Football season is well under way, baseball is in full swing, and you are probably wondering: “How about getting a bigger TV?” In terms of screen, the bigger, the better! Large displays have never looked this good and have never been this affordable. But with all the brands, models and technologies available it can be a challenge to figure out what is right for you and your home.
As your technology expert, BlueVision can help you with that. The main factors to consider are the environment (room size, lighting, furniture configuration, usage) and, of course, your budget. BlueVision is always available for an on site consultation, which is the best approach, but here are some clues.
What size?
This is typically determined by the location of your seating area. The rule of thumb is that your ideal seating distance is 1.5 times the width of your screen. However, with the current high-resolution screens (4K, 8k) you can easily sit closer and be fine. TVs come in specific sizes measured by the diagonal, but for the best experience in a media room or home theater we typically consider a size of 75” or bigger.
What technology?
LED (including Samsung QLED)
Most TVs are an LCD panel backlit by an LED light source. LCD is what creates the picture and LED is just the white light source in the back. The basic sets will be edge lit, which creates the same light intensity across the whole screen. The problem with that is that if you want your screen to be bright, the blacks turn gray and are not black anymore, which results in loss of detail, especially when watching movies.
TV manufacturers figured out that they could use an array of LEDs behind the LCD panel and adjust the brightness of each LED individually based on dark or bright areas of the picture. The results are phenomenal and improve the picture quality tremendously.
OLED
OLED is a display technology that produces its own light, no need for an LED backlight. The main advantage of OLED is an amazing contrast. When an OLED pixel is turned off it’s totally black, and also offers much better color rendering than LCD/LED panels. Thanks to the latest processors fast motion is not an issue anymore. ands down, in our opinion, these are the best TV sets you can get.
Projectors
If you are interested in a screen larger than 85”, it’s worth taking a look at projectors. Projector screens don’t typically do well with ambient light, so a dedicated room with no or low light is their best environment.
In terms of technology, projectors use DLP, DILA or LCOS panels. DLP is brighter and DILA and LCOS offer better contrast. LCD is also available but is typically used for office presentations, working fine with bright PCs or TV broadcasts, but performing poorly for movies.
In summary, if your goal is to primarily watch sports, which is typically a bright and colorful picture, an inexpensive 75” or 85” edge-lit LED TV will make you happy. If you intent to watch movies as well as sports, we strongly recommend an LED array model, or even better an OLED model, which will perform much better in dark scenes and will give a much better color rendering. For the really big screen, consider a projector, standard or short-throw.
What about resolution?
That’s an easy question. 4K is the standard. That’s a resolution of about 4000 horizontal pixels.
In terms of sports broadcast, the PGA is the only league that broadcasts in 4K today. NFL, MLB, NBA, NASCAR and MLS are still broadcasting in 1080p. But things are changing fast. For movies, Netflix, Amazon and Apple all have 4K movies available although they are compressed and sometimes just upconverted from a 1080p release.
One quick word about High Dynamic Range (HDR) which is supported by most TVs. It’s a technology that improves the picture quality by manipulating the image luminance or contrast. It has nothing to do with resolution. It is mostly used in movies and requires the movie to be captured with HDR cameras, produced and encoded as HDR. It’s definitely a good feature to have.
Call BlueVision today to schedule a visit of our showroom to experience LED, OLED, front projection and short-throw projection. Our experts will walk you through your new big screen selection and help you complement it with great audio options from sound bars to full surround sound systems. Our special packages including a large size TV and a surround sound system starting under $10,000 fully installed. Now is the time to plan a surprise for your loved ones this winter!