TVs...

[ZolaIII]

@Neddy the NANO is only a brand and I wouldn't go with IPS at all but VA (MVA) instead regarding LCD. VA and MVA have a lot greater contrast (4000~7000:1) but narrow viewing angles, this isn't a big problem when there is 1~3 tights packed viewers on sofa. You can choose LG NANO 756PA with both their IPS or Sharp MVA (not all sizes tho).

42.5" LG 43NANO756PA - Specifications

Specifications of LG 43NANO756PA. Display: 42.5 in, IPS, MVA, Direct LED, 3840 x 2160 pixels, Viewing angles (H/V): 178 ° / 178 °, Refresh rate: 50 Hz / 60 Hz, Frame interpolation: 100 TM (TruMotion), TV tuner: Analog (NTSC/PAL/SECAM), DVB-C, DVB-S2, DVB-T, DVB-T2, DVB-S, Cores: 4, Dimensions...

www.displayspecifications.com

While OLED's generally can't keep up with LCDs regarding whites the top ones can go as far as a good LCD. There are and where even plane back lit LCD's with nice inky blacks, of course nowhere near as OLED's. When it comes to package as whole I value LG and for the calibration Panasonic even more. One other problem which can be very big deal beaker is screen refractions but I guess that one you have to look up on your self.

 

[Neddy]

Thanks! I'll have to feret out the US equivalant of those models, and the VA vs IPS suggestions are very helpful!!
Viewing angle isn't too much of a concern for me, but reflections (sunny room) might be, tho it is on a lift, and so can be moved up and down enough to avoid it most of the time.
Yes, I 'aspire' to owning Panasonic OLED someday, but not this year.

 

[Spkrdctr]

Thanks! I'll have to feret out the US equivalant of those models, and the VA vs IPS suggestions are very helpful!!
Viewing angle isn't too much of a concern for me, but reflections (sunny room) might be, tho it is on a lift, and so can be moved up and down enough to avoid it most of the time.
Yes, I 'aspire' to owning Panasonic OLED someday, but not this year.

I would just go look at a big LG tv and don't worry, it will look great. Deep diving into the specs is a waste of time unless you were looking to buy a cutting edge $7000 TV of some type. Plus, if you look at TVs in a store they are hooked up so poorly that a fantastic TV might have a crappy picture or vice versa. When you get them home they usually look fantastic. LOTS of people here have recommended big LGs. If they did not perform, a lot of people would not recommend them. Plus the pricing is great too. A win win for everyone!

 

[ZolaIII]

Thanks! I'll have to feret out the US equivalant of those models, and the VA vs IPS suggestions are very helpful!!
Viewing angle isn't too much of a concern for me, but reflections (sunny room) might be, tho it is on a lift, and so can be moved up and down enough to avoid it most of the time.
Yes, I 'aspire' to owning Panasonic OLED someday, but not this year.

I have Panasonic GX810E for over a year with which I am satisfied (even it is very refractive) and it didn't cost much but they don't make those any more I think.

49.5" Panasonic TX-50GX810E - Specifications

Specifications of Panasonic TX-50GX810E. Display: 49.5 in, VA, Edge LED, 3840 x 2160 pixels, Viewing angles (H/V): 178 ° / 178 °, Refresh rate: 50 Hz / 60 Hz, Frame interpolation: 1800 BMR (Backlight Motion Rate), TV tuner: DVB-T, Analog (NTSC/PAL/SECAM), DVB-T2, DVB-C, DVB-S2, Dimensions: 1120...

www.displayspecifications.com

Avoid cheap Android Vestel made one's please!
So do try the LG NANO 756PA series with Sharp MVA panels and see if that suits you.

 

[zermak]

I am still waiting to replace my 50" plasma TV and I am torn between getting a high end TV (most probably a 65" OLED from LG with this year Neo panel) or a budget/mid range TV. I don't hit the trigger on the OLED TV yet because of the actual use of the TV in my living room; it's basically watched for news, some TV afternoon shows and mostly sports (football/soccer but via streaming) by my parents.

Just a tip to everyone living in Europe. The TCL C728 series it is exactly, hardware side, like the American R646 series: they share the same firmware; you can chek it up on the XDA forums. On Rtings the C728 gets good votes and it is on par with the more expensive Sony X90J. Considering that Hisense's offering in Italy (probably Europe?) is different from USA and we can't get the U8G series, it makes the TLC C728 our only best for the buck option. I have seen the 65" C728 model selling for around 860 euros before black friday week and I'll probably get this model when the price dops again. And well you can always get a bigger size and be happy with it! Bigger is better, sometimes I still can't stand some flaws of LCD TVs but for my purposes the OLED would be a waste honestly.

So to sum up. Get the biggest TV you can afford/fit with the best quality you can get. OLED is the best monitor/TV you can get right now in my opinion becasue of the great motion handling and well image quality but if you are going on the LCD side let it be a VA panel at least and check for the blooming issues and local dimming implementation.

PS: when I was a kid I used to watch a 20" (probably smaller?) Philips CRT TV from like 4 meters away... when we got the 32" 16/9 flat CRT TV it was like a huge jump forward

 

[ZolaIII]

@zermak believe me it's all about panel quality and calibration and you don't vant Android (with entry lv RTK or MTK SoC in anything).
TCL and Hisense VA panels have purple tint (my Panasonic had yellow one which I fixed with calibration) and are not quite good regarding calibration Sony is just a bit better regarding calibration.
Avoid cheap OLED's that have lo white output like a plegue!
There is always bigger and better and line of diagonal considered as economic acceptable actually moved quite upwards already from 58 last year to 65" this year.

 

[GeorgeBynum]

Anyone else here who refuses to touch "smart" TV's with a 10 foot pole and have any recommendations?

