Michael Corvin

I'm looking to upgrade my 46" Aquos (that I've loved, so I wouldn't mind sticking with them) in the next few months but never see any buzz about their line anymore. I never see any marketing or commercials. I check out the wall of tvs in various stores and am lucky to find a single Sharp model in the mix. Are they on a downslide? What gives?

Anyone around here have any of the newer models? One of their 4k tvs? Thoughts? Advice? Try a different brand?

Josh-da-man

From what I've heard, Sharp stopped making televisions a couple of years ago.

The tvs in stores with the Sharp brand name are actually made by Hisense under some kind of licensing deal.

I would avoid them, as I reember reading that Sharp was suing Hisense because he sets they were making under the Sharp brand name were "shoddy."

There actually aren't a lot of companies still making televisions. Off the top of my head, the only companies still making them are Sony (maybe not much longer?), Samsung, Vizio, and LG. Pioneer and Panasonic got out years ago.

Michael Corvin

Interesting. So everything is made by 4 and just rebranded for all the other companies?

kd5

Good to know. I still have my Pioneer rear projection HDTV, been happy with it, but it's getting older and I sometimes worry it won't be around much longer. If it breaks down I hope it's a simple repair but the repairman will have to come here because the TV weighs 250 lbs. If/when it dies completely it will need to be replaced ASAP.

I've been thinking LG makes some pretty good stuff, I wonder if an LG would be an adequate replacement for your Aquos?

My brother bought a Visio several years ago, as far as picture options go I thought it sucked compared to my Pioneer. The widescreen capabilities were seriously lacking. Maybe it was just the model he bought, I don't know...

Are LG TVs any good?

mrhan

Sony and Panasonic have started selling their versions of OLEDs using LG panels. Still very expensive but I saw the 65" LG OLED at Costco for 3k.

kd5

Sucks that larger LED TVs were starting to come way down in price ($500 to $700 @ Walmart) just for some new technology to come along to jack the price back up to $3000.

GreenMonkey

http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-tv/

Wirecutter has it spot on.

Best sets right now:

The TCL P series : local area dimming and built in Roku. Normally you don't get FALD in a sub $1k TV. Apparently fantastic bang / buck at $650 for a 55".

The Sony x900e - less bang/buck but really good TV, apparently.

LG OLED: Fuck bang/buck, I want high quality.

I've got the 65" 2016 OLED I picked up for $2799, because I had a big bonus and money to waste. It's very nice (black is SOOO black and it shines with scenes with dark & light stuff), although I wish it had better video processing. I struggle with judder on it, but when I look, my LCD / plasma have the same problems, they're just covered up a bit more by more motion blur.

The Samsung KS8000 is well liked also (especially for gamers) but it's discontinued and hard to find.

To me you're best off with either the TCL or an OLED, going in the middle for like twice the price of the TCL seems like the worst of both worlds to me.

DthRdrX

The Sony OLEDs have better processing than the LG models, as expected, but other than that PQ is pretty close between them. Too bad we don't get the Panny sets here!

The x900e is a great TV for gamers.

Michael Corvin

Sounds like OLED us definitely the way to go. Kinda pricey at the moment. I'm looking at Christmas, so maybe they'll drop a bit in that time.

Sony had a rough few years from what I recall, are they on the upswing now with their sets?

mrhan

Yup...best to wait it out. I'm sure the prices will keep coming down.

Before I even bought my OLED and checked them I was blown away by it's P/Q. Especially when it was sitting next to other sets. Even uncalibrated I thought it was that good but the price just turned me off. I knew it would eventually hit my price point and when it did I didn't even give it a second thought and bought one.

DthRdrX

I'd say so. Their biggest problem the last few years has been a lack of competitive pricing on a lot of model ranges.

Michael Corvin

Well the 65" LG OLED has hit $2150 twice in the last ten days or so from different retailers. Wasn't quite ready to pull the trigger yet though. I'm hoping to see it a tad lower between Black Friday and Cyber Monday... then it will be mine!

E Unit

Frys has had the 2016 65” OLED’s on sale for $1999. I’m really surprised there’s still some available, especially at that price. This is the third or fourth time they’ve had the 2016’s on sale at a very good price.

Michael Corvin

Just grabbed the LG 65" B7A from a Newegg Flash sale. $2,150.

Marketplace seller has 0 feedback though. We'll see how that goes. Apparently different sellers have had it at that price according to SD.

Dan

^ That's back in stock again. Super tempting... the 0 feedback is strange, though.

Dan

How'd that go? How's your new B7A, or did it get cancelled?

Michael Corvin

I thought I reported back.

The tv came through. Apparently the seller used AM Trucking. I'm not too familiar, but after calling them it seemed like they hold items in their warehouse until they have multiple deliveries in an area. Kinda lame, but The delivery guys were super cool.

