TV and Soundbar questions, advice - tldr - the usual!

[NickCW]

Morning all,

So after many moons I have decided to upgrade my 46" Samsung from 2012 (still going strong I might add despite multi attempts from the kids to destroy it), so this is what I am after:

- Wall mount it away from the kiddies above the fireplace, I can fit upto 75" but a 65" would fit nicer and not overpower the room as much. Will be sitting approx 3.5m away directly opposite, slightly more at other ends of the room.

- Soundbar and possibly rear speakers/sub.


Main questions I am stuck on..

1. Hiding wires - I will be installing a socket behind the tv and would like to use wireless HDMI as it gives me far more options with regards to where to keep a few games consoles (PS4/Switch), and the Sky Q box. Any experience of good wireless HDMI options would be appreciated.

2. Soundbar wires - Most I see have no visible wires, presume they are connected wirelessly but what about power, as most look to small to hide a power socket behind?

3. Last but certainly not least - what TV? It is an absolute minefield!
My preference has always been Samsung as I like the brightness of the pictures, so sticking with that for simplicity I have spent many hours searching but the vast array of options is mind boggling, as is the lack of comparisons. For instance is a 2022 model of a higher designation better than a lower specced 2023 model, as the lastest models seem to carry a huge premium. Samsung also have a wide variety of cashback and tradein offers, so any advice on this would be great. Is an older 8k better than a newer 4k, Neo QLed seems to be there best but yet Oled is better?!
Budget is about £1500 for the TV, I also need a second 43" TV so any combo deals or recommendations (as would like a matching pair-ish on looks for another room) would be lovely.

4. Soundbar recommendations, heard Sonos are good, also Samsung Q seems logical - again loads of deals with Costco offering 50% off some of them when bought with a TV etc, so any advice appreciated.

Also worth noting whilst I appreciate a good TV I am not looking to have the worlds best setup, I want to get the best deal for my money as you don't often replace these things (if I can spend less even better) but guessing around 2-2.5k for the two TVs and sound setup is logical with all the offers in place. More important is the wireless tech so it can look neat, and I can have the consoles/sky box the other side of the room for reasons I cannot fathom to explain being sleep deprived with teething children.

Sorry for the super long post, if you got this far have a virtual ice cream on me.

[dickymint]

If your're happy with Samsung (I certainly am) then I'd say their Q series with One Connect box (just a single thin cable from box to TV that carries all your sources signals and power) will tick your boxes.

Couple this with a Q series soundbar, wireless sub and rears for amazing Dollby Atmos sound - the beauty of matching with a Samsung soundbar is that you can set it to play the TV's speakers at the same time (adaptive sound setting I think it's called). My only slight regret is not paying the extra for their largest model.

4K or 8K? well there's not a lot of 8K to see at the moment, and most on here will tell you not for the foreseeable future, and some will say it will go the same way as 3D TV and die (which I find laughable ) My set happens to have 8K although it wasn't a deal breaker.

I've no knowledge of wireless HDMI and I immediately thought about it's capability to carry UHD and Atmos but a quick Google shows it's fine.

We bought from John Lewis as (according to the finance department AKA Wifey ) there was little difference in price to Richer Sounds but the warranty was better. Also Samsungs redemption cashback offer was excellent on all that we bought. Here's their current offer.......

https://www.samsung.com/uk/offer/2023-samsung-tv-s...

Finally the old Oled Qled Neo Qled brightness malarkey ....... who cares if you haven't got 20/20 vision

[Griffith4ever]

dickymint said:

Finally the old Oled Qled Neo Qled brightness malarkey ....... who cares if you haven't got 20/20 vision

That was all quite interesting until you undid it all with the above rediculous sentence.

Black is black, and grey is grey, no matter how blurry your eye sight is..... OLED is night and day better then backlit LED, though I don't think the OP will care as he favours "bright" Samsung TVs.....

[dickymint]

Griffith4ever said:

dickymint said:

Finally the old Oled Qled Neo Qled brightness malarkey ....... who cares if you haven't got 20/20 vision

That was all quite interesting until you undid it all with the above rediculous sentence.

Black is black, and grey is grey, no matter how blurry your eye sight is..... OLED is night and day better then backlit LED, though I don't think the OP will care as he favours "bright" Samsung TVs.....

I rest my case

[Lucid_AV]

NickCW said:

Morning all,

So after many moons I have decided to upgrade my 46" Samsung from 2012 (still going strong I might add despite multi attempts from the kids to destroy it), so this is what I am after:

- Wall mount it away from the kiddies above the fireplace, I can fit upto 75" but a 65" would fit nicer and not overpower the room as much. Will be sitting approx 3.5m away directly opposite, slightly more at other ends of the room.

- Soundbar and possibly rear speakers/sub.


Main questions I am stuck on..

1. Hiding wires - I will be installing a socket behind the tv and would like to use wireless HDMI as it gives me far more options with regards to where to keep a few games consoles (PS4/Switch), and the Sky Q box. Any experience of good wireless HDMI options would be appreciated.

2. Soundbar wires - Most I see have no visible wires, presume they are connected wirelessly but what about power, as most look to small to hide a power socket behind?

3. Last but certainly not least - what TV? It is an absolute minefield!
My preference has always been Samsung as I like the brightness of the pictures, so sticking with that for simplicity I have spent many hours searching but the vast array of options is mind boggling, as is the lack of comparisons. For instance is a 2022 model of a higher designation better than a lower specced 2023 model, as the lastest models seem to carry a huge premium. Samsung also have a wide variety of cashback and tradein offers, so any advice on this would be great. Is an older 8k better than a newer 4k, Neo QLed seems to be there best but yet Oled is better?!
Budget is about £1500 for the TV, I also need a second 43" TV so any combo deals or recommendations (as would like a matching pair-ish on looks for another room) would be lovely.

