• Welcome to The Audio Annex! If you have any trouble logging in or signing up, please contact 'admin - at - theaudioannex.com'. Enjoy!
  • HTTPS (secure web browser connection) has been enabled - just add "https://" to the start of the URL in your address bar, e.g. "https://theaudioannex.com/forum/"
  • Congratulations! If you're seeing this notice, it means you're connected to the new server. Go ahead and post as usual, enjoy!
  • I've just upgraded the forum software to Xenforo 2.0. Please let me know if you have any problems with it. I'm still working on installing styles... coming soon.

65+ Display (and speakers?)

The DirtMerchant

Well-Known Member
Famous
Friend of mine is looking to spend around $1500 total for a 65"+ 4K display
and I'm trying to convince him to go with a HTiB or a set of speakers. Full surround
not necessary.

Any specific suggestions and or do's/don'ts? I see an incredibly wide price range for 65" sets
from $800 up to $2k. Not sure what tech is causing those price differences and which
I should pay attention to.

I'd consider a Vizio set but in general want to steer him away from the bottom of the barrel brands (Hisense?) never even heard of it before...
 
id consider getting it via costco if you or him have membership. i believe the warranty goes from standard 1 year to 3 based on their coverage.

if he really doesnt want to spend too much on a full 5.1 maybe consider a soundbar, given you've seen his living room and hopefully enough reflective areas to get it to work properly. Yamaha does great work on them, but ive heard great things on vizios recently. Yammys also have a subwoofer out, so in case he wants more ump, its possible. (yammy's also have built in 'subwoofers'. its enough for a bedroom, but not bone rattling)

if he wants a 4k unit, he has to consider his sources too. a UHD or 4k blu ray player starts normally at around 200 bucks, including the xbox option.
 
if he wants a 4k unit, he has to consider his sources too. a UHD or 4k blu ray player starts normally at around 200 bucks, including the xbox option.

I think most 4K TVs are going to be Smart TVs, and usually you'll be streaming a 4K source if it's not hooked up to a game system. I don't know how many normal consumers still bother with physical media- and of those that do, who is bothering to get a 4K capable source device and will hunt down the appropriate discs. I know with my 4K the only time it sees a 4K source is streaming from Amazon or Netflix. I don't have anything that's actually capable of feeding the TV with it. But then, scaling a 1080p image to 4K acceptably isn't as hard to do as it was to take a 480i/p image and making it look decent at HD resolutions, so even using lesser source components may not be a deal killer.

Agreed on the soundbar stuff... those will likely run directly off the TV so there's no need to run another remote to keep everything working together (like you'll run into with a separate receiver).
 
I'd go for the best $1100-1200 TV I could get my hands on and spend the rest on a decent sound base.
 
Last edited:
I'd go for the best $1100-1200 TV I could get my hands on and spend the rest on a decent sound base.
What's the best $1100-1200 TV in your opinion? Do I need to worry about about edge-lit vs full back-lit anymore?
What is a "decent sound base"?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I'd at least take a look at the 65" Samsungs @ Costco, Amazon, etc...I'm a big fan of ZVox if the budget allows.
 
I think most 4K TVs are going to be Smart TVs, and usually you'll be streaming a 4K source if it's not hooked up to a game system. I don't know how many normal consumers still bother with physical media- and of those that do, who is bothering to get a 4K capable source device and will hunt down the appropriate discs.

if thats the case, why are people still 'buying' 4k version of movies? maybe tis just me, but i dont see sales declining for 4k UHD disc.

ive also seen people make the mistake of purchasing 4k versions and complain it doesnt work in their current blu-ray player.

i just wanted him to be aware that since he wanted a 4k tv, he should be aware that a 4k player is a possible purchase if he wants to maximize using it.
 
Wait ... I thought 4K discs also had a HD version soon included.
 
Wait ... I thought 4K discs also had a HD version soon included.
they do.

i dont use them, so i kinda dont know if there is any difference with a UHD version and a regular version that is included in a typical blu ray disc.
 
