Very OT: Thoughts on 4K/Favorite Electronic Brands
So, after months of compromising with the MGoFiance, I finally have my football watching set-up. 55 inches of 4K, curved, Samsung television now graces my wall, and I LOVE IT. (#humblebrag)
Also, because I'm an S7 kinda guy, my phone can act as a remote, an extra speaker, and mirror my activities on my phone to the TV. Super cool.
What I failed to research, however, is the general lack of 4K content right now. Or my phone possibly blowing up in my face. Still, I'm a Samsung fanboy.
So, do you think 4K is a gimmick like 3D was? What brands of electronics do you like best?
In the spirit of the long lost Discuss Man,
DISCUSS.
February 27th, 2017 at 12:12 PM ^
...but stay away from the Note.
February 27th, 2017 at 12:20 PM ^
February 27th, 2017 at 1:21 PM ^
charge on it. Then they kept pulling more crap on us Note 7 users. Honestly, the percent phones that burned was very low. It was the media that made it look like a terrorist weapon. I eventually gave in and went with the Galaxy S7 Edge. It's not bad.
February 27th, 2017 at 1:04 PM ^
Apple recently had a few phones do the same thing. It's a battery issue more than a phone issue.
February 27th, 2017 at 3:16 PM ^
February 27th, 2017 at 12:14 PM ^
is not a gimmick, even though your cable company will never support it. If you have netflix or a 4k player or Ps4 pro or something like that its definatly a nice upgrade. I have my gaming pc hooked up to a samsung 65" 4k curved and i love it, the curve is a dumb gimmick though.
February 27th, 2017 at 12:21 PM ^
February 27th, 2017 at 1:03 PM ^
Um, that's not how parabolas work.
February 27th, 2017 at 6:46 PM ^
So you're saying I can cook my game day brats with the TV! Will one TV do it, or should I buy four?
February 27th, 2017 at 12:51 PM ^
February 27th, 2017 at 12:57 PM ^
Well for starters you don't have to wear anything on your head to watch it.
February 27th, 2017 at 1:05 PM ^
Internet bandwidth is fine and streaming is the content source of future, not cable. Hell, it already is in my household.
February 27th, 2017 at 1:12 PM ^
February 27th, 2017 at 3:34 PM ^
Compared to 1080p blu-ray, sure, but 1080p streaming is typically compressed to the same degree, so 4K from the same service is significantly sharper looking provided you have >30 Mb/s.
February 27th, 2017 at 5:45 PM ^
That is part of the problem. It would be better to have 1080P video at the same rate that they are transmitting 4K compressed content.
From a typical size TV size/distance combination, less compression at higher throughput rate would result in better picture quality.
February 27th, 2017 at 5:11 PM ^
February 27th, 2017 at 1:03 PM ^
Are you running at 60fps? You must have a really nice rig if you are.
February 27th, 2017 at 4:21 PM ^
Have what I think is a nice rig but I'm not getting 60 fps at 4k for most games.. i74790 running at 4.6 and an Asus gtx 1080
February 27th, 2017 at 1:11 PM ^
4K is not a gimmick, there's a reason movies are shot and displayed in 4k and have been for a while now. The issue is that unless you sit really close or have a huge screen, your screen resolution quickly outstrips your eye's ability to resolve the difference. I have a 70" 4k TV, and at 8' away, I'm barely able to tell the difference between 4K and 1080p. For me, things like dynamic ratio, deeper blacks, expanded color palate, and better motion performance make a much more noticeable difference in viewing experience than 4K. Those things are harder to quantify neatly in a catchy spec sheet line though.
February 27th, 2017 at 1:14 PM ^
February 27th, 2017 at 2:39 PM ^
Hence the rest of my post.
That said, the ratio of screen size to seating distance of a theater really isn't that hard to duplicate at home. I'm pretty much there with my 70" in my room.
February 27th, 2017 at 12:16 PM ^
February 27th, 2017 at 12:38 PM ^
However, many of the games do not yet support 4k. So still in the same boat
February 27th, 2017 at 12:51 PM ^
Yeah, if you don't have a One S yet, it's probably better to wait for the Scorpio this fall, which will have 4K native games. One S will do 4K content, but not games, and the Scorpio likely won't be a ton more expensive, plus it'll still play all Xbox One games.
February 27th, 2017 at 12:55 PM ^
February 27th, 2017 at 12:54 PM ^
February 27th, 2017 at 2:05 PM ^
is suggesting us to not care about better visuals. Nice try Gameboy, nice try.
February 27th, 2017 at 5:15 PM ^
Haven't kept up with PC hardware recently, I take it?
EDIT: So I should also point out that the PS4 pro has made an effort at 4k resolution and people should expect the next generation of consoles (PS5, XBox Random Integer) to be fully on the 4k wagon, and sensibly so given that by the time they are developed and released 4k tvs will be in wide circulation. In PC land the capabilities of the newest graphics processors are getting pretty ridiculous.
February 27th, 2017 at 5:49 PM ^
I am EXTREMELY familiar with PC hardware and video graphic hardware, specifically.
What is passing as "4k" is just upconverted video from lower resolution renders. It is basically the same picture you would get if you fed 720P picture to your 4k TV and it upconverted it.
