TV buying advice

[Houses4Rent]

Hi irneb, thanks very much for this. I googled a bit and read a lot on CNET on TV testing etc. http://www.cnet.com/topics/tvs/
It seems most technical data like Conrast Ratio is hogwash anyway. However, what is the difference between 1080i and 1080p? And what if they just state 1080 on the adverts? In the end, correct me if I am wrong, as long I do not play Blue Rays or wait a long time until 1080 is broadcast in SA I will never use my 1080 TV to its potential anyway.

Fascinating how most manufacturers and cosumers seem to go the SMART route when a simple old PC can make any Smart TV look dumb.

[Justloadit]

It's called marketing
Always try and get the consumer to buy the latest item you have manufactured. This is what keeps them in business

[irneb]

Hi irneb, thanks very much for this. I googled a bit and read a lot on CNET on TV testing etc. http://www.cnet.com/topics/tvs/
It seems most technical data like Conrast Ratio is hogwash anyway. However, what is the difference between 1080i and 1080p? And what if they just state 1080 on the adverts? In the end, correct me if I am wrong, as long I do not play Blue Rays or wait a long time until 1080 is broadcast in SA I will never use my 1080 TV to its potential anyway.

Fascinating how most manufacturers and cosumers seem to go the SMART route when a simple old PC can make any Smart TV look dumb.

The i stands for interlaced, while the p is progressive. The difference here is that each time the screen is updated to show the next frame, the i types only update every other line (alternating in turn) - effectively only updating half the dots on the screen. The progressive version updates all the lines for each frame. You might see some flickering and "ghosting" in the i type of screen - especially with fast paced action shots at high resolutions like on blueray.

1080 is definitely more than we have currently in SA. But if looking at what's available overseas and interpolating a few years for us to finally see their scraps, then 1080 is actually the "poor-man's" TV quality already. It's just that over here we're lucky to receive 3rd world quality ... as with nearly everything.

Justloadit's correct. "Smart" is nothing more than a marketing term. It's very much in the same class as referring to a particular line of cars being "Smart" cars.

[Houses4Rent]

So I end up buyingh a Hisense 50inch Smart FHD TV Demo from Incredible Connection.

I play around a bit (all totally new to me) and a few things do not work. First call to Hinsense was great, and after that it crashed badly. Went up to top level and then someone eventually heard me. So they send technician, who was not too clued up either, but they agree that TV is not well.
I do not want to bring it back as my Vitality cashback over R1000 would be lost. Same module is discontinued by now anyway. Hisense still has stock though. Long story short and some hard negotiation and they ended up replacing it with a 50 inch ULTRA HD TV with a better and more recent different opertiong system.

2 questions: How will I ever get to source content in UHD? Are all DVD's UHD? The DVD rental shop could not tell me. Will my old DVD player be able to play it if DVD is UHD? Or must I go Blue Ray now to at least see the super duper UHD quality once?

Why are sound bars so expensive? Is there much benefit to connect to my old amp and speakers? Is that even possible?

I suddenly have more channels (eMovies, eKazi etc) even via my steam antenna which the first Hisense did not spit out. Just can't seem to get eNews. Signal is there, but screen stays black. Is that normal?

[AndyD]

UHD aka 4K resolution (2160p) is still fairly new. You only get a handful movies available in this resolution and you might struggle to find them locally unless you have a netflix account and a fast fibre to home internat connection.

HD is available (1080p) with blu ray movies and I think DSTV might even have some HD channels available although I couldn't swear to this.

You can also download movies in 2160p UHD and put them on a flash drive and plug it into the TV but the filesizes are going to be enormous unless it's a low-bitrate rip (around 5 times the size of 1080p).

[Houses4Rent]

Thanks Andy, sounds like a schlepp to get UHD media. Hopefully it wil become easier in the near future.

You mention DSTV and HD, but would ther source not have to be UHD? So UHD is only via Netflix right now it seems.

I probably will get Netflix and I have a 4 Mb/s copper line (rather call it 3.5 Mb/s). Is that fast enough? Just want to test out of curiousity whether the picture is really that much better.

[irneb]

I'm sorry to hear you got bad experiences from Hisense. Personally I've not had problems with them before. Perhaps yours was just some bad batch, or was damaged while it was demo'd in the shop.

Right ... DVD is (at best) standard definition (SD) tending to be around 480p (i.e. 480 lines of dots across the picture).

