New Television


 
JSaus said:
Our maybe 8 year old 70" Vizio TV is starting to show a signs of fogging, so I am starting a search for a new one. I researching, I can not decide on type. OLED seems the best, but lower screen life and lower light levels. We have it on a lot and in a fairly bright room, so probably not the best option. So now we have LED, QLED. Nano QLED, Mini LED etc. I am looking around a 75" screen and as anti-reflective as possible. Owner opinions? Technology advantages? Brand preference? $2000 range is fine.
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We have a bright great room and went with the Samsung frame TV. A little pricy but zero glare. I have to admit i have an older panasoic plasma and that picture is killer but its in a darker room.
 
I bought two Samsung TV's back in November when we moved, a 70" for the Living Room and a 55" for the Bedroom. The one thing I did not like is that when you turn it on, it starts playing the last channel watched, so if you're like me and up early, chances are good that if you turn on the TV, it will likely wake people, when it starts playing. I finally figured out how to stop it (turn off Live) Another thing that annoyed me is that it adds Apps when it feels like it, and there are Apps you can't remove at all, taking up limited storage. And finally, when I hooked up the soundbar directly into the port that's specifically for soundbars and such, it worked for a couple days and quit. I don't know if it's a defect in the TV, but since I have two and they both suffered that, I suspect it's the operating system that Samsung uses, which is Lynx based. So, in short, I bought a Roku, and I run it instead of the system built into the TV's. That's been the ticket, I very much like my Samsung TV's, but operating on a Roku, not on Samsung. And yes, you can download the Roku app on the TV, but I found and you might too, that the Roku "Streaming Stick 4K" ($50) makes for a much better picture than the Roku App operating on the Samsung TV's. ymmv
 
Yep, I use the ROKU Ultra on our main set. (Samsung 55") (wish I could go bigger :D ) I really hate Samsung's OS it is awful. Poky, clumsy. So I pretty much use the ROKU for everything except OTA TV. I use the antenna directly or through my TABLO DVR. I have it set up to stream to all the TVs.
 
ChuckO said:
I bought two Samsung TV's back in November when we moved, a 70" for the Living Room and a 55" for the Bedroom. The one thing I did not like is that when you turn it on, it starts playing the last channel watched, so if you're like me and up early, chances are good that if you turn on the TV, it will likely wake people, when it starts playing. I finally figured out how to stop it (turn off Live) Another thing that annoyed me is that it adds Apps when it feels like it, and there are Apps you can't remove at all, taking up limited storage. And finally, when I hooked up the soundbar directly into the port that's specifically for soundbars and such, it worked for a couple days and quit. I don't know if it's a defect in the TV, but since I have two and they both suffered that, I suspect it's the operating system that Samsung uses, which is Lynx based. So, in short, I bought a Roku, and I run it instead of the system built into the TV's. That's been the ticket, I very much like my Samsung TV's, but operating on a Roku, not on Samsung. And yes, you can download the Roku app on the TV, but I found and you might too, that the Roku "Streaming Stick 4K" ($50) makes for a much better picture than the Roku App operating on the Samsung TV's. ymmv
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Our Samsung TV is 5 years old. It's a UN75NU6080FXZA. Not sure the picture technology. Picture is very good.

I detest the ads it places at the bottom of the screen and the listing of free and trending movies. No way to turn this adware off. I too dislike the limited memory it has and the inability to delete the factory installed apps. I have added a thumb drive, which it recognizes, to add apps but once the TV is shut down, the apps no longer appear in the menu bar.

I set up a free Open DNS account and point the TV there. I have several domains I block which have cut down on the adware that Samsung feeds it. The best blocked sites resulted in the TV not being able to contact the mothership which resulted in the TV bricking itself from the internet with 24-48 hours of no motherly contact. Internet connection resumed only after I unblocked sites one by one allowing it to call home. Total BS of a business model.

Watching of Youtube has recently gotten slower with blank screen pauses for 3-10 seconds after video selection. We have high speed Xfinity with 990 Mbps down and 120 up. I am thinking my domain filtering is upsetting the beast.

I like Larry's idea of using it just as a monitor and using a Roku device as the tuner. We have an older Ruku device that I used to use with the prior Sharp TV. The Samsung integral Roku app is a wounded limited version of the Roku USB device. Their channel content is not the same with Samsung's version being much more limited (I assume so you can use their Samsung TV Plus app instead?). My daughter watches Japan NHK which the external add-on Roku device provides just fine, but the Samsung integral version doesn't provide it.

We watch a fair amount of OTA TV, Netflix, and Youtube.

I don't think I would buy a Samsung again after this experience.
 
Brett-EDH said:
Excellent choice. I just got the S90D 83” from Costco.

It goes up on the wall, hopefully this weekend.

Had to buy a custom in wall power box as my studs are 12” OC due to load bearing wall.

