TV Purchase help
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You don't need a smart TV, get one these instead:
https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/WKSASU71288/Asus-VivoStick-TS10-B015D-Z8350---2GB-DDR3L---32GBIt's a small Win10 computer you can plug into an HDMI port. Smart TV's don't come with all apps to all sources, with a computer you can access everything. Good article re this stuff: http://www.howtogeek.com/200557/why-you-should-connect-a-pc-to-your-tv-dont-worry-its-easy/
Pair it with one of these keyboards: http://www.logitech.com/en-nz/product/wireless-touch-keyboard-k400-plus
Access facebook, emails, websites, Youtube, install MS Office etc easily. Plug in a flash drive or portable Hard drive and watch videos or your photos, network it with other PCs if you want.
I've done this and love it!
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@Virgil said in TV Purchase help:
Lots of hdmi inputs, the more the better. You will be surprised at the number of TVs that only offer 2 or some shitty amount.
I've only got 2, but why would I need more? One for sky, one for Xbox, no others needed.
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@Bones said in TV Purchase help:
@Virgil said in TV Purchase help:
Lots of hdmi inputs, the more the better. You will be surprised at the number of TVs that only offer 2 or some shitty amount.
I've only got 2, but why would I need more? One for sky, one for Xbox, no others needed.
What about the PS4, Apple TV, PS3, XBox One..
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It depends what you use your TV for. Mine has 4 HDMI inputs but I only use the TV as a display. Sky and the Blu-ray player are connected to the AVR, which is connected to the TV. I can access the internet via the blu-ray player. Apple TV is connected to the TV as my AVR doesn't have enough HDMI inputs.
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So we whipped in on Friday night to pick up a TV about 30 mins before Harvey Norman shut so easy to get advice.
Picked up a TV that had HDR and I think it is LED? or maybe LCD. Looks fantastic though and am glad true-love was involved as she asks and asks and asks different questions.
Thing is though as being the last customer of the night they try and push the sale through so you can really get heaps of add ons for next to nothing.
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@NTA said in TV Purchase help:
LED - much more efficient on the juice than Plasma and even slightly better than LCD, with a higher picture quality than the latter.
First LED I had was a little uncanny tho - the people on screen looked too real.
I'm not worried about the juice it takes to run as we have plenty of river thingies turning wheels to give us some Zappy stuff in our houses
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@Hooroo said in TV Purchase help:
@NTA said in TV Purchase help:
LED - much more efficient on the juice than Plasma and even slightly better than LCD, with a higher picture quality than the latter.
First LED I had was a little uncanny tho - the people on screen looked too real.
I'm not worried about the juice it takes to run as we have plenty of river thingies turning wheels to give us some Zappy stuff in our houses
Enough of the scientific mumbo-jumbo, Hooroo! Give it to us in layman's terms!
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@Hooroo said in TV Purchase help:
I'm not worried about the juice it takes to run as we have plenty of river thingies turning wheels to give us some Zappy stuff in our houses
Also the heat factor - mother-in-law has a plasma (now about 10 years old?) and it makes the room a couple of degrees hotter.
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@NTA can you also smell brimstone at your MIL's? just wondered if it might be something other than the tv...
Can't recall if you've mentioned if the MIL is a GC or not ha ha
But yeah the plasma's crank the heat aye, plus they get noisy after a while.
One thing for note if you guys are using a receiver or similar to feed sky through to your tv. When we did our reno work we had some issues with sky. Got their techs over and it was explained that the sky signal has a low power current running through the cable so you need particular connections/plugs etc.
Apparently the sky box software and signal doesn't always play nice with receiver technology/software, and that causes quite a few tech call outs when the sky side of things is actually working fine. The tech said it's the receiver software that's dated or causing issues, especially if it's trying to scale or boost/tweak the signal.
His advice if you ever run into ongoing signal issues was to plug the box directly into your tv to see if that changed things. If it does chances are some sort of interference with whatever you route your signal through.
I reckon that's a good rationale for the pc media hub approach versus a receiver or sound system hub.
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@Paekakboyz yeah we recently had the MySky box replaced, and while he was there he changed the ports/plugs in the wall where the cable goes to, said the old one caused issues on a certain few channels (may have been 7,17 & 27??) for some reason.