FHD (full high definition) is 1080p, more than twice the amount of lines of SD. These sorts of things you only get on BlueRay discs, not DVDs. DSTV's "HD" is in fact "half"-HD, i.e. 720p. Most video recorders (e.g. on a smart phone) tends to record at these sorts of resolutions these days. So most likely your "home-videos" would be at 720p/1080p, long gone is the time of those VHS recorders were the limit.

The 4K / UHD (ultra high definition) is a lot more than that. It may be possible to find some BlueRay discs with this sort of resolution, but they'd be even more scarce than full HD discs. Most likely the only place you'd see this in SA is if you get an online-streamed version or some place you download such video source from (e.g. buying such movie through Amazon). Or of course if you produce such yourself using a video recorder / camera with UHD capability.

It's not a "bad" thing to have a TV which is better than the source files / streams you watch, it's just that you don't use it to its very limits. This may mean the TV needs to scale up lower quality video, or you need to change settings so it doesn't just display as a postage stamp in the middle of the screen. Think of it like someone with a Ferrari only staying at the speed limits on the normal roads, by only ever changing up to 3rd.

It seems a "waste", but what would be your alternative? Paying more for something worse? As long as it's nothing extra out of your pocket, I'd say go for the 4K TV. Even if you're never going to use it to its maximum, it's not as if it cannot show even old PAL qualities at 180 lines per screen (i.e. like TV signals in 70s and 80s), so your old DVD player should still work the same on a UHD as it would on a FHD or 1/2 HD or SD capable TV.

It's just that the TV uses 2 or more of its lines to display a single line from the DVD (i.e. it gets scaled up). And because the lines are so close together, it's highly unlikely you'd notice any artefacts due to the scaling process - though I'd likely want to see it first (ask them to play a DVD through it for you).

[Houses4Rent]

Thanks irneb, that makes sense. FYI the TV is in my lounge already and I did not pay extra for the "upgrade". So HISENSE did come to the party in the end.
Its a quantum leap jump for me as I came from a 54cm (yes, cm) CRT to a 50 inch LED flat screen UHD, lol

[irneb]

Thanks Andy, sounds like a schlepp to get UHD media. Hopefully it wil become easier in the near future.

You mention DSTV and HD, but would ther source not have to be UHD? So UHD is only via Netflix right now it seems.

I probably will get Netflix and I have a 4 Mb/s copper line (rather call it 3.5 Mb/s). Is that fast enough? Just want to test out of curiousity whether the picture is really that much better.

For UHD that speed's a bit on the low side. You'd most likely need lots of buffering to get something playing decently across that. Or more likely be able to download the file before you start watching.

You're effectively on the limits for halfHD / interlaced fullHD (i.e. 720p / 1080i), 1080p should be fine over 5Mb/s or higher, though SD (DVD quality) should be quite decent across that (a 1Mb/s is around your bottom limit for such). But for UHD I'd say you require at least 10Mb/s, probably better at 15. Note, these are if the compression techniques used are "decent", e.g. using multi-pass H265 encoding (or something similar, I think NetFlix did say they're going with H265 these days). Else you either need much higher baud-rates or you're going to see block-artefacts, dropped frames, stuttering, etc.

Thanks irneb, that makes sense. FYI the TV is in my lounge already and I did not pay extra for the "upgrade". So HISENSE did come to the party in the end.
Its a quantum leap jump for me as I came from a 54cm (yes, cm) CRT to a 50 inch LED flat screen UHD, lol

You're welcome ... yes it is a leap isn't it! I've also experienced similar myself, I find even my 24" LCD monitor to feel larger (never mind clearer) than my old CRT TV. But the LED TV is simply way beyond what I used to experience (even though it's just FHD).

[AndyD]

Thanks Andy, sounds like a schlepp to get UHD media. Hopefully it wil become easier in the near future.

You mention DSTV and HD, but would ther source not have to be UHD? So UHD is only via Netflix right now it seems.

I probably will get Netflix and I have a 4 Mb/s copper line (rather call it 3.5 Mb/s). Is that fast enough? Just want to test out of curiousity whether the picture is really that much better.

I'm not even remotely clued up about DSTV, I've not been a subscriber since they told me there was some kinda charge to have it suspended and reconnected during and after some building work at home so I told them they could shove it and I never looked back. They do have some info about HD channels on their website

A 4 meg line might be a problem for HD streaming, I'd do some real life speed tests on the line before taking the plunge. Also make sure it's unshaped and unthrottled etc.