Today its best to think of flat screen TV's as having no speakers at all, as they are too thin. So when buying, always best to factor in the cost of a soundbar with it.
Ah, "flat screen TV's (sic)," remember that bizarre passing phase for curved screens, wtf was all that about? 😆
@redchiz I think you'll find that writing "(sic)" is pretty much by definition breaking the forum rules. But I suppose that in the same way so is this post.
If you have ever wondered why old people talk about ‘turning over’ the channel, it’s that knob on the side, from the days when ‘remote control’ meant Mum or Dad commanding one of us kids to cross the room and turn it.
And I remember the cries of ‘fourteen inch heads’ when somebody blocked your view of it, which is how I know what the screen size was.
Dad bought it outright (or possibly on HP, but it certainly wasn’t rented) for 80 guineas, which was the old way of making prices look slightly more attractive.
Adjusted for inflation, that’s around £2,300 in today’s money, or about exactly what you would spend for a premium main family TV now. Of course, today you would get rather more than two channels on a 405-line black and white picture, but at least we never needed a soundbar with it 😛
As to the reliability you mention, redchiz, we were lucky with this set; just the odd valve replacement from time to time. But the V14 that Pye brought out next was so unreliable it nearly did for them, and it was a struggling Pye of Cambridge, now 60% owned by Philips Electronics, that I joined in 1972. (I will save the further relevant nostalgia for another post).
I do still miss the little dot the picture would shrink to, and eventually fade away, when you switched the TV off, though. Why don’t the new ones do that? 😢
*in a technical sense, though you could get ones with poncier cabinets, with doors and all.
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
Well, OLED is out below 42”, HD should be a given, so you have a choice between plain old LCD, and the various formulations with fairy dust (Quantum Dots, in other words). The more dimming zones the better, full panel lit better than edge lit, and so on.
Which? magazine rates a couple of Samsung 32” sets above anybody elses’, but complains about colour accuracy on both. Which rather surprises me; we do have one Samsung 32” markedly inferior to the other two on a direct A/B, but even this one is more than acceptable on its own. (And it was markedly cheaper, but no longer available).
I won’t buy Sony, despite their very good pictures; they are no longer the premium product they were in the Trinitron days and even the early LCD days, and their beauty is only skin deep.
We have lurched towards LG these days, with a 43” Nano in the bedroom, and a 24” LCD in the utility room, beside the GX in the lounge. I’m a great fan of the LG UI, which you can navigate either conventionally from the centre ring of the Magic remote, or via a little teardrop you can move round the screen and click on what you want. And you can swap from one service to another directly, without having to climb back out of any menu you are in.
TVs though, are one thing you really have to go into a showroom and look at, even though you might compile a shortlist on spec and price beforehand.
I had an LG LCD 24 inch well over 10 years ago and never really liked it. LG may have improved since then. Panasonic used to be a good make of TV. My sister used to have a Panasonic LCD 32inch HD ready non smart TV and it has good picture for 720p but sound was not the best at times and the EPG on it was rubbish. In my option Panasonic has gone downhill a little over the years. Cant comment on Sony as me and my sister have never had a Sony TV.
LG had a big makeover in 2015 when they went to the latest incarnation of WebOS, and dropped their older OSes. So a set from before those days indeed won’t be representative any more.
Panasonic sets have enormous respect these days, despite their small range, with some arguing that they are the best of all.
I don’t have a Panny TV, but it is a Panny BluRay player that spent last weekend feeding all the video and audio goodness of our UHD copy of Dune to our LG GX setup with added rears.
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
As we drift ever further off topic, I hope nobody minds if I join in? 🙂
How reputations and perceptions have changed over the years. Does anybody remember when renting a TV was the norm, to cover both their notorious unreliability and massive upfront cost, back in the day?
Sony were undoubtedly the leaders in the later days of CRT, with premium prices accordingly.
The flat screen breakthrough came through with plasma, I recall an early-adopter friend paying an eye-watering amount for a Toshiba set that came in two parts, panel and tuner/output box separately.
