Spec me a new TV for a grand?
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What's the verdict on your Panasonic TX-50DX700B? Good for gaming? Viewing angles ok? I am tempted to pick one up. Perfect size and price for me.
Soldato
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Hi, have to say I am really impressed with the DX700B. Upscales all the 1080p stuff brilliantly from my SkyQ box and all the freeView HD stuff is just as good. However I upgraded my Netflix to 4K and wow! Marco Polo 4K HDR just amazing. The TVs remote has a big Netflix button which takes you straight in and the TVs seems to recognise its 4K HDR as I checked the settings and it had changed to rec 2020 and brightness etc were all up from the normal settings, then when you finish watching 4K HDR it reverts back to normal settings. As for gaming I can't help you there as I don't game on TVs. Viewing angles are definitely not as poor as has been reported and actually seem quite decent. Just for your info have a look on very.co.uk as they have this tv and if you are a new customer and open an account you will get 20% off your first order which is a big saving. The TVs looks great in silver and has a black rear, the feet can be put on in two positions, wide or in the middle. All in all very impressive for the money.
Thanks for the info. I am either going to order this or go crazy and get a LG55EG920V 4k OLED. I am not sure I can justify the OLED though so your one sounds like a good bet.
My mate bought this. It's very good.
I popped into Richer Sounds today and got to see a DX700B in action. Was very impressed and also found out a bit more from the staff. Decided to go for it so ordered one which should get delivered later this week. I think for the pricepoint it's spot on. Perfect size for my living room too. I still want to use a 1080p projector for movies so this TV is mainly for 4k Netflix and gaming.
I also got to see one of the LG 4K OLEDs in action. Very nice contrast and colours but it wasn't as mind blowing as I was expecting (probably just due to showroom settings and environment).
I also got to see one of the LG 4K OLEDs in action. Very nice contrast and colours but it wasn't as mind blowing as I was expecting (probably just due to showroom settings and environment).
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Soldato
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Hi, checkout AV Forums for a youtube guide by DARKO to all the intricate settings for the DX700B (its a 58" in the guide but I used the same settings for my 50") it looks great although bear in mind it can differ for same brand tvs.
Nice one got a link for that?
I am a fan of panasonic ips too for the viewing angles (pity panasonic are getting out, and maybe ips like others will concede to oled god) found this article which was the most objective i have seen for samsung vs oled. (unfortunately not ips)
If you have a combined living/dining room (even a wide sofa!) need larger viewing angles.
It is difficult to assess this aspect of tv's in the shops (do some RS's have viewing rooms) and I suppose if you buy from JL can return it if you do not like it, but whether they are reluctant to sell you another.
I plug the ebay panasonic store, although some have had products fail after limited 1year guarantee.
If you have a combined living/dining room (even a wide sofa!) need larger viewing angles.
It is difficult to assess this aspect of tv's in the shops (do some RS's have viewing rooms) and I suppose if you buy from JL can return it if you do not like it, but whether they are reluctant to sell you another.
I plug the ebay panasonic store, although some have had products fail after limited 1year guarantee.
Well I got the DX700b yesterday. Used Darko's settings to calibrate it. Then watched some 4k content on Netflix. Pretty much blown away. Looks incredible.
Out of interest, what settings do you use to watch 4k / HDR content on Netflix? The same Darko settings? For HDR, it seems to automatically set max backlight etc by design I think.
Soldato
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Followed the Darko settings and don't mess with them. The TV seems to automatically recognise 4K HDR and changes to rec 2020 and maxes contrast etc and it looks great to me. I honestly don't know if you can mess with the 4K HDR settings, also as soon as you stop watching 4K HDR the telly reverts back to rec 709. I'm happy with what I'm seeing and vowed I wouldn't chase the 'perfect' picture. yeah the 4K stuff looks great but I was worried about 1080p upscaling and am blown away by how good it is, chuffed about that to be honest. 
Followed the Darko settings and don't mess with them. The TV seems to automatically recognise 4K HDR and changes to rec 2020 and maxes contrast etc and it looks great to me. I honestly don't know if you can mess with the 4K HDR settings, also as soon as you stop watching 4K HDR the telly reverts back to rec 709. I'm happy with what I'm seeing and vowed I wouldn't chase the 'perfect' picture. yeah the 4K stuff looks great but I was worried about 1080p upscaling and am blown away by how good it is, chuffed about that to be honest.
Hey I ran into a problem last night with the TV sadly. Have you noticed any issues with shadows? When I watched last night's Game of Thrones episode almost any scene involving candlelight looked pretty horrific. It was because any shadow was flickering and cloudy as if there wasn't a uniform shade of black. Looked so bad I stopped watching it. Are shadows and dark night scenes ok for you? Is there any sort of flickering movement? It's almost like it doesn't have the range to put out the black tones needed or something.
