Can't Find A Good TV Anymore

[toobfreak]

Thats probably why I had to get a better HDMI cable. I don't know what retard at the company decided to put a regular HDMI cable with a 4HD tv.

Regular HDMI cables are cheesy throwaway crap. The good cables can run into a lot of money.

 

[ozro]

I use a projector, I can make the picture so big even a blind bastard like me doesn't need glasses.
Picture quality? Well, did you notice the comment about blind bastard?
Mr Toobfreak, you seem knowledgeable about these things. Did Walmart buy Philips to make the ONN brand stuff?
My latest projector is onn. I live off grid, I get a four foot by six foot picture using only 50 watts. This is my third projector in four years, they seem to be sensitive to lightning storms. I had two fizzle out during storms, nothing else in the house fried when they did. Nothing happened to my panels or battery bank or other equipment. No burn marks on any ground rods ect. Both times, just a close strike and poof- projector fried.
Anyway, good luck in your TV search.

 

[toobfreak]

So basically, no true videophiles here who have a wide diversity of equipment like me dealing with keeping it all relevant and working in the HDMI age.

Here I am in the late 1980s with about 7 inputs, plus audio out to a sound system, plus video and audio sub-processing for removing video and audio noise and other things. BTW, that TV still works and I have it in my bedroom.

This is the best, most recent photo I have of my current video set up.

 

[Baron Von Murderpaws]

3D sucks. Why would you want it?

Its fun to watch some old movies in 3D sometimes.

But I really don't need it. The video program I have on my computer has a 3D option that turns any show or movie into 3D.
Pretty freeking neat.

 

[Moonglow]

I have a 2009 Emerson and it still works great.I have owned Emerson's since the 1990's.

 

[toobfreak]

I use a projector, I can make the picture so big even a blind bastard like me doesn't need glasses.
Picture quality? Well, did you notice the comment about blind bastard?

Yeah, well, projector TV has its uses, but in my experience suffered two problems: brightness, especially off-axis, and chromatism or colour fringes around the edge of the picture (usually blue or red fringe) resulting from vestigial lateral color in the lenses.

Mr Toobfreak, you seem knowledgeable about these things. Did Walmart buy Philips to make the ONN brand stuff?

I'm retired, don't follow things like I used to but in my experience, Walmart contracted with companies to make special "versions" of stuff for their stores made to a certain price point. So, if you buy a TV at Walmart, it is an inferior model they make just for Walmart cheaper for them than similar models sold elsewhere by using cheaper parts. But Philips is a big Dutch company (I have some Philips test equipment) and I doubt Walmart bought them. But you used to see a lot of Philips TVs---- another line which seems to have disappeared. Who knows, maybe Walmart bought them or their TV division and rebranded the name to a house brand.

My latest projector is onn. I live off grid, I get a four foot by six foot picture using only 50 watts. This is my third projector in four years, they seem to be sensitive to lightning storms.

You need to buy yourself a whole house energy arrester. The best ones are the gas discharge type. Then plug it into a UPS with over/under voltage regulation, battery backup and at least 150 joules of energy storage. The more the better. Also, unplug the stuff when a storm comes up.

Anyway, good luck in your TV search.

Thanks.

 

[Dogmaphobe]

Filed under "1st world problems".

I like to watch t.v. with a beer in my hand, but my local bottle shop has 1137 different beers, and it is causing me a great deal of angst as I am trying to decide upon my evening selection.

 

[JohnDB]

Regular HDMI cables are cheesy throwaway crap. The good cables can run into a lot of money.

Well....
Some are just expensive but still throwaway crap.

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

I have a new 77 inch LG OLED on a drop mount that sits over the fireplace that kicks ass!!
And it cost $5K less than the 60 inch Sony we have in the game room.
I dont see how you cant find a good TV these days.

 

[toobfreak]

I have a 2009 Emerson and it still works great.I have owned Emerson's since the 1990's.

Gee, early Korean stuff. Was never a fan of Emerson gear but the great thing is that any brand from the best to the worst, can have good and bad days where you buy cheap stuff and get a prize and buy good stuff and still get a lemon.

 

[toobfreak]

Well....
Some are just expensive but still throwaway crap.

My "good" HDMI cable was $100 fourteen years ago. A big thick thing designed for "deep colour" (transmits enough bandwidth for billions of colors). Most of then are no thicker than a toothpick with tiny breakable wires.

 

[Godboy]

Welp, my 2009 Mitsubishi 60” DLP TV was a goner again last night. I sat down to watch TV and eat something, relax, and BING! No picture, no sound, just a red status light. After about 30 minutes of fiddling, I was sure the TV was really DOA this time. At the very least salvageable only by a factory technician. But after a time of rest and reflection laying on my bed thinking about it watching my 1986 Hitachi 27” CRT bedroom TV which still works like a champ never a problem (they really make the BEST TVs), I got behind the thing, delved into it and resurrected it for now at least to live another day.

But my patience is broken. I’ve had it with DLP. I want a new TV with better technology and I would buy one today and pay any price, if but for a few things:

• 60” TVs are apparently no longer made. Selection is now down to either 55” or 65” and my speaker system is set up optimized for a 60” so I would have to reconfigure my speakers to fit a 65”.
• It must be stand mounted. I cannot do wall mount (not that I would want to) because my rear wall slants.
• My TV had a boatload of inputs for HDMI, component, composite, S-Video, RF in, outputs, you name it. And I use them all.
• I’m a name brand buyer: Hitachi, Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, Mitsubishi, but most TVs now are fuzzy brands I never even heard of. What’s an “Insignia?” "Hisense?" And please don’t even mention Samsung to me. Every Samsung product I've dealt with is crap.

Much to my dismay, all I found was marketing hype. Mind you, I was an electronics/electrical engineer who has a lot of background in video (I could probably design and make my own TV) and all I found was a couple of useful features (like 120Hz refresh rate which was just coming out new when I bought my TV). Instead, they hit you with

• 4XHD resolution (why do I need this when all my sources are 720 to 1080 at best?).
• LED technology, processing technology, backlighting technology (they are all nice, all good, not a critical choice). I guess plasma TV is long gone.
• Built in streaming services, Google, Roku, Apple, etc. I don’t use any of that crap and don’t even want Ethernet connected to my TV. Even the damn remote controls have buttons for all this stuff I do not want or need.
• The damn TVs now have 99 specs, 95 of which are of little to no value to the user. They have USB ports, optical output ports, BUT NO FREAKING INPUTS.

The ONE THING that matters, to a TV buyer you would think, is the capability to have the input range and scale needed to support your existing equipment, but that spec is buried in the specs and when you find it, the inputs are:

3 or 4 HDMI inputs! And at least one or two called HDMI 2.1 which probably means incompatible with regular HDMI. Probably an RF modulated input (antenna in), and if you are lucky, maybe ONE composite input. And that is it. Many of my devices were made before HDMI was even invented. Worse, I hate HDMI. But we are forced to use it because unlike DVI, HDMI allows the industry to spy on you and collect data on your viewing habits and things. And as I went up in price, $1000, $2000, $3000 and more, instead of getting more inputs, all it got me was more gingerbread technology fluff garbage features I do not need.

This really bothers me as I know how companies and engineers think: Designed Obsolescence. Instead of adding inputs to support older technology and gear, they want you to throw everything out TO BUY NEW. Gotta keep that return business! Hell, not only do I still have two professional Super-VHS tape decks that cost $800 each in 1988, but I even still have a Sony Laserdisc player! It is cool to fire it up once in a while. Back then, they used to make laserdiscs which had the full TAR (Theatrical aspect ratio / letter-boxing) which showed the FULL width of widescreen films even if the aspect ratio was 5:1.

Now when you buy a BluRay or DVD in widescreen, they still chop some of the ends off like pan and scan to fit the standard 16:9 HD widescreen format of today which isn’t very widescreen. I remember going to see Its a Mad Mad Mad Mad World at the theater in 1963 that the screen was so wide, it was curved, and you had to look side to side to take it all in, you could not follow all the action at once. Oh what an experience going to see a movie used to be at one time. So now I am forced to consider just keeping my old TV and sinking money into it to keep it going, or looking for some sort of “converter box” that takes all these old interface formats like composite video, S-video, component video, DVI, etc., which then CONVERTS them into an HDMI output and hope the thing works half well.

Anyone ever try one of those?

Most of the good brands are gone. You can find Sony, Vizio, LG, Samsung (ugh), but not Hitachi, Pioneer Elite, Panasonic Prism, or Mitsubishi, and some others that used to be the best there was. Nearly all of it is Chinese or Korean made now.

Go with Samsung. They make the best screens in my opinion and ive never had a single issue with any of mine.

 

[toobfreak]

I have a new 77 inch LG OLED on a drop mount that sits over the fireplace that kicks ass!!
And it cost $5K less than the 60 inch Sony we have in the game room.
I dont see how you cant find a good TV these days.

I'm looking at the LGs and Sonys. I've had bad luck with a Sony, an old 26" Trinitron (yes, 26"), but I still have high confidence in the brand. It isn't the picture quality or the durability I have trouble with, it is the fact that I can't find a TV that has a good selection and variety of INPUTS to plug into it, plus at least one analog audio out to feed the home theater sound system.

Everything is HDMI now and digital optical audio out which I assure you is not superior just an attempt to force people to junk their old gear and replace it all with new stuff to feed the industry. Just as HDMI is no better than DVI, just that DVI fed the video signal alone to the TV with the audio on a separate feed. Actually, an ideal, professional engineering solution. I guarantee you that if you go into a professional broadcast station, they don't use stuff with HDMI bullshit connectivity.

The main thrust of HDMI was for CONSUMERS--- it took the DVI video signal, paired it with the audio digitally interlaced, then added some over head for handshaking, really designed to make sure there was no intermediary equipment between the source and the monitor to prevent people from copying "perfect" HD picture quality (that too can be beaten). It was a high priority of the motion picture industry when HD came out (a decade after Japan as Japan went analog, but was delayed for years and years in the US because of fears the movie industry would lose sales to bootlegged HD copies of movies).

I'm guessing part of the reason why new TVs don't have shit for inputs is because new TVs are thin panels and there just is no room for a lot of electronics, or even a good sound system. I'm probably going to have to find a box somewhere that takes composite, component video signals and up-converts them to 720 HD outputting on HDMI in order to squeeze all of my gear into a new television.

 

[toobfreak]

Its fun to watch some old movies in 3D sometimes.

Must be me. I went to see one of the recent JJ Abrams Star Trek movies years ago in 3D (you wore the dopey glasses) and the effect made me nauseous and gave me a headache. I think the 3D you refer to processes the video to add a sense of "depth" to the picture which is a somewhat different thing.

 

[toobfreak]

Go with Samsung. They make the best screens in my opinion and ive never had a single issue with any of mine.

Any? How many have you gone through? My main TV is from 2009 with probably 60,000 hours use on it, and my other TV is from about 1986, an analog CRT with picture tube with even more use and still on its original picture tube! I refuse to have anymore TVs than that.

Granted, no comparison to the TVs of today, but I'm really only interested in 1020 HD resolution, and pretty good sound built in. 120Hz refresh rate. The color space of 1020 is all anyone needs and most of the rest of the stuff they pack into TVs now is pretty useless gingerbread with MARGINAL gains mainly aimed at gaming and geeks deep into streaming to keep pushing steaming onto people to replace cable. That and internet connectivity so people can surf the web on their TV (no interest to me as I already have a very good dedicated computer for that) and so that they can "plug into" your viewing and programming to collect data on users.

Also of no interest to me.

 

[toobfreak]

Regular HDMI cables are cheesy throwaway crap. The good cables can run into a lot of money.

The crappy HDMI cables they include with gear are thrown in there at practically no cost to the manufacturer just so that they can tell you that "everything you need is included." They work and get you up and running usually for most things and that is about all you can say about them.

 

[Godboy]

Any? How many have you gone through? My main TV is from 2009 with probably 60,000 hours use on it, and my other TV is from about 1986, an analog CRT with picture tube with even more use and still on its original picture tube! I refuse to have anymore TVs than that.

Granted, no comparison to the TVs of today, but I'm really only interested in 1020 HD resolution, and pretty good sound built in. 120Hz refresh rate. The color space of 1020 is all anyone needs and most of the rest of the stuff they pack into TVs now is pretty useless gingerbread with MARGINAL gains mainly aimed at gaming and geeks deep into streaming to keep pushing steaming onto people to replace cable. That and internet connectivity so people can surf the web on their TV (no interest to me as I already have a very good dedicated computer for that) and so that they can "plug into" your viewing and programming to collect data on users.

Also of no interest to me.

There is a certain threshold you should try to meet. TV's from any brand can range from ultra cheap (under $100) to super expensive (over $50,000). You should get a Samsung 4k, 60-70 inch. Spend $800-$1000 and it will last for many years and not become obsolete within a few years.

 

[toobfreak]

There is a certain threshold you should try to meet. TV's from any brand can range from ultra cheap (under $100) to super expensive (over $50,000). You should get a Samsung 4k, 60-70 inch. Spend $800-$1000 and it will last for many years and not become obsolete within a few years.

Funny, when I bought my 60" HDTV I have now, I think I paid about $1300 for it on sale going out of business at Circuit City in 2009.

LED TVs are that much cheaper now. There are many good ~60" TVs now for like $500-$800!

I just doubt that mine will be a Samsung. Most likely a Sony Bravia.

 

[Hossfly]

I have a Samsung and a ROKU. I always buy what Consumer Reports reviews and CNET for price.

Best TV for 2023, Tested and Reviewed

Whether you're into console gaming or just looking to stream Netflix, here are our favorite TVs for 2023.

www.cnet.com

 

[luiza]

Welp, my 2009 Mitsubishi 60” DLP TV was a goner again last night. I sat down to watch TV and eat something, relax, and BING! No picture, no sound, just a red status light. After about 30 minutes of fiddling, I was sure the TV was really DOA this time. At the very least salvageable only by a factory technician. But after a time of rest and reflection laying on my bed thinking about it watching my 1986 Hitachi 27” CRT bedroom TV which still works like a champ never a problem (they really make the BEST TVs), I got behind the thing, delved into it and resurrected it for now at least to live another day.

But my patience is broken. I’ve had it with DLP. I want a new TV with better technology and I would buy one today and pay any price, if but for a few things:

• 60” TVs are apparently no longer made. Selection is now down to either 55” or 65” and my speaker system is set up optimized for a 60” so I would have to reconfigure my speakers to fit a 65”.
• It must be stand mounted. I cannot do wall mount (not that I would want to) because my rear wall slants.
• My TV had a boatload of inputs for HDMI, component, composite, S-Video, RF in, outputs, you name it. And I use them all.
• I’m a name brand buyer: Hitachi, Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, Mitsubishi, but most TVs now are fuzzy brands I never even heard of. What’s an “Insignia?” "Hisense?" And please don’t even mention Samsung to me. Every Samsung product I've dealt with is crap.

Much to my dismay, all I found was marketing hype. Mind you, I was an electronics/electrical engineer who has a lot of background in video (I could probably design and make my own TV) and all I found was a couple of useful features (like 120Hz refresh rate which was just coming out new when I bought my TV). Instead, they hit you with

• 4XHD resolution (why do I need this when all my sources are 720 to 1080 at best?).
• LED technology, processing technology, backlighting technology (they are all nice, all good, not a critical choice). I guess plasma TV is long gone.
• Built in streaming services, Google, Roku, Apple, etc. I don’t use any of that crap and don’t even want Ethernet connected to my TV. Even the damn remote controls have buttons for all this stuff I do not want or need.
• The damn TVs now have 99 specs, 95 of which are of little to no value to the user. They have USB ports, optical output ports, BUT NO FREAKING INPUTS.

The ONE THING that matters, to a TV buyer you would think, is the capability to have the input range and scale needed to support your existing equipment, but that spec is buried in the specs and when you find it, the inputs are:

3 or 4 HDMI inputs! And at least one or two called HDMI 2.1 which probably means incompatible with regular HDMI. Probably an RF modulated input (antenna in), and if you are lucky, maybe ONE composite input. And that is it. Many of my devices were made before HDMI was even invented. Worse, I hate HDMI. But we are forced to use it because unlike DVI, HDMI allows the industry to spy on you and collect data on your viewing habits and things. And as I went up in price, $1000, $2000, $3000 and more, instead of getting more inputs, all it got me was more gingerbread technology fluff garbage features I do not need.

This really bothers me as I know how companies and engineers think: Designed Obsolescence. Instead of adding inputs to support older technology and gear, they want you to throw everything out TO BUY NEW. Gotta keep that return business! Hell, not only do I still have two professional Super-VHS tape decks that cost $800 each in 1988, but I even still have a Sony Laserdisc player! It is cool to fire it up once in a while. Back then, they used to make laserdiscs which had the full TAR (Theatrical aspect ratio / letter-boxing) which showed the FULL width of widescreen films even if the aspect ratio was 5:1.

Now when you buy a BluRay or DVD in widescreen, they still chop some of the ends off like pan and scan to fit the standard 16:9 HD widescreen format of today which isn’t very widescreen. I remember going to see Its a Mad Mad Mad Mad World at the theater in 1963 that the screen was so wide, it was curved, and you had to look side to side to take it all in, you could not follow all the action at once. Oh what an experience going to see a movie used to be at one time. So now I am forced to consider just keeping my old TV and sinking money into it to keep it going, or looking for some sort of “converter box” that takes all these old interface formats like composite video, S-video, component video, DVI, etc., which then CONVERTS them into an HDMI output and hope the thing works half well.
bnlah , blah.

Would have preferred a post that I could begin to understand , but have you stacked all your technical concerns against the end result, even if all your technical worries are taken care of?
Namely , there is so little worth wasting viewing time on that it would not greatly matter if you never saw any TV programme ever again .

Team GB TV is supposed to be mega miles ahead of its US counterpart in terms of range and quality .
God help you if that is true .
Because we have no news and politics that is ever worth watching and in general we are fed mindless crap featuring uninteresting people all involved in the great movement toward leading us to a state of imbecility .
Apart from a little sport , when it occasionally gets live air time , I doubt I watch five hours a week. Only because it is mindless rubbish or just repeated low level sameness .
Bit like here on reflection .