New tv required

ED209 · 14 Sep 2019 at 09:15

Hello all,

I was wondering if anyone could suggest some TVs. My budget is not as high as others but looking at around the £600 mark and been looking at the TVs that Costco sell as one recently had opened near me.

The current tv I have is a Toshiba one from 2006, it’s still going strong but hardly supports any file formats for watching videos via usb and just generally needs replacing.

I would like to connect the pc up to the new tv for gaming, got a Xbox 360 with virgin media service and now tv.

Any suggestions would be appreciated

lucid · 14 Sep 2019 at 10:10

There are some holes in your requirements at the moment. For example:

What size?: Around £500 will get you something quite nice in a 40" screen (Panasonic 40GX800), but at say 60" you'll be scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of features and performance because all the money went in to providing the biggest (and cheapest/lowest quality) large TV panel.

What file formats do you need it to support?

Are all your sources digital, or do you need a VGA connection? 3x HDMI inputs is fairly standard on 4K TVs, but if you must have 4 rather than using a HDMI switch then you'll limit your choices. As for VGA (if you're still using that), it's not as common as it was back in 2006.

Input lag: Do you notice much of a delay between your gaming movements and how long it takes the screen to react?

Brands have changed a bit too since you last bought. Most of what used to be the bigger Japanese brands are now just badges on the front of TVs made by companies you've never heard of but who make the same TVs sold cheap as Polaroid, Blaupunkt, Technika and a dozen other forgettable supermarket/discounter brands. Your Sharp, Hitachi, Toshiba are all now just badges and very little to do with the Japanese brands of old.

Newer brands on the market are Hisense and TCL. They're both Chinese and have done deals to acquire some of the factories from European and Japanese brands that have pulled out of the market. The TVs are aimed at people who buy on price rather than cutting edge performance. Of the two, Hisense is the better brand.

Philips is back on the scene but under new owners. The TV business was spun off and sold a few years ago. The people behind the Philips badge don't make TVs for anyone else.

Sony, Panasonic, Samsung and LG are mostly made by the companies whose name appears on the front of the set. There's a small exceptio with the entry-level Panasonic range which is just a badge on Vestel TVs.

ED209 · 14 Sep 2019 at 10:19

Thanks for the reply.

For size would be looking at 40” or 43” and for formats mkv’s would be nice as the current tv only supports avi.

The two new brands you pointed out, I have seen about and currently a 4K one for around £300. I currently do not use the tv for playing games and it’s only 1080p as well.

All our sources are hdmi, 3 should be fine as can either change them over or as you said get a hdmi switch.

Also increased budget to £600 now

ED209 · 15 Sep 2019 at 08:29

lucid said:
There are some holes in your requirements at the moment. For example:

What size?: Around £500 will get you something quite nice in a 40" screen (Panasonic 40GX800), but at say 60" you'll be scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of features and performance because all the money went in to providing the biggest (and cheapest/lowest quality) large TV panel.

I have had a look and can find 40GX800B, is this still a good TV?

lucid · 15 Sep 2019 at 14:11

It's fairly new (May this year?) and has had decent reviews. I have the 50" and can confirm that it will play .mkv rips from a USB flash drive as I've just given it a whirl. I haven't tried from a USB HDD, but see no reason why it wouldn't do the same from that.

The TV has a gaming mode which disables most of the processing for low-ish lag (some say around 30ms, but I can't confirm). Do you know what the lag figure is for your existing TV?

You should have a look at the competing models from Sony, Samsung and LG and then work out if one of those fills your needs better.

Sony KD43XG7003 (black) / Sony KD43XG7073 (silver)
LG 42UM7300

Samsung doesn't have a like-for-like competitor product.

TheVoice · 15 Sep 2019 at 14:48

LG and Samsung are usually pretty good in terms of streaming app support, if that sways things at all. Panasonic often seem to lag behind in that respect and will probably only get worse as newer ones come out e.g. Disney+.

varkanoid · 15 Sep 2019 at 17:53

TheVoice said:
LG and Samsung are usually pretty good in terms of streaming app support, if that sways things at all. Panasonic often seem to lag behind in that respect and will probably only get worse as newer ones come out e.g. Disney+.

That shouldnt matter too much as NowTV and Virgin have plenty of app support to fill the gaps.