[dewilson58]

Originally Posted by Scorpyo

The only reason a person would say something like that is because............

I kno, I kno.

[John_W]

Originally Posted by armyguyot1

We have an old Phillips 50 inch plasma. Heavy? Oh my god. Has as good a picture or better than our 65 inch Samsung...

I bought a 50" Panasonic Plasma at Circuit City in 2008 and yes, it was heavy, weighed 97 pounds. Anyway I got a red line down the middle in 2013 and they said to fix it required a circuit board would be about $500 with labor. My electric bill with SECO on our CYV was about $115 a month. We gave away the plasma and now have a Samsung 75" 4K LED TV and a Vizio 65" LED TV and our electric bill since 2013 has never been over $90 a month and most months about $80. That TV was costing about a $1 a day more to operate.

[OlifOlif]

I am still using a 21" Zenith set I bough in 1988. It has some stereo sound. However, I don't think Fox News offers their good reports in stereo.

Anyway, this set has a remote control, and a place to hook up an antenna from the outside. It also can get cable, but I had that disconnected when many of my favorite channels went off the air.

Since I originally paid $400 for this thing (have receipts to prove this), I am really getting my money's worth! I hope it doesn't break down since the Walmart I bought it from is in Carbondale Illinois. And I am not going to Carbondale to find a TV shop there!

If you want to pay once and never again, I highly recommend this set for all to see!

[iq100]

JerryLBell,
Nice information and analysis.
Could you recommend any 4K and HDR content? Name of content and where available, please. Something that shows off 4K and HDR. Thanks.

[Nucky]

42 Inch Panasonic L.R ** 55 Inch Sharp B.R. ** 25 Inch LG Kitchen ** 2- 35 Inch Samsungs in the Office ** 42 Inch Vizio in the Golf Cart Garage.

I can't wait for the Panasonic to croak. It is 13 years old and has a beautiful picture. It cost me $1200. All the other sets combined cost me about $1200.

I'm trying to like Best Buy but struggle to do so as they are nice before you buy but Nudges after you own. I love electronics. I have a calculator collection just like Alex P. Keaton.

[Graspher]

86” LG 4K wall mounted. Best tv I’ve ever owned. Real easy to see - no glasses needed.

[SickofSnow]

Thank you so much for all of the advice. You are a wealth of information. It appears that you have helped others on here as well.
Thank you!!!

[davem4616]

I went looking at televisions the other day....didn't realize that there are now 85" screens out there

We presently only have a 65". When we upgraded from a 55" we gave the 55" to a neighbor

We just don't see the need for more than one television in the house at this time...especially with this huge open floor plan

Should one of us be confined to bed for a sustained period of time, we'll put another in the bedroom

[birdiebill]

55 inch Samsung in the living room, 49 inch Samsung QLED in the den, and 32 inch Sony in the bedroom. The Sony is at least 8 years old and the 55 inch Samsung is 5 or 6 years old. My wife does not watch sports, thus two separate nice size tv's; no arguing over what to watch that way.

[nn0wheremann]

$300 cheapo from Walmart. 55” class, 4k UHD. Not smart. For that, I use an old laptop and a $30 Google Chromecast. Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Britbox work very well driven by the laptop. The audio on the cheap TV sounded cheap, but I had a set of very fine computer speakers I plugged in, and that solved the audio problem.

[iclash]

Originally Posted by SickofSnow

Just wondering what size and model TV do you currently own for your living room and bedrooms? I am thinking of either the samsung 4k or the TCL Roku. I haven't decided on a definite size as of yet.
I would love to know your thoughts on the ones you own.
Thank you!

do not skimp on size. you may think a 60 or 70 inch is too big but, unless you watch tv in a closet, you want big. it is almost like going to a movie house. if you have a great sound system, even better.
your eyes never strain to see things.
a smart tv is a smart tv. just don't go for an off name. spend a little extra.

[OhioBuckeye]

Originally Posted by villagetinker

75" Vizio 4k monitor (this TV has no tuner) $900 about 1.5 years ago, great picture. This is a smart "TV", with all of the streaming applications built in, great color.

That's a great size for a TV, 75". When we lived in Ohio I figured that would stay there so I bought a Theater projector which cost me $4,000. just for the projector & it was just as sharp as any of the Samsung Q's, maybe better, 125 inch. But in most houses I would guess a 60 to a 65" would be plenty big enough. But I sure missed that theater I had in Ohio. Oh yea, it was in a basement.

[retiredguy123]

Originally Posted by iq100

JerryLBell,
Nice information and analysis.
Could you recommend any 4K and HDR content? Name of content and where available, please. Something that shows off 4K and HDR. Thanks.

