Have just obtained clearance from better half to get a big ol HDR 4K telly. Trouble is, I’m completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of different models, technologies, discounted prices and reviews.

Have just been down to Curry’s and done the obligatory ‘what’s the best deal?’ chat – and had the ‘wouldn’t touch a Sony’ response. They were throwing ‘this ones 8- bit but this ones 10-bit’ curve balls – no idea what that means..
I never trust what I’m seeing in store due to the various sources being used but you can usually spot a lemon.

Some claim to have 100Hz refresh rate, some 400Hz, some around 2000Hz?!

Can’t stretch to OLED (not sure it’s even worth it?), am looking for the biggest I can source within budget that has the best blacks, smoothest motion, half decent OS, and minimum of 55”. Would prefer 60”-65”

Sources will be PS4 Pro, netlifix HD plus other streaming services. Sound quality unimportant as will be running through 2.1 set up. Have loved my current 40” Sony KDL-40W605B asides from its glitchy OS, it has a brilliant picture and I rearely notice any judder or smearing.

Essentially, I want to be blown away by a big screen for £1000 or less. I’d be gutted to blow a wedge on a bigger screen only to find its worse than my current.

Let’s do this.

Get a BIG ASS Samsung curve smart telly….you gotta luv them curves!!..lol

Urgh. Can’t edit this but anyway this LG I got is great. So good we bought a 55″ one for the hall. The smart remote makes all the difference and the apps work really well. Minor niggle is the on screen guide but it’s hardly a deal breaker.

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-and-home-entertainment/televisions/televisions/lg-60uj750v-60-smart-4k-ultra-hd-hdr-led-tv-10160659-pdt.html

[mod edit: FTFY]

The 8 bit v 10 bit / refresh rate bollocknaise is great for salesmen (and women) or should I say sales person.

I have a lovely new to me £600 55″ Samsung led smart 4k tv. I love it its awesome. My mate has spent £3k on an OLED tv (same size). It’s also awesome…. But absolutely NOT £2400 more awesome.

That pretty much sums it up. Hi-fi / tv up selling based on completely made up crap is rife in the industry*

*edit OK not made up but very marginal gains fwiw

Hang on, Jimjam – you bought a TV for your hallway?

A couple of thoughts… wait and see if there are any Black Friday deals at the end of this week (good timing!)… and think about buying from the likes of Costco, John Lewis or Richer Sounds for the 5 year warranties.

I recently spent £600 on a 55” Philips, picture is great but not class leading, but I wanted Ambilight. Probably wouldn’t have bothered for general telly watching but we mostly watch films. Looking forward to Blade Runner 2049 on it.

Have loved my current 40” Sony KDL-40W605B asides from its glitchy OS, it has a brilliant picture and I rearely notice any judder or smearing.

Got one of those, I love the picture, just leave it in cinema mode and turn off all that motion flow nonsense.
I’m not looking to replace mine yet but will be a tough act to follow (especially at the price)

The 55″ Hisense is bloody brilliant if you get a good one. Disappointing of you don’t. Their QC isn’t all that.

At its best it blows anything the right side of £1k away.

Urgh. Can’t edit this but anyway this LG I got is great. So good we bought a 55″ one for the hall

Telly in’t hall?
Weird city.

Get a BIG ASS Samsung curve smart telly….you gotta luv them curves!!..lol

No. About as useful as a 3D set. I’d also avoid any smart functions and use a supplementary box like Apple TV for any smart functionality. The TV is unlikely to get OS updates after a couple of years, whereas a box will for five or six years and will be easier and cheaper to replace in the future, because the TV is likely to keep going for at least ten years; my 42” Sony Bravia is now ten years old, has a superb picture, and has my MAC Mini plugged into it for a monitor, so that’s the smart functions sorted.

Daffy – Member

Hang on, Jimjam – you bought a TV for your hallway?

Yeah, it’s not really a hall as such but it’s not really a room. It’s a decent sized room as you come in through the front door so I decided to put an arm chair and a tv in there. It’s a bit of a bastardisation since it’s an old house and before it was renovated it used to be a living room.

Some claim to have 100Hz refresh rate, some 400Hz, some around 2000Hz?!

Refresh rate is not a thing on LCD TV’s. I’m surprised they are still quoting these. They are a throw back from CRT tubes where electron beams scanned and illuminated the pixels. LCD’s really have infinite refresh rate because you can just switch on individual pixels and leave them on indefinitely if required.

