55" OLED or 65" LED TV...
Discussion
Digitalize said:
Put blocks behind the BR player to hold up the turntable. But surely the PS3 is void of use? Also generally amps like to vent out of the top, so try not to have anything on top of them.
Cheers. I didn't have a lot of choice for amp placement, as the space between the shelves is quite tight at the top (It is much taller than even the HTPC). The record deck does sit almost an inch above the amp, which is more space than if it were placed lower. As soon as my old games I bought on PS3 can be transferred to the PS4 (Tomb raiders, Silent Hills, Resident Evils..), I shall remove the PS3. Until then, I still use it quite often.
hab1966 said:
If ive got the right model, Currys is now selling at (just) sub £2k
LG OLED55B6V Smart 4k Ultra HD HDR 55" OLED TV
Yes, that's the one, and £80 cheaper than what I bought it for only a couple of weeks ago.LG OLED55B6V Smart 4k Ultra HD HDR 55" OLED TV
A downloaded film on SKY hd is only around 3.5gb max. This is the same, perhaps slightly less than a DVD file. A BR file size is between 20-40gb, uncompressed.
We don't have fast broadband where we are (in the sticks, so still phone line BB), but Amazon and Netflix seen to stream really well, with decent picture quality. BR discs are much better, though.
I know that I will need to by that 4k HDR BR player to get the best possible picture from the TV...
We don't have fast broadband where we are (in the sticks, so still phone line BB), but Amazon and Netflix seen to stream really well, with decent picture quality. BR discs are much better, though.
I know that I will need to by that 4k HDR BR player to get the best possible picture from the TV...
legzr1 said:
Probably not what you want to hear but 4K streamed using Netflix/on board apps is as good as amt of the best mastered BR's in my collection.
HD (at 1080P) streamed on the same services beats anything put out by Sky (with the exception of 4K from Q naturally).
There's a store online doing the Samsung 8500 UHD player together with three free UHD discs for £270 at the moment - I'll hunt the link out if it's of interest.
I can believe 4k streaming is as good - as long as you have the requisite bandwidth available.HD (at 1080P) streamed on the same services beats anything put out by Sky (with the exception of 4K from Q naturally).
There's a store online doing the Samsung 8500 UHD player together with three free UHD discs for £270 at the moment - I'll hunt the link out if it's of interest.
I did look at that Samsung player, and there are quite a few unhappy customers (Amazon). They say it's fine for blu ray discs, but 4k HDR BR discs aren't so good. I think I would rather pay a little more for one that doesn't seem to have problems playing 4k discs.
Digitalize said:
Netflix especially have worked very hard on their compression algorithms, and are always looking at ways to improve quality.
For their own shows they also use tricks such as more static shots which lowers the bitrate for those scenes.
The picture on Netflix is very good, I have to admit.For their own shows they also use tricks such as more static shots which lowers the bitrate for those scenes.
I am almost ready to buy a new 4k HDR BR player, but then I thought about HDMI leads. Will something like this do, as the one Curry's suggest is £80, and I'm not paying that!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01CVQKZS2/ref...
legzr1 said:
Probably best to stick to a 'high speed' HDMI cable for transmission of 4K - some leads previously working fine with BR/1080p have caused issues with the higher bitrate
Cheers. the one I linked to states it is the higher speed type. I certainly am not prepared to pay £80 for a 2 metre cable! I order a metre long one for sound, and the 2 metre to connect directly to the TV, with that HDMI port in HDR mode - or something like that.legzr1 said:
If your AV amp cannot deal with 4K or HDR then a player with dual outputs and the leads you suggest is the way to go. Most UHD players have one output at 2.0a for picture and sound and one at 1.4 for sound only especially for situations like this.
I 'negotiated' when I bought the TV and managed to get three X 3M HDMI leads thrown in - stupid rrp and no difference in sound/vision to a £7 lead I already had.
