What to look for when buying a TV?

Choosing a TV for your living room is quite a difficult decision – after all, you will spend quite a large sum of money on it. It is worth taking care not only of a nice design, but most of all, the right dimensions of the device and other parameters that have a large share in whether the purchase will turn out well

A TV set is still needed

Over the years televisions have undergone a real transformation. Nowadays they hardly resemble the devices popular at the turn of the 90’s. A TV set is now a real center of home entertainment. Not only can we watch one of many TV channels on it, but also turn on Netflix, HBO GO or another streaming service and enjoy the vast amount of available content. What should we pay attention to when buying a TV? Here are some important points.

Dimensions

Of course, the size of a modern TV is very important. It is also a parameter in the selection of which we very often make mistakes. There is a common misconception that the bigger the diagonal of the screen is, the better. We should choose a TV set taking into consideration two values:

• size of the room in which it will be placed,
• distance between the person sitting and the screen (too close distance to a large TV will make us tired).

Example distances are:

• 50-inch TV – 210 cm
• 75-inch TV – 300 cm

With Ultra HD TVs these distances are even greater.

What type of display to choose: OLED, QLED or LCD?

Of course, each of the proposed types of display has its advantages. So it is worth emphasizing that:

• OLED is very good black parameters, great contrast quality and a guarantee that, when looking at an angle, we will not have to worry about color degradation; the image is extremely realistic,
• QLED is in practice an LCD screen, but with better parameters of brightness and colors,
• LCD is an older and cheaper technology than OLED; contrast is lower, color degradation may occur when looking at an angle; screen size is not limited

What resolution is worth choosing?

In this parameter we can choose monitors with the following resolutions:

• HD Ready – 1355×768 pixels,
• Full HD – 1920×1080 pixels,
• Ultra HD – 3840×2160 pixels

Higher resolution gives a greater richness of detail. However, in practice, there is no TV signal that is broadcast in Ultra HD. Hence, we won’t necessarily have the opportunity to take full advantage of the TV’s capabilities after purchasing such a high resolution TV. In addition, imperfections will also be more visible. However, if our goal is to watch movies on Blu-ray discs, then the choice of Ultra HD will be fully justified

Smart TV technology is worth using

An indisputable advantage of practically all new TVs offered on the market is that they were created using Smart TV technology. Thanks to this technology they are no longer simple devices for receiving a TV signal but become true centers of home entertainment for the whole family. Thanks to Smart TV we will be able not only to use VOD services, but also Facebook, use the Internet browser or play simple games. It will also be possible to control the device with a smartphone, which is a very convenient option. Much depends on the software that we have in such a device. Examples of operating systems provided for TVs are:

• Android TV,
• Smart Hub,
• webOS TV,
• My Home Screen

What connectors and ports does the TV have?

From a technical point of view, the communication of the TV with the environment is also important. So you need to check what connectors and ports our device has. The number of them is also important. So we have at our disposal connectors:

• HDMI,
• USB,
• Wi-Fi and LAN,
• CI (Common Interface),
• antenna input,
• S/PDIF