Things moved on and prices fell, Panasonic became the daddy of the plasma era, in fact my mum still has a set that must be 15 years old now and still stands comparison in vivacity and contrast to most LCD HD sets which succeeded it.
Power consumption and costs of production heralded the modern age, specifically the aforementioned LCD displays. Broadcasters and manufacturers worked together to increase resolution and so screens got bigger.
I started with Toshiba, moved on to Samsung and have since stuck with LG, the finest currently available in my opinion.
And here we are. A 32 inch telly would have been regarded as large screen as recently as the turn of the century, and look at us now!
32” in widescreen CRT was just about doable, but the last despairing gasp of CRT TVs was the first Sony digital one, a 36” behemoth that it took two men from the local Sony shop to carry in from the back of a Volvo estate.
However, it was a failure in a number of ways, and we sent it back.
Its size and weight made it clear that only with flat screen TVs could that 36” limit be broken.
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
But our son had a two-box Pioneer plasma that was the best TV I ever saw until OLED came along; the same approach to inky blacks.
I remember recording some of the 2012 London Olympics, which the BBC did in 3D, and being very impressed that the YouView box, which I’m sure wasn’t designed for 3D recorded it, and could replay it. I guess a broadcast signal is a broadcast signal?
We still have two TVs that will do 3D, and both are curved. The logic with big curved screens, 55” and up, was that you were off-axis for the two edges, and hence would get colour changes, so the curvature combated this by making the edges less off-axis.
Nowadays, they can solve this better on flat screens, even LCDs. No idea of the logic of curved 32” screens, but my wife still prefers them to flat ones.
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
My earliest memories of a TV are from back in the 1960s at my nan's house and it was very much like a piece of furniture, a beautiful rosewood case in the "sitting room" (we didn't have a "living room" in those days, that would be the kitchen) which was regularly polished along with the wooden sideboard. Hiding behind the sofa while watching Doctor Who. And I was fascinated by that dot!
My first NICAM set was a humungous 21 incher by HITACHI. When it arrived I excitedly scoured the listings to see what upcoming programmes were to be broadcast in stereo, by no means a a given in those days and duly appended with a "N," so I could put it through its paces. I was somewhat nonplussed to find that my first opportunity was .... snooker! Might have been good for the introduction of colour, not so much stereo.
Looking round, we are only running one soundbar now, in the lounge on the LG GX, where it certainly makes a massive difference with its sub and its ‘wireless’ rears. (Wireless front to back, though some people apparently feel cheated that they have to be connected to the rear receiver, and that plugged into the mains - what do they think speakers run on, air?)
But it does seem that wall mounting makes for better sound than stand mounting on the others. I can think of a couple of reasons why this should be, and a couple why it shouldn’t.
The 43’ LG on the wall in our bedroom is still a bit of a mystery here though, seemingly capable of thunderous bass and 5.1 surround audio all on its own, which must be some psychoacoustic trickery, as all the speakers are built in to the set.
But we would hesitate to add either of our now superannuated soundbars to it, lest it spoiled the effect.
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
Wow I could only dream of a sub and speakers , sadly shmbo would go ballistic with all the extra cables etc. So sadly a soundbar is the limit of my home theater.
Wow I could only dream of a sub and speakers , sadly shmbo would go ballistic with all the extra cables etc. So sadly a soundbar is the limit of my home theatre.
(i) TV, soundbar, wireless sub (ii) receiver, rear speakers
See any wires (there’s one visible, though I could hide it if it was obtrusive in normal use)? See the receiver?
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
I’m earliest memory of a TV was in the mid 70s we had a 21inch CRT Ferguson TV rented from the old Granada shop. It had buttons for 5 channels but only 3 channels was broadcast at the time. TV as repaired at last once a year if I remember. in 1982 got rid of that TV and bought got Philips 28inch CRT from the old Comet shop. In 1986 got rid of that TV as it never even had a scart connection at the back for our first VHS recorded that we had bought also out of Comet. TV was a 28 Inch CRT with telex service.
