Question Best 43/42 inch TV currently available - ideally not 4k

[Nick.M.G.]

looking for a new TV and as I still watch some SD stuff I thought it best to try and avoid 4K.
I do some PS4 gaming so a low input lag would be nice.
Thanks

 

[Loopthrough]

Go Sony! Stunning picture quality for FHD - most people would believe it was 4K at that size! Maybe the WE7 or WE6.

 

[Bakey]

I've got a 43" LG HD TV and love it, picture is great and don't see the need to upgrade to 4k.

 

[Sonic67]

Why don't you want 4K? Many new TVs are and you are cutting back your choice. You don't have to watch 4K on it.

 

[Kinetic Frenzy]

Why don't you want 4K? Many new TVs are and you are cutting back your choice. You don't have to watch 4K on it.

Then why bother with it? I bought a 3D plasma TV 7 years ago and have watched 1 3D broadcast of tennis on it and played about an hours worth of 3D gaming in that time.

You can barely find enough channels broadcasting in decent bandwidth 1080p to fully justify an HD set let alone a 4K set

And all this ignores the elephant in the room: 4k is hardly going to look at it's most jaw dropping best on 42 inch set! Lipstick on a pig when all you want is a good bacon sarnie

 

[Sonic67]

Then why bother with it?

First up it's easier for TV manufacturers to produce 4K TV's than 4K and HD TVs. So it actually means lower costs going over to 4K manufacturing.

Second, if your competitors are producing 4K TVs and the market has moved onto them then so do you.

Third if the cost isn't great then you might as well produce 4K.

Fourth as TV screens get bigger and bigger then the resolution has to get better or the quality drops.

Fifth it's still another feature. Features sell.

Sixth there is more and more 4K output.

More here as to why you'd want it:

11 reasons why your next TV has to be an Ultra HD 4K TV | TechRadar

What will you do when 8K arrives?

Super Hi-Vision 8K TV standard approved by UN agency - BBC News

First 8K TV screen to be put on sale by Sharp in October - BBC News

I bought a 3D plasma TV 7 years ago and have watched 1 3D broadcast of tennis on it and played about an hours worth of 3D gaming in that time.

And? I have watched a lot of 3D TV, TVs aren't designed specifically for you personally and you admit you did use the feature anyway. Are you saying if you saw a decent 4K TV 42" TV you deliberately wouldn't buy it? You don't have to watch 4K. If it comes to it it's still smaller pixels and will upscale HD.

You can barely find enough channels broadcasting in decent bandwidth 1080p to fully justify an HD set let alone a 4K set

And you still just watch broadcast TV

I have a UHD disk player, connect my PC to my TV, have a PS4 Pro and watch 4K TV via Amazon Prime on my TV. I also have a 4K GoPro camera and you can watch 4K on youtube if you don't have Amazon or Netflix or Sky or cable or BT. I barely watch broadcast TV but if I do it's still upscaled.

4K is something that has constantly got bigger. You want to buy a TV now and in a few years realise it is obsolete? Or buy one that is as future proof as possible?

And all this ignores the elephant in the room: 4k is hardly going to look at it's most jaw dropping best on 42 inch set! Lipstick on a pig when all you want is a good bacon sarnie

And you ignore that eventually all 42" TVs will be 4K anyway. It makes no odds whether it looks better or not. See reasons above. My TV has speakers on it. I never use them. It would take a lot of effort going round trying to find a TV without speakers so I ignore the fact they are there and just buy the best TV I can. Why don't you buy the best 42" TV you can and if it has more pixels making up your 1080p TV broadcast just not worry about it?

 

[PlasmaVirgin]

I'd say it depends if the op is open to upgrading in 2 or 3 years if he feels that 4K is then worth it. If he is only using SD and HD sources for the next couple of years (maybe until the PS5 is released?) then it might be better to get something like a 42" 1080p set from a quality manufacturer than spending the money on a brand new bottom of the range 4K set from one of the cheaper companies.

 

[Sonic67]

The PS4 outputs HDR for gaming. All of the PS4's do. The only way to watch HDR is on a 4k HDR set.

£400 and a decent manufacturer.

LG 43UH603V 43 inch 4K Ultra HD HDR Smart LED TV Freeview Play

So even if you don't want 4K you could make use of the HDR capability with the PS4.

 

[PlasmaVirgin]

Honest question - how would the picture on that LED compare with something like the last & best of the Panasonic plasmas for 1080p movies, sport, etc.

 

[Sonic67]

An old TV is an old TV (and that came from a recent AV Forums podcast talking about old plasmas). They were fine in their day. Technology has constantly moved on. Where there has been faults, money has been thrown at it. See link above. It's not just a higher resolution. It's slimmer screens, smaller bezels, more inputs, HDR, higher resolution, lower energy use, even the smart TV stuff is better. If you are still watching broadcast TV you are also still in the last century. Even phones can shoot 4K now. I still have a 42" HD TV. It's in the bedroom and is ok.

 

[Kinetic Frenzy]

First up it's easier for TV manufacturers to produce 4K TV's than 4K and HD TVs. So it actually means lower costs going over to 4K manufacturing.

Second, if your competitors are producing 4K TVs and the market has moved onto them then so do you.

Third if the cost isn't great then you might as well produce 4K.

Fourth as TV screens get bigger and bigger then the resolution has to get better or the quality drops.

