SOLVED: The WORST Possible TV ever!

When I compared big screens, it came down to QLED vs OLED. The Quantum dot tech, color rendering, and local dimming won me with Samsung’s QLED. And since Samsung bought Harmon Kardon, I paired it with one of their new sound bars with Dolby Atmos. We watch a lot of HGTV, Animal Planet and Nat Geo, and the picture is amazing.

Hate to break it to you, but any LCD TV you buy is going to look that way to you coming from a CRT television. It’s just a fundamental difference in display technology. CRTs have a rolling refresh rate, where the screen is re-drawn line by line over a period of time. On LCD panels, the entire display is more or less refreshed at the same time.

The good news is you’ll get used to it pretty quickly, and it won’t look weird to you anymore.

How do you cope with not having discovery channels?

That ‘smooth motion’ feature gives me the creeps, too! :confounded:

I’ve noticed that on some TVs, ‘smooth motion’ is configured for each input source.

For example, disabling it while on HDM1 won’t necessarily disable it on all sources.

Have you ever considered a one remote for all your devices, I have” this one”:Amazon.com and with one button turns the tv-stb-stereo combo on, been using it for last 10 years, just reprogram it as needed with the addition of new equipment.

edit: I think this is their new one.

Two years ago I bought a Samsung 49inch 4k tv for £550. It was complete crap. Blurry picture and washed out colours. I use it with my PC so it looked even worse. My old 1080p Hannspree which I practically got for free is waaaay better. The only good TV I found under £1200 was an LG one which was priced at £799. Funny thing is there was an LG right next to it in the store which was £699 and the difference in picture quality was huge. I don’t know if they’re the same now in a 2019 but I doubt you’re going to get a great 65 inch TV for under $800.

I swear some of their models exist for only two purposes:

  1. To get sight-unseen sales based on price alone
  2. To sit next to the models that are actually good for comparison purposes

More specifically for you:

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Thank me later

I set up the Harmony 650 for my mother. It works pretty well. Trouble is with older components is that ON/OFF is the same signal, just toggled. So, if you’re sloppy with the control, you end up out of sync. I’ve had to field a number of calls from my mother with “TV is on but there’s no sound!”. I’d gotten her this terrific Integra receiver for managing the sound, which does very well. Sounds great. TV is Samsung, though. These days if you don’t get all the same brand then you’ve got complications with universal remote programming.

Its later. Thanks. This is actually a very good place to get TV reviews. Their videos on YT are good too.
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In the end I decided to go with the Samsung Z7100 65”. Its a 4k smart tv. Got it for $600. There is actually one that rated much better on the rtings review (the UM7300) and costs $100 LESS, but it has privacy invasion technology hardwired into it so I paid the extra $100 to get the Samsung :slight_smile:

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I also picked up the R650 sound bar from Samsung for another $200. I chose the 650 because it has the independent center channel which is primarily responsible for dialog (volume of voices vs music) that I can adjust. My sound bar is here, the TV should be on Thursday. I will let you know how it goes…

^ Cool! Good to see you were able to decide on a TV so quickly. I’d take a few weeks to finally decide, I get so overwhelmed with tons of data. Curious about that privacy invasion technology “hardwired.” What’s that all about? I wonder if there’s some way to physically defeat it.

I think it’s LG that has some models with a concealed webcam to monitor the faces that are watching it. And it won’t even work until you accept the service agreement that makes that legal.

Do like Zuckerberg and put black tape over the camera and microphone? :laughing:

If you can find it…

An actual use for a flashlight with strobe!

Hold the light at your temple aimed at the teevee, and start strobing (better with a lower-output light like an AAA). Camera chips are kindasorta retroreflective, and there’s a pretty good chance you’ll see it strobe back at you.

Just tried it with my (old) phone. SP10A on moonlight. Talk about a pinhole camera! Faintly glows orangey when you hit it just right (at least at arm’s length).

I just tried strobe onto the face of my phone, but the camera didn’t seem to retro-reflect.
If I had to guess, they would want to put this camera behind the lens that receives the remote IR signal. That way it’s concealed, and covering it would stop the remote from working too.

Diffusion film! :smiling_imp:

Shouldn’t block IR too much, and still let the receiver pick up the IR signal aimed at it. But it’d horribly distort beyond recognition any image the camera would try picking up.

I find this so wrong, on so many levels. I mean, yeah, there has been some sci-fi movies showing such tech. But not realistic in our present day. I mean, just how lazy are people going to get?

The only scenario I can think of, is this: Persons A, B, and C are watching TV, when a commercial comes on for a product. Person “A” wants it. So that person says to the TV, “I want to buy that item on the screen right now.” The TV scans the faces, recognizes the person who spoke, accesses their Amazon account, adds the item to cart, then waits for Person “A” to confirm. Once confirmed, item is ordered.

Given how often we actually buy items on-line, I can’t fathom why someone would want it so incredibly easy like this… considering all the privacy they are giving up to have it. :zipper_mouth_face: A profile is stored in the TV’s memory, accessible over the Internet. What’s to prevent some hacker from accessing it, then using that profile to order items, shipped to an alternate address?

Interesting idea.

I did not understand what I read as being some next level sci-fi stuff. Just a simple metric of how many faces were detected and what channel was being watched. It’s been a year or two since I read it, so don’t take me as an authority on the subject.

Telescreens.