4. Soundbar recommendations, heard Sonos are good, also Samsung Q seems logical - again loads of deals with Costco offering 50% off some of them when bought with a TV etc, so any advice appreciated.

Also worth noting whilst I appreciate a good TV I am not looking to have the worlds best setup, I want to get the best deal for my money as you don't often replace these things (if I can spend less even better) but guessing around 2-2.5k for the two TVs and sound setup is logical with all the offers in place. More important is the wireless tech so it can look neat, and I can have the consoles/sky box the other side of the room for reasons I cannot fathom to explain being sleep deprived with teething children.

Sorry for the super long post, if you got this far have a virtual ice cream on me.

Wireless HDMI exists, but for 4K, and on top of that low lag, and depending on the TV and console maybe VRR at up to 120Hz, that's just too much for wireless to handle. Stick with wired and plan the installation so that the cabling is concealed once the TV and bar are in place. This isn't difficult to achieve, but I'd recommend ditching the idea of wall sockets and go instead for a brush plate which allows you then to have a single cable with the excess hidden in the wall. That's handy. You'd be able to make the signal connections whilst holding the sound bar in your hands, then feed the excess cable back into the wall as the bar is offered up to the bracket. You also avoid the problems of trying to fit a straight plug connection into the back of a wall socket.

The other catch with wireless is that whilst you lose a hardwire connection between the console and the TV say, you still have the HDMI cables needed to connect the TV and source(s) to the wireless TX and RX boxes. That sort of defeats the object, don't you think?

Sound bars: You've already decided you want surround. The next choice is whether you want the bar to do Dolby Atmos as well. Have a look at the Samsung Q930 sound bar. The main front L,R and C speakers are joined by a pair of Atmos speakers which fire up at the ceiling creating a virtual speaker effect. The rear speakers are wireless (but require power; wall wart type mains transformer for each) and they also include upfiring speakers. The Q930 is on a closeout deal right now, down from £899 to around £650, but stocks are selling fast. Oh yes, it includes a wireless sub too with a decent 8" driver.

Sonos is nice if you want to get into their wireless music eco-system. It gets very pricey though when you take the basic sound bar (ARC @ £899), then add the sub (£799) and a pair of standard wireless speakers for rear (non-Atmos) duties; 2 x Sonos One SL at £320 or 2 x Sonos Era 100 at £500. If you want Atmos effects from the rear then you'll need the Era 300 at £900 a pair. In total that's £2,600 for 5.1.4 Atmos. It'll sound good, but will it sound £2,000 better than the Q930? The simple answer is no. It's better, but not by that much.

There are useful comparisons between the leading contenders at varying price points on the rtings.com web site. You will need to drill down to get more than a couple of comparison products, but it's worth a few minutes to learn how to navigate through.

It's up to you which TV brand you prefer. What I would suggest though is having a shortlist of TV features against which you can measure any possible choices. Before carrying on though, let me just say that this isn't some navel gazing exercise where people obsess over tiny details. This is basic stuff. If this was car choices, then it's front wheel drive vs rear wheel drive vs all wheel drive. It's the choice between four cylinder or an in-line 6. It's standard brake discs versus larger vented discs and some Brembos. You don't have to be The Stig to appreciate those differences. Think in the same terms then about what I'm going to suggest on the TV.

Backlighting: crap is direct lit with no dimming or with 'fake' micro-dimming. Better is edge lit with dimming, but with the light coming from just the bottom edge of the screen it's impossible to do more than some very basic backlight control. The best here is Full Array Local Dimming (FALD for short). This is where the LEDs are behind the image and split into a grid where they can be varied in brightness independently of their neighbours. The ultimate expression of FALD is in mini-LED (see Samsung QNED TVs. Other brands have this too.) Here there are lots of LEDs which results in the ability to dim very small sections of the screen independently. However, mini-LED is new tech and there are standard FALD sets that work better. You have to read the reviews. rtings.com is good for this, but there's also AVForums.

Panel: Basic is an LED TV panel with a 50/60Hz native refresh rate. Better is a screen with a 100/120Hz native refresh rate. This is the number of images per second that the screen can 'draw'. Don't confuse this with the motion processing rate. This one is generally double the screen's native refresh rate. Be careful when reading specs not to confuse motion processing with the screen's native refresh rate.

Screen colour depth: crap is 8 bit colour. Better is 8+2 FRC. This is a dithering technique with an 8-bit screen to simulate colours that the screen doesn't normally produce. The vast majority of TVs with HDR use 8 + 2 FRC. The best is a full 10-bit screen, (you get this with nearly all OLEDs) but FRC works well.

Colour depth is also related in part to tech such as Quantum Dot. This is a way of improving the colour purity.

The Sony BRAVIA XR65X90LU @ £1799 is probably more than you budgeted, but this is a 10-bit, 100/120Hz native panels with FALD. The colour vibrancy is every bit as good as the Samsungs. The closest Samsung in price is the QE65Q80C @ £1,699. It's cheaper, but the image dimming leaves a lot to be desired for a FALD screen and results on washed out blacks and a lack of vibrancy compared to the Sony. It is a 100/120Hz panel, but only 8+2 FRC colour. You'd need to step up to the Samsung QE65QN90C (£2,699) to match the features of the Sony.

TV prices. New models (2023) always carry a significant premium compared to the outgoing 2022 models. It's not always guaranteed either that the new TVs are as good or better than the older models they're slated to replace. Over the course of a year the TV prices fall until a point is reached where the new models are launch. The cycle then repeats.

Edited by Lucid_AV on Monday 26th June 04:40

[TEKNOPUG]

For your budget, I'd go for a top of the range 55" OLED over a mid-range 65".