My amp if fairly new, a Denon AVR X2200W, and can handle 4k Ultra HDR stuff. I thought the reason for the separate audio and video was to give a more stable picture and better sound - or doesn't it work like that?I 'negotiated' when I bought the TV and managed to get three X 3M HDMI leads thrown in - stupid rrp and no difference in sound/vision to a £7 lead I already had.
legzr1 said:
Some AV amps can cause 'handshake' issues between source and TV but that Denon with HDCP2.2 should be absolutely fine - it should only be passing through picture and taking the audio signal to process - sounds like you don't need the direct to TV lead 
Ah, OK, thank you. And I thought there were separate leads/inputs just to free up the digital traffic!varsas said:
I have the Samsung and it's fine, I own around 5 UHD films which I have watched a couple of times each. The problems I had were caused my me looking at forums after I'd started using it and switching to the recommended settings (instead of just leaving it all on auto), also I did find my older HDMI cables didn't work correctly (picture would blank out every now and again), luckily I had an amazon basics 'Hi-speed' one which fixed that.
2 people gave it 1 star, one because it did not include the Martian, and one because their player was DOA. The two star review had the same issues I was having (banding, blocks of colours etc), with the same TV I have, fixed in my case by leaving the settings on default instead of playing with them(!)
Not trying to say it's the best player ever, or that people have not had issues, but if you just want to watch 4k blu-ray's it's fine. You'll find something cheaper and better in 6 months time.
Thanks for the clarification 2 people gave it 1 star, one because it did not include the Martian, and one because their player was DOA. The two star review had the same issues I was having (banding, blocks of colours etc), with the same TV I have, fixed in my case by leaving the settings on default instead of playing with them(!)
Not trying to say it's the best player ever, or that people have not had issues, but if you just want to watch 4k blu-ray's it's fine. You'll find something cheaper and better in 6 months time.
Edited by varsas on Friday 4th November 14:07
I ended up ordering the new Panasonic DMP-UB700EBK player, which should arrive today. It will be interesting to see if there's any significant difference between a standard and 4k HDR BR.
Not sure about LED TV's, I skipped those altogether. I went from plasma to OLED. I was going to get (and really wanted) a 65" LED TV to begin with, but after seeing the OLED display in Richer Sounds, I knew I had to sacrifice the 65 for a 55".
I have now set up my 4k HDR BR player, very nice (just one half metre HDMI lead from player to AV amp). Although, if I am honest, the Blu Rays do not look any better than my MKV BR files on my HD's. The 4k HDR BR of Oblivion does look (and sound) very nice, though.
I have now set up my 4k HDR BR player, very nice (just one half metre HDMI lead from player to AV amp). Although, if I am honest, the Blu Rays do not look any better than my MKV BR files on my HD's. The 4k HDR BR of Oblivion does look (and sound) very nice, though.
Daytime viewing is not really a problem, no better or worse than the plasma we had before. The TV is wall mounted and adjacent to French doors and windows. Obviously, when the sun is shining directly through the windows there is glare and reflection, but there would be no matter what type of screen we have. I just close the one set of curtains. Also the viewing angles are as good as our old plasma TV, no idea what LED's are like for this.
gizlaroc said:
I wasn't talking about reflections, all screens will get this, I meant my Pioneer and Panny plasmas simply weren't bright enough to over come the room, you just couldn't see what was on screen on anything but the brightest of scenes.
99% of people will never have this issue, and it is the only time I can think you might go LCD instead of OLED.
AH, OK, I see. Well, in that case, it's your fault for owning a mansion! 99% of people will never have this issue, and it is the only time I can think you might go LCD instead of OLED.
varsas said:
Interested to hear your opinion. My first thought are here:
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
and my mind hasn't changed much, except that I have begun to realise that 'The Revenant' is exceptional, it really is like watching one of those demo loops, but that most UHD BluRay's around at the moment, at least the ones I have, can't hold a candle to it and are only subtly better than the BluRay. I hope this will improve.
