPad. Sky Go for example.

 

[Rooter]

Your aerial might need adjusted , upgraded or a booster fitted .

No, it's all about the decoder (or sky box or digi box) nowt to do with the aerial.

 

[williamalex1]

No, it's all about the decoder (or sky box or digi box) nowt to do with the aerial.

Post 44 , says Sky and blueray are ok, so it's problems with terrestrial signals via aerial he's having..

 

[upsidedown]

If you've Sky why are watching through a terrestrial signal ?

 

[Jimaroid]

The guy in Curry's is sort-of right, you won't ever get the best HD through terrestrial Freeview, but not due to the reasons he's claiming. Unfortunately it's not a straightforward problem so don't expect a simple answer beyond "it depends" because HD is a catch-all term for many different formats and different hardware/software combinations are better and worse at dealing with some things and not others.

Freeview HD channels are usually 1080i for HD, but it can vary a lot and depending how good the TV is you'll get different results. Some TVs are really bad at managing lower frame rates and if you're watching 1080i@25fps on a lesser quality TV it'll look rubbish even though it is technically still HD. This is because the TV will have to do some difficult interpolation of the picture and fill-in frames, this "motion engine" type of marketing garbage is usually what leads to blurry HD pictures even if you've got 100% signal quality because the TV is resampling the picture beyond what's encoded in the stream.

I might be wrong but I don't think any Freeview channel is capable of broadcasting at 1080p@50fps, so HD off of Freeview is never going to look as good as a decent Bluray.