Fifth it's still another feature. Features sell.

Sixth there is more and more 4K output.

More here as to why you'd want it:

11 reasons why your next TV has to be an Ultra HD 4K TV | TechRadar

What will you do when 8K arrives?

Super Hi-Vision 8K TV standard approved by UN agency - BBC News

First 8K TV screen to be put on sale by Sharp in October - BBC News


And? I have watched a lot of 3D TV, TVs aren't designed specifically for you personally and you admit you did use the feature anyway. Are you saying if you saw a decent 4K TV 42" TV you deliberately wouldn't buy it? You don't have to watch 4K. If it comes to it it's still smaller pixels and will upscale HD.
And you still just watch broadcast TV

I have a UHD disk player, connect my PC to my TV, have a PS4 Pro and watch 4K TV via Amazon Prime on my TV. I also have a 4K GoPro camera and you can watch 4K on youtube if you don't have Amazon or Netflix or Sky or cable or BT. I barely watch broadcast TV but if I do it's still upscaled.

4K is something that has constantly got bigger. You want to buy a TV now and in a few years realise it is obsolete? Or buy one that is as future proof as possible?

And you ignore that eventually all 42" TVs will be 4K anyway. It makes no odds whether it looks better or not. See reasons above. My TV has speakers on it. I never use them. It would take a lot of effort going round trying to find a TV without speakers so I ignore the fact they are there and just buy the best TV I can. Why don't you buy the best 42" TV you can and if it has more pixels making up your 1080p TV broadcast just not worry about it?

You mistake me for someone who hasn't already considered all of these things (ok so i admit, some i've almost immediately dismissed as marketing bs ) and yet i still come to my original conclusion

 

[Sonic67]

You mistake me for someone who hasn't already considered all of these things (ok so i admit, some i've almost immediately dismissed as marketing bs ) and yet i still come to my original conclusion

Fine. If you can show me a review from anywhere, anywhere, saying 4K TVs are a bad idea, you are better off with an old plasma, it's all marketing bs or anything vaguely similar, I'll be happy to concede the point. Otherwise it's all just your own opinion.

 

[Dodgexander]

Play nicely please

 

[Dodgexander]

I would suggest you demo some SD content on UHD tv's to see what you make of it, depending on the content, you're eyesight, own opinion etc and your viewing distance it may not appear to be worse to you than a FHD tv.

I personally think it looks a lot worse and so do others but not all.

 

[Sonic67]

I'm not sure how this works. If I have a piece of A4 paper and colour it red it's a red piece of paper. Let's imagine it's a single pixel. If I cut this paper into four it's four smaller pieces of red paper. The "pixel count" is higher but otherwise it's exactly the same. Same area, same colour. You can keep cutting the paper up but there's no reason why the smaller pieces of paper can't show the same as the larger one.

What then might happen is the extra pixels might be used to make the image better. All things being equal you should get the same or a better image with higher resolutions not a worse one.

What I think happens is that when someone buys a new television they also buy a larger one.

The problem is expanding an SD image over more and more real estate and that is why the image looks worse. People then think new televisions are bad at showing SD or a 4K TV is bad at showing HD. It isn't. It's that you bought a bigger TV and you spread the resolution over a larger screen.

 

[Dodgexander]

I'm not sure how this works. If I have a piece of A4 paper and colour it red it's a red piece of paper. Let's imagine it's a single pixel. If I cut this paper into four it's four smaller pieces of red paper. The "pixel count" is higher but otherwise it's exactly the same. Same area, same colour. You can keep cutting the paper up but there's no reason why the smaller pieces of paper can't show the same as the larger one.

What then might happen is the extra pixels might be used to make the image better. All things being equal you should get the same or a better image with higher resolutions not a worse one.

What I think happens is that when someone buys a new television they also buy a larger one.

The problem is expanding an SD image over more and more real estate and that is why the image looks worse. People then think new televisions are bad at showing SD or a 4K TV is bad at showing HD. It isn't. It's that you bought a bigger TV and you spread the resolution over a larger screen.

For starters, it requires more processing power to stretch the image, something TV chipsets don't do very well as they aren't very powerful due to cost savings/power/heat restrictions. Secondly the more you stretch an image the more processing that's required at all, processing a smaller image to a larger resolution requires more and by having more you also introduce more artefacts. Read any UHD TV review, its unfortunately one floor of UHD TVs.

So using your analogy its the joints (or the smoothing out) of those joints that makes it look worse, the more joints you have the more work is required to blend them together. On top of that those joints are more populous, which means you can't invest as much quality processing into making each less noticeable like you can if there were 4x less joints (like on a FHD TV). This results in a much softer image and a loss of detail. Imagine a white tiled bathroom with white grout and then split those tiles into 4. Those 4 smaller tiles aren't going to be as neat as 1 larger one.

 

[Sonic67]

I've found a long article on it here.

Can 4K TVs make 'regular' HD content look better?

Interesting.

 

[Dodgexander]

HD stuff looks fine on UHD, its because its easy to upscale and doesn't cost as many resources. 1920x1080 can just be quadrupled. 1270x720 doesn't work quite as well but its still good enough of a source to look decent. Its only SD that looks noticeably worse...of course bad UHD TVs will make 720p or even 1080p look worse than on a native FHD TV but usually that isn't the case, upscaling is now pretty good even on budget models.