New 42”-ish Smart HD TV Required For Neighbour

Soldato
Joined
13 Apr 2013
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Location
La France
One of my old English neighbours has taken a shine to Netflix and wants to replace his old (pre 2010) 42” Philips with a full HD one of a similar size (can be slightly larger) which has a Netflix app built in.

Several caveats:

- This is for France so Freeview tuners are useless.

- Must have WiFi connection as there’s no way to run Cat5/6 to where he wants it.

- Must be able to display 1080i content as he has an old Humax Freesat box which has 1080i as its highest resolution.

- Must be available on Amazon.fr or in French stores as shipping from the U.K. is FUBAR right now.

Thanks in advance.
 
For anyone to stand a chance of making any useful recommendations you really need to specify a budget. Without that, your thread is dead in the water.

General points:
Full HD isn't worth buying. You need to be looking at 4K UHD sets.

Full HD has had its day. Any larger sets still available will generally be cheaply-made products to attract the no-quality-too-low crowd. As such then, any smart features will running on a skeleton-level of processing power.


4K UHD is now mainstream. It will handle all the resolutions we've progressed through from basic 4:3 576i through wide-screen, HD Ready, HD 1080i, HD 1080p and UHD 2160p. Every base will be covered.

Just in case there are any lingering doubts about 1080i from the Humax, let me reassure you that 1080i at both 50 and 60Hz refresh rates are classed as a recognised HDTV formats, and as such, any TV classed as HD Ready or Full HD or UHD/4K will accept and display a 1080i signal.




Check what's available from Amazon.fr You will find a lot of stuff has Wi-Fi reception built in. Cross reference those models by searching online for reviews. Rtings is a useful site.

Personally I would steer clear of budget and lower-middle-range LG TVs. They have a problem with the backlight LEDs being under spec'd and then run too hard. This causes premature failure. The picture gets purple blotches where the the LEDs fail.

Samsung and Sony are fairly safe bets. Mid-and higher-end Panasonics are decent. Budget Panasonic sets are outsourced to Vestel in Turkey. Its Panasonic design and spec but Vestel electronics same as a lot of the well known budget TV brands which are now just a badge for marketing purposes.

Sharp, Toshiba, Hitachi, Ferguson*, Normende* and most of what used to be the 2nd tier Japanese, European and British brands are pretty much all now made by 3rd party manufacturers in Turkey, Slovakia or China. Some are okay for budget sets. Others are quite poor. Sharp isn't bad for a badged product.

HiSense is a relatively new brand. The product is a bit mixed. There are some pretty good sets and then some cheaper stuff. Do some research if you need a cheap telly.

Philips TV production is now in the hands of a new company with manufacturing at the old Philips factories. IIRC, the parent company is PC screen giant AOC. The TVs offer good value and a decent picture. Ambilight is a nice feature too.

With all these brands, smart features don't last forever. Within 3-4 years the cracks start to show as support for the older models starts to wane. An Amazon Firestick or Roku box will work slicker from day one and is more likely to keep on working long after the TVs own smart features have croaked.

Netflix is supported. Buy a 4K version of Firestick or Roku and your neighbour will be able to access the premium quality Netflix content if they subscribe at that level.

These devices are cheap for what they do (£50-ish) and plug in to a spare HDMI port. They're also compatible with older sets with HDMI port too; a cheap way to add Smart to an older TV for a fraction of the cost of a new TV upgrade.

* if still available
 
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