# General Business Category > Technology Forum > [Question] TV buying advice

## Houses4Rent

So my 17 year old box style 54cm TV finally packed up and it seems I need a new one according to my family.

We are not big TV watchers, but we have children... So maybe its time for a LED flatscreen.

What does one have to look out for when buying a TV?

Smart versus normal?
Curved versus flat?
Resolution?
Hertz?
Contract ratio?
Wifi/LAN/internet?
Is a long warranty worth its salt or neglible because they pretty much all last as long as the warranty?
Fancy global brands vs SINOTEC and HISENSE and co?

And what technical specification is important and which not so important?

Any advice/tips welcome.

----------


## AndyD

What kinda budget are you working with for the replacement? What do/would you use your TV for ie do you just watch mnet or would you use it connected to your home network to play movie files. Would you use it for gaming? Would you use it for internet browsing, online shopping and skype etc?

----------


## Houses4Rent

> What kinda budget are you working with for the replacement?


Maybe around the R5k mark, but I do not really have a budget, just do not want to spend a fortune.




> What do/would you use your TV for ie do you just watch mnet


I do not have a dish and will unlikely get one. Even if I do I would expect that any new TV nowadays can handle that, correct?




> or would you use it connected to your home network to play movie files.


Nope, never watched a movie from a computer file - at least not yet.




> Would you use it for gaming?


Definately not, no time and will not set a bad example for my kids either. Maybe one day a XBox Kinect if the pressure becomes too big. The body moving games I would consider.




> Would you use it for internet browsing, online shopping and skype etc?


[/QUOTE]
Skype and internet is the only use I can image I might use.

So in short pretty low spec use, but I do not want to buy some technology which is on its way out right now. Thanks

----------


## AndyD

Lol, so you don't have DSTV, you don't have movies on your network, you don't use it for consol games.....so what do you need a TV for or do you watch SABC maybe? If you're looking for a device to browse the web and use skype maybe rather look at a tablet or IPad.

----------


## Houses4Rent

Some SABC, ETV and .... kids (videos, DVD, etc)

----------


## adrianh

We got rid of the TVs long ago. I also considered buying a big screen TV but decided against it. Local TV is terrible and the news is totally biased. I can't stand being constantly interrupted by advertisements when I'm trying to watch a movie. ETV reached a point in the late evenings where it was 5 minutes of porn ads to every 3 minutes of movie.

We put a PC in the lounge with a nice big screen. The machine isn't state of the art or anything, just a basic machine with a remote mouse and keyboard. The machine does have internet and is connected to our router. We store all our movies and stuff on the machine as well. It works like a charm because we get to watch movies, TED Talks and whatever else is on the internet or on a memory stick. We've even taken to downloading all our personal photographs and GoPro video on the machine. I want to put video and image editing software on it because the girls want to blog their stuff. This way we can all sit together and mess around with the imagery before they post it.

----------


## Houses4Rent

Sounds good Adrian, but my girls are to young to control al that. Besides are big PC screens not far more expensice then TV's? At least that is my perception as I think a PC screen must be able to handle static content, while TV's only have to cope with moving content?

----------


## wynn

I have not had a TV or DSTV for at least a year, before that I never watched SABC or E.
I found that I either watch more if it is a series or spent less time watching a documentary because there are no adverts that you can't skip after 3 or 4 seconds so a programme taking an hour on any of the TV stations is over in 40 to 45 minutes, so in 4 hours you can watch what would normally take 5 and you don't feel brainwashed.
Also the choice is much wider and very much more up to date and you watch what you want, not what they programme.
For live sport, which is the only thing I miss, I meet some friends at the local pub, much more social.

----------


## Houses4Rent

I might even agree with you, but the discussion point is TV buying advice, not whether SABC and ETV are worth watching.

----------


## irneb

> Sounds good Adrian, but my girls are to young to control al that. Besides are big PC screens not far more expensice then TV's? At least that is my perception as I think a PC screen must be able to handle static content, while TV's only have to cope with moving content?


I have found that to be the case with truly "large" screens yes, well the effect actually. But when you refer to LCD / LED backlit / true LED the actual difference between a PC monitor and a TV is that the TV has a tuner and speakers built in, while the monitor is not made in such great quantities - other than that they are the exact same thing.

If you're simply replacing your 54cm tube, that would be around a 21" screen ... those you can pick up at any computer shop for around R1000 to R2000, you'd most likely have difficulty even finding TVs that size these days (I think the smallest I've seen is 24" ... i.e. around 61cm). However, when you start looking for those 40" (100cm) to 60" (150cm) stuff you'd actually be hard pressed to even find a PC monitor. So generally you should be able to find a much larger TV than a monitor for the same price (unless you go for "very" small - read similar to old TVs).

From your replies it seems you most likely don't need a "high-end" thing. BTW, those so-called "smart" TVs are quite literally just a normal TV with VERY low end phone guts [think similar to the feature phones you got just before the first iPhone] built in - you'd be better off (possibly cheaper) by using even an old computer instead just permanently plugged into one of the video ports on the TV. I.e. like adrainh's - just using a TV instead of a screen. In fact, that's exactly what I have in my lounge - a 42" LED backlit with a very low end computer sitting behind it - the computer handles all the "smart" stuff like internet access, streaming across network, able to do normal computing using wireless keyboard/mouse, etc.

Technical aspects are a bit subjective and depends on your use case. E.g. a high contrast ratio may be a necessity due to light levels in your room, or due to the sorts of videos you watch, then again it may not make much difference. Usually the greater the difference the better. But you also need to check just how black a black is and how white a white. Best way would be to test and see, preferably watching something indicative of your usual stuff in a room lighted like the one you'd have the TV in.

I would advise you get at least a fullHD TV (i.e. something saying 1080P - not 1080i or lower). You could go with the ultra high definition stuff (usually listed as 4K or sometimes referred to their lines of dots count 4320 instead of the fullHD's 1080). To put this into perspective ... a normal TV (like the one you had) tends to have between 280 and 420 lines - 420 being a very high end DVD quality. The 1080 is what you'd see if you use a BlueRay player instead of just DVDs. Even DSTV's "HD" is just halfHD ... i.e. 720p and not 1080p ... so even if you go for them anything higher is probably wasted.

Also the aspect ratios have changed. Your old TV was a 4:3 ratio (i.e. 4 parts wide by 3 parts high). The norm for TVs these days is 16:9, i.e. closer to the proportions you'd see in a cinema (though there it's likely much wider in relation). So with a 1080p that means there's 1080 horizontal lines of dots across the screen by 1920 vertical columns. You'd most likely not be able to find anything else these days. Possibly if you go for PC monitors you may run into a 16:10, but the 16:9 is near ubiquitous now.

Connections ... the LAN/WiFi idea is only of use if the TV has some form of computer built in. And most of these have such a useless computer that you'd most likely use something else anyway. Thus such connections tend to be less than useful. Most common these days is HDMI, nearly all DVD/BR players now send on HDMI cables instead of the old RCA/SCART stuff - better quality and also incorporates both video and stereo up to 5.1 channel sound inside the single cable (don't have such a nest behind the cabinet anymore). If you have an old DVD/VHS with RCA /Co-Ax antenna outputs, you'd need to search for a TV which takes them - they're getting ever more scarce (especially as even the normal TV signals are supposed to change over to digital). If you're thinking of a computer to turn a "dumb" TV into a "genius" (note "smart" is "stupid" compared to this arrangement) then I can recommend a DVI connection (or better as high-end), though you should get reasonable results even with HDMI - it's only in very fast action games where you may notice some glitches. So for lowest cost I'd look for something with at least 2 (preferably 3) HDMI inputs - most that I've seen come with a minimum 4 HDMI input ports these days (unless you go for absolute budget machines).

Technology: Well, you get 4 types of "flatscreen". The older Plasma (basically each dot is like a neon light bulb glowing when electricity passes to it), LCD (i.e. one long snaking neon light behind a glass panel with LCD crystals to allow the light through or not at the specific spots), LED backlit (this is a LCD with the neon light replaced by LED lights instead - tends to be a bit flatter and doesn't heat up as much), and true LED (where each pixel is in fact a little LED "lightbulb" - this is like the later versions of the iPhone's screens). The true LED screens are extremely expensive (you'd most likely not find a 40" for under R20k), but he backlit stuff is nearly every single one you see in a shop (this may change in the near future as true LED technology becomes easier to build, in fact most of the high-end ultra HD / 4K screens use true LED). LCD and Plasma seems to be less available these days, so I'd not bother about trying them anymore.

