Technology Android

dilla · May 16, 2020

So let's assume that "value" is important in getting a TV but not the #1 priority. Meaning TCL would be something you and I would get in our budget range when looking for value, but maybe not someone like my dad. Although you may be able to swing an OLED of your choosing, I don't know, despite the drawbacks of OLED tech. Would you go with the flagship Sony or the flagship Samsung QLEDs?

My dad is serious about getting a TV this time. Last time he was throwing the idea out there because our current Sharp was randomly shutting off until we unplugged it and plugged it back in; turned out my sister had her Switch plugged in to the surge protector. Along with the TV, the Dish DVR, two lamps, the Nexus Player, and our air purifier. I don't know how someone let it happen, but it did lol.

Anyway, he wants a slimline TV that would go flush with the wall when mounted. I really don't want to steer him towards OLED screens because I know he watches a lot of news and a lot of comedy shows, with the former having a lot of static images/tickers and the latter probably not benefiting from "true blacks." I don't want him asking me about burn-in images after a few years and I'll eventually bring it up to him if he starts to gravitate towards an OLED panel.

The pricing of a Sony X950 85" isn't too far off from a 65" C9 or even the newer CX. I figured I'd hype up the larger screen size of the 85" Sony over the 65" LG OLED to try and sway him some more.

If he insists on the absolute latest tech, I'll let him go the OLED route. It's his money and he has always been an "overkill" kind of guy when it comes to tech and some times we're actually grateful for it in the long run. But the difference in performance and value between a Samsung Q90/Sony X950 is probably greater than a Sony or LG OLED, especially since the sales pricing nets a larger panel for relative chump change. Just a few hundred on a $2K+ TV.

If he goes OLED, the slimline TV would be the LG E9 and God forbid he looks in its $3K+ direction. I think the 85" Sony X950 is about $2400? I'll have to look at Best Buy again, but that had the lowest price I'd seen for a brand new set, and not open-box.

So I've done my own research using various sites. Reputable tech review sites, like RTings. I've also looked at Consumer Reports and The Wirecutter as well as gone through many SlickDeal thread comments whenever a deal pops up for TVs. Still stuck in the air when it comes to LED TVs and deciding between the Samsung and Sony flagship LED TVs. For OLED, if we go that route, I think it's accepted the Sonys have better image processing but also cost a few hundred more than a similar sized LG model. That's probably a different discussion.

masta247 · May 17, 2020

dilla said:

I've largely disregarded >$1000 LCD TVs - at that price personally I'd only recommend OLEDs, but I understand the concern about burn-in - it's why I didn't go for an OLED TV in the first place.
With a flagship LCD from Sony or Samsung truth is you are still getting "just" an LCD TV. It's maybe 10% better for twice the money, but you're paying a large premium just for that extra edge strictly for getting the best that LCD can currently produce. It won't magically do so much better than a TCL flagship for half the price - they are very similar TVs that largely use the same panels. That said, they are still the highest class of LCDs that are currently around.

If money is not a problem and LCD is the choice, you can't really do much better than Sony 950 series or Samsung's flagship QLED TVs. RTings is a reputable site and I'd definitely trust them whenever you're stuck between the two - they are outlining pros and cons of both well, although they seem to rate Samsungs higher, and I trust that they are objective. I like both TVs - they don't have the wow factor of OLEDs, but their FALD, contrast (in HDR) and color reproduction are good enough to produce some wow factor and the image quality is definitely nice. I honestly don't think your dad would be disappointed with either. If he's not an expert and spends most of his time sitting directly in front of the TV, chances are the FALD is good enough on those TVs that it would give him the impression that he has almost an OLED without the burn-in to worry about.

dilla · May 17, 2020

masta247 said:

I think a lot of people on SlickDeals also hold RTings in high regard and it explains why they jack off to the Samsung QLEDs too and bring it up when a deal for another brand TV is brought up.

One thing that TCL's 8 series gets criticized for is "black crush." RTings, I believe when I glanced at their review, said their panel suffered from the same thing. And, like I said, it gets brought up a lot.

On the one hand, I think that no one in our house is a cinephile; be it someone who loves watching movies/sports a lot nor someone with a keen enough eye to note imperfections in pictures. It makes me think just getting one of those mid-range TVs from LG or even the top of the line TCL 8 would be enough for my parents. I have my own dinky TV at my place and I still end up streaming content legally or illegally on my computer, phone, or monitor. But I know, on the other hand, my dad is looking to spend some money because, at the same time, we don't buy TVs often. At my parents' house, this next TV will be only the third TV in 21 years, as opposed to many households that may get a new one every five years either to get something bigger in screen size or more updated tech like 4K or OLED or smart TVs.

So maybe I'll let him go down the OLED route and spend $2-3K on a 65 or 77" OLED. Or an 85"LCD. Even if it's overkill. If I didn't mention it before, he's looking to finally wall-mount the TV and wanted something slim in design. As thin as all TVs these days are, I know LG makes the E-series which is even flatter and meant to be wall-mounted, and those are about $500 more than the C-series counterpart.