The TV is amazing. A buddy just got a regular LG 4k set and while it looks great, I can honestly say, there is a noticeable difference between that and my OLED. Both look fantastic, but everything just "pops" better on the OLED. Resogun (PS4) looks especially gorgeous. We watched the Fifth Element UHD the first week we had it. Incredible. Regular BDs look even better than before with the 4k upscaling.

The smart tv functions are great. We've been enjoying 4k content via YouTube.

I'm going to be finishing my basement this year (hopefully) and I'm wondering if I'm going to be able to go back to my 1080p projector. First world problems. I do have 5.1 for that setup though which is a plus over the soundbar with the 4k tv.

The remote is fantastic. Super ergonomic and it is designed like a Wii Remote with pointer functions. It seems to work far better than the wii remotes ever did. It's great for typing. It has a dedicated Netflix and Amazon buttons which is cool. It also has voice commands which seems cool, but I don't talk to my electronics. The only downside is there is a distinct lack of DVR buttons on the remote. I guess I'm keeping my TiVo remote handy.

The TV is highly recommended.

Dan

Nice! Thanks for taking the time to respond!
I have my eye on the 65" now. I figure with 8-series coming out soon-ish(?) then the B7's and C7's should start to really drop in price even more. Hoping for sub-2k, but I'd probably pay $2100 for the C7 if I saw it. I just couldn't bite the bullet before Christmas on that B7, so I hope and expect we'll see good prices again in a bit.

I know exactly what you mean about how the wii remote "pointer" works. My brother's wife's father has an LG (not OLED) and I got to play with the remote a bit and yeah, they really have that kind of motion control down. It's smooth as silk. Good to know the smart TV apps are good too.

Michael Corvin

Is the C7 the one with Atmos? I considered it, but it seems to run a few hundred extra and didn't seem worth the extra scratch for my situation.

Dan

Late reply, but yes. It's "fake" Atmos since it's still just stereo speakers, so it doesn't compare to what you'd get with a true Atmos multi-speaker setup.

I actually ended up getting the E7; Fry's had it for $2299 (they were out of B7 and C7 65" sets anyway), and threw in free delivery for today. The E7 has the non-removable soundbar at the bottom, which... ehh... in my house, I can't use a real HT setup anyway, so the soundbar is better than nothing. I've been using headphones more and more lately, anyway.
I sold a bunch of crap on eBay over the last few months, so that has offset the cost of the TV quite a bit.

Can't wait for it to arrive!

Michael Corvin

Sweet. I'm sure you'll love it. The anticipation is a killer.

So I ended up getting a new soundbar/sub setup. I couldn't get my old Sony to work with the LG remote, and the old Harmony can't quite compete with the LG. A bunch of remotes is a PITA so that's my justification.

Got the LG SJ9. It's the Atmos $1000 model. I had noticed it had been on sale for $650 so I set some price watches for it to hit that low again. Low and behold, BuyDig via ebay had it for $400 for a few hours. Sold!

The thing sounds amazing. The soundbar is almost as wide as the 65" TV. It's a beast. The wireless sub is pretty cool.

Now I just need to get the old tv/speaker down and all the new gear on the wall. I think that will be my goal this weekend.

Dan

Got it all set up last night. Popped on Forza Horizon 3 for a few minutes then later put on Horizon Zero Dawn for a few minutes as well (My wife was watching me, so she didn't want me playing games ALL night )

Both games are HDR-capable, but you need to enable Deep Color on each input on the TV first (for those that haven't done this yet, it's not in the picture settings, but General instead). That said...



Beautiful stuff. In Zero Dawn, as night time starts to come, it's just amazing. I also watched a few random things on Netflix and Vudu; even non-HDR content looks great.

Tweaking settings is a bit of a hassle, but it always was with other TVs too. I threw in my Watchmen UHD disc and it looked way too dark. Didn't try any other discs, though. The motion remote is really nice, as already discussed.

Yeah... all in all... amazing TV set. I haven't seen deep blacks like this since my Toshiba TUBE HDTV. I vividly remember watching Open Water on that, and there's a scene at night where it's pitch black except when the lightning hits. I'm going to have to pop that in and see how that looks here, because it always looked like crap on my LCD TVs. I'm pretty sure it's just a DVD, though.

Michael Corvin

Awesome. Sounds like you solved an issue I had with HDR. It would only show on the PS4. Sounds like I need to poke around the settings more.

Also, if you have Resogun, give that a whirl. The black background with all the colorful explosions and whatnot is amazing.

Michael Corvin

I've been at a couple different friends' houses and watched things on their standard 4k sets and they aren't nearly as impressive once you've gone OLED.

So anyone poking their head in, spend the extra scratch on OLED. There's no going back once you do.

Dan

I like that this thread is supposedly about Sharp TVs, but really, it's just LG OLED.

Anyway... I totally agree. It sounds like the 2018 models aren't a massive step up from the 2017 models (incremental, which is totally fine), so if anyone sees either the B7, C7, etc. or the B8, C8, etc. for a good price, go for any of them.