New 55" tv time.

[Flibster]

Been looking at TV's for the lounge to replace the (we think, 14 year old) Panasonic Plasma in there. When we sized the room out, we left space to upgrade to a 60" screen when time came to upgrade, so naturally they don't make good 60" screens anymore. So 55" it is.

Spent a while at the weekend just scoping what was likely to be the main contenders. Was primarily thinking the Samsung S95B would be the obvious choice, with the Sony somethingorother in there for around the same price. Certainly not the A95K as it's a grand more expensive. And there's been a surprise.

As lovely as the Samsung S95B is, and it really is, I'm leaning towards the Panasonic LZ1000.

Slightly cheaper, Master OLED panel, supports all HDR formats, don't care that it's considered a 'thick screen' as it's going to be wall mounted anyway, inbuilt speakers being parp doesn't matter either as the amp and 5.1 setup is always used too.

Am I losing my mind?

 

[Flibster]

Samsung, last time I looked, did not support Dolby vision which is baffling considering that seems to be the standard for dynamic HDR

Correct. It doesn't.

Sony doesn't support HDR10+

If you want all the support its Phillips or Panasonic iirc.

£450 off the LZ1000 at the moment, great deal at £1099 with 5 years guarantee

That's kind of what I was thinking. The LZ1500 is another £600 on top, and really doesn't seem worth it.

Although getting the 55" S95B get's me a £500 Samsung soundbar for free. That'd be the parents christmas present sorted with zero effort.

 

[Flibster]

What's the budget ?

Around £1k

This is slightly over that. £1100 iirc.

Can do ya that directly from Panasonic if you like with 5 year warranty.

Apparently the LZ980 doesn't have the Master OLED panel, the LZ1000 does. And they're exactly the same price at John Lewis.

 

[Flibster]

@Flibster have you settled on a TV yet or are you waiting on deals?

Going to be looking at tvs again on monday. Other half coming with me too. Going to try to persuade her on the 65"....

Still leaning towards the Panasonic. Samsungs lack of Dolby Vision is pretty much ruling that one out. Sony being a grand more is just silly. Not looked much at the LG sets so will do that.

 

[Flibster]

Well, took the other half to check several screens out. Couldn't persuade her on the 65" sadly. It would have fit, but with about 5mm gap on either side.

Had the 65" LZ1000 pretty much next to the 65" S95B and the 65" C2. Sony A95K was across the way and still arse puckeringly expensive. There was an issue with the Samsung though. The panel was warped. From head on it looked fine, but slightly off to one side and you could visibly see the edge of the panel was bent. And this is meant to be reasonably common on the Samsung as it's so thin.

They're all lovely screens. There's small differences in the picture but not really enough to worry about for 95% of the population. You feed it a 4K HDR signal and they'll produce a great looking image. Got to watch some of David Attenborough's A Life on Our Planet on netflix on them and .... Slight colour and brightness differences between them but nothing that I could immediately point at and go WRONG! , all looked fabulous.

Smart features and general interface. I really don't care. I'll either be using my SkyQ, Fire Cube, Xbox or bluray. I've lived with terrible interfaces on many devices for years, so I really have no real opinion here.

Same with the built in speakers. Don't care. Everything runs through the amp, so they're off 99.999% of the time. Was only when the amp failed that we've used them. That said, was very impressed with the Sony built in speakers. I suppose they had to spend the extra cash somewhere and that seemed to be the biggest difference. Not heard sound like that from a TV since the 32" CRT's and rear projection years. Ahhh happy days...

Off topic for a moment... What the hell has happened to TV stands? I mean we're planning to wall mount it eventually but until then it's going on a stand. They're all either flimsy, hideous or absolutely enormous. The Panasonic easily had the most practical stand as it allows for the screen to rotate for you know, plugging things into it, but it was still felt a little precarious spinning a 65" screen on that small of a stand.

But, overall. We've ordered the 55" Panasonic LZ1000. Support all the HDR formats, picture was great, sound is passable for the one occasional we'll use it, stand sensible, and the price was very reasonable. Only has 2 HDMI 2.1 ports, but I'm not going to plug a PC into and won't have more than 1 modern console plugged in. It's fine for now.

In the end, with the other half getting special discounts from JL through work we got it for just under £1K and a set of Technics earbuds for real cheap with it. Yay? That's a christmas present sorted completely by accident.

Need to wait for delivery now. Oh, and put in that order for the modded Panasonic UB450 UHD player. Saves me having to use an American PS3 for region A blurays now.

 

[Flibster]

Quick update. TV arrived this morning.

Spent the morning stripping all the old HDMI cables out and replacing the lot with KabelDirekt HDMI2.1 cables (Thanks Amazon black friday sales) ready for receiver replacement at some point. Also allowed me the time and space to re-route and tidy a lot of them and HDMI-ify my Wii. As the receiver doesn't do 4k60 or HDR passthrough, only 4k30... Bum... I've plugged the SkyQ and Firestick straight into the TV and am using ARC. Everything else plugs into the receiver. CEC's a little flaky, but it always seems to have been.

Oh.. the hell of redoing cables! Especially as it's a been 6 years since the initial setup and then everything was just hidden down the back. Thank god we put the unit on wheels. Did have to empty the Dyson twice though. Ew...

Not really had time to mess about with them too much. Set to Filmmaker mode on everything, except where Dolby Vision is on, that got set to Dolby Vision Dark. All enhancements are OFF. Colour remaster, Noise reduction, MPEG remaster, Resolution remaster, dynamic range remaster, intelligent frame creation... All firmly off. Need to play with Colour Gamut and Gamma settings. Currently have it set to DCI-P3 for colour and BT.1886 for Gamma. Looked good at a first peek.

Loving the remote. It's stupidly heavy, feels like they've stuck a lump of metal in there to make it feel weighty. Has many buttons, but it feels really nice.

Menu's are fine. Simple lists and occasional sub menus. Apps, it's got almost everything I need and more. Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Britbox, Plex, Youtube, iPlayer (and all the other terrestrial ones). Also has AppleTV, but no chance of me using that. It's relatively speedy to navigate, and if you just use the most common ones, they're all on the remote. Doesn't have Paramount+ or Discovery+ though.

Tomorrow will be putting the panel through it's paces with a few HDR things. Watched a bit of Wall-e and was suitably impressed. Have Blade Runner 2049 and Soul lined up for tomorrow's viewing as the other half is in Birmingham.

So, yeah, Under £1k for the Panny 55LZ1000 was very much worth it.

Oh, and because I've gone from a Panasonic to a Panasonic... I don't have to recode anything. It's all just worked straight away! The Sky remotes don't need to be recoded, the weird old unbranded multi-remote works perfectly.

 

[Flibster]

Not tried casting. Will give that a go later on.

 

[Flibster]

Thanks for the update @Flibster, glad you're enjoying the new TV.

Is it possible to cast to the TV too? I have three sticks in my AV receiver - NowTV, Fire and Chromecast - all individually powered and two needing their own remote. Sounds like the TV would do away with those sticks and their associated cables.

I recall some years back there were downloadable calibration files for TVs. Is that still a thing?

Played with casting. It's got a mirror mode that isn't exactly casting...

Other than that, accessing youtube elsewhere allows you to send it to the TV, same with Netflix, Disney Plus didn't and neither did Prime Video. It's a bit hit and miss.

Lovely! Great thing with Panasonic, from memory, is that you can have filmmaker mode but also have game mode on, so that you don’t have to compromise on picture quality.


Enjoy

Yup. Filmmaker mode and Low latency mode simultaneously.