New TV!

Very bold of you to say that about The Matrix -- to Dan's endless annoyance, I have never been tempted to see the film. The prospect of Keanu Reeves, action hero makes me larf.

I appear to have used up my exclamation-point quota for the month. Argh.

Which he usually does, anyway.....remember that face called "Bram Stoker's Dracula"? Made all vamps despair, and try to stake themselves.

As for DVDs, I know you probably have "Blade I" and "II" on reserve, so get the Terminator series. All Arnie, all kitsch, all the time!

Also, try "Almost Famous" and "Velvet Goldmine". Glam, true, but still fun to watch.

Next pass, I shall dig up some culture for your brain....

I am disappointed that Ned hasn't mentioned "Salival". Pout.

Good...so I can! It's decadent fun, for a pack of music commercials.

(Truly enough, he'd swung me in Tool's direction, in the first place;>)

Preach on; I know the feeling!;> Currently, my Library feeds my hunger....as the moths fly out of my pockets. Wonder if London poverty is any different;>?

Congrats on the TV and DVD player, but be careful that mighty finance charges do not bite you in the ass, dear.

(My hint for three DVD's everyone must own if the have to own a DVD playa).

- 'Cockfighter' ('cos it's got Warren Oates, it's banned in the UK, it's directed by the GRATE Monte Hellman, and it sounds like cockfarmer.)

- 'Suspiria' (made for a big telly)

- 'The Conformitst' (prob. the most beautiful film ever made)

- Any of those fabbo Mario Bava discs that have been issued in the last couple of years - 'Blood and Black Lace', maybe, or 'Bay of Blood'

- 'Mouchette' ('cos Bresson is the greatest)

I larfed nonstop and so did Dr. Ben.

It doubles as a 5 CD player and can play MP3s as well. You could load it up with mp3 mix discs and have enough music for an all-weekend party without ever having to switch CDs.

I'd buy "The Mummy Returns", though. Is that wrong?

haha i like that in 2002 DJP was buying a bigger TV than i have in 2011.

anyway i'm wondering if this animal exists: a TV with absolutely no features other than a tuner, and looking great. i don't want a "Smart" TV, i don't want 3D, i don't want DLNA support, i don't want USB ports. i've already got a popcorn hour and a PS3 and between them they take care of pretty much everything. possible?

Are you good at electronics? You could ]build one yourself

In the UK? You could just go along to a "recycling centre" and 'literally' pick one up for nothing - it would weigh a lot however. Curry's had an 'Essentials' range of appliances fairly recently - I remember seeing toasters and other small appliances, I think it included TVs.

I don't want a shitty TV, I want a TV that tunes in broadcasts and displays them exceptionally well!

Oh OK, well, no then...probably.

(I did wonder what you meant by looking great...)

However thanks for the link to these guys - http://www.nbtv.org/

(to StanM)

xp Actually the last TV I took down to the recycling centre did have a great picture (and better sound than my new one - do they deliberately soound crappy so you have to buy a home cinema?) but of course it was analogue.

The rubbish sound is more because the race to make flatscreen TVs as slim as possible leaves barely any depth in the casing for speakers, certainly not for a decently sized bass speaker. It's frustrating to have to shell out for a separate audio system/soundbar, but if you use the TV a lot then you'll feel the benefit.

Tracer: if you look at commercial grade LCD and plasma screens then these rarely have any of the extra gubbins you refer to, and they are often very well made with high-quality displays (part of my job involves buying this kind of kit). The flipside is that you'll not get speakers or a tuner as standard. To be honest, any decent consumer grade TV will have USB and dnla etc, so you're not really paying over the odds for its inclusion.

hmph yeah my idea is to save money by getting a set that doesn't include this stuff. And going up to "commercial grade" sounds a bit pricey as well.

The bits you're mentioning are the cheapest bits on a TV. Removing them wouldn't reduce the cost by much, maybe £20-30. And for the manufacturer, it would make such a TV harder to sell.

how much did that run you?

Like $950 plus $75 for the frame. I think the 55” was about $450 more. The 50” is good size IMO - good size for a bit more of a cinematic experience without being overwhelmingly large in a small space. We initially looked at the 43” but when I measured it out it was just too small.

Normally wouldn’t be comfortable spending this much at this time but we don’t have any debt apart from my nz student loans so we financed it interest-free

no shame! genuinely just curious

this frame tvs are really amazing looking tbh

The sound quality is better than I expected. Not in any hurry to buy additional audio for it. The first thing we watched a was streaming rental in ultra hd and it sort of blurry?? Like my glasses prescription wasn’t strong enough. Idk it seemed like the problem was my eyes not the screen.

is it possible there’s some motion smoothing shenanigans that are still switched on?

No I think it was the ultra hd because I watched something on Netflix today and it was clear. The ultra hd option on the rental def took some filter off - it wasn’t motion smoothing but it looked a little too… real?

