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Forums - General Discussion - Misconception? 4k TVs cost too much?

SvennoJ said:
OdinHades said:
Cheap 4K TVs have absolutely shitty image quality. If you have only 500 bucks for a TV, you're most likely better off with a good 1080p screen than some shitty 4K TV. Also the software on cheap 4K TVs is lacking most of the time. Prepare for lagging menus and stuff like that. On top of that, cheap 4K TVs don't have HDR, so they are not future proof in any way. If you don't want to buy yet another TV in 1-2 years, don't buy one without HDR.

That being said, 500 $ is a lot of cash. Why should anyone spend so much money if there isn't any need for it? Why buy a 4K TV now when your good ol' 1080p screen is working just fine? Most people just don't see the need for it, so most people will upgrade no sooner than when their old TV breaks down. Or they might not upgrade at all, because who's still watching TV these days, lol. It's just silly to go out and spend your money for something you don't need. It's also bad for the environment.

4K won't be the standard before 2020 at the very earliest.

True, at this point a 4K tv mostly useful for a 4K console. Here we only have 1 experimental 4K tv channel with a few sports broadcasts. 4K streaming isn't much of an option with capped bandwidth nor is there much to choose from. 4K blu-rays have a big premium price tag and really most new movies suck, while old movies hardly benefit from a 4K release.

If you have $500 to spend, better spend it on VR for a new experience instead of an already outdated tv (hdmi 2.1 is already announced). Content wise they're about the same :)

Old 35mm film is about 4k in effective resolution so a good print and decent transfer to digital actually can be pretty good plus modern digital processes can clean up the images very nicely. Often better quality now than they have ever been. 



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Entry level 4K is crap. You really do want to get a good HDR set. Not all HDR sets are good either. LG throws HDR on everything, including TV's that cannot do the wide color gamut or have good contrast and brightness to even utilize it properly. Around $1,000 and 55"+ you start to weed out the crap.

As others have mentioned, TV OS is important as well. Low end TV's are "smart" but run like crap and are limited. On the flip side, some really smart TV's are buggy as crap, like my KS8000. Youtube has issues, Netflix has issues, even Plex has issues on it at times. Granted, it requires me just restarting the app or hard restarting the TV, but the issues are there.

rtings.com is your friend and a great repository for what to look for and the best sets to get within your range.



bonzobanana said:
SvennoJ said:

True, at this point a 4K tv mostly useful for a 4K console. Here we only have 1 experimental 4K tv channel with a few sports broadcasts. 4K streaming isn't much of an option with capped bandwidth nor is there much to choose from. 4K blu-rays have a big premium price tag and really most new movies suck, while old movies hardly benefit from a 4K release.

If you have $500 to spend, better spend it on VR for a new experience instead of an already outdated tv (hdmi 2.1 is already announced). Content wise they're about the same :)

Old 35mm film is about 4k in effective resolution so a good print and decent transfer to digital actually can be pretty good plus modern digital processes can clean up the images very nicely. Often better quality now than they have ever been. 

It's very dependent on what kind of film stock was used and how well it has aged. Besides that, 35mm film was anamorphic or compressed width wise. A 2.35:1 movie compressed to 1.33:1 already results in close to half the detail width wise. In practice I have watched many older 35mm movies on blu-ray that already show the limitations at 1080p. Sure, less compression artifacts and improved color reproduction will make a difference, but it won't be even remotely close to the difference between dvd and blu-ray. Certainly not worth double dipping again imo.

I wouldn't mind watching movies shot on 70mm again on 4K blu-ray, but that can wait.



SvennoJ said:
bonzobanana said:

Old 35mm film is about 4k in effective resolution so a good print and decent transfer to digital actually can be pretty good plus modern digital processes can clean up the images very nicely. Often better quality now than they have ever been. 