OK, picked up a Samsung 65" display from Costco for $999.
The ZVOX soundbar is under consideration, but there is a possibility of wanting surround speakers...
But...are there wireless speakers that are any good and don't break the bank?
 
There was a thread around here somewhere for "desired" settings on the Samsung display wasn't there?
I basically went through and turned HDR on and shut off any "edge enhancement" type stuff that I saw...
 
I've had a high-end 4K set for two years and do not own a UHD disc player. $30/movie is too much. I have picked up one or two 4K streaming titles, but it looks like Vudu has no plans to support HDR10. I'm in watch and see mode. In the meantime, I'm still buying HD titles for $5-8 each and keep most of my 4K viewing to Netflix, Amazon, etc.

Do not underestimate the ability of a good 4K set to make your HD material look better. I know mine did.
 
I've had a high-end 4K set for two years and do not own a UHD disc player. $30/movie is too much. I have picked up one or two 4K streaming titles, but it looks like Vudu has no plans to support HDR10. I'm in watch and see mode. In the meantime, I'm still buying HD titles for $5-8 each and keep most of my 4K viewing to Netflix, Amazon, etc.

Do not underestimate the ability of a good 4K set to make your HD material look better. I know mine did.

So can a 4K set up-scale an HD pic and actually make it look better? I remember when HD blu-ray players were boasting about up-scaling a regular DVD, but I never really saw good improvement.
 
So can a 4K set up-scale an HD pic and actually make it look better? I remember when HD blu-ray players were boasting about up-scaling a regular DVD, but I never really saw good improvement.

Yes, it can look better. Remember that during the timeframe the TV makers were able to go from 2K technology to 4K technology the silicon makers and algorithm experts were also spending fortunes developing better means of scaling content in real time. So, while the early HD TVs lacked decent scaling technology, and only some of the best DVD Players with scaling chips were even "acceptable" to viewers, today's technology allows for amazing scaling abilities.

As I wrote a few years ago about 4K televisions (which resulted in a ton of rude responses saying we never need something like that in our homes), for every single pixel on a regular HD signal, there are 4 pixels on a 4K screen. That allows a scaling processor to use interpolation and other techniques to remove stair-stepping and the stuff you'd expect. But it also introduces other capabilities, such as adding to the perceived colors and grayscale levels by mixing shades.

For example, and this is real, if you have 256 shades of gray available in a source, but the background in a scene runs from an infinite black at one side and an infinite white at the other (such as a beam of light piercing through a gap in the shades on a window and washing across a white wall behind the actors), the limit of 256 shades could potentially introduce bands of gray where the compression or format is limited. With a good scaling engine that sort of scene could easily be recognized as an infinite transition from white to black and the output could use not only more pixels to smooth out the transitions, but add dots of adjacent shades into each original pixel to trick our eyes into seeing a shade the signal cannot produce. Your a photographer, you see that effect when you make an image fully black and white be removing all the gray content. There are still what appear to shades of gray in certain transitions. Or, even more memorable, that's how a black & white laser printer can claim to offer grayscale output - the toner is black and the page is white, but by spattering tiny dots of black toner with gaps of white it appears to be gray to the eye. A good scaling algorithm and processor can do that. So, instead of a brick wall of 256 shades of gray, the higher resolution screen can be used create what appears to be 512 shades (easy to do) up to 1024 shades of gray. And that's just for black and white. Add color and standard color space content can appear to be in HDR on a non-HDR screen pretty easily - and just imagine what a true HDR screen could do???

So, yes, the new 4K and future 8K televisions will offer a better experience even with old format content - assuming the video processors are up to snuff. And these days most video processors are very good and some are insanely impressive.
 
One of the reasons I chose a Sony FALD over an LG OLED was that the image processing was so much better on the Sony that it be the LG away on upscaled content.
 
There is zero chance that I will upgrade almost 2,000 movies to UHD, so performance with HD sources was a really high priority. I definitely got much better performance across the board. The thing is jaw dropping with UHD HDR content, but it still looks really great with regular HAD to the point where I can safely state that non-HDR 4K content only looks marginally better.
 
Back
Top