Pnambic

HAHA! I totally bought this when TRU put it on sale for a while on Saturday for my 13 year old son, but I promise you I'll be logging some time on it. I'll let you know how it is. The reviews I've watched have been favorable for indoor flight at least.

So I went out and bought a 4k TV... I kid! Just looking to make Len spit his coffee all over his keyboard. Monster, you're dead right in that going forward, we're likely to see manufacturers focusing all their attention on the 4k TVs. At least until OLED's are here. I think 4K is just as useless as 3D, perhaps even moreso, but it should be an easier sell to the uninformed masses since you don't need to wear any head gear to enjoy the almost entirely placebic improvement in picture quality. They'll be offering the best other stuff besides 4K on them in order to move as many as possible. And the best other stuff might actually be worthwhile. Quantum Dot should be awesome. High Dynamic Range (if/when a format is ever nailed down) should be awesome. OLED IS awesome. I fully expect my next TV to be a 4K set simply because there won't be any other reasonable option by the time I'm in the market again. But I won't be buying it because it's 4K. I'll be buying it because it's an OLED with HDR and lots of other worthwhile cool improvements. By the way, most 4K TVs do NOT have higher refresh rates. Remember, you have to have a 4K TV that can quadruple the number of pixels its refreshing at the same rate just to stay even with a 1080P TV refresh wise, the next step up would be 8 times as much. We don't see jumps like that real fast generally. I've done a ton of looking and almost every 4K TV I've seen has a real refresh rate of 60Hz (regardlss of the number that explicitly doesn't have a Hz next to it that they put on the box trying to fool you). Look it up in the manual for the specific device. Most manuals have been surprisingly candid about the refresh rates if you're willing to look for it. Outstanding read: http://www.cnet.com/au/news/why-ultra-hd-4k-tvs-are-still-stupid/ And Monster - I'm glad I'm not the only one who completely misses the draw of curved screens...

From a slightly different angle, I believe it's because retailers have far more current information and more immediate control over their pricing today than they did 5 years ago, 10 years, 15 years... That means throughout the year, they are waging a much more intense priging war with their competitors that have driven margins lower. So there's not as much pad there to discount when it comes to Black Friday. Remember - the stores aren't doing this as a gift to us all, they're trying desperately to earn revenue. And the smart stores recognize that they can do clearance stuff all year round these days. With much greater knowledge and understanding of how their products are selling on a day to day basis (used to be month to month or even quarter to quarter), retailers are more actively managing it throughout the year. That means a little less left overs for Black Friday. Also, in the past it may have taken a couple months of lead time to get that Black Friday ad all put together manually and sent to the printers and ready for the sale. It took weeks just to communicate the prices down to the stores in advance. No one wants to be the fool that discounts their front page big deal TV to $400 just to have your competitor discount it to $350 and steal all your thunder. So it was a lot more hush hush and top secret. These days, the prices in the ads can be changed in seconds and a completely new add can be created in minutes, printing them still takes a little while, but most people get their ads digitally these days anyway. That gives retailers a lot more control over what they're selling and for how much. Black Friday is changing. The retailers still love it. It's a massive marketing campaign that's already rolling and its much easier to keep something rolling than to try and start something new. Consumers are aware of it all over the US and beyond now and some are even dependant on it for their holiday needs. But retailers are always learning and looking for new ways to make a buck. The ones that don't, or don't do a good job of it go out of business. Retailers are tracking your purchases to learn about you individually as well as "us" regionally to help them target us better. They're figuring us out much faster than we're figuring them out (in general, though members of sites like these are likely to be keeping it roughly even probably).

You're probably better off that your current TV is continuing to work just fine. Mind sharing the make and model number? We could compare specs right here to determine if the 4K would actually be an upgrade for you or not. ========== The 4K Samsung at Sams club for $428 right now (http://www.samsclub.com/sams/40-led-wifi-tv-smart-uhd/prod18310413.ip?navAction=) has its manual posted here: (http://downloadcenter.samsung.com/content/UM/201509/20150914125600079/ENG-US_HMUATSCJ-1.315-0907.pdf). Samsung's manual indicates even though it touts "Motion Rate 120" (whatever that means), it has a 60Hz panel which will limit even your 1080P media to 60Hz. There's a good chance your current TV is the better of the two for your needs right now and into the foreseeable future. ========== The 4K at BestBuy for $449.99 right now (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-40-class-40-diag--led-2160p-smart-4k-ultra-hd-tv-black/9481007.p?id=1219704422798&skuId=9481007)is a normal Samsung product (http://www.samsung.com/us/video/tvs/UN40JU6400FXZA) and the manual here ( Reviews indicate the contrast and blacks are not the strong suit of this TV. (http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/samsung/ju6400) ========== If you're buying the TV to be 4K future proof, you should know that neither the 4600 nor the 460D series support 4K @ 60Hz @ 4:4:4