It's very dependent on what kind of film stock was used and how well it has aged. Besides that, 35mm film was anamorphic or compressed width wise. A 2.35:1 movie compressed to 1.33:1 already results in close to half the detail width wise. In practice I have watched many older 35mm movies on blu-ray that already show the limitations at 1080p. Sure, less compression artifacts and improved color reproduction will make a difference, but it won't be even remotely close to the difference between dvd and blu-ray. Certainly not worth double dipping again imo.

I wouldn't mind watching movies shot on 70mm again on 4K blu-ray, but that can wait.

I stand by my comments that some old movies look great fully restored at 4k but there are grain issues and other factors with some old movies. Yes aspect issues may mean you may get vertical borders but they don't bother me too much.



bonzobanana said:
SvennoJ said:

It's very dependent on what kind of film stock was used and how well it has aged. Besides that, 35mm film was anamorphic or compressed width wise. A 2.35:1 movie compressed to 1.33:1 already results in close to half the detail width wise. In practice I have watched many older 35mm movies on blu-ray that already show the limitations at 1080p. Sure, less compression artifacts and improved color reproduction will make a difference, but it won't be even remotely close to the difference between dvd and blu-ray. Certainly not worth double dipping again imo.

I wouldn't mind watching movies shot on 70mm again on 4K blu-ray, but that can wait.

I stand by my comments that some old movies look great fully restored at 4k but there are grain issues and other factors with some old movies. Yes aspect issues may mean you may get vertical borders but they don't bother me too much.

Ofcourse they look great, the restoration process benefits from using a higher source resolution. It doesn't matter much for the output resolution though (blu-ray or 4k uhd) as the super fine detail isn't there. Baraka was scanned in at 8K from a 70mm source, mastered in 4K, downsampled to blu-ray and it is one of the best most detailed blu-rays out there. For the 4K version it should be mastered in 8K and downsampled to 4K UHD for best result.

4K UHD is still an experimental format in a lot of cases, for example read this review
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/GoodFellas-4K-Blu-ray/161258/
In comparison to the Blu-ray, the UHD reveals a slight (a very slight) increase in visible detail and grain, but the improvement continues to be overshadowed (literally) by improper black levels that cast a haze of overbrightening across the entire frame.
It's a far cry from the dvd to blu-ray transition (which many claimed upscaled DVD already looked just as good...) Diminishing returns are very real for old movies. Mastering in 4K works, the output format doesn't matter much, certainly not enough to justify rebuying with a $10 premium added to the price tag.



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Peh said:
Stay away from the cheap stuff below 1500 €.

Eh? I'd say stay away from the cheap stuff too but we're talking 600EUR and below, not 1500!!!

You can get plenty of good 4k HDR sets for much less than 1500 from brands such as LG, Samsung or Sony.

The one I have my eye on is £649, that's about 760EUR.



yeah they're not expensive at all.
As a 50" 1080p 3D TV owner since 2011, I can only laugh at most of those prices. Most comparable 4k TVs (without 3D) are well below the price I paid for my old TV (around 1000€).

Obviously if I get one, I'd get a 60" or so, which will most likely above 1000€.



Barkley said:
Peh said:
Stay away from the cheap stuff below 1500 €.

Eh? I'd say stay away from the cheap stuff too but we're talking 600EUR and below, not 1500!!!

You can get plenty of good 4k HDR sets for much less than 1500 from brands such as LG, Samsung or Sony.

The one I have my eye on is £649, that's about 760EUR.

You have to be careful. For instance, the Samsung KS7000 brand is being advertised with HDR1000. But the panel can only do 8 bit + FRC and not 10 bit. Also, if you want to use Smart TV, then the TV's at a lower price point will have a slower performance regarding these features. Overall image quality is also lower on those TV's because of a cheap panel.

I recommend to check out a lot of reviews and comparisions with other TV's.



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Peh said:
Barkley said:

Eh? I'd say stay away from the cheap stuff too but we're talking 600EUR and below, not 1500!!!