If they decide to cut the cord and go streaming, even for their Indian shows, I really might push hard for the TCL and its Roku UI since I know that will be very easy for them to use. I don't know how Android TV is on Sony or webOS on LG, but I can see them running in to problems navigating menus that aren't big and bright and almost child-like, like the Roku's UI. Since they'd get live English TV via Hulu Live and their Indian stuff via Sling TV, it would be best to keep it simple.

So maybe I'll revisit the TCL 8 and keep that tied at the top of the list with the Sony 900/950, etc for LCD TVs and then go LG if they want OLED? Oh, you did mention the Samsung Qs, and you and RTings both make it seem that it toes the line between OLED and regular LED quality. Or rather blurs the line a bit, without assuming the risk and burden of burn-in that OLEDs may get.

I doubt they go for a proper surround sound system because it may get expensive the way their living room is designed, with high ceilings that include the first and second floor, so about 18-20 feet high. I'd just tell them to invest in a good sound bar, then, with Dolby Atmos. I think Sony has one that just came out and I saw a YTer go over it:

Of course, UAC has kind of turned in to more of a social influencer with tech and doesn't review it properly or in-depth, it's still from Sony and people associate it with quality. Or certainly a premium look and pricing lol. I'll have to research soundbars for them too.

masta247 · May 17, 2020

dilla said:

Oh I'd never say that LCD can toe the line between it and OLED. QLED is still a marketing name for another LCD tech - even if it's 5% better than what their LCDs did before, it's still an LCD with all its traditional flaws. I mostly praised modern FALD backlight. When OLEDs launched and most LCD TVs were edge lit, the image quality of LCD looked like utter garbage compared to OLED which would just blow everyone's minds. For a mainstream buyer, FALD can fool people into believing the contrast of LCDs suddenly became amazing. It does look good most of the time and makes LCDs appear to be suddenly much closer to OLED if you're sitting right in front of the TV. I know I was wowed the first time I watched HDR TV at night - FALD / local dimming really is a game changer.

There are imperfections and it's still far behind OLED's WOW effect, but FALD made LCD still worth buying as they're doing their best to replicate what OLED does naturally. If you're not looking for imperfections and want to avoid burn-in issues and higher prices of OLED, the LCD alternatives aren't half bad is what I'm saying. They went a long way with all sorts of fancy tricks to fool people that they can sort-of compete with OLEDs - An average OLED would still be the golden standard for image quality though, except it comes with potential burn-in risk, which is a major and biggest risk with going OLED that isn't there at all with LCDs.

As for Atmos, I'm not sure how much of the sound quality you can get of just a sound bar with a sub. It'll be much better than TV speakers, but likely won't be too amazing.

dilla · May 17, 2020

masta247 said:

I think that's what I meant. That high end LCDs have some software or hardware tricks that give some of the effects of benefits that OLEDs have, but still clearly come up short. But that the gap, or perceived gap between them and OLEDs was getting smaller, albeit with some compromises and it would be $1000+ less than an equivalent OLED. But the Q90s are still quite pricey and aren't $1000+ cheaper than an LG OLED. Maybe a Sony OLED lol. Boy, Sony really charges a fuckton for its OLEDs compared to LG, despite them using LG's panel. And I don't think the Sony OLED's picture is worth the premium over the LG's. But I do understand that for people who are deep in to AV hardware and tech, they'll see the difference and may want the better image processing that Sony's OLEDs supposedly get over LG's.

As for sound, in general, this is kind of how my parents living room is

lol imagine getting surround sound for that shit. I know soundbars are also a compromise and a master-of-none, but it would beat the internal speakers, like you said, and would be much cheaper than trying to get surround sound set up when the interior of the house looks like that.

THEV1LL4N · May 18, 2020

I think I may need to go for a 50" TV screen as 55" might be a little too big.

Just getting an idea whether these are any good?

I will keep my eye on a few product lineups and hopefully purchase around August or November when the sales are on as I don't need it before September or October anyway.

dilla · May 19, 2020

Best Buy has a sale on the Eero Pro 3 pack for $399. Basically $100 off and it might be time to pull the trigger on a tri-band mesh router for the clinic. Right now they're using the dinky modem-router combo given to them by ATT.

dilla · May 19, 2020

I know Google did it first and perhaps some other OEMs made their own, less-popular variant of it and I never heard about it but the new Apple Glasses look pretty neat: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/05/19/apple-glasses-price-prescription-lenses-rumors/

And since it's Apple, I expect it to be refined and a more user-friendly experience, which I think was one of the complaints of Google Glass. It looks like it could be 18-24 months away but was supposed to be unveiled this Fall when the outbreak hadn't happened. But this might get pushed back to 2022, according to the article.