You CAN go wrong with a name brand, but most stories would seem to indicate that when things do go wrong, they don't go as far wrong. Here's the thing. Call Panasonic's customer help line. Right now. Chances are, you'll get to a person who speaks English in 15 minutes or less. Now try the same thing for TCL or Westinghouse or HiSense. The point is, if something does happen to go wrong, most name brands take protecting their expensive name brand more seriously and have at least some infrastructure in place to help you out. I can personally attest to Panasonic's customer service being top notch. Something that a lot of people don't know is that a ton of these TVs share components. Screens, processors, control boards, etc. While some of these manufacturers do make their own (I think Samsung makes *most* of their own and I think Sony makes a good chunk of their own and I think LG makes their own, they sell their components to many of these other brands. So a TCL may well have a screen made by LG and a control board made by Samsung in it. And they might sell parts to other manufacturers too. I too have a Westinghouse 32in I picked up from Best Buy a few years ago. Great little TV. My only gripe is the volume goes from can't hear to too loud with one click. As with many things, there are good repairmen and bad ones. You do need to be wary. I do believe I've dealt with many more good ones than bad though. But suggesting off brand TVs last longer than name brand ones as a rule? I'd like to see some evidence to back up that claim. Perhaps you're right - but I'd like to know which off brands so I could spend my money more intelligently.

I'm generally not the biggest fan of Bose, but this is an example of what I was talking about. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N1SSX6Q/ref=gbps_img_s-3_4782_33c6051f?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=2292984782&pf_rd_s=slot-3&pf_rd_t=701&pf_rd_i=gb_main&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0Y40S6KM3RCPWXTQFEKE If you're hanging your TV from the wall, then this may not work for you. But if you're placing it on a stand, this might work. Here's a deal on one from Klipsch: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F3JW37G/ref=psdc_172563_t2_B00N1SSX6Q Again - I have not listened to either of these to provide an opinion, but they both have pretty good reviews.

This is what I'd buy. I've purchased all of my HDMI cables from Monoprice for the last 10 years. http://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=9304

Similar to cars, with speakers, there's no replacement for displacement. Speakers aren't magical. While we may be pretty foggy on climate science, we have the science of reproducing sound waves down pretty good. And bigger speakers *can* produce better sound than smaller speakers (assuming the same quality of components and all that. It's all about making sound waves. As mentioned above, speakers can definitely have distinctive sounds though. If you're upgrading one speaker in a multi-speaker setup, you will likely want to match the rest of your set. I started out with these massive Klipsch KG 5.2's I bought back in college. When I went to build the rest of the 5.1 setup (geez, 15 years ago?), I was sold on these really sweet sounding Paradigm surrounds and center. Trouble was, the Klipsches were so efficient and bight, I couldn't ever hear anything from the other speakers even after tuning the Klipsches down 6 dB and the others up 6dB (the most my receiver could do). Had to take the Paradigms back and swap them for some Klipsches that better matched my fronts. I did also want to add that I've seen some TV stand speakers recently that are more than just your garden variety sound bars. They're pretty darn big - designed to not just sit beneath and in front of your TV, but for the TV to actually sit on the speaker. They're often a good foot or more deep (as opposed to a couple inces for most sound bars) and will often include a subwoffer within. I can't remember what they're called precisely as I didn't pay all that much attention to it as it wouldn't really suit my needs at all, but your BIL might have had one of these if it was all that impressive. The thing to rememberr here is a Center channel speaker will need to be powered by something - generally a receiver. Sound bars and this other thing I mentioned are self-powered.

They won't be able to tell a difference between $6 high speed HDMI cabes from Monoprice vs. the crazy priced Monster HDMI cables at anything less than 15 feet. HDMI cables transmit a digital signal - not analog. Ones and Zeroes. It doesn't matter how "clean" the one or zero is - just that it got from one end of the cable to the other end. It has been found that at lengths greater than 15 feet, cable quality *can* help, but that doesn't mean the most expensive cable is the best one. But it sounds to me like your friends have more dollars than sense. Good for them! Let them help support the economy. If they can't find something better to do with their money, may as well give it to someone else - maybe they can.

That's what hotels are for. And $19/day UHaul rental vans. You'll save enough to make it worth your while, right?

Didn't they also make large sodas illegal a couple years ago?

Macs are seldom discounted as well as "PC's" but I believe the best deals of the year on all PC's and Macs alike are to be had on or around Black Friday.

Yea, normally, I'd do a little personal boycott of the offending manufacturer - trouble is, it looks like they're ALL doing it.