Ok it was def the tv. We watched Nobody last night and it was cringey bc of the lack of visual atmosphere. Got into settings, which has a bunch of presets for picture, and it was on “dynamic”. Switched to “filmmaker mode” - huuuuuge improvement. The text is still blurry to look at so I’m gonna figure out how to fix that today.

The sound quality is better than I expected. A sound bar would be nice, but as a luxury upgrade rather than a necessity for enjoying using the tv.

"The sound quality is better than I expected. Not in any hurry to buy additional audio for it."

glad to hear this!

a quick Google will almost always find you a pathway to the menu option you need to turn off, the real pain is after an update you might need to do it all again but other than that it's a one and done kind of task

our LG has those modes too, after I turned off motion smoothing and all that I still switch between modes to get the right result at times (there's a sport one that makes everything look like a video game from 2012, that one I don't use)

The remote is great - charges by usb or ✨indoor light✨no batteries!

my 11-year-old vizio set just died ;_;

i finally did it. after about 8 years of waiting for an OLED that would fit in my living room LG went and fucking made one and i have fucking ordered it.

Ooh which one? I'm planning to get one of those -- the LG OLED C2 42"

that's it

it will replace a 26" Toshiba Regza that i bought in 2006 which tbf still works like a champ, dodgy remote aside

it will JUST about squeeze into the only spot in the living room big enough for it and i'm stoked for the madness

i was motivated by my experience this summer of being able to cast things from my phone to the TV in the airbnb we stayed in. it was like magic. Now that the PS4 MLB app appears to be completely fucked i was having to unplug the HDMI cable from the PS4 and plug it into my laptop to watch the game. humiliating for a man of my age i think you'll agree. the other thing is that over the years on-screen graphics have drifted smaller and smaller, in games and for sports, to the point that it's pretty hard to read some of it on a 26". but i mean yeah... the main thing is, let's not beat around the bush... New TV

we have a pretty terrific 32" flatscreen from 2010 that still looks great and does a bang-up job on breath of the wild

we're getting a new TV because, why not, and because our toddler seems like she's finally over the "randomly pulling heavy objects off the wall" stage of toddlerhood

that's kinda pricey still, but i always forget they last about 10 years and i'm sat in front of one 10 hours a day.

no scart or component in though, is that how tvs are these days? is my ps2 obsolete (not to mention the n64) because i can't plug it into anything

It is kind of ridiculous. twice the price of an LCD twice its size.. but I have been waiting patiently for an OLED for years. I hope it will last at least 10 years. my living room certainly won't be getting any bigger lol. It does not have component or scart sadly.

(the article i found listed the 48" price fwiw, which didn't help)

they are not dissimilar. in fact i think in the US they're literally the same price. i found a john lewis discount (now expired i believe) which put it at less than a grand.

it's here :O

Today I was able to get the LG remote to control my Yamaha receiver's volume. This receiver is 25 years old. I find this incredible. So now I've got one remote for everything. TV audio piped into the receiver via optical, and out to three Elac speakers. The only thing slightly weird about it is that if I listen to Spotify or Sounds via the TV the sound comes out pretty loud out of the centre speaker, but, well, listening to music on a TV is pretty weird anyway.

i am doing it now, because timed recordings on the pvr of late night radio is easier than anything else. utter waste of energy though.

(radio 6 is louder than normal tv, radio 3 is the same as tv. optimod...)

More aggressive compression on 6M I think, which the vocal R3 audiophiles wouldn’t stand for.

koogs why not eat the dog food and just use Sounds to catch up on like… Benji B or whatever?

is the dog food vegetarian?

i'm on 3g, so have always had more pvr space than bandwidth. (he says with 140 unheard episodes of front row taking up space)

And no broadband? koogs! I never knew the digital divide extended quite so far!

I've been in a vacation rental without internet for a week and omg, cheap TVs are terrible to watch and so is actual TV when you don't have any streaming/iPlayer etc. I tried to switch of all the motion fiddling settings and it still looked horrible.
Hopefully we won't need a new TV for a while - drove quite a way to get the last decent plasma one we could find, probably around 8 years ago tho.

New nice TVs at a reasonable price are among the best buys for the buck. It's the age of miracles.

Literally a couple of months into the pandemic my flatscreen fritzed and I ordered a new one thinking it would be a replacement, but it ended up being even bigger, which, thanks. (55" Vizio) Combined that with a new Sony 4K/Bluray player with modifications to play all BD regions and will never look back.

How’s the sound from the tv speaker? (I don’t use external speakers as I have haring damage and I always find them too abrasive.)

From mine? Quite good I think!

My setup is upthread. TV speaker is permanently off. I have optical out to a 3.0 system and it sounds great. The centre speaker changes a lot. Before I just had R and L and everything went through those. Now with a centre speaker the R and L become more kind of ambient atmospheric sources (i’m guessing what would be coming out of rear speakers is getting mixed into them since I have no rear speakers? Or possibly I’m just losing that rear speaker information. I’ve never been clear on that)