Want to buy a 4K/UHD TV - Help please

The idea that middle adopters are 1-2 years away "at most" is laughable.

Especially when middle adopters tend to buy when there is plenty of content available at a reasonable price also the prices of the sets has come down considerably.

Late adopters are those that buy after content has been readily available for years and the price for the content is now cheap as well as the TV's.

Early adopters (aka the present) are those that buy when both the TV's and content are not readily available and are overpriced in comparison to the alternatives.

Also if 8K set aren't available in John Lewis within the next 3.5 years (before 2019) I'll eat my hat.

There has been one set made by Samsung that is cheap, but I would like to see reviews of said set before it is hailed as the messiah, I'm willing to bet my 1080P tv beats it for Picture Quality.
 
Richdog said:
Samsung have just released a new 4k TV, the Samsung UE55HU6900. HDMI 2.0 is implemented, quad core running the internals, and the UK pricing seems to be around £1250 with a decent warranty. If you're in the market for a new TV then it seems like a great option as it's basically the same price as many 1080p sets. No idea if there's a 65" version... I couldn't find one at least. Think they are only doing 46", 50" and 55".
Click to expand...

Saw this on HUKD the other day. £1499 from RS with 5 year guarantee and its on pre order at the moment. If its still around in June then looks like this will be the one I go for. HDMI 2.0 and HEVC, so seems like its ready to roll. They could have squeezed 3D into it, but I'm not overly fussed about that.

Even if its not around in June, as you say with such aggressive pricing other manufacturers should be following suit pretty soon.
 
Getting more and more tempting to buy into 4k, i'm looking into replacing my PK590 at somepoint soon, broadcast 8k aint going to happen anytime soon so no point waiting for that, and by the time it does this 4k Samsung set will be due for replacement anyway.

For someone wanting to upgrade a 1080p Plasma, i can see limited reason not to buy into a HDMI2.0 HEVC set, provided it deals with 1080p content well that is...
 
Saw the LG 55" Curved OLED TV yesterday at Costco. OLED looked great, but not a gamechanger like some people make it out to be. Blacks are important, but not £4,000 important, let alone £3,000 or £2,000 when I have a Panasonic Plasma. At this point, or even within the next 12 months, I'd rather have a 4K TV.
 
Kappa said:
Saw the LG 55" Curved OLED TV yesterday at Costco. OLED looked great, but not a gamechanger like some people make it out to be. Blacks are important, but not £4,000 important, let alone £3,000 or £2,000 when I have a Panasonic Plasma. At this point, or even within the next 12 months, I'd rather have a 4K TV.
Click to expand...

OLED beats LCD at everything not just black, that is just one part of it.

Contrast is better as well as dynamic range between pixels right next to each other, etc.

Colours are a lot better too, in fact everything is better that is why Plasma Master Race will wait for OLED 4K/8K sets.
 
kona786 said:
Also LCD's are ranked far behind Plasma and OLED for motion resolution.
Click to expand...

Where did you hear that? From what I've seen (ignoring any motion processing, which isn't OLED specific) the native motion resolution of the LG OLED is the same as LCD - 300 lines according to the HDTVtest review.
 
Warbie said:
Fixed that for you :p We've been making compromises ever since flat panels came out. Let's hope OLED give us the picture quality we had decades ago, just with massive screens!
Click to expand...

CRT's were good but not great, they also had their issues.

No TV has ever been perfect at everything. Also I would love to see a CRT playing Blu Ray side by side compared to my GT50.

I know which one I would prefer.
 
Depends - against a decent HD CRT it would struggle. Black levels, depth, motion - all would be considerably better on the CRT. A well looked after FW900, for example, would comfortably best any plasma. It's the screen size that would be lacking. CRTs also have a more natural looking image. This is one of the reasons I favour projectors too. Not just because of the large image - they tend to give a more life-like, natural, 'analogue' pciture. LCD/LED and plasma all looks processed in comparison. My recent LED is actually the only panel I've kept since panels first came out - the rest were returned in favour of HD CRTs and projectors.