Hey listeners, here's a little update from your uncle Pnambic. I've been digging a lot to find the true refresh rates of a lot of these 4K TVs and I thought I'd share the gist. 4K media is hard to come by; true 4K media almost non-existant. And to my knowledge, there isn't even a standard being discussed, let alone agreed on for 120Hz 4K media. So what 4K media you can find is mostly 24 or 30 Hz, and some is 60 Hz. The standard is leaning toward 60 Hz, but the marketplace needs major upgrades in hardware in place before that will be commonplace. What this means is that 4K screens have not been designed to display 120 Hz 4K material. Some only handle 24/30 Hz. Some can handle 60 Hz. Unfortunately, this also means that a lot of the 4K TVs out there have therefore limited ALL refresh rates on the TV to 60 Hz. This means that even the 720P, 1080i and 1080P material you watch will also only be displayed at 60 Hz. So, if you're not real careful, "upgrading" your 1080P 120 Hz or 240 Hz TV to a 4K TV may degrade your viewing experience on 99.99% of the material you'll be able to watch on the TV. TV manufacturers know it would be a hard sell to convince a person who just spent $1000 on a 240 Hz 1080P TV two years ago to upgrade to a TV that displays 1080P material WORSE than their current TV but can maybe show 4K material if you can find it. The trade-off doesn't make much sense even to complete newbies. So they've made up new measurements such as TruMotion (LG), MotionRate (Samsung), MotionFlow (Sony), SPS (Vizio), Clearscan (Toshiba), BacklightScan (Panasonic) and others. What they're doing is just making up a number that looks like what you'd expect to see for the refresh rate and hoping you'll assume that's what it is. Most of these numbers are actually TWICE the real refresh rate, some even more. So when you see an LG TV with a TruMotion 120 plastered on the box, it may actually be a 60Hz TV. The good news is, many manufacturers are at least putting the real refresh rates in the product manuals. So if you go to their websites and look them up, you can generally find the actual refresh rate there to help you make your decision. But it requires that you play the part of educated consumer and dig it up. For example, take UN60JS7000FXZA listed at BestBuy for $1299. The BestBuy ad says "Motion Rate 120". Most people assume that means a refresh rate of 120 Hz. In the Samsung manual (http://downloadcenter.samsung.com/content/UM/201509/20150914125600079/ENG-US_HMUATSCJ-1.315-0907.pdf?CID=AFL-hq-mul-0813-11000006), see the sections titled: - "Supported Resolutions for 3D Modes" pg. 150 (frequency column) - "Supported Resolutions for UHD Input Signals" pg. 151 (frame rate column) - "Supported Video Codecs" pg. 161 (frame rate column) - "Supported Resolutions for Video Signals" pg. 167 (display format column) Do you see anything listed at 120 Hz anywhere? Anywhere at all? Nope. Even 1080P is limited to 60 Hz on this TV. Would you consider it an upgrade to go from your 120 Hz 1080P TV to this (for all intents and purposes 1080P) 60 Hz TV? I wouldn't. It looks like the entry level 4K TV's (most all of the best Black Friday deals) are by and large all 60Hz all the time. Now, there are TV's that appear to be able to display 1080P (and lesser) material in 120 Hz or better while still showing 4K at 60 Hz. Vizio in particular appears to be pulling this off in some of their $600 - $1000 Black Friday TV's. They're the only ones I've seen so far in that price range (I've only looked at a couple dozen TVs so there might be others still). I've never owned a Vizio TV, so I can't speak to them as a company in general, but this is something I would look for if I were in the market. My point is, look it up. Be an informed consumer. While I think its silly to waste ANY money on 4K TV's right now, if you've fallen in love with the marketing that's been thrown about and are determined to be a "cool kid" and get a 4K TV this year, at least get one that won't be worse than your current one at showing 1080P material. BTW, turns out upscaling 1080P to 4K isn't being treated as just multiplying the pixels by four - and the quality of upscaling varies by manufacturer and even by line within manufacturers. That RTings website tests for upscaling at the pixel level and the results are interesting. Again, a little research can go a LONG way here.

You're awesome StationChief. I appreciate all the hard work you put into this and I'm sure a lot of other people do too.

That's weird, the Amazon one still shows as $149 to me. And as you say, this is indeed a dual band. But the 5Ghz band on this is actually faster than the two 5Ghz bands (individually) on the 3200.