In 1988 we had one of the gadgets like remotes that you linked to the VCR and got a code from newspapers TV listening and put that in this remote to set a recording on the VCR to make it easier to record. 1991 was our first TV with Fastext, A 28 inch Sharp CRT and that had Nicam stereo and replaced VCR with one that had the code thing for recording TV programmes built in to the VCR remote. In 1990 we also by this time had the old BSB Squarial dish and box before we was moved over to the old Sky analogue service until we got rid of Sky in 2000. We never got your first DVD player till the mid 90s. Watching TV is now much easier with streaming services.
I still have a over 5 year old Sony Blu-Ray disc player in the house but have not used it in almost 2 years.
My earliest memory of a TV was in the mid 70s we had a 21inch CRT Ferguson TV rented from the old Granada shop. It had buttons for 5 channels but only 3 channels was broadcast at the time. TV was repaired at least once a year if I remember. In 1982 got rid of that TV and bought a Philips 28inch CRT from the old Comet shop. In 1986 got rid of that TV as it never even had a scart connection at the back for our first VHS recorder that we had bought also out of Comet. TV was a 28 inch CRT with teletext service.
In 1988 we had one of the gadgets like remotes that you linked to the VCR and got a code from newspapers TV listening and put that in this remote to set a recording on the VCR to make it easier to record. 1991 was our first TV with Fastext, a 28 inch Sharp CRT that had Nicam stereo and replaced the VCR with one that had the code thing for recording TV programmes built in to the VCR remote. In 1990 we also by this time had the old BSB Squarial dish and box before we were moved over to the old Sky analogue service until we got rid of Sky in 2000. We never got our first DVD player till the mid 90s. Watching TV is now much easier with streaming services.
I still have an over 5 year old Sony Blu-Ray disc player in the house but have not used it in almost 2 years.
If you got your first DVD in the mid-90s, you must have been very rich 😛; I think you will find it was a few years later. I do recall that when The Sopranos came out in 1999, stealing DVD players was the new big thing for Tony’s crew. Our first DVD player was a Sony, and cost £450; the back was absolutely bristling with component video connections as, if I recall correctly, the view was that SCART couldn’t quite do the format justice - though SCART was on the back there, and that was what we actually used - and HDMI wasn’t yet available on consumer devices.
DVD was wonderful compared with VHS, though less of a contrast with BetaMax; but like the CDs before them, it was great not to have to rewind them, or worry about them coming back out of the slot as a tangle of chewed oxide 😛
I agree with you about streaming services. We are rewatching The Wire, and even though we have the DVDs, it is better and more convenient to watch it on Now. Where it has also been adjusted for 16:9 (without Stretchyvision!) while our original DVDs are 4:3.
Still, though, nothing beats a UHD BluRay for absolute quality.
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
@Roy, I'm in the process of deciding which 4K Blu-Ray player to buy. Torn between the LG and Panasonic one. Currently thinking LG as wifi for the same price but both customer reviews say the drives are noisy with disc spin. I also want multi-region DVD capability and have found remote hack for Panasonic and DVD "upgrade" disc for LG, so that shouldn't be a problem.
Did you consider the LG as same make as the TV or was Panasonic your preferred from the get go? Also do you find the player noisy?
Anyone else got either make and wish to pitch in and take this thread even further off topic?
My earliest memory of a TV was in the mid 70s we had a 21inch CRT Ferguson TV rented from the old Granada shop. It had buttons for 5 channels but only 3 channels was broadcast at the time. TV was repaired at least once a year if I remember. In 1982 got rid of that TV and bought a Philips 28inch CRT from the old Comet shop. In 1986 got rid of that TV as it never even had a scart connection at the back for our first VHS recorder that we had bought also out of Comet. TV was a 28 inch CRT with teletext service.