If it were me i’d just get the one below and be done with it. You can waste hours of your life shopping around for things like this and at the end of the day there will be very little difference between them. I’m a bit of a Panasonic fanboy so a bit biased I admit, but they’re super reliable, i’ve had 3 or 4 Panasonic TV’s over the years and they’ve been absolutely faultless.

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-and-home-entertainment/televisions/televisions/panasonic-tx-65ex600b-65-smart-4k-ultra-hd-hdr-led-tv-10159546-pdt.html?store=2279&cmpid=ppc~gg~(PLA)-LOCAL~~Exact&istCompanyId=bec25c7e-cbcd-460d-81d5-a25372d2e3d7&istItemId=xppxxpmrtp&istBid=t&srcid=198&cmpid=ppc~gg~0045%20(PLA)%20TELEVISIONS~All%20TVs~Exact&mctag=gg_goog_7904&kwid=GOOGLE&device=c&ds_kids=92700027233270744&PLA=1&tgtid=0045%20(PLA)%20TELEVISIONS&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIg9fRjp3L1wIVjJEbCh1PPglvEAQYASABEgK49_D_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Comes in within your price range taking the cash back into account.

LCD panels absolutely have a refresh rate – it’s the speed at which the whole screen can redraw – it’s not instant by any means – and used to be measured in ms (still is generally for computer monitors).

Look at the new iPad Pro for eg – much faster refresh rate than the older ones and it shows – particularly when using the Pencil for eg.

Samsung 7000 Series

65 inch panasonic bought mine for £1500 a few weeks back now reduced to £1250 i think , fantastic picture with sky HD and netflix.

7000 series is a very good call but shop about as others are throwing in a Blu-ray player too PRC Direct are for 1.

No recommendations for a projector/screen combo yet?

Not a recommendation for a TV, but I second getting somewhere with a 5 yr guarantee. Priceless if you do run into trouble…had a Sony a few years back that I bought for £1k over the net, must have ended up with 3 replacements and spent more time getting fixed than it did in the living room…was so much hassle trying to deal with company online that ever since my main priority has been a ‘local’ bricks and mortar shop with 5 yr guarantee. Richer Sounds, and up here in the North east Fenwicks/Bainbridges/John Lewis etc etc.

iancity1 – Member

Not a recommendation for a TV, but I second getting somewhere with a 5 yr guarantee. Priceless if you do run into trouble…had a Sony a few years back……

That was one of my main questions when it came to buying my tv and something I generally ask for big purchases. I asked around a few electronics stores and the general consensus was that Samsung were head and shoulders above in terms of warranty replacement and repair, Sony were generally regarded as the worst and the rest were all somewhere in between.

Read the Which or What Hifi reviews. Ignore individuals telling you how good their TV is, they upgraded and usually are just comparing their new one to their 3-7 year old one.

Refresh rate is not a thing on LCD TV’s. I’m surprised they are still quoting these. They are a throw back from CRT tubes where electron beams scanned and illuminated the pixels. LCD’s really have infinite refresh rate because you can just switch on individual pixels and leave them on indefinitely if required.

Hmm OK refresh is technically a CRT era term but it’s continued in use for LCD screens (where it’s more accurately described as frame rate). It does make a difference but it depends how it’s implemented (e.g. frame interpolation I can’t stand personally). It is largely a marketing gimmick (and often misleading as most manufacturers include the interpolation of backlight scanning in the quoted figure), however a true 120Hz panel + backlight scanning should generally have less noticeable motion blur than a 60Hz panel + backlight scanning.

It’s much more important with computer gaming (e.g. 60 vs 144) but that’s true frame rate whereas as on a TV with a broadcast source it’s generally always 24-50 fps so the more your TV boosts beyond that the more artificial its becoming

As for recommendations, as has been said just go to the John Lewis & Currys website and look at the models in the price range/size range you’re interested in and Google for reviews of them. I’d always recommend a Samsung for a £600-1000 budget but that’s partly due to personal experience/bias, I imagine it’s hard to buy a crap TV in that price range these days.

I would also budget for a sound bar (even if it’s takes away from the screen budget) if you don’t have anything existing to output to, flatscreen TV speakers are pretty poor.

As you,re using a PS4 Pro you want a one that is fast at processing the Samsung 7000 series scores big on this, Panasonic usually struggle.

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/tvs-entertainment/1405345/best-tv-for-gaming-2017-these-4k-hdr-televisions-will-get-the-most-out-of

Largest Samsung to budget. From John Lewis. The curved TVs are a bit of a gimmick. Ours produces a nice reflection back at you.

