Random Thoughts Thread

[PretentiousHipster]

Yea I'm planning on moving out with my partner soon. I was doing research on TVs, and the stores here don't even sell 1080p anymore. Just the models for the smaller TVs. Everything on the larger side is 4 or 8k.

[isiolia]

Back in 2013 I got a '46 tv for around $1500. Is this what TVs go for now? I guess I have not been keeping up with technology. What do Expensive TVs offer more than 4K then?

Yes and no There are still TVs that are plenty more expensive, just like there were undoubtedly $500 (and cheaper) TVs on the market when you bought your 46" one.

The short answer there is that you can pay more for quality. 4k resolution became common fairly quickly. I think the market basically swapped to that several years back - one year a midrange or better TV was probably 120 or 240hz 1080p, likely with 3D support... then next it was all 4k outside of the cheap stuff. Nowadays even the value sector products (IE https://www.amazon.com/Insignia-NS-43DF ... 07FPQ343D/ ) are 4k at the ~40" and larger sizes (below that is still a mix of 1080 and 720p).

A big consideration with 4k is that the resolution itself is kinda nice...sometimes...maybe...but the big potential for improvement on most screens is HDR. Does it necessitate 4k resolution? Well, no, but that's the standard that the consumer version(s) were incorporated into. Essentially, this gives a larger color range to work with. There's a lot of potential there, particularly with newer content actually shot for HDR, but it's also something that really needs a high quality display to reproduce properly (and there's no guarantee that content implementing it is good/better either). However, with everything done right, it's the high end offering right now.

Long and short being, a budget TV may have that 4k resolution, but may only technically support HDR, and lack the actual processing/specs to generate the image intended.

Unlike back when you got your TV, where there might have been a debate between plasma and LCD, now you do have the option of OLED (mostly from LG), which is similar to plasma in that individual pixels light up, or can be off, giving you the deepest black levels. OLED isn't cheap, or perfect, but it'd be a common reason someone is spending $1200-1500 on a 55" TV today, instead of $500 (my current TV is an LG55B8).

Otherwise, you'll have other higher-quality options. Samsung's QLED for instance. Or just models with higher brightness, better processing, more local dimming zones, etc. In some ways, LED can be well suited to HDR as well, since it's intended to be able to get very bright, past the levels that OLED sets can usually do.


All that said though, you can certainly get a better TV cheaper today than you could back when you last bought one. You can likely go spend half what you did on a 65" set and get something that'll outperform what you have in every respect. There's just even-better stuff on the market, which may be worth spending more on, depending on the person shopping.

[RCBH928]

The short answer there is that you can pay more for quality. 4k resolution became common fairly quickly. I think the market basically swapped to that several years back - one year a midrange or better TV was probably 120 or 240hz 1080p, likely with 3D support... then next it was all 4k outside of the cheap stuff. Nowadays even the value sector products (IE https://www.amazon.com/Insignia-NS-43DF ... 07FPQ343D/ ) are 4k at the ~40" and larger sizes (below that is still a mix of 1080 and 720p).
.

50 inch 4K for $300?
This is like someone telling me you can buy 2 story house with a pool for $5K. It just does not sound right.

[isiolia]

50 inch 4K for $300?
This is like someone telling me you can buy 2 story house with a pool for $5K. It just does not sound right.

You get what you pay for, though that level device may be just the thing for throwing a TV in the back room for streaming or something.

[RCBH928]

People who have "warez" and other shady content websites, in which companies do they host their website content? I don't imagine any legit company is willing to risk hosting any copyright infringing material.

[PretentiousHipster]

So if you dunno I've been doing YouTube reviews of games as a hobby. Even the best case scenario I'll keep working though as YouTube seems too volatile. Something surreal happened. My latest video is on the first Legend of Zelda game and out of nowhere the views tripled (only around 170 views now but still). Turns out it got 7100 impressions in a little under 2 days. I wonder what happened in that case? Did a type of moderator see it and promoted it to many users on their homepage?

To show how drastic this is: I have 32 videos so far and have been doing them since June. I have a total of 11.7K impressions if you include the jump in the latest video.

[RCBH928]

Paid a visit to the pirate bay, seeders seem to be in the hundreds after they used to be in thousands in its heyday. Either torrents losing popularity or all the cool kids are hanging somewhere else. I know for sure many people abandoned the torrent scene after low cost streaming services like Netflix had worldwide releases. Instant stream beats downloading and waiting I guess.

[PretentiousHipster]

Yea streaming killed it. I go on a few private torrent sites but it's for films so obscure to the point that they don't have official releases. It feels more like a UNESCO archive rather than a torrent site.

[stickem]

Ya I still visit a private torrent site. The firestick/kodi thing probably had something to do with it as well. Why download it when you can just just stream the same torrent, just a site is hosting instead of you.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Yea streaming killed it. I go on a few private torrent sites but it's for films so obscure to the point that they don't have official releases. It feels more like a UNESCO archive rather than a torrent site.