In 1988 we had one of the gadgets like remotes that you linked to the VCR and got a code from newspapers TV listening and put that in this remote to set a recording on the VCR to make it easier to record. 1991 was our first TV with Fastext, a 28 inch Sharp CRT that had Nicam stereo and replaced the VCR with one that had the code thing for recording TV programmes built in to the VCR remote. In 1990 we also by this time had the old BSB Squarial dish and box before we were moved over to the old Sky analogue service until we got rid of Sky in 2000. We never got our first DVD player till the mid 90s. Watching TV is now much easier with streaming services.
I still have an over 5 year old Sony Blu-Ray disc player in the house but have not used it in almost 2 years.
If you got your first DVD in the mid-90s, you must have been very rich 😛; I think you will find it was a few years later. I do recall that when The Sopranos came out in 1999, stealing DVD players was the new big thing for Tony’s crew. Our first DVD player was a Sony, and cost £450; the back was absolutely bristling with component video connections as, if I recall correctly, the view was that SCART couldn’t quite do the format justice - though SCART was on the back there, and that was what we actually used - and HDMI wasn’t yet available on consumer devices.
DVD was wonderful compared with VHS, though less of a contrast with BetaMax; but like the CDs before them, it was great not to have to rewind them, or worry about them coming back out of the slot as a tangle of chewed oxide 😛
I agree with you about streaming services. We are rewatching The Wire, and even though we have the DVDs, it is better and more convenient to watch it on Now. Where it has also been adjusted for 16:9 (without Stretchyvision!) while our original DVDs are 4:3.
Still, though, nothing beats a UHD BluRay for absolute quality.
The ones in your link was similar to the ones I used. Yes I had 626 lines and colour fro the get go. I remember an uncle who died about 15 years ago now used to have a old BetaMax in the late 70s-early 80s. Long before I got my first VHS recorder. It could have been the late 90s not the mid 90s that I got my first DVD player now I come to think of it.
I still use my Toshiba Blu Ray player as I still buy blurays for the quality of picture, with none of the compression that streaming content can suffer from. £20 from Richer Sounds. Though I was buying an awful lot of stuff at the time, so the shop manager through it in as a deal.
I'm now happy with the disagree icon, because its gone.
I still use my Toshiba Blu Ray player as I still buy blurays for the quality of picture, with none of the compression that streaming content can suffer from. £20 from Richer Sounds. Though I was buying an awful lot of stuff at the time, so the shop manager through it in as a deal.
Please elaborate? I wasn't aware that Blu-ray went above 1080p? Unless you mean Blu-ray UHD of course, which does indeed have a resolution of 2160. Exactly the same as 4K streaming.
@Roy, I'm in the process of deciding which 4K Blu-Ray player to buy. Torn between the LG and Panasonic one. Currently thinking LG as wifi for the same price but both customer reviews say the drives are noisy with disc spin. I also want multi-region DVD capability and have found remote hack for Panasonic and DVD "upgrade" disc for LG, so that shouldn't be a problem.
Did you consider the LG as same make as the TV or was Panasonic your preferred from the get go? Also do you find the player noisy?
Anyone else got either make and wish to pitch in and take this thread even further off topic?
You’ve obviously got a shortlist, or at least a price point, since when I look up those makes, I find multiple models. So which models are we talking about? And why no Sony on the list? I don’t like Sony TVs, admittedly, but I do rate their BluRay players, and I was all-Sony in this regard until my Panny just edged it over the Sony that was my other shortlist candidate.
When I got the Panny, it was to work with a 2015 Samsung JS9000; the LG GX didn’t arrive until last year. But there’s nothing I want the Panny to do that it can’t do with the LG setup.
When I chose the Panny, things were much easier; everybody had three models, cheap, midrange and ludicrous. I’m talking £200, £300 and £800, typically here.
Eliminating any without dual HDMI outputs usually ruled out the cheap option, common sense ruled out the ludicrous one, so the price point was around the £300 mark. The Panny aced it because it was multi-region, albeit only for DVDs, but we had a fair few of those I was thinking I might play again.
I see some more modern UHD players now offer BluRay multi region as well.
I only ever had one US BluRay, a mistake as Amazon didn’t specify it was US; it indeed would not play, so it went back.
The Panny isn’t noisy, but it sits in an enclosed cabinet, which you can see below the TV in the photo I posted recently. It’s WiFi, which is handy for firmware updates, but is not otherwise a big consideration; there are a few apps on the player but we never use them, as the good ones are duplicated in more convenient places, and the other we don’t bother with.
I touched on the dual outputs; with the Sammy TV, I had a Yammy soundbar. I couldn’t plug the Panny into just the Yammy, as this wouldn’t support the HDCP level the Panny wanted to pass through to the Sammy. And I couldn’t plug the Panny into just the Sammy, as the Sammy couldn’t pass the full audio from the Panny down ARC to the Yammy.
With me so far? So I used the Panny’s two outputs to pass video to the Sammy and audio to the Yammy, and thus realised the full potential of the Panny.
I though this nonsense would be over with the LG GX and its eARC, but it turns out the LG GX TV won’t pass DTS to the GX soundbar, just Dolby of various ilks😢 So the split would still have been needed if I had had the Panny plugged into the TV. But instead, I plugged the Panny into the GX soundbar, which does handle DTS, and does pass the full video the Panny is capable of to the LG TV. Accordingly, one output now suffices.
So what models are your shortlisted players? And what TV and audio device are you planning to use with it, makes and models again?
Then I can see if there are any gotchas or limitations you should be aware of. Or you could start the process, based on the above tidbits….
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
I still use my Toshiba Blu Ray player as I still buy blurays for the quality of picture, with none of the compression that streaming content can suffer from. £20 from Richer Sounds. Though I was buying an awful lot of stuff at the time, so the shop manager through it in as a deal.
Please elaborate? I wasn't aware that Blu-ray went above 1080p? Unless you mean Blu-ray UHD of course, which does indeed have a resolution of 2160. Exactly the same as 4K streaming.
I doubt if even @Visionman could score a UHD BluRay player for £20.
But whatever you show on a 4K TV will have a resolution of 2160. The question is how many of those bits were invented by the TV (3 out of 4 even for an HD BluRay) or in the decompression of a lossy streamed video, even a UHD one. And while even UHD BluRay is compressed to an extent, it’s nothing like the extent to which streaming video is compressed.
Never mind the width (2160 pixels) feel the quality (bitrate), which can be up to ten times higher than streaming.
Comments
Ah, do you remember the advent of NICAM, when TVs had two rattly speakers, instead of just one?
TVs these days strive to be as thin and flat and bezel-less as possible which of course tends to make sound quality somewhat secondary.
But I suppose that in the same way so is this post.
If I can join you on that enjoyable trip down memory lane…..
Here’s the first TV our family ever had, a top of the range* Pye VT4 from the mid-50’s:-
https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co34491/pye-vt4-television-receiver
If you have ever wondered why old people talk about ‘turning over’ the channel, it’s that knob on the side, from the days when ‘remote control’ meant Mum or Dad commanding one of us kids to cross the room and turn it.
And I remember the cries of ‘fourteen inch heads’ when somebody blocked your view of it, which is how I know what the screen size was.
Dad bought it outright (or possibly on HP, but it certainly wasn’t rented) for 80 guineas, which was the old way of making prices look slightly more attractive.
Adjusted for inflation, that’s around £2,300 in today’s money, or about exactly what you would spend for a premium main family TV now. Of course, today you would get rather more than two channels on a 405-line black and white picture, but at least we never needed a soundbar with it 😛
As to the reliability you mention, redchiz, we were lucky with this set; just the odd valve replacement from time to time. But the V14 that Pye brought out next was so unreliable it nearly did for them, and it was a struggling Pye of Cambridge, now 60% owned by Philips Electronics, that I joined in 1972.
(I will save the further relevant nostalgia for another post).
I do still miss the little dot the picture would shrink to, and eventually fade away, when you switched the TV off, though. Why don’t the new ones do that? 😢
Here’s a good resource on the brands issue:-
https://www.techradar.com/uk/best/best-tv-brands
LG had a big makeover in 2015 when they went to the latest incarnation of WebOS, and dropped their older OSes. So a set from before those days indeed won’t be representative any more.
Panasonic sets have enormous respect these days, despite their small range, with some arguing that they are the best of all.
However, it was a failure in a number of ways, and we sent it back.
Its size and weight made it clear that only with flat screen TVs could that 36” limit be broken.
But our son had a two-box Pioneer plasma that was the best TV I ever saw until OLED came along; the same approach to inky blacks.
I remember recording some of the 2012 London Olympics, which the BBC did in 3D, and being very impressed that the YouView box, which I’m sure wasn’t designed for 3D recorded it, and could replay it. I guess a broadcast signal is a broadcast signal?
We still have two TVs that will do 3D, and both are curved. The logic with big curved screens, 55” and up, was that you were off-axis for the two edges, and hence would get colour changes, so the curvature combated this by making the edges less off-axis.
Nowadays, they can solve this better on flat screens, even LCDs. No idea of the logic of curved 32” screens, but my wife still prefers them to flat ones.
My earliest memories of a TV are from back in the 1960s at my nan's house and it was very much like a piece of furniture, a beautiful rosewood case in the "sitting room" (we didn't have a "living room" in those days, that would be the kitchen) which was regularly polished along with the wooden sideboard. Hiding behind the sofa while watching Doctor Who. And I was fascinated by that dot!
I was very much in the market for a 14” NICAM TV in the old CRT 4:3 days, ratty speakers or no, and scored a Thompson one from our local Curry’s.
Turned out it was a Philipe Starck design, and signed by him (though not personally, just tampo’ed on).
My first NICAM set was a humungous 21 incher by HITACHI. When it arrived I excitedly scoured the listings to see what upcoming programmes were to be broadcast in stereo, by no means a a given in those days and duly appended with a "N," so I could put it through its paces. I was somewhat nonplussed to find that my first opportunity was .... snooker! Might have been good for the introduction of colour, not so much stereo.
Looking round, we are only running one soundbar now, in the lounge on the LG GX, where it certainly makes a massive difference with its sub and its ‘wireless’ rears. (Wireless front to back, though some people apparently feel cheated that they have to be connected to the rear receiver, and that plugged into the mains - what do they think speakers run on, air?)
But it does seem that wall mounting makes for better sound than stand mounting on the others. I can think of a couple of reasons why this should be, and a couple why it shouldn’t.
The 43’ LG on the wall in our bedroom is still a bit of a mystery here though, seemingly capable of thunderous bass and 5.1 surround audio all on its own, which must be some psychoacoustic trickery, as all the speakers are built in to the set.
But we would hesitate to add either of our now superannuated soundbars to it, lest it spoiled the effect.
So sadly a soundbar is the limit of my home theater.
See any wires (there’s one visible, though I could hide it if it was obtrusive in normal use)? See the receiver?
in 1982 got rid of that TV and bought got Philips 28inch CRT from the old Comet shop.
In 1986 got rid of that TV as it never even had a scart connection at the back for our first VHS recorded that we had bought also out of Comet. TV was a 28 Inch CRT with telex service.
1991 was our first TV with Fastext, A 28 inch Sharp CRT and that had Nicam stereo and replaced VCR with one that had the code thing for recording TV programmes built in to the VCR remote.
In 1990 we also by this time had the old BSB Squarial dish and box before we was moved over to
the old Sky analogue service until we got rid of Sky in 2000. We never got your first DVD player till the mid 90s.
Watching TV is now much easier with streaming services.
Very interesting! I wish I could remember my history of devices that clearly 😢
I take it you were 625-line and colour from the get-go?
