What to look for when choosing a TV
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The TV in the house, as before, is the "highlight of the programme" when it comes to entertainment and content consumption. Unlike the "boxes" with huge kinescopes that have sunk into oblivion, the current generation of televisions has significantly "wiser" and "lost weight", but at the same time has increased the diagonals of the displays. The screen size is point No. 1 when choosing a TV, which directly affects the comfort of watching TV shows.
Diagonal and screen resolution
Let's start with the basics to understand the essence of the issue. The diagonal of the TV display is the distance in inches measured between its opposite corners. To convert to more familiar measurement values (centimeters), the diagonal of the screen in inches must be considered together with a multiplier of 2.54x. The optimal viewing distance is considered to be three times the diagonal value, but this concept is very conditional, since it rests on the next point of the programme — the resolution of the displayed image.
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| Depending on the diagonal of the screen, the optimal distance to the TV screen varies in different boundaries. |
The ball in the field of modern TV is ruled by 4K panels (3840x2160 pixels), individual pixels on the screen of which are not visible even from a close distance. The picture on them can be viewed up close, enjoying the high detail of the frame when consuming the corresponding content. Fortunately, the ultra-high-resolution film library is growing by leaps and bounds. The main thing is to have at hand a sufficiently high-speed communication channel with the World Wide Web.
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| A clear difference between the main formats for displaying images on the TV screen. |
FullHD TVs (1920 x 1080 pixels) are also in high demand among the public — most of the television content is adapted to this and even lower HD image format. For example, broadcast of terrestrial, cable and satellite television is often made in HD Ready resolution. Therefore, if you are going to use TV for its intended purpose — to watch TV shows — there is no special point in overpaying for the notorious 4K. But for large-caliber models (with a diagonal of 55"), the UltraHD screen resolution is a "lifesaver" in order to save yourself from the visibility of individual pixels.
The next step in the evolution of televisions is 8K panels with an impressive resolution of 7680x4320 pixels. However, they are still few, too expensive, and there are not many films in such high resolution yet. A TV with an 8K screen is a kind of reserve for the future, which already exists in the present.
Panel Type
The most common on store shelves are LCD TVs, each cell of the matrix of which flexibly changes the degree of transparency, passing a certain amount of light. To see the picture on the screen, LED-illumination is used in the design of such models. There are two types of it:
- Edge LED — side, when the LEDs are dispersed around the edges of the screen;
- Direct LED — carpet — with a substrate of LEDs directly behind the panel (provides a more uniform glow of the screen, but takes up more space).
There is no better option in terms of the "price / quality" ratio on the modern market. A new round of technology development is the use of displays that use organic light—emitting diodes (OLED). Each pixel on such a panel glows independently, and the lack of backlighting is beneficial to the thickness of the display, allowing it to be "packed" into the thinnest possible case. OLED TVs produce the best quality picture with an amazing depth of black, however, they are prohibitively expensive. In addition, the technology has a number of insignificant disadvantages in the manner of the modest "life" of organic LEDs and their tendency to memorize static images. OLED TVs can be found in the portfolio of Sony, LG and Panasonic.
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| OLED panels produce the most colorful and juicy picture. |
A high-quality and affordable alternative to models based on organic light-emitting diodes are simpler QLED solutions, the panels of which are based on the technology of "quantum dots". Individual pixels in them also emit radiance on their own, but they are still provided with backlight (with blue LEDs instead of classic white ones) to help them. The screens of QLED TVs have bright and rich colour reproduction with a deep black colour. TV of this kind are offered under the sign of the South Korean brand Samsung, less often by TCL and Hisense companies.
The "smart" component
In addition to broadcasting TV shows and playing movies from a USB stick, the lion's share of modern televisions has developed network functions. The pre-installed SmartTV platform opens the doors to the limitless world of content for viewers, provides Internet access for watching videos online, browsing the web, social networking gatherings, and also boasts support for installing compatible applications. There is no single "operating system" for this case — every major player in the television arena dictates its own rules. The quartet of the largest of the SmartTV systems is presented below:
- AndroidTV is a universal smart platform for Sony, Philips and some second—tier manufacturers (for example, Kivi). It will be familiar to owners of Android smartphones and tablets, since everything in the system is built in a similar way and only adapted to the TV image format. The user is kindly provided with a huge array of compatible applications in the Google Play Market, also most of the apk files will be installed on the TV in manual mode.
- Tizen (Samsung TVs) is a proprietary shell with a friendly interface, which is an interactive strip at the bottom of the screen: with a list of installed applications and service recommendations. It is controlled by remote control, voice and gestures.
- webOS (LG TVs) — provides quick access to network content sources, being famous for flexibility in terms of changing the configurations and appearance of the system specifically for your needs.
- FirefoxOS (Panasonic TVs) is a shell from the "fire fox" with an intuitive menu interface in the form of a horizontal application ribbon. The range of applications for the system is particularly small.
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| The OS under the sign of the "green droid" is now on TV. |
It is possible to extend the functionality of any TV without a smart shell with the help of external set-top boxes.
Technologies-image "improvers"
Perhaps the main technology on guard of improving the quality of the broadcast image is considered to support HDR, which expands the brightness range reproduced by the TV. With the use of this technology, details in the lightest and darkest areas of the image become visible on the screen, thereby increasing the reliability and realism of the picture, and, accordingly, the degree of involvement of the viewer in what is happening. The maximum effect is achieved when consuming HDR content, i.e. with data "sewn" into the film about the perfect display of the scene.
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| A clear difference between a regular picture and an image with an extended dynamic range. |
The number and degree of effectiveness of other software "improvers" varies from manufacturer to manufacturer and from one model to another. More expensive panels will have more of all sorts of "tricks" in an effort to improve the quality of the displayed content, and the low-cost field of berries may not have them at all, which, however, does not diminish their strength.
Sound
Since the TV claims to be the central element of the home multimedia system, sound is an important criterion for choosing TV for true moviegoers and adherents of watching music TV channels. Thin and loud TVs on the market "one, two and less". In part, the situation is corrected by the Dolby Atmos technology put into service with some models and attempts to cram the unintelligible into the thin body of the product, for example, a built-in subwoofer. If sound is a priority for you, you should look at an external speaker system or models with a separate soundbar, which to some extent can replace multi-channel acoustics. One of the most famous manufacturers in the television field, Samsung, has the name One Connect.
Additional features
To heighten the effect of immersion in what is happening on the screen, you can advise models with a curved screen. They work with the correct seating arrangement of the audience — as close as possible to the centre of the panel.
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| The maximum effect of immersion in what is happening is achieved by landing as close as possible to the centre of the screen. |
Also, an important point of the programme when choosing a TV is a variety of connection interfaces — the more of them, the better, in order to make maximum contact with other devices and gadgets, including "by air". The minimum required is a couple of HDMI ports, a similar number of USB ports, DVI, audio outputs for the sound system and a Wi-Fi module.
For a snack, we left the criterion for choosing a TV by cost — depending on the hardware of the device with certain functions, the price tag for TVs of the same diagonal may differ many times. Therefore, estimate the low-cost that you are ready to spend on the purchase, and you are welcome to the full catalog of televisions, where it is easy to find the most suitable copy by resorting to the services of a whole galaxy of search filters.
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