Can a new TV ever be justified on power consumption savings?

Caporegime
Joined
13 Jan 2010
Posts
32,985
Location
Llaneirwg
In past I was always sure a new TV was never worth it.
Cost of TV and power use of old TV never made it a sensible choice.

But I'm now wondering :
With electricity at soon to be 40-45p a unit
And that I have a 46 plasma
And probably be watching more TV in winter than summer

Is a new TV actually sensible?

Unfortunately I do not have exact pound per minute cost of the TV.

And I think it uses about 200w but it could be more as it very much fluctuates if picture is bright or dark (plasma tech)


I'm guessing it's still a "not worth it" but I wouldn't mind a new TV in this year's sales.
 
Wouldn't be worth it. Just turn it off to save money.

I expected this to be the answer. Saves money. But no n new toy! :D

Got excel out..
Even if I watched 4 hours every day and saved 100w that would only save about 60 a year. So definitely not worth it
 
Last edited:
This is it. I don't really have any 4k content.
We have D+ and Netflix HD.

So I'm not really sure what is going to drive a new purchase.
In show rooms tvs never look like they do at home.

I'm also not entirely sure I like the new oled esque type picture. On some viewing absolutely. But I never got a standard LED back lit as I always hated that washed out look.

I guess I've not really ever properly watched an OLED tv
 
They are getting close to the quality of a plasma just not quite there yet.

So unless you must watch in 4k just stick with what u got unless u want to downgrade for 4I or smartv features

Really? Plasma is still considered as good as modern tvs? This can't surely be the case?

No no need for smart. I can ask Google to play TV show X o. Living room TV and it turns on and plays. So no need for anything like that.
 
Probably not as TVs are expensive but if you want a new TV just buy one.

That said, Plasma has some advantages over a typical mainstream LCD TV and that would be motion clarity and depth of blacks. Overall though, any new 4k should blow a Plasma panel out of the water for image quality, despite what some of the folks here say, since you've got a higher resolution, probably higher peak brightness and possibly better colour reproduction, more features including HDR and UHD support if you want it, e-ARC and more.

I upgraded to an OLED in 2017 (LG B7) and honestly couldn't go back to LCD now. It does a fantastic job of deep blacks and bold colours, though motion clarity is a bit of an issue, especially exacerbated over LCD TVs due to the fast pixel response time of OLED. An LCD kind of blurs frames together, but if you watch a film at say 24P on an OLED, it feels almost like a slideshow. To get around this, you can use motion interpolation settings, which are actually pretty good and tweak-able now, although whichever setting you use you may introduce some artefacts or soap-opera effect (which I actually don't mind but I know many do). With these enabled, the motion is smooth and to me, looks great on these panels (typically 120Hz I think).

If I was thinking of buying now, I would probably wait it out a little and get one of the new QD-OLED TVs from Sony (Samsung panel but Sony's image processing tends to be better) once they are more affordable. They have higher brightness than LG OLED and should not really suffer from the burn-in issues that the earlier OLEDs do have as well as better colour reproduction. That said, burn-in is very overstated and for normal use and OLED should be ok unless you get a manufacturing problem (not unheard of). With Plasma it's probably something you may be conscious of anyway.

OK this is important.
I watched something on a newer non oled TV. And I could clearly see the "soap opera effect"
No one else could see it.

It wasn't my TV so didn't play with the settings but on panning shots it was absolutely horrible.

If any of these tvs cause this and it cannot be turned off its a deal breaker. It may be what you are eluding to?

Yes, fully aware of burn in. It's never been permanent when I've had it.
 
This is what I was directly talking about, yes. What did you find horrible about it? The artefacts or the artificial smoothness? It took me a bit to get used to but I would say on 24P content specifically (such as Blu-Ray) on an OLED you really need it on. Most TVs you can turn it off, or if they're like mine, there's around 20 different levels to play with so you can find the right balanced setting.

What I didn't say was that 'normal' TV on the OLED at 30FPS such as Freest or streaming platforms does look fine, but having used the motion smoothing for so long, I do find it very difficult to going back to have it without.

It's a very personal preference thing, I totally respect that you may not like it so it's important to demo a TV if you can before you buy (especially if it's high end). Good TV retailers will allow you to do this and try the settings to see what you like.

I kind of wish things were filmed at higher FPS to eliminate this somewhat, but I think the established 'feel' of cinematic content at 24P is quite hard for people to let go of after a lifetime of watching things that way as well as storage/bandwidth concerns. I do get it and Plasma panels handle this very elegantly so you've probably got used to that too, which is how it could be jarring.

It made me feel sick. It also looked completely artificial.
It was almost hyper smooth,too fluid.
I could only watch for minutes at a time.

It's hard to explain, I also thought the characters looked too 'pop out' from the scenery like they were layered on.
 
Back
Top Bottom