Choosing a 4k television

It should be easy to buy a TV. Just choose a make you have faith in, make sure it's going to fit into the space where you want it and buy according to budget. Ah well, it turns out it's not that simple any more. If wanting to get the best TV for the money, it takes a lot of research.

It's not just a choice between OLED or LED displays either. Both types of display have their advantages and disadvantages. Adding to the confusion is the fact that manufacturers generally supply both types of display and run them in different ways in their different models.  This can put a buyer in quite a dilemma over what's the best one to buy.

I'd previously heard so many good things about OLED panels that I thought the only thing that would prohibit me from buying An OLED TV would be the cost. They tend to be hundreds of Pounds more than LED/LCD televisions ...but wait, there are other factors to consider.

The screens tend to be shiny and reflective. If you want to see the deep blacks that OLED is capable of without them being obscured by some reflection or other, the room will likely need darkening. That's not much good if planning to do other activities in the room at the same time. Also, current OLED displays cannot give enough brightness generally when compared to LED displays, so needing a darker environment for best viewing.

Nonetheless, if those reasons aren't too much of a problem, OLED TVs will likely give a superior picture quality to LED TVs. Maybe the room is a shady one anyway, or the lighting is only ever fairly dim. If so, OLED can be the best choice. It seems to me that under those conditions, picture quality would be really good.

Maybe it would be safer all round to place the bets on an LED TV. A few years ago, all LED displays were edge-lit. The light from the LEDs was shone across a transparent plate that had hundreds of deflectors. These catch the light and direct it forwards through the liquid crystals and this is what gives the picture.

Some displays are now directly lit or full-array, meaning that the LEDs are placed behind the entire surface area of the screen. Added to this is something called 'local dimming'. This attempts to give the same black levels that OLED panels can achieve. The trouble is that these can cause an unwanted effect called 'blooming' to some degree or another, so you'd want to find an LED/LCD display that's best at overcoming blooming and light bleed (a bright light on a dark background might have a halo effect around it, not an issue with OLED). Some manufactures are better than others at this.

All in all, it is very difficult to decide on what's best. I'll continue reading and watching reviews but still haven't decided yet. I might just give up altogether and keep watching my 8 year old Panasonic HD television for a while longer.

Thanks Beast - It only looks knowledgeable because I've been going into it in detail over the last week. Surprising how much can be found out in such a short time. The conclusion is that I can't come to a conclusion. 

There is another important factor. This is to do with the 'Standard Definition' Freeview channels that a lot of us watch in UK. The video in Freeview transmissions is made up of 576 horizontal lines. These lines of video information have to fill the height of the screen and displays are made to cope with this size. Think of the lines as rows of pixels laid down on a TV screen. The video content in these transmissions will look good if the TV screen is designed for this resolution.

Time passes and we get Full HD transmissions on some channels. HD consists of 1080 lines and displays have to be made with more rows of pixels to cope with that. That's OK but there are still Standard Definition transmissions as well and because these are only 576 lines, they aren't going to fill the 1080 line screen.

This is where 'upscaling' comes in. The TV has a processor that upscales the lines to fill a 1080 line screen. However, the extra lines of video just aren't present in the SD transmission, so what does the processor do? It invents the video content by more or less guessing what should be in the missing lines by looking at the lines that are there. This is why some standard definition pictures can look poor on a Full HD television. Some transmissions that aren't Full HD are better than others too.

The processor has to upscale even more if the screen is a 4k one because a 4k screen has 2160 lines to fill up ..all from only the 576 lines that are actually present in the transmission. Some processors will be better at doing this than others.

OK, if there is a proper 4k signal source, the picture will look great with a very high degree of definition. How well will it expand a Standard Definition picture to fit the screen though? 

This is only the vertical resolution. There is also the horizontal resolution to take into account. This also has to be processed to fit the picture to the number of pixels the screen is made up of.

A 4k display consists of 2160 lines. To get a standard definition picture to fill a 4k screen, the video content needs to be 'upscaled' (height and width) to a much greater degree. If it wasn't, the SD picture would only fill up a fraction of the 4k screen.

Some of these figures might vary (a bit) but perhaps the above says what upscaling is about and why it's another factor to take into account when buying a 4k TV.

I have to say how pleased I am with the new TV and home theatre system. It cost a fortune by the time I got the new audio amplifier (the old one was incompatible with the new TV) but I don't spend money on holidays or much else. I haven't yet found a way of taking savings with me when I die, so I splashed out.  

The picture definition is impressive, even on up-scaled lower quality transmissions. By the time the sound is coming out of all 8 speakers, it makes TV viewing a treat.

I know not everyone is bothered about peak definition and good sound. I think it must have been all those years of being a TV engineer and getting the last ounce of picture quality out of black/white and CRT colour TVs. There was so much to twiddle on those that could improve picture quality.

The new 4K TV (Samsung QE50QN94A) has lots of settings and it takes much experimentation to find the best ones. Now that's done, the picture is excellent. Having to buy a new AV receiver was an unexpected downside but well, it's bought now and that's that.

I hope it all lasts for as long as I do ..and runs more reliably.

Now that was very informative. 

We have a Panasonic 50" 4K LED TV (TX50EX700B) which has picture quality well good enough for us. The sound quality, like most modern skinny thin TV's leaves a bit to be desired - so I use our Sonos speakers. Not needed for me because my Hearing aids are bluetooth connected to a sender plugged into the TV optical port and I get great stereo sound with perfect lip synch.

I don't watch much TV - but my wife does. We use only Freeview TV usually via a Humax recorder and find the HD channels fine. She watches Amazon Prime, Netflix etc through the TV which is internet connected. 

I also Use the TV to show our photos and videos rather than huddle over a tablet.

I was going to go for an OLED TV but then a new range of Samsung QLED TVs were released that had mini LEDs for backlighting, so reducing the 'bloom' effect that is often seen mentioned when searching for information on televisions.

I'm watching a series on Netflix at the moment called 'Lillehammer'. It's about an American mobster who gives information to the law about another mobster in exchange for a new identity in another country. He chose Lillehammer in Norway because he'd watched the 1994 Winter Olympics held there and thought it looked a nice place.

A good tale all in all. It could be described as a 'black comedy'.