Affordable video cards (<$250) that can do 4K gaming comfortably is probably another 2 to 3 years away, at least. Any console that debuts within that time will have the same problem that plagued Xbox One (not quite enough oomph for 1080P gaming).
February 27th, 2017 at 12:17 PM ^
February 27th, 2017 at 12:30 PM ^
I don't have DirecTv myself, but I watched the MSU/ND game at a buddy's place and was suprised at how much better the 4k broadcast was. I didn't think there would be that much difference from regular HD. It was the only time in 2016 that I was slightly jealous of Sparty.
February 27th, 2017 at 12:19 PM ^
February 27th, 2017 at 12:23 PM ^
February 27th, 2017 at 12:28 PM ^
You can get several 4k shows right now on Amazon Prime, and they look great. And IMO, even "regular" high def content looks much better on my 4k Samsung than it did on my 1080p Vizio M series, because the video processing is superior. I noticed the difference instantly. So even if 4k content lags, the video still looks better. I recommend it.
Having said that, a 1080p TV will still deliver you an excellent picture at a cheaper price than 4k.
February 27th, 2017 at 12:32 PM ^
February 27th, 2017 at 2:11 PM ^
Not sure what Samsung Model you have, but you might want to look for a setting called 'Auto Motion Plus'. I noticed a fairly constant juddering on my Samsung TV when watching shows on Directv. It was almost as-if the show was pausing for a few milliseconds every few seconds during the show. It was very annoying and I thought there was something wrong with my TV. After doing some research I discovered that Samsung's Auto Motion Plus engine causes issues, especially with Directv. Once I turned Auto Motion Plus off, my picture was smooth as a baby's butt. Since you can set the picture settings by source, I just set that off just for Directv and leave it on for the other sources. It doesn't seem to affect Netflix and Amazon at all.
Give it a try, maybe it will help with you juddering as well.
February 27th, 2017 at 2:54 PM ^
February 27th, 2017 at 12:28 PM ^
3d was a gimmick. 4k appears to be here to stay, as one has a hard time finding 1080p tvs in larger sizes in stock at all anymore and the lower end 4k tvs at those sizes are coming in at nearly identical price points (I've done some careful pricing on 70" tvs for my church and the 4ks I can get in that size right now are cheaper than the 1080p tvs available to me 16 months ago).
I think that 4k is a lot less revolutionary than HD was. HD is a stunning upgrade from the old SD resolutions that jumps off the screen. 4k is barely noticeable at all at typical viewing distances, especially in regular programming, and the infrastructure required to actually broadcast it (cameras, bandwidth, etc) is harder to manage.
However, since it is rapidly becoming ubiquitous in new equipment (contrast with 3d) there is space for content producers to find ways to make it shine.
February 27th, 2017 at 12:29 PM ^
company is installing 4K systems all over the country. as said above right now you have to have a device that supports 4K... our customers are using the 4K for digital signage for the most part...
February 27th, 2017 at 12:35 PM ^
February 27th, 2017 at 12:51 PM ^
OLED is the gold standard and LG is the big dog in that department although Sony seems like they are getting back into the mix along with some others per the CES. You can't do with back lighting what you can do with individually excited pixels (no sex talk intended). I'm not a big lover of curved screens...to me they defeat some of the advantages of thin uncurved flat screens and how they fit on walls. With OLED, there are no off-axis issues.
4K isn't going anywhere, at least not for quite some time.
For me, one of the biggest features that has come along in recent years was uncompressed audio that started with Blu-Ray DVD's. I have a very substantial investment in the audio part of home theater. Good speakers are very pricey but they also don't need to be replaced very often, unlike the much more quickly changing audio standards.
February 27th, 2017 at 1:52 PM ^
I refuse to use that name & call them what they are.
LUCKY GOLDSTAR
February 27th, 2017 at 3:43 PM ^
February 27th, 2017 at 2:00 PM ^
I believe LG is supplying Sony with its OLED panels. Sony likely has better upscaling and other peripheral hardware to go alongside the panel, but otherwise the LG and Sony models should be awfully similar.
February 27th, 2017 at 1:54 PM ^
February 27th, 2017 at 3:38 PM ^
OLED is awesome, but it still has issues with motion simply being an always on vs pulsed technology like CRT or DLP. There's tricks they can pull with sub-frame shut off, but there's not enough brightness to turn off the pixels long enough to really get the crisp motion. Honestly, if my DLP hadn't died, I would never have gotten another set. The current offerings give me a headache gaming, especially on less than 60fps games.
February 27th, 2017 at 12:42 PM ^
I like what little I've seen in 4k but right now I'd like to see cable companies get HD right.
February 27th, 2017 at 12:43 PM ^
something or other that I bought on sale a few years ago. I used to be a super loyal Samsung buyer, but my last TV died after what seemed like an unreasonably short time (less than 5 years), so I replaced it with whatever non-smart TV was on sale at ABC Warehouse.
It's fine, although it seems like TV speakers suck ass now. You almost have to hook it it up through the stereo to hear the damn thing.
4K is beautiful and I think it will be adopted on a wider scale eventually, but I don't care enough about screen resolution to upgrade just for that. I only buy a new TV when the old one dies, or becomes embarrassingly outdated (my main TV was a 32 in tube TV as recently as 2009).
February 27th, 2017 at 12:49 PM ^