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@NTA said in TV Purchase help:
Also the heat factor - mother-in-law has a plasma (now about 10 years old?) and it makes the room a couple of degrees hotter.
My first decent TV I splashed out on a Pioneer plasma (back when Pioneer made the best screens) and it also functioned as a heater in winter.
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New house, so i am getting data points everywhere. Costs a bit more, but so useful.
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@NTA "LED" TV's are LCD screens, they just have an LED backlight rather than the old compact-fluorescent light sources.
Calling them LED TVs was a smart piece of marketing from Samsung.
OLED TV's have a miniaturised group of Organic LEDs for each pixel - no LCD filter required.
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@mariner4life said in TV Purchase help:
New house, so i am getting data points everywhere. Costs a bit more, but so useful.
Get 4 ports anywhere you have AudioVisual gear: TV, Game Console, Sky/Fox, Sound system. Also the home office if you're getting one, but don't worry much about the other rooms as most the kids devices will be Wifi.
Pull that all back to a patch panel somewhere convenient (under the stairs or back of the pantry) and then spend a bit more on a decent network switch to pull it all together. For your wifi, something that is Power over Ethernet (PoE) can do a good job if the switch supports it.
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@Paekakboyz I sometimes have issues with a temporary loss of volume via the AVR when changing to channels like ESPN. It's an annoyance but that can be rectified by just pushing the input button on the AVR remote.
Maybe the MySky box is improved now as when I set up mine through the AVR I needed to use a co-ax cable to get 5.1 audio and only use HDMI for video.
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@antipodean said in TV Purchase help:
@NTA said in TV Purchase help:
Also the heat factor - mother-in-law has a plasma (now about 10 years old?) and it makes the room a couple of degrees hotter.
My first decent TV I splashed out on a Pioneer plasma (back when Pioneer made the best screens) and it also functioned as a heater in winter.
@antipodean Was that by chance the Kuro?
I purchased a 55" from the last generation of the Pioneer Plasma's made in Japan, the Kuro (which is Japanese for Black) and until this day, even though it is now 10 years old, I haven't seen a TV which such amazing colour replication and deep blacks.
On the other hand, it just didn't handle some things as well as the more modern TV's. And they certainly do put out some heat and suck up the "zappy stuff" (thanks for the technical explination @Hooroo ).
I've heard that on the second hand TV market, they are still one of the few TV's that have held their relative value and are in demand for their colour reproduction and black blacks.
I also have a Samsung 3D LED which I got about 6 and 1/2 years ago and whilst it is bright and good view, the colour reproduction isn't great and certainly doesn't do blacks very well.
Apparently OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TV's are now the KURO equivalent. Amazing colour reproduction and very dark blacks. But as with all things technological, the OLED is very expensive when compared to LED.
Been doing some research and if I was to buy a TV at the moment, it would be hard to justify an OLED due to cost and would likely go with a very good LED.
Things to consider when buying a new TV:
3D TV's are dead in the home marketplace
Curved TV's are on their way out
4K / UltraHD are a low cost investment to ensure your TV is "future proofed" as much as any tech can be considered future proofed. The purchase price on 4K/UHD TV's has dropped drastically in the past 6 months making them not much more expensive when compared to the equivalent sized 1080P Full HD TV.Yes, there isn't much 4K content available... YET.
But Netflix and others are making more and more of it available.
Streaming such content however can be painful depending on your bandwidth, i.e. on ADSL it really rather sucks. And will eat up significant portions of your data allowance.
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@RoninWC said in TV Purchase help:
@antipodean Was that by chance the Kuro?
I purchased a 55" from the last generation of the Pioneer Plasma's made in Japan, the Kuro (which is Japanese for Black) and until this day, even though it is now 10 years old, I haven't seen a TV which such amazing colour replication and deep blacks.Yes, it was and I agree with your opinion on its capabilities, particularly the blacks. I had the smaller 50"
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@antipodean
Actually I stand corrected, as mine was also the 50". It's my Samsung LED 3D TV that is 55".The Kuro's only came in 42, 50 and 60 inches.
Always wished I had enough for the 60" but it was just way too expensive in the day, near on $10K.