I think I need to have a fiddle with the settings, because I am not seeing too much difference between 4k HDR and standard Blu-Rays. The most impressive I have seen so far is Avatar on standard BR (and that was an 32gb MKV file on one of my hard drives and played through my HTPC). I bought the 4k version of The Da Vinci Code (wife likes it), and watched that last night. Not too impressed, TBH. The darker scenes (of which there are many in this film) look quite grainy in places. The 4k version of Oblivion is better, but it is not twice as good (never mind 4 times) as the standard BR version that is also included with the HDR version.http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
and my mind hasn't changed much, except that I have begun to realise that 'The Revenant' is exceptional, it really is like watching one of those demo loops, but that most UHD BluRay's around at the moment, at least the ones I have, can't hold a candle to it and are only subtly better than the BluRay. I hope this will improve.
But I may need to fiddle with the settings when I get time. I really don't fancy spending £20 on The Revenant, I feel that is a film I would only want to watch once, and not keep..
Funk said:
Chris, if I have no intention of utilising the 4K capabilities of the LG would it still be a worthwhile purchase even for 1080 stuff? I currently have an old 42" Panasonic plasma which is quite flattering of even 720p MKVs and I'm wondering whether the LG might be wasted on me and what I watch?
I would say yes. I did like my plasma TV and there was nothing wrong with it. However, the picture on the OLED is so much more vibrant, and really does bring BR (and MKV HD files) to life. The picture is definitely more colourful and sharper.One thing I have learned is that uncompressed MKV files are as good as the original BR played through a £400 BR/HDR player.
ETA - The picture is so good I have now started to buy BR versions of my favorite films and shows I have on DVD.
Edited by chris watton on Monday 7th November 10:08
Funk said:
Cheers. I have a mix of 1080/720 stuff but have been waiting for a display which does blacks like a plasma can. Nice to have the 4K option down the line if I want it.
Most of my stuff is driven from the PC which has an MSI GTX 760 Twin Frozr card in it. That card only has HDMI 1.4a and I think the max resolution it will output is 2560x1600 (WQXGA).
The GPU in my HTPC is around 4-5 years old (EVGA GTX460), so that's probably only 1.4a, too. But I was astonished just how good Avatar looked, and the other MKV files.Most of my stuff is driven from the PC which has an MSI GTX 760 Twin Frozr card in it. That card only has HDMI 1.4a and I think the max resolution it will output is 2560x1600 (WQXGA).
Off topic I know, but with this talk of showing video files on an OLED TV and not looking very good, I have to say that all of my MKV files look and sound just as good as the original disk they came from. (Including the DTS sound for BR's and Dolby 5.1 for DVD's)
It got to the point where I had so many DVD's and Blu-Rays (and now 2x4k HDR BR's ), it became increasingly impossible to have easy access to all of them. I decided it would be better if I backed them up, uncompressed (otherwise what's the point of watching/listening to something inferior)? onto 4tb hard drives, and box up my DVD's and store them as back up. Even all the extras were backed up.
I ended up buying an 8 bay hard drive unit and added the hard drives as I went, separating all of the different film and TV types into their own folders, so they'd be easily accessible. Storage is so cheap now, there's little need to have great films compressed into tiny file sizes which compromise the quality. Having my complete music and video library stores all in this one place, in this little box which takes up little space appealed to me. because they are 4TB drives, they have to be played through the HTPC as standard TV's and DVD players don't recognise any drive over 2tb.
I did have a couple of MPEG4 video files that have been on my drives from years, but I decided to buy the BR's (I think each one was around £3 to buy)! and re-copy them in MKV format.
I would not dream of trying to watch a great film or TV series which has been compressed to an inch if its life, there simply is no need for it now that large amounts of storage is so cheap.
I can tell you, hand on heart, there is absolutely no noticeable difference between the original BR disc and MKV files, both visually and in sound, when watching them on the new OLED TV.
It got to the point where I had so many DVD's and Blu-Rays (and now 2x4k HDR BR's
), it became increasingly impossible to have easy access to all of them. I decided it would be better if I backed them up, uncompressed (otherwise what's the point of watching/listening to something inferior)? onto 4tb hard drives, and box up my DVD's and store them as back up. Even all the extras were backed up.I ended up buying an 8 bay hard drive unit and added the hard drives as I went, separating all of the different film and TV types into their own folders, so they'd be easily accessible. Storage is so cheap now, there's little need to have great films compressed into tiny file sizes which compromise the quality. Having my complete music and video library stores all in this one place, in this little box which takes up little space appealed to me. because they are 4TB drives, they have to be played through the HTPC as standard TV's and DVD players don't recognise any drive over 2tb.