BTW, Amazon and NewEgg have the Netgear Nighthawk X4 AC2350 (R7500) for $149 right now. (reg. $280) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MRVJY5C/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122617&cm_re=Nighthawk_X4-_-33-122-617-_-Product

HAHA! A friend of mine just referenced the Spinal Tap scene where Nigel is earnestly explaining his band's secret of success - that their amps go up to 11, instead of 10 like most everyone else. This is such a perfect analogy for 4K TVs this year....HAHAHA Nigel: This is the TV I bought at Black Friday this year and it's very, very special, because, if you can see this sticker on the side....it says 4K. Look, right across the box. 4K on the front, 4K on the back, 4K on the sides. Interviewer: Oh, I see. And most TV's go up to 1080P. Does that mean its better? Nigel: Well its bigger. It's not 1080P. You see, most blokes, they be watching at 1080P. Where can you go from there? Nowhere! But when you want that little extra push, this TV goes all the way to 4K. Interviewer: But there is no 4K media to speak of...and that 4K TV doesn't support chroma 4:4:4 or HDCP2.2 or UHD. Nigel: <pause>...this goes to 4K.

Rock on! I'm sure your parents will love it. I'm sure you're aware that we measure TV screen size diagonally. As luck would have it (or perhaps you did it on purpose), a 32in old tube style TV has a screen that's about 19in tall. To get the same size SD image on the screen (with those black padded sides like if they were playing it from their DVD player), it would require a 39in HDTV. Well done.

Well, you're not alone. There are plenty of people who couldn't care less about picture quality - all they want is the largest screen to impress their visitors. Is their opinion right or yours? And there are those who couldn't care less about a .5% difference in picture quality so long as they get the TV with the 50% improvement in response time for watching sports or gaming. Is their opinion right or yours? And how about those people who understand that the deeper the blacks a screen can reproduce, the better and more rich the color pallet? Your opinion or theirs? It's good that you know what you want so you don't waste your money on something you're not interested in. But in my (ok, perhaps not too terribly) humble opinion (and I imagine many others), response time is important. And I appreciate the effort this site went through to perform the tests they did and find value in their hard work. I'm sure the 850 is a fine TV. But the images I watch on TV (such as sports and video games) often move very quickly so motion blur and lag are quite important to me. And it looks like the site did a very thorough job explaining their rating process. So judging by those numbers, the 810 would probably suit my needs better than the 850. But in the end, if you like that 850, you go get it and make it yours. Enjoy it.

Did you take the time to read the actual reviews though? The reason he places the 810 above the 850 is not the picture quality, its the mostly motion blur and input lag. These things matter if you game on your TV or if you like to watch fast moving sports. Turns out the sample 850 they tested was worse than the 810 in these areas. Maybe it was a bad sample. Or maybe it's endemic of the components used in the 850. They can only report what they test. - Response Time was 12.5ms on the 810 vs 16.5ms on the 850. - Input Lag was slightly better at 35.7ms on the 810 vs 39.5 on the 850. - Gray Uniformity was also measured to be significantly better on the 810 (2% std dev vs 5% on the 850). - It's also mentioned that the 850 had a glitch in its upscaler causing poor image on 480P media. It looks like this has been addressed in a firmware update. Again, with the Samsung TVs, (which were scored almost identically by the way at 8.4 vs 8.3), again, the 7500 achieved a significantly better input lag measurement in Game mode vs the 8500 (21ms vs 37ms) and a slightly better response time of 8.9 ms vs 11.9ms on the 8500. Just because a TV has a bigger resolution or a bigger number in the model number or a bigger screen or a bigger price tag, that doesn't make it automatically a better TV. There are many aspects to defining the better TV and this site appears to have done far more work researching these things than just going to Best Buy and looking at them in the aisle. By the way, I love how this site also reports the settings he found optimal for the TVs to help poor schmucks like me tune our own sets better. One of my personal rules on the matter is if I can't find the TV on the manufacturer's website - or if I can't even find a manufacturer's website, then I won't even consider the TV. Not looking for a couple hundred dollar paper weight.

You can monitor your kids' driving habits. (If you have way too much time on your hands.) But maybe just the threat that you could would be enough to improve their driving. You can use as proof in case of an accident that the other driver pulled out in front of you, or your light was green, or they wandered out of their lane, or... Best use though is for people who like to race their cars (on tracks - not public roads) so they can go back and critique their lines, braking points, etc. Also to share online.

What are they going to plug into the TV? (Roku? Chromecast? Amazon Fire TV? Apple TV? DirecTV? cable box? BluRay? VCR? XBox? --> hey, my dad plays Wii and he's 70 ) How far away from the screen do they sit? Do they still have good eyesight? How's their hearing? How big is their current tube TV? Is the space limited? Does it have to fit in a TV cabinet? Or would you hang it on the wall? Or set it on a TV stand?

It's already more difficult maintaining one's traction and balance on snow with the two legs you've been using all your life. Attempting to do so on a segway or swagway is just silly. If you do it, please make sure to get it on video so you can at least get a couple hundred thousand hits on youtube of the inevitable fail.

Wow, tons of great info on this page! http://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/fake-refresh-rates-samsung-clear-motion-rate-vs-sony-motionflow-vs-lg-trumotion