Which TV is better please?

I couldn't find the right forum to put this in. So if it's wrong, please feel free to move it please? Thanks.



I have two TV's in mind but can't decide which one is better? Can you advise me please? The model's I'm looking at are:

SONY BRAVIA KD43XG8096BU (£549.00)
LG 43UM7600PLB (£399.00)

Both are 43" my current TV (Toshiba) is a 32". The only reason I'm upgrading is that I would like to connect to WIFI to watch BBCi Player, UKTV Play etc. I have looked at both sets, and have been told that the Sony has a habit of dropping conection at variouse times.

Which has the better sound and colour?

Both have sports, vivid, cinema, etc. I did find the Sony remote more user friendly then the LG, but can't make up my mind which is the better set.

Many thanks and hope you can help?

Lots of this comes down to personal preference - but Sport and Vivid modes are definitely best avoided - they distort pictures massively (Vivid in particular winds up the colour saturation to the point that pictures look like cartoons). On some TVs cinema mode can be useful (it will often disable some of the harshest processing) - but my advice to anyone buying a TV is to go to the shop and watch channels with content you typically watch on both. Ask for the remote control - and get the picture to a state you like. Personally I usually end up in a Standard or Custom mode usually - though on some TVs there is a reasonable 'calibrated' or 'THX' mode that can be pretty good. I also don't agree with having different settings for different types of content. Your TV should just be correctly set up and then display what it is fed as accurately as possible...

In my case I disable all the digital picture 'enhancements' - like Motion Flow/Natural Motion, Noise Reduction, Live Colour, Contrast enhancement etc. I set the picture to a reasonably warm setting (by default most TVs are far, far too blue - and when you first do this you think the picture is far too orangey/pink - but it's actually often more accurate, and much nicer to watch as a result) and reduce the sharpness to the setting where it has no impact on the picture (on most TVs this is 0, but on some it's 50%)

Personally I'm not a fan of LG LCD TVs (sometimes now called LED TVs) and prefer Sony's picture processing (or lack of it when it's disabled). (LG are much, much better when it comes to OLED TVs - not to be confused with LED-backlit LCD TVs)

However this is a personal preference - and budget vs cost vs subjective preference is always a balance. Personally I don't like the integrated smart TV functionality on most TVs and prefer to use an external solution like a Roku Streaming Stick+ (though now it doesn't frame rate match Netflix it's not as desirable) or an Apple TV (which is - for me - probably the best TV streaming solution currently around)

My personal preference is to ignore the smart capabilities on a tv set, they soon become obsolete as the hardware can't keep up with the ever changing demands of streaming services.

I personally use a NVidia Shield, which is regularly updated and since I've had mine, the OS has been updated to Android Pie. It also has built in Chromecast, so you can use other apps which the Shield's Android TV, along with a Now TV 4K box.

Yep - the Shield TV is a neat solution, if only it supported Automatic frame rate switching in Netflix, Amazon, iPlayer etc. It's such a faff to constantly adjust the output frame rate depending what shows you are watching (Netflix has 23.976, 25 and 29.97 stuff, Amazon has that and 50 and 59.94 live sport...) The Android Pie update has also mullered the Rec 709 / Rec 2020 colour gamut switching a bit AIUI (which was only recently introduced)

The Now TV 4K box has resolved the Netflix resolution issues has it as AFR on that app. But agree about the lack of AFR on Amazon and Netflix otherwise. AFR works perfectly on Molotov, the French IPTV app which is fine for the US channels such as Cheddar TV and the dodgy IPTV apps such as Perfect Player and Tivimate ironically. Also works fine with Kodi.

Ah - on the Roku Streaming Stick + (one of the only players that supports proper 2160p50 HLG Rec 2020 iPlayer UHD output) - AFR works on everything OTHER than Netflix (or that was the case last time I checked)

At one point everything on the Roku SS+ was AFR - but that caused issues in Netflix with the auto-play trailer backgrounds (as they kept re-syncing the TV as they AFR-ed if they weren't all the same frame rate) - so they disabled the function just in that channel/app.

I'll have another look this evening - they were getting a lot of flak in their online forums when they disable it (without at least making it optionally disabled)

** EDIT - just checked - AFR still borked in Netflix on the Roku Streaming Stick + with software update from 25th Sept **

(The Apple TV has the benefit of Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support - alongside AFR on Netflix and Amazon - which neither the Roku nor the nVidia Shield TV support)