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| Overall is it pretty hard to get a bad TV these days... | |
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Actually there's a huge lot of poor TVs, as it has always been. If you know a thing or two about picture, you will have to avoid the majority of TVs on offer.
1. Poor backlight uniformity
You watch a scene with lots of uniform color (blue skies, white snow, green grass) and see abnormal difference in brightness which is not moving with the picture. This is the number one problem with most LCD displays. Very few are uniform, even the more expensive ones. Plasma and OLED displays on the contrary are.
2. Poor viewing angles
Well, this one is not so obvious. There are several technologies of LCD displays, but not one offers the perfect combination of features. TN - below average color, poor angles, average contrast, fast response in action scenes. PVA - better color, better angles, very good contrast, good response. IPS - great color, great angles, poor contrast, poor response. Not one technology combines all the best bits, so manufacturers come up with features such as segment dimming or black line scanning to overcome the issues. Again, no problem with Plasma and OLED in this regard, they simply have perfect viewing angles.
3. Insufficient motion resolution
As mentioned in point 2., some LCD types have a slower response time due to liquid crystal reaction time. A result of this is very often seen in cheap LCDs, blurred movement and a general plasticky feel. A 4k display with poor motion response can hardly match a definition of 720p display with fast moving action, even though it can display a spectacular picture in demonstration footage displayed in the shop. More expensive LCD displays are generally free of this problem. All OLED and Plasmas are, as reaction time of pixel is nearly immediate.
4. Bad contrast in dark scenes.
LCD as a technology relies on backlight. Some of it is always coming through which means few LCD offer truly black blacks. More expensive TVs have backlight segments which can go dim in darker scenes, but most ones under 1000 CHF don't. This, combined with poor backlight uniformity means you can forget watching Star Wars. Try OLED or Plasma for a change. Only the pixels which are active are lit up. The rest stays dark.
Of course there are good LCDs, but these are in the high end territory which puts them in the same price range as OLED.
5. Colors
Well. All TVs look vivid in the shop. It's only when you buy that spectacular TV and bring it home that you notice it can actually do 256 extremely vivid colors and not many shades in between. Some technology types are simply unable to reproduce a full range of colors. An amateur has little chance to verify this in a shop or a showroom. Best to rely on some professional reviews.
There are advantages and disadvantages to all technologies, but the reason some TVs cost upwards of 3000 CHF is not snobbery. They simply are much better.