[TobyD]

Dear UKB geek-munity, I'm after a decent TV, smart or not doesn't matter - I'd probably get a Chromecast anyway. I'm not too excited about it having the world's best picture or sound, but something reasonable would be great. I'd like a decent size screen, but nothing huge: sofa to wall distance probably 3-4 m at a guess. Any ideas/ recommendations / else I should know? Prepared to pay up to £400 ish I think.

Cheers.... T

[tomtom]

In the tech section of the guardian there's a 'which non smart to should I buy' article...

[TobyD]

In the tech section of the guardian there's a 'which non smart to should I buy' article...

I couldn't see this anywhere: recently? Do you have a link?

[sidewinder]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2016/sep/08/can-i-still-buy-a-dumb-tv from my experience of buying a non smart TV I would recommend a Samsung. I 'sacrificed' on thickness and smart features in return for good picture quality and sound quality. Hasn't felt like a sacrifice over the last couple of years

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

£400 will buy you a lot of telly now. If your not after the latest high end features/gimmicks such as curved, OLED etc you'll get a great pic with standard 'Smart' features for around £300. Stick to a main brand such as LG, Samsung, Panasonic. 4K panels start around £400

My advice would be to be careful about the size, if your 3-4m away I'd say no bigger than 42inches. We tried a 47inch one briefly and it looked rubbish even at full HD because we were too close to it, swapped it for the 42inch version. There are various calculators online to help. http://www.which.co.uk/reviews/televisions/article/what-size-tv-should-i-buy

Go and see the panels in a shop, they are all pretty amazing now but do differ quite a bit. Remembering that most models have a 'shop display' mode that boosts the saturation and contrast to try and stand out from the competitors model next to it! Left like that it would do you eyes in, most people prefer more muted colours to look at for any length of time.

If your near a Richer Sounds I highly recommend getting one from them, they now guarantee most models for 6 years and are brill with after-care. I wouldn't get one from Amazon etc due to the hassle of returning one if you need to. John Lewis are also good for TVs.

[TobyD]

Cheers guys, super useful replies. I'd considered going to richer sounds anyway, probably will now.

[SA Chris]

John Lewis have a great returns and guarantee policy will price match too, although i think that excludes major online retailers, ie Amazon

http://www.johnlewis.com/inspiration-and-advice/never-knowingly-undersold-policy

[lagerstarfish]

yeah, but don't John Lewis fund hate and support cruelty to animals?

[Muenchener]

Recently went through the same exercise, and just ordered the most basic 43" Hisense based on reviews saying they were comparable in quality to the better known brands but somewhat cheaper.

Tune in in a week or two for first impressions.

[TobyD]

yeah, but don't John Lewis fund hate and support cruelty to animals?

Probably. All consumption is a tacit support of hate, cruelty and oppression. So someone will have to suffer for my telly; or perhaps I could get one knitted by fruitarian monks?

[TobyD]

Tune in in a week or two for first impressions.

Let me know how it goes.

[SA Chris]

yeah, but don't John Lewis fund hate and support cruelty to animals?

Probably. At least they pay taxes though.

[Jim]

get a smart TV as opposed to a panle with a chromecast, they are much better. Most TV's are smart these days anyhow. We have 1 47" LG TV and 1 48" Samsung TV. The UI on the LG's is better but the picture quality on the Samsung is significantly better (both 1080 HD, not UHD 4k etc..), I would definitely recommend the Samsung over the LG although you do get a lot of TV for your money with LG

[Doug]

My 6 year old LG smart TV has got significantly dumber over time. We watch a lot of stuff on demand and the only app left working on the telly is iPlayer, and that is prone to flakiness. Actually, YouTube app still works but crashes lots and is a pain to use as it no longer pairs with my phone.

For Amazon, Netflix, 4od etc we fire up the Xbox. In fact it we use it more doing that than playing games.

I've heard the argument that once you've bought the TV there's no more money going to the manufacturer, so there's no economic incentive for them to keep updating apps on old systems or rolling out new software.

[tomtom]

That was the argument in the guardian article...

That the screen/audio doesn't become as outdated as quickly as the software (and/or the firmware required to run the software)... so it is argued that you can spend say £400 on a telly that lasts 10 years and isnt smart - and £30 every few years on a new google/amazon stick etc... As opposed to £400 every 3-5 years on a new telly...

I can see the numbers for both sides...

We've been toying with buying a new telly for 4-5 years (we've a 32" 720p Bravia thats 11 years old now?) and a youviewbox and amazon fire dongle in... works fine - though I'm looking to get a 4k one at some point as the 720p is getting a little chunky...

Its bizarre though that its now hard (quite hard) to find a sub 40" model (OK its not hard, but there is a fraction of the range and they're not discounted)... we've a largeish victorian terrace and 32" is fine in the front room...

[SA Chris]

Can you not upgrade firmware? Ours smart tv seems to get regular updates every few months.

[IanP]

That was the argument in the guardian article...

That the screen/audio doesn't become as outdated as quickly as the software (and/or the firmware required to run the software)... so it is argued that you can spend say £400 on a telly that lasts 10 years and isnt smart - and £30 every few years on a new google/amazon stick etc... As opposed to £400 every 3-5 years on a new telly...

I can see the numbers for both sides...

In reality though it's becoming pretty hard to find non-smart TVs at anything other than very base level and the cost differential between smart and non smart equivalents seems pretty small. 

I bought a Samsung UE40H6400 last year at around £400 - got good reviews for excellent picture and decent sound and I've been very pleased.  Don't use the smart functionality too much (have got a Tivo) but didn't feel I paid much extra for it anyway.    The latest mid-range Samsungs also seem to get good reviews.