Several thoughts;

1, you don't have to use the "smart" features.
2, since you say TV, I assume you need a tuner, else look at a PC display
3, what are your needs?

 

[zermak]

@zermak believe me it's all about panel quality and calibration and you don't vant Android (with entry lv RTK or MTK SoC in anything).
TCL and Hisense VA panels have purple tint (my Panasonic had yellow one which I fixed with calibration) and are not quite good regarding calibration Sony is just a bit better regarding calibration.
Avoid cheap OLED's that have lo white output like a plegue!
There is always bigger and better and line of diagonal considered as economic acceptable actually moved quite upwards already from 58 last year to 65" this year.

I've got a iDisplay Pro to calibrate the TV/monitor; even my smartphone is calibrated XD
And I've got a (HT)PC to use the TV with if the OS/smart features are that bad.

 

[ZolaIII]

I've got a iDisplay Pro to calibrate the TV/monitor; even my smartphone is calibrated XD
And I've got a (HT)PC to use the TV with if the OS/smart features are that bad.

I don't think you got me. Thers OS and surrounding ecosystem and requirements to run it. I like Android (on a phone) but it needs at least deacent hardware as to work satisfactory which arguably most of TV box or Android TV are not. Actually last deacent MTK one I remember from couple years back (A53/A73) and a newer ones are usually worse (only in order CPU core's). The composition layer on Android is still Java based (tho one day we should get Vulkan based one). No one really wants slow and unresponsive TV. LG is a half dumb Web OS and enough apps and Panasonic is super dumb, very limited apps and quite wired OS but those are fast.

 

[JW001]

I had the same dilemma half a year ago. Decided to go with 75'' Sony X950H LCD and I'm happy with it - the picture quality is amazing! Here is a list of reasons for this decision:
1. High contrast and brightness needed to watch EPL games on weekend mornings.
2. Support for Dolby Vision (to my eyes, the most spectacular HDR version - most of new movies on Netflix support it).
3. Great upscaling algorithms - 1080 resolution looks very good.
4. No worries about screen burn-in, in contrast to OLED screens.

My previous TV was a 52'' Samsung LCD bought in 2008 and still running. I do tend to squeeze as much life as possible from my TVs .

 

[zermak]

@ZolaIII Ok I got you but it seems that the TCL I mentioned uses a MT916 from Mediatek and it should be a 4 cores Cortex-A73 @1.6GHz with 3GB DDR4 2666MHz, a G52MP2 GPU and a 32GB ROM (specs from XDA forum).
I've used a TV box, just to try it, with worse specs (I don't remember the SoC) and it handled Full HD videos easily but it bugged me cause Android couldn't switch TV video frequency on the go (of course there were ROMs to load that could, based on GNU/Linux with Kodi or similar apps).

 

[ZolaIII]

@zermak yup that's the SoC and Sony series 8 & 9 used it for long. There are A55 only SoC's with ASIC A1 decoding, Kodi uses FFmpeg. Browser's use two core's per thread but OS puts more worker's on it, most initializing is done scalar without SMP affinity or superscalar. Future more Android uses Java script shell's for interface (jit dynamic compiled) and native executive libs (precompiled and still C mostly). You really need superscalar OoO core's with Android so that apps init isn't sluggish.

 

[zermak]

@ZolaIII Well I am sure OoO will be more popular (I mean we already have phones with very powerful SoCs which are actually overkill for a phone use case scenario) and ARM is ahead with the processor architecture (with the BIG.little hierarchy which Intel has put on its new processors too and AMD is for a eterogeneus solution in the future and it already has well balanced APUs). And about the SoC on the TCL C728/R646, that's not bad considering it is a mid range TV

 

[AudioJester]

Is the much improvement with the G series OLED Evo?

 

[Soundmixer]

Even then you will perceive nearly no difference in 1080HD and 4K

Oh, there is a difference alright, and it is quite noticeable even putting HDR and WGC aside. Test signals will easily reveal differences in resolution, and actual content will as well depending on how it is shot.

 

[dasdoing]

Oh, there is a difference alright, and it is quite noticeable even putting HDR and WGC aside. Test signals will easily reveal differences in resolution, and actual content will as well depending on how it is shot.

it realy depnds on distance to size ratio. at 4m the TV need to be the size of a wall to justify 4k

 

[Trdat]

If you use your TV as a big screen to watch movies and selected content go with OLED.
But if your TV is on all the time in the background for hours almost every day go with LCD.

Can you care to explain why? Really curious...

I have 75inch LCD it's always on but its connected to my desktop so its essentially a computer monitor.

 

[Soundmixer]

it realy depnds on distance to size ratio. at 4m the TV need to be the size of a wall.

Any resolution test would include getting the proper 40-degree viewing cone. Your 4m example is unrealistic for most folks. How many folks have the space for a 90-100" television? That is the size set you need to view a 4k set from 4m away. If I sit 2m away, all I need is a 65" set. I think most folks can fit that in their living room, media room, or small-size dedicated theater.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Can you care to explain why? Really curious...

I have 75inch LCD it's always on but its connected to my desktop so its essentially a computer monitor.

I think the other poster is thinking of OLED's suffering from some screen burn in which LCD's pretty much don't. I think it was more of a problem with the first OLED's and while maybe not completely solved apparently the problem has been greatly reduced in more recent OLED manufacture.

 

[dasdoing]

Any resolution test would include getting the proper 40-degree viewing cone. Your 4m example is unrealistic for most folks. How many folks have the space for a 90-100" television? That is the size set you need to view a 4k set from 4m away. If I sit 2m away, all I need is a 65" set. I think most folks can fit that in their living room, media room, or small-size dedicated theater.

well, OP is at 4-5m