//edit but yeah, the footprint is massive and they take looking after. CRT is well dead - it just bugs me a little when people rave about Kuros and the motion and black levels on plasma when CRTs did these things a whole lot better!
 
Last edited:
I should say, it was sitting next to the LG 4K LED. As both tech comes down in price I don't see the £/win factor swaying me to OLED for a long time. I'm that person who would (did) buy a TV because it could do 3D. I don't even own 3D glasses :S

Saying that, what difference would I notice in either if purchased? I have a GT50 and watch The Wire (in SD) and series linked nearly every show on the History channel! :D And still plan on getting a 4K curved TV this year...
 
Last edited:
HecarimOP said:
Where did you hear that? From what I've seen (ignoring any motion processing, which isn't OLED specific) the native motion resolution of the LG OLED is the same as LCD - 300 lines according to the HDTVtest review.
Click to expand...

Interesting your right with out adding motion processing. Maybe it's just these early OLED's sets that are affected. Hope this improves.

Seems plasma was best here.

However it seems the added motion processing does benefit OLED a lot more than LCD as said here:

Enabling [TruMotion] doubled the EA980′s motion resolution to 600 regardless of what settings we used, even [De-Judder] “0” and [De-Blur] “0” in [User] mode! Incidentally, this is the [TruMotion] settings we’d recommend to viewers: on our review sample, it boosted motion clarity without introducing significant interpolation artefacts, or soap opera effect to 24p drama/movies.
Click to expand...
 
Again, I don't believe that's OLED specific. I've seen similar things said about the motion processing on certain LCD sets. Motion processing in general is steadily improving.

I don't think motion resolution is THAT important, although it depends on the content you're viewing. The advantages of OLED are more than a worthy trade off for the loss of motion resolution in comparison to plasma. If it was that much of a deal breaker OLED wouldn't be universally praised for easily producing the best picture quality available thus far.
 
Everyone in mobiles section prefers OLED screens to LCD. So I don't see how it would be any different when upscaled from a 5-6 inch screen to 60 inch.

Yes they are expensive and people buy budget options in mobiles which only come in LCD but in a few years the budget phones will soon start to get OLED and people will soon forget LCD screens within the phone market.

OLED is the way forward for those that want quality, LCD will just be the cheaper budget option.
 
Chris1712 said:
Personally I like it for two things, monitors (oh lawd dat dpi & screen real estate) and BIG tv's. 55"+, the bigger the better. It is noticeably better, not only in quality but in the new production style it allows (wider shots, less panning etc. etc.).
You can achieve ALMOST the same quality now with things like the darblet post processing thing, though it is obviously much more artificial.

One of the best demo's I've seen was a live football match where they actually used very few cameras, with wide shots and not much movement. Combining this with the 84" panel it felt at times like you were sat in the crowd, especially at corners/throw-ins etc.
The bonus really is that it will push the market towards larger panels aswell, personally I've had projectors for the last ~5 years so the idea of a panel less than 80" or so just does not appeal to me, even budget brands will bring out 84" panels in the next 12 months.
It's also a great way to usher in HEVC, once there's a large enough install base we could potentially turn off DVB-T & MPEG-2 (controversial! But heck it would be awesome right?).

EDIT: As for 'normal' sizes. This changes, I remember back when 720p launched 26"/32" was 'normal'. I'd guess that 42" is normal now, and sales of 50"+ are actually accelerating quicker than any other size at the end of HD. I think 55" will be the 'normal' for 4k, with 65" being the same as 50" was ~ 3 years ago, and so on.

I bought in to 720p before HDMI existed, before T2 existed, before Freeview HD was specced. Who cares, it's cool innit :p.
Click to expand...

quoted for the truth.

I can't see why anyone would buy a 4k under 65''. It's gotta be around 80''+ to enjoy the high res in my opinion.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom