New TV set

My (Sony) TV is connected to the internet and I don't see any adverts, apart from those broadcast on ITV &c, which I avoid by programming a 'skip ads' button on my universal remote.

Isn't Apple+TV obtainable on Amazon Prime only by payment of an extra sub?

For those of use with fading eyesight the bigger the better.

I think for the past 10 years most TVs have had built record capability. You often need to add USB connected storage but then it means if you don't use it you are not paying for disk drive you don't need and if you do need it you can change which size you need ...

Dave

much, but if you are living alone and have arthritic hands and can't see the buttons on the remote, then being able to say

"alexa set the TV to ITV1"

probably more than compensates for the fact that some one in Trumpland or possibly even Putinville could listening to your farts, snores, or grunts of pleasure from self abuse....

Dave

I just had a quick check and the Panasonic TX-50MX800B has a headphone output. I would think that others in the range do as well. As for ease of use, the TV can use Alexa, so that /might/ be of help is she has an internet connection.

Recording is more of a problem. The TV has only one tuner so even if it could record (it can't) she couldn't watch one channel while recording another. I have no idea if other makes with a recording facility can record on a different channel from that being watched. So that leaves a freestanding recorder. Panasonic no longer seem to do a "simple" PVR - they combine it with Blu-ray/DVD. Probably the cheapest PVR these days is a Manhattan T4R 500GB, which might be worth a look. In any case, I wouldn't be surprised if PVRs disappeared completely within a few years, so we'll have to stream everything. :-((((((((((

Unless the TV had more than one tuner then it has to be on the channel that is being recorded, or at least certainly on my LG.

We added a quite cheap and cheerful USB drive which allows readily for either recording or pause. The pause button gets used quite a lot.

Most TVs have a basic recording capability if you plug a USB drive into them for storage. It tends to be a bit limited though - often only allowing recording something from the same mux or possibly the same channel (they don't usually have multiple tuners), and quite often the recording is encrypted and DRM tied to the set, so you can't move it elsewhere or watch on a different device.

or a network connected TV tuner:

also TVs of old gave a taller picture for a given diagonal by virtue of not being widescreen. So you need to go 40+" in widescreen to watch something 4:3 at the same size you used to see it on a 29" 4:3 TV.

It has to be on the same MUX yes, but not necessarily on the same 'channel' since there cab be up to 12 'channels' on the same frequency...

In general there are 6 MUXES on any given transmitter tower. Broadcasting at different frequencies and powers..

Right. I misinterpreted the promotional blurb on Modern TVs. I suspect a Manhattan or BT box controls will be a struggle for the intended user who has just about mastered her Humax:-)

Why can one buy a new TV for £350 and something that appears similar for £3500?

Different technologies?

One TV may have LCD (Liquid Cyrstal Display) flat panel and the other a OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) flat panel. The latter will be much more expensive.

The former requires a light source behind it and on cheaper models this likely to be a single source at the side of the panel while on the more expensive models it will an array of LEDS directly behind the LCD panel.

Some LCD panels have a much wider viewing angle while some a more restricted viewing angle. A LCD with a narrower viewing angle is probably OK where all the people viewing the TV are sitting in front of the screen but in a room where the seating arrangement means some people are viewing the screen off-axis they will see a degraded picture (washed out colours and lower contrast).

A more expensive TV may have a better image processing engine (electronic image processing chip).

You may be paying more for branding.

How much some of the differences matter is up to the consumer to choose.

I have two LCDs TVS, a 55 inch towards the top end of the price range and a much smaller TV for the bedroom at the lowest end of the price range. The difference in picture quality is like chalk and cheese but both produce a watchable picture.

Umm. So if a set claims OLED features for £499 it will be the 4k version but must also have made savings elsewhere? Thanks for the explanation. (Latin is Greek to me)

Timatmarford snipped-for-privacy@demon.co.uk> wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net:

What it her current humie? I am still on the old school HDR-2000T (discontinued) and find its EPG far more user friendly than their newer offerings but it does not offer access to streaming channels so I look ahead and record items of interest. This adds the benefit of skipping adverts.

If kids (of any age) are messing with the settings then ban them from using it until they learn.

If the current or another humie might serve the purpose then maybe a dumb display would do the job. At 50" (essential<?>) it will need to be a TV.

Totally with Theo on the streaming == spying thing, I have no time for it.

Be aware that Samsung and others have QLED which you might read as OLED if you don't have your specs on, but is actually regular LCDs but with added 'quantum dots':

Meanwhile an OLED is just a tiny red (or green or blue) light that you can light as bright as you like. OLEDs tend to have deeper contrast because you can turn them off completely, while a filter-based display is always going to leak some light.

The cheapest OLED at Currys is £699 but the cheapest QLED is £199.

'Full HD' (1080p): 41 models

(other retailers are available)

For elderly eyes who sit far from the screen I'm not sure it's going to make a lot of difference. You could go to a shop and compare, but note they tend to show over-bright over-contrasty images on their demo videos - better to compare playing live TV if you can.

Theo

Most OLED sets start at around 700 to 800 for the smaller sizes (i.e. under 50").

But yup generally larger is more expensive, as are more features.

IME making sure you get a "high dynamic range" (HDR) capability is well worth having. I find a much more noticeable improvement in enjoyment moving from "normal" to HDR than from moving to 4K from HD for example - especially with OLED which really highlights the effect.

On some LCD backlights which are arrays of LEDS areas can be dynamically switched off to give deep blacks because there is no light behind the LCD to leak through. However, all these features to enhance the picture tend to increase the price of the TV.

I have a Manhattan T2R I haven't learned how to use. Second hand, they don't give you the manual:-(

Humax HDR-FOXT2 (500GB?) Panasonic Tx-L37E5B

Sadly she is quite happy provided it keeps working! The solution to whatever the GCs did was to switch off the Humax at the main isolator rather than the handset switch.