I remember the old VCR codes thing, but I never came across a codes decoder like you describe. Ingenious. Something like one of these, perhaps?
https://steltronix.co.uk/shop/remotes/videoplus-gemstar-vip-190-remote-control
If you got your first DVD in the mid-90s, you must have been very rich 😛; I think you will find it was a few years later. I do recall that when The Sopranos came out in 1999, stealing DVD players was the new big thing for Tony’s crew. Our first DVD player was a Sony, and cost £450; the back was absolutely bristling with component video connections as, if I recall correctly, the view was that SCART couldn’t quite do the format justice - though SCART was on the back there, and that was what we actually used - and HDMI wasn’t yet available on consumer devices.
DVD was wonderful compared with VHS, though less of a contrast with BetaMax; but like the CDs before them, it was great not to have to rewind them, or worry about them coming back out of the slot as a tangle of chewed oxide 😛
I agree with you about streaming services. We are rewatching The Wire, and even though we have the DVDs, it is better and more convenient to watch it on Now. Where it has also been adjusted for 16:9 (without Stretchyvision!) while our original DVDs are 4:3.
Still, though, nothing beats a UHD BluRay for absolute quality.
Did you consider the LG as same make as the TV or was Panasonic your preferred from the get go? Also do you find the player noisy?
Anyone else got either make and wish to pitch in and take this thread even further off topic?
I remember an uncle who died about 15 years ago now used to have a old BetaMax in the late 70s-early 80s. Long before I got my first VHS recorder.
It could have been the late 90s not the mid 90s that I got my first DVD player now I come to think of it.
When I got the Panny, it was to work with a 2015 Samsung JS9000; the LG GX didn’t arrive until last year. But there’s nothing I want the Panny to do that it can’t do with the LG setup.
When I chose the Panny, things were much easier; everybody had three models, cheap, midrange and ludicrous. I’m talking £200, £300 and £800, typically here.
Eliminating any without dual HDMI outputs usually ruled out the cheap option, common sense ruled out the ludicrous one, so the price point was around the £300 mark. The Panny aced it because it was multi-region, albeit only for DVDs, but we had a fair few of those I was thinking I might play again.
I see some more modern UHD players now offer BluRay multi region as well.
I only ever had one US BluRay, a mistake as Amazon didn’t specify it was US; it indeed would not play, so it went back.
The Panny isn’t noisy, but it sits in an enclosed cabinet, which you can see below the TV in the photo I posted recently. It’s WiFi, which is handy for firmware updates, but is not otherwise a big consideration; there are a few apps on the player but we never use them, as the good ones are duplicated in more convenient places, and the other we don’t bother with.
I touched on the dual outputs; with the Sammy TV, I had a Yammy soundbar. I couldn’t plug the Panny into just the Yammy, as this wouldn’t support the HDCP level the Panny wanted to pass through to the Sammy. And I couldn’t plug the Panny into just the Sammy, as the Sammy couldn’t pass the full audio from the Panny down ARC to the Yammy.
With me so far? So I used the Panny’s two outputs to pass video to the Sammy and audio to the Yammy, and thus realised the full potential of the Panny.
I though this nonsense would be over with the LG GX and its eARC, but it turns out the LG GX TV won’t pass DTS to the GX soundbar, just Dolby of various ilks😢 So the split would still have been needed if I had had the Panny plugged into the TV. But instead, I plugged the Panny into the GX soundbar, which does handle DTS, and does pass the full video the Panny is capable of to the LG TV. Accordingly, one output now suffices.
So what models are your shortlisted players? And what TV and audio device are you planning to use with it, makes and models again?
Then I can see if there are any gotchas or limitations you should be aware of.
Or you could start the process, based on the above tidbits….
I doubt if even @Visionman could score a UHD BluRay player for £20.
But whatever you show on a 4K TV will have a resolution of 2160. The question is how many of those bits were invented by the TV (3 out of 4 even for an HD BluRay) or in the decompression of a lossy streamed video, even a UHD one. And while even UHD BluRay is compressed to an extent, it’s nothing like the extent to which streaming video is compressed.
Never mind the width (2160 pixels) feel the quality (bitrate), which can be up to ten times higher than streaming.
https://www.gearbrain.com/uhd-bluray-disc-benefits-explained-2651286148.html