[stevelup]

When your 'Smart' TV is out of date in a year's time and the manufacturer has decided to stop updating it, you just plug in a Fire TV / Roku / Whatever dongle and ditch the onboard stuff.

I don't think it's a big concern.

But if you're stuck with a clunky UI on the actual TV, you have to live with that forever.

Personally, I'd like my TV to have the fastest, simplest UI there can possibly be, and not to overload it with carp. Let me choose what I then plug into it.

The problem with the early Android based TVs (and this is admittedly largely resolved now) is that they had underpowered CPUs, not enough RAM, and the platform itself was immature. Even just navigating through the menus to change settings was a torturous exercise. That is something that cannot be fixed with a dongle...

So.... What I'm saying is that the 'smart' capabilities of the TV itself are almost irrelevant when a £35 Fire TV stick is better than pretty much all the offerings out there.

[rikur_]

So.... What I'm saying is that the 'smart' capabilities of the TV itself are almost irrelevant when a £35 Fire TV stick is better than pretty much all the offerings out there.

Our kitchen 'TV' is actually a surplus computer monitor with a Fire TV stick in it .... and the holiday home is furnished with old TVs with Now TV boxes. The only downside seems to be two remote controls - one for on/off and the volume and one for everything else

[OCB]

Nice to see my thread being recycled - very eco friendly

As mentioned back then, we went for the Sony KD-55x8508C.

Since then we've had next to no issues. We did get a sound bar which mainly gets used for films + doubles as bluetooth soundcast device for Spotify when we have guests.

Very few "large" updates any more.

Kids still find the Netflix button very useful.

Not long ago I added Plex to the house multimedia mix. It works great.

On our 2010 iMac we have AirParrot, and screencast from that to the Sony.

One of my boys has an android tablet, and it natively allows him to cast Youtube videos directly from his tablet to the TV (what's nice about that is it's not really screencast - the native youtube on his tablet calls the youtube app on the telly so it's full HD or even 4K).

And of course, having the remote app on our phones mean we can use that when the kids are listening to something too loud/not coming to table etc - or those semi regular times the remote gets temporarily unaware of it's position

[Mr Bags]

4k is a wonderful marketing tool by the manufacturers! On a 55 inch 4k tv, you would need to sit only 5 feet away to appreciate the improved resolution compared to a 1080 screen. Unless this is how you view your screen, I would simply get a decent 1080 tv and save your money!

The table below shows the discernible distances/screen res and size.

[stevelup]

'4k' is less about resolution than it is about other new tech such as HDR and immersive audio formats.

Most of the currently released UHD Blu-Rays actually come from 2K intermediates - so any additional resolution is interpolated anyway.

You're quite right that with an average TV in an average room, at an average viewing distance, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between 1080 and 2160 signals

[OCB]

I would absolutely love to see their peer reviewed references for that diagram.
Or at least even scientific references of some sort.

I work way too many hours per day in front of screens, and have done so since back in the days of 8" CRT and dual-scan LCD.

Right now I'm on a 15.4 inch 2880x1880 screen.
"Marketing" many would say, as apparently I can't see the difference between this screen and a lower res one.

I call horlicks (or something that sounds like it) on that one.

I definitely feel less eye strain etc etc with higher rez/higher hertz/higher contrast screens.

Interpolation etc does have an impact on your visual cortex. When text isn't 100% crisp and clear, your eyes try to focus - and when they can't, your brain compensates (but your eye muscles never really stop trying to fix the jaggies).

That's a few physiological reasons why reading a real book is less stressful than reading the same text on a shoddy screen. It's why you prefer a top quality ebook reader over an iPad on the sun lounger. There's other stuff about the distraction of reflection etc - but that's extremely boring...

All I'd say as an engineer and scientist is - be a tad careful on pseudo-science marketing (on both sides).

[JonathanB]

Well finally narrowed it down and have decided to get a 50" (or49") as it'll fit ok on our TV unit. Decision now I think is between a Panasonic TX-50DX700B (£579 in most places) or a Samsung UE49KU6400 (£540 dish) which has the added bonus of a Freesat tuner (which although we don't use at the moment, the Freeview signal here occasionally goes so I have been pondering fitting a dish).

Sometimes I think there is just too much choice!

[Colonel Panic]

Can't comment on the relative merits of those two TVs, but I went down the FreeSat route (hiding the chav dish behind the greenhouse) a few years ago when it had more HD channels than FreeView - four as opposed to none - but AIUI the playing field is now level.

Next time around I can't imagine why I would not just go for FreeView & ditch the dish - but if your terrestrial signal is marginal & you can cope with the shame of a dish then go of FreeSat.

[JonathanB]

At the moment it's ok, but it does go through phases of dying. That said, could just revert to streaming at that point anyway, especially as you can watch "live" now that way.

[Paultheparaglider]

The Freeview signal used to be poor where I am, although I think it might have been boosted in recent years as it is more reliable these days. However, when it rains heavily or snows, the signal strength still drops considerably and breaks down on some channels. I fitted a satellite dish - one of the slightly larger Sky ones you can pick up cheaply on eBay, and have had no problems since then in all sorts of weathers. It was pretty easy to set up. The only drawback to satellite is you need separate cables for each signal, so if you have 2 televisions (or satellite boxes) which have record and watch capability you need four cables in total and a quad lnb.

I'm not ashamed of my dish.

[stevelup]

Whatever you do, I'd suggest buying from John Lewis and benefiting from the 5 year warranty.

[JonathanB]

Or Richer Sounds and get 6 years!

[stevelup]

Good point, yes. But you have to pay for that, and often it's cheaper from JL.

Both warranties are very good. I know people who have had brand new TVs from both after four odd years!

[JonathanB]

Not any more, free if you sign up to their free VIP club it seems.

[PeteSpencer]

+ 1 for John Lewis:

I've bought all our consumer electronic/electric stuff from them for donkey's years.

The only exception which I have cause to regret to this day was my Lenovo Ideapad Laptop last year which I got from Amazon in a moment of aberration.

For a four figure sum I appear to have bought a pile of cr ap: Amazon not interested, Lenovo Help line sends reams of geek speak emails to try and put it right with no success.Now out of warranty and still useless.

Come back Sony Vaio, all is forgiven......

Yes, JL every time....

Peter