View attachment 107568
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I too have an S90. Really happy with it. Got a 65 inch and paired it with a high end soundbar with surround speakers. Really good sound makes the experience much better.
 
Had my first battle with the built in apps last night. I use Fire TV as my streaming device thru a surround system and use the TV as a monitor. I hit the Netflix button on the remote and it loaded right up. Couple problems. First, the surround system played sound from one source while the app played another. Second, I had to pull up the manual to figure out how to exit the app.

What I notice on this TV is that good sources look really great while it exacerbates bad color. Skin tones can look nice and natural or like someone slapped them red depending on the source. Live news seems to have the biggest variations, while produced programming looks great.
 
Well, one setting made a world of difference. Turned off "eye comfort" and enabled "optimized" for picture based on ambient light. Looks perfect now.
 
My two Samsung TV's are UN70DU6900D & UN50DU6900D, and they're no way in the class of the TV's that JSaus, Brett & Mark bought. Not sure if their TV's use the Tizen operating system mine do. That's really my only complaint, picture wise, the two TV's are great, and now that I have them on Roku players, they're fantastic. Those looking at Samsung TV's just note mine are entry level and not the level being discussed in this thread
 
ChuckO said:
My two Samsung TV's are UN70DU6900D & UN50DU6900D, and they're no way in the class of the TV's that JSaus, Brett & Mark bought. Not sure if their TV's use the Tizen operating system mine do. That's really my only complaint, picture wise, the two TV's are great, and now that I have them on Roku players, they're fantastic. Those looking at Samsung TV's just note mine are entry level and not the level being discussed in this thread
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I’m coming off a UN55C8000 which was bought new in 2010. I bought it right before Super Bowl as my rear projection Mitsubishi died a few days before the game.

I guess 15 years is a good run. It still works. Just too small for the new home and OLED is an amazing picture compared to LED.

I always use my TV’s as monitors. I don’t want Samsung tracking me or controlling what’s on my screen.

I run an OTA DVR and an AppleTV device. We use the Apple box for streaming so it has our apps and content.
 
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Brett-EDH said:
Got my in-wall media box installed and powered a few minutes ago.

It will house an Ethernet switch, Apple TV, power block to plug the TV, switch, apple box and possibly a new OTA dvr box (Silicon Dust).

Tomorrow I will install the wall mount and then mount the TV to the wall bracket.

View attachment 107666
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Now that is very cool: Is the Ethernet wired to a nearby Mesh Router or directly to your main Router? The only thing lacking (that I can see) is a LED light strip :)
 
ChuckO said:
Now that is very cool: Is the Ethernet wired to a nearby Mesh Router or directly to your main Router? The only thing lacking (that I can see) is a LED light strip :)
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Cat6 is a home run to my main communications cabinet in the primary BR which connects directly into the router. Because I’ll have 3-4 devices that need internet, I’ll plug the main run into a small switch and then the switch will serve al the needed devices.
 
Brett-EDH said:
Excellent choice. I just got the S90D 83” from Costco.

It goes up on the wall, hopefully this weekend.

Had to buy a custom in wall power box as my studs are 12” OC due to load bearing wall.

View attachment 107568
Click to expand...
I would have loved getting the 83" but it was about 1" wider than the space I had. Also, it was about a grand more expensive. In reality, I do not perceive the 77" as appearing much bigger than the 70" it replaced. An 83" probably would have been a bigger impact. Of course, I remember when a 26" TV was as big as it got and we survived.
 
JSaus said:
Of course, I remember when a 26" TV was as big as it got and we survived.
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And you were stylin'!

We have a 10 year old (or more) 55" 4k Vizio, a very early 4k model. I could probably mount an 80-85" display if I rearrange things, but our viewing distance is only about 12' max. At least for the moment, I don't have any real reason to replace it as it's working pretty well.

Having said all of that.... I'm getting quite disillusioned (if not downright <BEEEP><BEEEEP> off,) at the ad insertion and interleaving that starting to take place. Anything I buy to display is going to be just that, display only, and I may have to go to a commercial panel just for that. Trying to bar the adware site & domain names is turning out to not work so well, the vendors are burying firmware updates, online requirements and adware all behind the same domain name.

Side note..... all of our video/media traffic is now all TCP/IP networking based. I've retasked the coax cabling with MoCa adapters to bring 1gbps networking pretty much everywhere in the house. We use Roku Ultra streaming devices with HDMI cabling through A/V receivers to generate video traffic. Yes, I know... the Roku Ultras only have 100mbps network ports, but the wired ports demonstratively perform better than WiFi connections. I have a media server downstairs that runs all of our media (both video and audio) everywhere, as well as externally available.
 
So jealous. They way my family room is laid out and how my set is mounted 55" was the largest I could squeak in there )thanks to the large brick fireplace. Which severely limits my options on TV size.
 
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