You can buy the 3-disc set of Planet Earth II 4K HDR bluray discs from Amazon for about $27. It is produced by BBC Earth and is well done. But, you would need a 4K bluray disc player.

[Two Bills]

Last thing we need in our house is a Smart tv. according to my wife.
She says she has enough trouble with Her smart ****husband, without adding another!

[iq100]

Originally Posted by JerryLBell

Last year I got the bug to get a 4K TV. Right about then, a number of websites I follow that review TV and other home theater equipment were going nuts over the TCL Series 6 4K HDR TVs, claiming they were every bit as good a picture as you got from substantially more expensive Samsungs and LGs. I bought one (a 65") and have been quite happy with it. This year, my man-cave TV went out and I decided to buy another TCL. I thought I'd save a few bucks with a lower-end series and got a Series 4 4K HDR TV. It was terrible. The picture quality was just plain bad no matter what I tried to do to calibrate it (and I'm been into home theater for decades so I'm not completely ignorant). I took it back and got a TCL Series 6 4K HDR (a 55"). As good as the set I bought last year was, this year's Series 6 is better-looking and has more dimming zones. So I'm a fan of the TCL Series 6. I'd really like to get a Series 8, but they are quite a lot more expensive and not as great a deal when compared to similar technology in Samsung and LG.

There is one caveat with the TCL. They are built in China, which will stop some folks from buying them. The Chinese government is probably given them financial aid to make them so competitive with the South Korean-built Samsungs and LGs.

There is one other issue that probably isn't an issue for most people. The TCL interface is based on Roku, which most people know as a streaming services stick that you can plug into a TV. Here, it's built in. It's fast and supports most streaming clients you can think of However, if you have DISH Network TV (like I do) and use this as a secondary TV and figure you can save a few bucks on renting a DISH Network "Joey" box for this TV, think again. DISH hasn't written a streaming app that works on Roku TVs or sticks. If you want to use a streaming stick for that, you have to get an Amazon FireStick (there may be other devices that work, such as AppleTV, but I can only go with personal experience). Otherwise, just get a "Joey" (or a "Hopper" if this is your main TV).

As far as size goes, there are two schools of thought. One says,:



Well, based on that one, I should be sitting 96" (8 feet) to 160" (13 1/3 feet) from my 65" TV. I am probably between 7 and 8 feet maximum from it.

The other school of thought says:



My first HDTV was 40". The second was 48". Then 55". Now 65", If I could afford and fit an 85" set, I'd probably grab it. I love me some immersive home theater, both in terms of screen size (though I prefer quality over quantity, I do like a big set!) and sound. And I've got a pretty decent sound system to help with the sound.

By the way, if you're expecting to be as knocked out going from HD TV (aka "1080p resolution") to 4K TV (aka "2160p resolution"), you may be disappointed. First of all, very little on your cable or satellite TV service is 4K and none of your Blu-ray discs (much less your DVDs) are 4K. If you get NetFlix or Disney+ or Google Prime or a few other streaming services, some of the content is 4K but most of it is still HD or even SD. Second, HD resolution is 1920 x 1080 or 2,073,600 pixels total. Standard definition (SD) was, at best, about 640 x 480 or 307.200 pixels total. The jump from SD to HD was a 6.75-fold increase in resolution. The resolution for 4K TVs is 3840 x 2160 or 8,294,400 pixels so the jump from HD to 4K is four-fold. And for most people our age, the pixels on an HD set are already small enough that we can't distinguish them from one another. Make them four times smaller (for the same-sized set) and you might not see any resolution difference at all.

The other difference if 4K is color. HD sets have a very good range from the brightest image they can show to the darkest (this is called the "dynamic range"). Most better 4K sets support something called "High Dynamic Range" or "HDR". This can be notably better than the dynamic range on regular HD sets but only if the source material supports it and your TV can decode it. There are a few competing standards for HDR, the most popular of which are HDR10 and Dolby Vision. If your source material is encoded with these (not all 4K shows use either) and your TV can handle (not all 4K TVs do both or even either), it can be noticeable. Bright scenes can be brighter without "blooming" into full white. Dark scenes can be darker without losing detail in the shadows. However, this really only shows up dramatically in more recently made movies and TV shows that are shot with newer digital cameras. Older shows or even shows where the images just aren't that dynamic in the first place will not show up all that differently.

Any suggestions for content that shows off 4K and HDR? Name of content, and a URL where the content can be bought, streamed, etc.

Thanks.