Thank you both
@Uncle Fester and
@StewartR, I know exactly what u mean, I had to adjust my current set to get it how I wanted it, the standard setting wasn’t too my liking.
I’m just going to have a quick look at them aesthetically, see which I like and then come home and do a bit of research. Have either of you taken a usb stick in with a specific movie to test one out?
With regard to test material; I have never used a USB stick as the ability of different televisions to read either the stick or specific file format can be quite variable.
I have taken specific DVD's and more recently Blu-ray's and UHD's of films that
I'm familiar with. I generally test for how well the television copes with dark scenes (the original
Alien film or
Harry Potter & The Ghostly Hallows are particularly good) how well a television resolves fine detail and colour accuracy. Finally I look to see what motion handling is like. Although I don't watch sports normally; both football and golf are good for this. If you're not sure what to look for just try to see if things look
right and whether
you find the image pleasing.
If you go into a retailer at a very busy time and they don't have time to hook up a disc player then arrange to go back when it's less busy. If they won't do it at quite times then they won't get my business. I have found
Richer Sounds and
Sevenoaks Sound & Vision to be very helpful in this respect.
If you're familiar with set up and calibration discs I can recommend the
Spears and Munsil one. Don't worry if you're not as we're going into nit picking territory now.
Personally I don't suggest the use of 'demo' discs or download's as they are usually shot to look good and impress. Other than seeing
how good the set may look I don't think that they are that useful. I want to see the televisions work with normal broadcasts and commercially released material and look at difficult scenes and form my opinion on how well they perform. Other people may think differently.
The most useful thing about having test material is that you can use a common basis for comparisons.
If you have no test material to hand don't be swayed by the manufacturers demo loop as they will always run something that plays to the strength of the particular set on show. For instance on a OLED demo you'll find scenes of cityscapes at night, fireworks or starry skies. You'll rarely find truly bright scenes.
Conversely when seeing a demo for LCD/LED televisions (and that includes Samsung's deliberately confusingly named QLED) you'll see lots of scenes of bright skies, brightly lit jungles with a colourful animal (usually a tiger or a colourful bird) and very little in the way of dark material. Frankly it's difficult to make such scenes look bad.
If I have no test material to hand I like to look at people's faces onscreen. Firstly if the colour accuracy is off people's skin tones don't look right and that is relatively easy for us to pick up on. Secondly facial freckles and creases and particularly hair can say a lot about about the sets ability to resolve fine detail. A news readers face on BBC news (it must be a Hi-Def channel) is particularly informative as they tend to use the best cameras.
If you need further information regarding picture quality or want to research a particular television I would suggest you look at the following forum and websites:
https://www.avforums.com/PicturePerfect/
https://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-tvs,review-2224.html
https://www.cnet.com/how-we-test-tvs/
Please note that the last two sites are US centric but will also have tests of televisions available in the UK as well as some that are not.
Finally don't get overwhelmed by technical information and specs. Just make sure that
you are happy with the picture, like the look of the television (its going to be on show for a long time) and has the features you want at a price that suits you and that's good enough.
Edited to add: Don't search for perfection as you won't find it.
Every television will have it's flaws and compromises. You just have to make sure you can live with them.