I did have a couple of MPEG4 video files that have been on my drives from years, but I decided to buy the BR's (I think each one was around £3 to buy)! and re-copy them in MKV format.
I would not dream of trying to watch a great film or TV series which has been compressed to an inch if its life, there simply is no need for it now that large amounts of storage is so cheap.
I can tell you, hand on heart, there is absolutely no noticeable difference between the original BR disc and MKV files, both visually and in sound, when watching them on the new OLED TV.
varsas said:
This is my end goal too. I want to buy a NAS/Router thing, store all the films on an external USB drive and use DLNA to play the files anywhere on any device. this nearly works. The problems are that you can't buy a 2.5inch drive big enough (I need 6-8TB just for my current BluRays uncompressed and I want it powered over the USB port) and the players I have tried (Samsung/Toshiba/Somy bluray players) crash if the audio gets over about 2,000kbit/second. I haven't tried my UHD player yet.
I decided to build a small HTPC because I thought it'd be a neat all-in-one solution at the time. I could listen/watch my music and film library with just a click of the mouse, surf the net and play my Steam games on the big TV. The plus side to plugging the extra hard drives into the PC rather than TV or BR player is that I could use drives much larger than 2TB, and using the mouse is much less 'faffy'.If you want to attach the hard drive directly to your player/TV, they will have to be no larger than 2TB - but you can still put a lot of stuff on that. You could buy a HD caddy which can house 2,4, 6 or 8 2TB drives, and your player should be able to recognise the HD's (Western Digital drives work just fine). I use the paid for version of MakeMKV to back up my library, it always works very well.
I find that most BR film files are around 15-25gb, but some long films (like Titanic) is over 40gb.
I can't talk about iffy compression as I have no files that are compressed smaller than the actual DVD/BR originals. However, I have found that since watching BR and 4K BR stuff, the difference in quality from those and DVD is very noticeable. It does upscale DVD's, but to be honest, once I got used to BR and 4K BR, DVD's are now like video cassettes in terms of quality. They are no worse than what we've been used to, it's just that the quality of the other formats makes the DVD versions look worse when compared to HD formats.
DVD's still look fine, especially when played through the 4K BR player, but some DVD's that were fairly poor quality to start with, picture-wise, do not look any better (which is understandable). Some DVD's still look great, and the ones that never looked too good, still look a little crap.
I have been replacing a lot of my favourite movies and box sets from DVD to BR, because they do look and sound so much better (BR disks are now very cheap, some being less than £3, and I have just picked up the complete Battlestar Galactica box set for under £20 in BR format in the Amazon sales)
Regarding The Da Vinci Code, I can confirm that even on a 4K HDR BR disk, the picture still looks grainy, it must be the way it was filmed.
Finally, if you invest in a brand new 4K HDR OLED TV (and possibly a 4K player), why the hell would you want to watch quality stuff that's compressed to an inch if their lives?
DVD's still look fine, especially when played through the 4K BR player, but some DVD's that were fairly poor quality to start with, picture-wise, do not look any better (which is understandable). Some DVD's still look great, and the ones that never looked too good, still look a little crap.
I have been replacing a lot of my favourite movies and box sets from DVD to BR, because they do look and sound so much better (BR disks are now very cheap, some being less than £3, and I have just picked up the complete Battlestar Galactica box set for under £20 in BR format in the Amazon sales)
Regarding The Da Vinci Code, I can confirm that even on a 4K HDR BR disk, the picture still looks grainy, it must be the way it was filmed.
Finally, if you invest in a brand new 4K HDR OLED TV (and possibly a 4K player), why the hell would you want to watch quality stuff that's compressed to an inch if their lives?
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