Brand and/or guarantee? Hummm .... personally I've had bad experiences with some "known" brands (in particular Sony), and very good experiences with some "unknown" brands (Hi-Sense). So from my own experience, it seems to either not matter - or possibly you'd be better off going with the non-label stuff. But take note, this is just my own anecdotal experiences. Personally I tend to try for a Samsung or LG before I look at the Sonotec's in the shop. I've yet to have any TV fail on me before the guarantee period (the Sony thing is more about it not working with certain things I plug into it), so most likely that guarantee is a waste. The only thing I've ever gotten fixed / replaced under guarantee was a computer, everything else seems to last at least as long as their pre-calculated obsolescence deadline.

----------

adrianh (19-Jul-16), Dave A (21-Jul-16), Houses4Rent (19-Jul-16)

----------


## 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 :Big Grin: 
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.

----------


## AndyD

> 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.


The terms HD and UHD are nasty and misleading. HD refers to anything that's 1080p resolution, the problem is even a movie that's been 'upscaled' to 1080p from a 720p source would still qualify as HD even though the quality will be poor. Likewise the term HD takes no account of the bitrate of encode so you will find mkv containered HD 1080p movies that range between 1.6 gigs and 50gigs in size and again the playback quality will be poorer for the small file even though both are technically 1080p resolution.

I'm not sure what standard netflix encodes follow or what filesizes HD and UHD movies would be so I can't comment on ADSL speed requirements. They do have a guide on their website though.

----------


## irneb

> The terms HD and UHD are nasty and misleading. HD refers to anything that's 1080p resolution, the problem is even a movie that's been 'upscaled' to 1080p from a 720p source would still qualify as HD even though the quality will be poor. Likewise the term HD takes no account of the bitrate of encode so you will find mkv containered HD 1080p movies that range between 1.6 gigs and 50gigs in size and again the playback quality will be poorer for the small file even though both are technically 1080p resolution. But down scaling from UHD to FHD (or even lower) isn't a bad idea at all.
> 
> I'm not sure what standard netflix encodes follow or what filesizes HD and UHD movies would be so I can't comment on ADSL speed requirements. They do have a guide on their website though.


You're right about upscaled being a "silly" idea. You cannot make something better than it used to be by increasing its resolution. So if the movie wasn't recorded at FHD (usually they're recorded in RAW uncompressed format, these days at typical 4K resolutions at anywhere between 24 and 60 fps - meaning multi-TB files), then turning it into FHD is a futile exercise.

And yes, the smaller file is probably worse than the larger. All other things being equal. However, a smaller file with a better compression codec might even be better than a larger file with a less optimized codec. It all comes down to the amount of loss in the lossy compression used in the codec. E.g. some would throw away certain colour shifts which human eyes cannot distinguish, others may combine similar pixels, yet more may combine portions of consecutive frames which they deem not to change, and some of the later versions also try to figure out movements from frame to frame. It's usually a bad idea to push these to their limits.

Personally, I've done some re-encodings myself. And what I've found is best results (both minimum file size and best quality) tend to come from using the better variants of compression codecs (used to be xvid, though these days VP8/H265 give even better results), using a multi-pass encoding (checking how much loss will happen and reducing the loss to acceptable levels in final pass), and never use a constant bitrate encoding scheme (rather allow increased bitrate for scenes where it's needed and reduced where it's not). Unfortunately, this means a 2h movie of 1080p@24fps could be fine at 2GB, while another of similar length, resolution and framerate may start to show artefacts at 5GB. It is usually a factor of how much movement and complex shapes are changing between frames. Increasing the resolution tends to mean a multiplicative increase in size as well, e.g. 1080 to 2160 is not just twice as large, but rather 4 times (i.e. the pixel count is the effect, not the height) - though that's also an inexact measurement due to the actual compression algorithm. It's possible to derive the statistics of how much an encoded file deviates from the original, and this is where multi-pass encodings comes in, it uses such statistics to figure out which parts of the movie requires higher bitrates and which can be made even lower. My own investigations showed that best results is obtained by using a constant quality limit with multiple pass encoding and a variable bitrate, as soon as a constant bitrate is forced the quality suffers.

I'm not exactly sure just how NetFlix encodes their FHD/UHD movies, or others for that matter. They tend to keep the exact "science" behind these a secret (from each other at least). The trouble is bitrate on its own (i.e. the size of the file delivered) is only a part of the story. The compression algorithm and how it's applied tends to have a bigger effect on the quality than the file size, and the actual raw material (i.e. the original recording) has the greatest effect. Some reading material:
http://www.imore.com/netflix-increas...why-isnt-apple
http://mdp-labs.co/netflix-leads-wit...on-algorithms/
https://donmelton.com/2015/12/21/wha...le-and-amazon/
http://variety.com/2015/digital/news...ty-1201661116/

----------