[tomtom]

That's a very fair point.

I wouldn't actively seek a non smart TV....

[Jim]

also for the samsung I bought a cheap USB 500gig hard drive and plug it into the telly and it become a PVR as its got dual tuners

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

Adding the 'Smart' features is peanuts compared to manufacturing the panel itself. Look at how many 'Smart' features you get in most sub-£50 blue-ray players. Theres nothing wrong with having multiple 'Smart' sources, we have apps built-in to the TV, via (cheap) Blueray player, YouView box, games console and Chromecast. You'll only use what is easiest/best. We mainly use the YouView box because of its seamless integration between live and streaming, and use the Chromecast to stream via phone/tablet/chromebook etc. Whoever said TVs don't tend to get as frequent software upgrades is correct.

[TobyD]

I wouldn't actively seek a non smart TV....

Came to the same conclusion after trawling John Lewis.

Although the Samsung dumb TV looks good value; I couldn't really see the difference in picture quality between the 5100 and the 5500 either. The dude in the shop was adamant he'd go with the 5500 but he would say that wouldn't he.

I'm considering mounting it on the wall as well: JL do a good service although it doesn't seem that hard to do yourself.

[Paul B]

If you partake, remember it's black Friday shortly and I'd expect some ridiculous deals on TV's.

[Muenchener]

Tune in in a week or two for first impressions.

Let me know how it goes.

OK.

So far in general I'm very happy with it.

Setup was completely straightforward and painless, and everything I've hooked up to it so far works: DVD player, XBox, laptop, WiFi, TV antenna.

Picture quality seems good to me, although I'm no expert on what a decent modern telly should look like. The side lighting looks rather uneven on large flat areas of single colour, such as the startup screen of the Youtube app, but I don't intend to spend much time looking at large areas of flat colour and it's not noticeable otherwise. I did notice one bit in Game of Thrones where we were focused on a character's face close up, with a column of horsemen riding by in the background, where the foreground character's face was pin sharp but the moving figures in the background seemed oddly smeary. But I suspect from what I've read that this might be a normal feature of high res LCD screens and DVD-to-4K upscaling rather than something specific to this particular TV, and so far I've only seen one clip where it was distracting enough to notice for a few seconds.

Sound seemed ok for the five minutes I used it, but then I plugged in a DAC leading to my analog stereo amp* , through which music videos sound great, so the telly will probably spend the rest of its life with the sound on mute.

43" doesn't feel like an unreasonably huge size for a normal (Munich apartment) living room; I could even have gone bit bigger.

The only "smart" feature I've used is the Youtube app, and it's great. On bouldering videos you can clearly see things like black crimps on black volumes, which at normal browser window size on a laptop screen are basically invisible. (My son managed to find an Amazon app somewhere in a menu, a feat I have so far been unable to repeat)
But I've hooked up an old laptop that will be taking care of most of the "smart" duties for the time being, although I suspect lack of a remote might become a pain.

* Get me, so retro. Not really - transistors not tubes

[Jim]

assuming you've got the tv plugged in to the router or on WIFI, you can find the youtube clip on your phone and hit the cast button and it should come on your telly to save you using the clunky tv menu thing

[Muenchener]

Yep, my son already wised me up to that one.

[Falling Down]

DACs rule - I have the  Skybox and DVD player going into mine and into the stereo for the same reason.  The tele is on perma mute.

[Johnny Brown]

So we've had this Sony smart TV a few years now, and the apps are starting to disappear as they are no longer supported - first 4, then youtube, then amazon. I'm really opposed to junking perfectly good hardware, is there a decent plug-in solution?

[SA Chris]

Amazon Fire Stick? Can get apps for all standard online / on demand TV on it (iPlayer, 4OD), plus loads of films and series if you have a prime account. Can also access Netflix etc through it with a paid account.

Remote is a bit fiddly, but kids and i seem to cope.

 

[SA Chris]

Just looked, remote looks like it's a lot better on newer ones than ours.

[tommytwotone]

I've got an XBox One - all the major apps on it (iPlayer, ITV, 4, 5 and Netflix), plus it's a top-notch gaming machine and a blu ray player.

You can pick them up second hand off eBay for c.40 fuckalls.

[Paul B]

Amazon Fire Stick? Can get apps for all standard online / on demand TV on it (iPlayer, 4ODAll4),

Likewise, Chromecast works fine for me. Have you checked if CC is built into your fancy Sony TV? My parents had it as a feature that just needed enabling.

[andy_e]

Is a Raspberry Pi controlled via your telephone still a viable option these days?

[Paul B]

Is a Raspberry Pi controlled via your telephone still a viable option these days?

I gave up on mine as CC became more and more embedded within Android. It [RasPi] certainly never felt like a justworks^TM solution.

[tomtom]

+1 for the fire stick.

[SA Chris]

certainly never felt like a justworks^TM solution.

Same with mine. My brother in law (techno geek) helpfully installed one on our telly, and talked me through use, but I never could remember what to do, so just use the firestick.

[tomtom]

isnt there an amazon sale thingy on later this week (thurs?) normally their own stuff (eg firesticks) are on offer then,,,

[Johnny Brown]

Cheers guys will have a look at the firestick...

Edit: bit alarmed to see it includes alexa... I can disable that right?

[tomtom]

Cheers guys will have a look at the firestick...

Edit: bit alarmed to see it includes alexa... I can disable that right?

Yup.

[SA Chris]

Alexa can fuck right off. Silly cow.

[tomtom]

I like the voice control (not Alexa) on the fire stick. "Fireman sam" spoken into the remote can save alot of hassle when weilding a wailing toddler :D