There have been recent articles about enormous strides with facial recognition made by the Chinese. We’re talking 50 meters away. So while the TV specification may indicate “face detection”, it may actually have the capacity for facial recognition. Given what has recently happened with Huawei, who knows what tech might be slipped into the chips for TV’s being produced by South Korea (that has a tight technical relationship with China).
I wasn’t criticizing what you said, only expanding upon it. :sunglasses:
I wouldn’t be so sure the words “face detection” would appear in the specs. Legally, simply making a statement in the User Agreement to the effect of “…may collect some user data to improve user experience” would cover this.
I’ve rescued and repaired several TVs from the curb, thanks to help from the friendly members at the badcaps.net repair forum.
My favorite success is a 55” Samsung LED model. It was a rainy evening, and when I picked up the TV, water poured out of the case. I fully disassembled it, let everything dry, and replaced a 25¢ component that had lost its magic smoke. It’s still working 2 years later!
A couple of the TVs I’ve repaired had been discarded because of backlight issues. It seems that most manufacturers are overdriving the backlight LEDs, causing early failure.
The badcaps.net folks recommend reducing the backlight level to ~70% on any new LED-backlit TVs to prolong their lifespan.
I just replaced all of the backlights in another rescued Samsung 55” after finding this:
I got my first “connected tv” just a few month back, at the beginning of the year, following the arrival of optical fiber in my house… and that was a game changer. I quit tv more then thirty years ago but like to watch movies, off DVDs, BDs, USB keys or HD. The connected part is to me a much bigger improvement then size or picture quality - which is very very decent anyway to my taste. I’ve only scratched the surface yet but having Netflix, Youtube, TED conferences and so many other options right on the tv is just amazing.
If your Internet connection can pull 20Mbps go check some 4K footage on Youtube. Aquariums, drone footage over remotes places, town walk-through… There are quite some impressive 4K video out there.
There are lots of WEGA TVs, but if you have a CRT or DLP projector, you’re likely to hate the contrast in any LCD tv, and that includes QLED since they’re transmissive displays.
I “upgraded” a couple of years ago from a Mitsubishi rear-projection DLP to an LG LCD (55”, 4k, UHD). And most of the time, I love it. It upscales really nicely, and DVDs and 1080(p/i) look great on it. But when we’re watching something with really dark scenes, you can see the backlight dimming zones, and that drives me insane.
Full array/direct lit tvs are supposed to have better contrast. Last time I checked they were still so close to the price of OLED, that they made OLED the obvious choice (but out of my price range). That might be different now, because it changes fast.
I’m not particularly sensitive to frame-rate monkey business. I can see it sometimes, but it doesn’t bug me. So, maybe the lack of contrast, and sometimes visible dimming zones won’t bug you. YMMV.
And, I think the only way you can not buy a smart tv is to buy a computer monitor and use it as a TV. If you don’t need a tuner built in, and would prefer to skip the crappy built-in speakers, that’s not necessarily a bad way to go.
I should have done this. The built-in apps WERE unbearably slow in my LG. But now they have all been dis-continued one by one, and all that is left is a shell of a TV with slow boot times. The bottom of the barrel Roku that is now plugged into it is 10x faster than the TV ever was.
Instead of the 7100 model, get the 8000 model if you can find it for not much more expensive. I have a Samsung 55in UN55KS8000DFXZA and I love it. The picture is awesome, the smart tv features are fast to load and look great.
You definitely want smart and 4k. More and more 4k media is being made. Lots on Netflix is 4k. Smart is awesome. Having Netflix and other apps right into the tv is awesome.
Think of it like this. Don’t spend the money on a new tv with old technology. Spend just a little more to have a current tv that you will enjoy for many years.
Interesting. I guess the LED’s are being overdriven because manufactures want to even the backlight and consumers like it bright. I thought they found a fix by increasing the number of LED’s and going with brighter ones.
The specific thing I am referring to is the AI that supports Alexa and other voice programs. I realize that theoretically you have to enable it and agree to terms etc. And realistically in most cases that would actually be true, but in general devices that even have that potential (webcams/alexa/google home) just laying around is not my cup of tea. My smartphone does have the capability, but that would be much easier to remove or put out of voice range should I have reason to.
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So far I have only ever had reason to believe that I was being listened to by AI when it was not my intention to be one time. My wife was talking about a very specific product to be used at her job and Facebook then started advertising it too her. No searches of any kind had been made for it on any device we use. However I think it is still more likely that the data for this item was mined because she opened an email (or emails) about it on the house PC vs being listened to.
Got you. Yeah, I know that feeling… the “soft off” option means that it can be turned on at some point… even by a software update.
These TV’s that are internet enabled will update themselves automatically by default. Some TV models will allow you to set that option to manual. I did that on my mother’s smart TV. And you know what? About a half year later, a dialog appeared asking her to do an update. She clicked “OK.” It did it successfully. Then when I visited her, I checked the TV config… and “automatic update” was set. It made an override to my previous setting! And that bugged the hell out of me. So I can understand paranoia about soft privacy settings… they can be flipped at any time by an update.
I’m still using my Sony TOTL KDL46XBR4, which was a very early HDMI capable LCD TV. Because it is LCD with a powered back light, rather than LED, it uses more power, but the picture quality is truly wonderful. Not smart. There is an adapter you can get to make it WiFi enabled… but it’s limited. I have an external ROKU plugged in via HDMI that does the job.
And who’s to say after an “upgrade” that you’re no longer allowed to play video from any source other than an Approved (Commercial) Supplier, and no more Kodi or anything. RealPlayer, anyone?
Congrats mate, happy I could be of some help, doesn’t pay you back for the hours of entertainment you’ve provided me on Youtube, but at least it’s something!
WOW!!! The most unbelievably POOR QUALITY Picture you could imagine!!! I can not even believe this is real! When I first started watching this TV I knew right away the picture was a significant downgrade from my old TV but I assumed this could be resolved in settings. Everything looks as if the camera was out of focus when the video was filmed. SOFT images no matter how much the sharpness is increased. It does this from every source in a varying degree. Brodcast tv, streaming and even blue ray. After hours of fooling around though I finally figured out what the actual problem is.
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This TV creates a duplicate image of every frame and off sets it by pixels.
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I have slow internet so I wanted to eliminate that as the problem. This is using my blue ray player its an older 1080p but still does not rely on my internet.
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Some shows also have horrible “shaky camera effect” and a weird looking frame rate (yes smooth motion is turned off) Blue bloods is the worst I’ve seen. Mandalorian did not do that. The duplicate frame is still there though. Turning ON smooth motion does seem to HIDE this extra frame slightly, but not totally and then of course you get crappy soap opera effect.
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Also from blue ray.
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Brodcast TV quality is also significantly downgraded for the same reason. This is the best possible image I was able to capture because the person was sitting still. But compared to my old tv the clarity, and sharpness is only about 1/4 of the quality. When the show is running the grainy effect is more apparent.
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Is there some fix for this that I am not aware of? Or is this really the trash that people accept now because they don’t know any better?
If you have a standard definition source, you pic is going to look like crap. That is a very large screen for a low res source. Have you tried it with native 4k yet? You will also want to make sure that the TV is set to upscale sources. I found that when I went from a 47” to a 65” that it took a lot of adjustment and tinkering. I went with a Sony 65” Bravia after a lot of reading and testing at stores that allowed you to go to other sources and allowed you to take the set out of demo mode or to set basic settings off max. In stores, the demo mode makes everything as vivid and bright and saturated as possible to try to overcome the overhead lights. Not a good way to compare.