Edit: Looks like noise / blocking in dark scenes. Could just be due to the compression Sky use for broadcasting 1080i content but I am concerned it could be TV issue. I think the issue is colour banding or posterisation. Like this: http://www.audioholics.com/hdtv-formats/audioholics-hdmi-1-3-q-a/standardcolor.jpg
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Well I think I've improved the shadow issue. I realised I had Game Mode on (off by default) and when on this mode pretty much disables many of the image features.
The good news is that it seems to automatically turn on Game Mode when you fire up a game (on PS4 at least) so there seems to be some meta data involved that works it out for you and there's no need to turn it on manually by looks of it.
I've stuck with Darko's settings, with backlight dimming on min and gamma at 2.3 which is just my preference, and it looked much better last night. Sky HD is heavily compressed so it's never going to look amazing on a 4K TV anyway. I think shadow detail is always the first to suffer from compression. But the full HD and 4K stuff is sweet.
The good news is that it seems to automatically turn on Game Mode when you fire up a game (on PS4 at least) so there seems to be some meta data involved that works it out for you and there's no need to turn it on manually by looks of it.
I've stuck with Darko's settings, with backlight dimming on min and gamma at 2.3 which is just my preference, and it looked much better last night. Sky HD is heavily compressed so it's never going to look amazing on a 4K TV anyway. I think shadow detail is always the first to suffer from compression. But the full HD and 4K stuff is sweet.
Soldato
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All ok with mine, I wont be gaming on it until I get the XBOX ONE S 500GB for the 4K Blu-Ray player, unless a cheaper player appears. Not gonna pay the early adopters tax for the Panasonic/Samsung, might as well get the Xbox.
Do you have Sky HD? Be interesting to know if you can at least see the same shadow detail issue I get sometimes with HD content they broadcast. Game of Thrones for example was particularly bad. From what I can tell, it's more an issue with Sky and terrible compression of HD content than with the TV.
another reference video for shadows/smoke is peaky blinders off of iplayer they have the last couple of hd/720p episodes still available, earlier in the series i had seen some haloing around light sources in smoke, that looked like a compression artifact
Soldato
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Had a look at Game of Thrones on my skyQ box and though I don't see the same issues as you with shadow detail etc I did notice in candle lit dark scenes the textures on a dark wall were awful, I wonder if the fact SkyQ is producing 1080p rather than 1080i makes a difference. I then watched 4K HDR Marco Polo and some dark candle lit scenes and had none of those issues, it looks amazing by the way. So yes I suspect Sky HD and their compression is the culprit. Also just viewed some Spartacus HD from Netflix and saw no such issues in dark candle lit scenes. The finger is definitely pointing at Sky.
Had a look at Game of Thrones on my skyQ box and though I don't see the same issues as you with shadow detail etc I did notice in candle lit dark scenes the textures on a dark wall were awful, I wonder if the fact SkyQ is producing 1080p rather than 1080i makes a difference. I then watched 4K HDR Marco Polo and some dark candle lit scenes and had none of those issues, it looks amazing by the way. So yes I suspect Sky HD and their compression is the culprit. Also just viewed some Spartacus HD from Netflix and saw no such issues in dark candle lit scenes. The finger is definitely pointing at Sky.
Nice one thanks for checking. Yeah apparently they've dropped the quality over the years. Something like a 12mb bit rate now. I might upgrade to Sky Q at some point. Thrones seemed particularly bad. Netflix looks spot on so yeah TV seems fine.
Sky1 HD is averaging 7Mb/s and bbc1 HD only 5Mb/s, whereas the 4K might be 14Mb/s, but since it is a different codec/resolution difficult to compare expected picture 'quality'
The sky&bbc satellite broadcasts are 1080i (maybe 720p) not 1080p, if the SkyQ material came from the satellite it will have been de-interlaced on the box itself and not necessarily better than feeding 1080i directly to the tv and letting it deinterlace.
[broadcast of 1080p would not need twice the bandwidth of 1080i, but I guess they evaluated that increased quality was negligible ]
Is SkyQ material streamed off of the web 1080p ?
[ For anticipated 4K broadcast will it be 2160i@50hz (films) and 1440p@50hz (for sports) so deinterlacing on 4k tv would still be required ]
out of interest, game of thrones blu-ray bit-rate across multiple disks is > 19Mb/s
The sky&bbc satellite broadcasts are 1080i (maybe 720p) not 1080p, if the SkyQ material came from the satellite it will have been de-interlaced on the box itself and not necessarily better than feeding 1080i directly to the tv and letting it deinterlace.
[broadcast of 1080p would not need twice the bandwidth of 1080i, but I guess they evaluated that increased quality was negligible ]
Is SkyQ material streamed off of the web 1080p ?
[ For anticipated 4K broadcast will it be 2160i@50hz (films) and 1440p@50hz (for sports) so deinterlacing on 4k tv would still be required ]
out of interest, game of thrones blu-ray bit-rate across multiple disks is > 19Mb/s
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