You can get plenty of good 4k HDR sets for much less than 1500 from brands such as LG, Samsung or Sony.

The one I have my eye on is £649, that's about 760EUR.

You have to be careful. For instance, the Samsung KS7000 brand is being advertised with HDR1000. But the panel can only do 8 bit + FRC and not 10 bit. Also, if you want to use Smart TV, then the TV's at a lower price point will have a slower performance regarding these features. Overall image quality is also lower on those TV's because of a cheap panel.

I recommend to check out a lot of reviews and comparisions with other TV's.

Are you talking about the US 7000 or european?

http://www.displayspecifications.com/en/model/c82db05

It seems like its true 10bit according to this site however its always confusing with Samsung because of the infamous Samsung panel lottery where they use different panels across the same model range and sometimes even the same model. 

I don't think you can just say paying more gets you a decent panel. Sony have used some pretty awful panels on high end sets. You have to go with reviews nowadays. Hisense have used some awful panels on their entry level sets but on their one step up models they have used panels that you see on much higher priced models with Japanese or Korean brands. Very happy with my budget set but its not a LG OLED I'll admit but seems to outperform many more expensive LCD models comfortably. I don't know what the sweet spot is with televisions where diminshing returns kicks in on price but I personally don't think you have to spend 1500EUR to get a good LCD set. If I'm spending 1500EUR I'm going for OLED anyway and wouldn't even consider LCD at that price.



bonzobanana said:
Peh said:

You have to be careful. For instance, the Samsung KS7000 brand is being advertised with HDR1000. But the panel can only do 8 bit + FRC and not 10 bit. Also, if you want to use Smart TV, then the TV's at a lower price point will have a slower performance regarding these features. Overall image quality is also lower on those TV's because of a cheap panel.

I recommend to check out a lot of reviews and comparisions with other TV's.

Are you talking about the US 7000 or european?

http://www.displayspecifications.com/en/model/c82db05

It seems like its true 10bit according to this site however its always confusing with Samsung because of the infamous Samsung panel lottery where they use different panels across the same model range and sometimes even the same model. 

I don't think you can just say paying more gets you a decent panel. Sony have used some pretty awful panels on high end sets. You have to go with reviews nowadays. Hisense have used some awful panels on their entry level sets but on their one step up models they have used panels that you see on much higher priced models with Japanese or Korean brands. Very happy with my budget set but its not a LG OLED I'll admit but seems to outperform many more expensive LCD models comfortably. I don't know what the sweet spot is with televisions where diminshing returns kicks in on price but I personally don't think you have to spend 1500EUR to get a good LCD set. If I'm spending 1500EUR I'm going for OLED anyway and wouldn't even consider LCD at that price.

I was talking about the KS7090 (Europe version). That one has definitely 8bit + FRC. But the TV in your link is the MU Version, so probably even newer than the one I was talking about. But seriously, you never know. Even my Monitor is written on the official site of Asus as an 10 bit panel. But in reality, it only has 8 bit + FRC.

Buying a proper TV is really difficult to do nowadays :/

Edit : Hm? That's strange. That site of yours also lists the KS7000 as 10 bit.

I found this here:

https://www.avforums.com/threads/samsung-ks7000-ue55ks7000-uhd-4k-tv-review.2032989/page-5

Ok, it seems, that the KS7000 really has a real 10 bit panel. The confusing comes from displayspecifications.com. They listed it at 8 bit + FRC, but it was changed later on. A lot of reviews took this one as it's source like this site here in german:

http://www.zambullo.de/fernseher/samsung-ks7090-vs-ks8090-vergleich-der-samsung-suhd-tv-modelle-ks7090-und-ks8090-aus-2016.html



Intel Core i7 8700K | 32 GB DDR 4 PC 3200 | ROG STRIX Z370-F Gaming | RTX 3090 FE| Crappy Monitor| HTC Vive Pro :3