Despite making loads of cash Samsung always manage to make their products look totally cheap and tacky. How do they do it?

Depends what range you’re looking at they’ve not always got it right but other look superb.

Despite making loads of cash Samsung always manage to make their products look totally cheap and tacky. How do they do it?

I’m biased but I don’t mind it TBH. I’ve got my eye on the new “Frame” tv, but it’s double the OPs budget.

One tip would be to buy last year’s top of the range. Anything up to 60% discount with very little change in features etc. between years.

Thanks for all the recommendations folks.

Other than being 55″, I think I’m leaning towards the MU7000 series unit.
We sit square on to TV position so I don’t think viewing angles will be an issue, plus seemingly lowest lag in class should transfer well to PS4 Pro gaming.

Make sure you measure up your stand/cabinet vs the feet position (unless you’re wall-mounting). The MU7000 feet don’t look too bad but when I changed to my current 55″ Samsung it’s curved stand design put weight right at the edge of the screen which was too far apart for my cabinet at the time.

Wonder why he said not to touch a Sony, apart from the obvious answer being that he’s working at Curry’s…

I am dubious about Samsung reliabilty and I always have been about Sony, although that dates back frmo seeing problems with Sony VHS decks! All my Sony’s have been solid.

If you buy from John Lewis they all have 5 year warranties anyway.

Check out the main review sites, like http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/, etc for TV reviews and go for a recommended one that has accurate colors or one where they show the corrections they applied to get accurate colors.

Then you can apply those corrections at home as the out of the box performance is normally pretty rubbish. I had a Sony 40 W905 with a brilliant picture, but only when reset.

3D is mostly dead so ignore that. Curved is an elaborate practical joke that only makes sense if you sit little a couple of feet from it (think: 40″ monitor, not TV).

My next TV is almost definitely going to be a midrange LG, I love what they’ve done with the software and the screen quality is good. Given Samsung’s track record I’m actively vetoing anything from them now: our three year old smart bluray player is only good for Netfix now as iPlayer hangs during playback and 4od won’t even start. All their new TV hardware is powered by Tizen which I’ve had the unfortunate pleasure of working with and it’s a miracle that there’s not a botnet of samsung TVs yet to be honest. Maybe there is nobody has noticed. Sony sort of has brand loyalty from me, our current TV is 7 years old and still going strong and the one before that must be a decade old now and is at my inlaws in the spare room still. Amazing seeing the horror of CRT these days but it’s still working.

I recently spent £600 on a 55” Philips, picture is great but not class leading, but I wanted Ambilight.

Ambilight is great imo, I’m surprised other mfrs haven’t used it, I guess it’s Philips IP.

Samsung perform well with regards to lag for gaming, and if your believe the hype – they are suppposed to provide something like 90% of all panels to other ‘manufacturers’.
I’ve tended to enjoy Sony styling and reliability and the Bravia processing, yet I’m lead to believe their customer support is dire in the event of any issues (Samsung allegedly being the best).
I did get to play with the OS on a large LG screen yesterday and it was pleasingly lag free and intuitive..

FFS. I’m back at square one aren’t I..
Doesn’t anyone just go with What Hi-Fi award winners anymore?

Doesn’t anyone just go with What Hi-Fi award winners anymore?

only stupid people ever trusted that mag anyway…

they are suppposed to provide something like 90% of all panels to other ‘manufacturers’.

they had a joint venture with Sony, didn’t they, so technically they weren’t supplying Sony.

And only LG is making OLED panels, so no Samsung there.

Half the time it is the software running the set you are paying for, that makes the different in picture quality.

Sony are strong here, I beleive LG might have made strides recently – certainly the LG at the hotel I stayed at this weekend managed to make SD look watchable, where I’ve never seen a hotel Samsung not make it look worse than it really is. Bog standard setting, obviously.

Seems someone has issues with Samsung.

I did a LOT of research before buying one of these Panasonic TX58DX902B. Its pretty impressive, especially in UHD via Sky Q.

However, I bought a Digihome 42in TV a while back for literally peanuts for the kitchen and the picture via Sky Q on that is frankly……Amazing!

Check out Richer Sounds and the reviews: here

My inlaws have a new LG and it has some setting that basically makes it unwatchable (for me), like it’s so ultra-realistic that you can see all sets in TV shows are sets, CGI is really obviously an addition… I hate it but I don’t know what it’s called to avoid it when I go looking for a TV soon.

I bought an LG 55″ 4k television last weekend, mainly for video gaming.

It’s very good, I like it a lot.