It looks more promising than the wireless charging pad that Apple eventually scrapped because of fire risks, or something like that. Hopefully between now an 2021-22, we don't see it get scrapped for some reason, too.

dilla · May 22, 2020

Surface Book 3 looks pretty nice. Looks basically the same but it gets some internal upgrades. I'm seeing a good bit of reviews of the Surface Buds, Headphones, and Book all together. Looks like MS is trying to make some stuff to get toe to toe with Apple in quality and appeal.

dilla · May 23, 2020

I ended up installing the mesh at the house lol.

I know very little about networking and the hardware involved but the previous router must have been more outdated than I initially thought.

Previously, I had a 50+ foot ethernet cable running from the modem in the basement, up two flights of stairs and in the near-center of the house and in to the router (E4200). I forgot to do a speedtest prior but I would normally get about 100 Mbps or so since I'd torrent at 10 MB/s.

After setting this mesh up, it's now 250 Mbps, as per fast.com and Speedtest, both. I'll have to torrent something and see how those speeds improve. I think the biggest pro I've seen is a decrease in latency while gaming. On a benchmarks, it's now about 10ms. In games, it's 30ish, which is about half of what I was getting before, around 55-70ms. And this is all wireless so no ethernet backhaul. I had originally set it up that way, at least between the first and second units, but the third is on the polar opposite end of the house from the first and also two floors above, so an ethernet from the second to third unit was going to intrusive. Plus, I went the mesh route to lose the messy ethernet wire feeds and went with the Pro because of the triband feature.

So far, it's been great. Now all our devices and smart home devices are split between nodes evenly and the wireless range is phenomenal. The Blink camera I was ready to punt in to the woods because it would often fail to get a live stream is finally snappy and doesn't miss a thing. Turns out the wireless range was the problem, not the battery or simply the device being cheap shit.

It's still weird to have a cloud based router settings menu, though, only accessible via the Eero app. It's definitely a setup meant for beginners-to-intermediate users, but still lacks the features and freedom of access to settings that even old routers had. I don't know or understand what those are but I've read some of the gripes on the subreddit for Eero and also noticed myself that the menus were not as deep or tortuous as other routers like our old Linksys or Netgear. That's probably a good thing because I'd likely tinker with it too much and screw it up and end up hating it lol.

It was pricey but, like our TV, our Router was very old and stuck in the early days of the previous era. I doubt my parents will be getting another router for another decade, barring this Eero eating shit before then.

One pro of the router settings being cloud-based is the features the Eero app has, including the ability to restrict access or prioritize devices over smart home devices, like plugs and light bulbs. There's even a paid service, which we have a 30 day trial for, that has built in ad-blocking along with spyware and malware protection built-in to the nodes/network. I think for $100 a year, they offer those privacy services and the tracking of threats detected and ads blocked etc., a subscription to Malwarebytes (not sure how many devices/users), and 5 device access to a VPN service. I don't think we'll end up subscribing to the service but it's pretty neat so far during the trial.

I'm just happy that several of our outdoor smart devices have finally started working properly and without a hitch. The boost in speed and decreased latency is also a nice bonus.

$400 for a router is kind of dumb but...technically these are three independent routers, right? lol

dilla · May 26, 2020

Tried a torrent. We have "up to 200Mbps" internet from Xfinity but typically got about 8-10 MB/s of download speeds on the old router. Tried a few movies and TV shows this week and it was a steady 20 MB/s lol. Unreal. I don't think I saw those speeds even when standing right next to the old router, so this may not have even been a signal issue and rather the hardware being from 2009ish.

Someone told me it could be MIMO, or something like that, but I'm not too familiar with networking hardware so my dumbed-down understanding is it "has more antennae" or something like that lol.

Pretty amazing piece of tech.

THEV1LL4N · May 26, 2020

Is this a WiFi 6 router?

masta247 · May 27, 2020

Wow, lol, you were stuck on some ancient tech. One benefit of apartment living is one central, super-fast router with Wifi reception everywhere.

dilla · May 27, 2020

masta247 said:

Yeah, the house is so old, it doesn't have built-in ethernet, which many places have now. The clinic does, which means getting the Eero set up there will be easy and we could probably make-do with just two units plugged in directly in to the ethernet port on each floor.

I thought I'd be using wired backhaul, but to be honest, the speeds only go down by about 20-30 Mbps when I don't use it, so I just run them all completely wirelessly. It's probably the tri-band thing that helps with that. I don't think I ever noticed slowdown when others were on the internet but I have been paying attention this past week and I was getting low latency in games while my sister was using Zoom and my mom was streaming video/music one night. Still nothing intensive but it was still three people using the internet for something other than web browsing and it didn't seem to affect anyone's speeds or my latency. I also didn't think of this before but we have a few cameras which probably only use bandwidth to upload videos when motion is detected, but we get 20+ motion clips of about 30 seconds each per day and even that doesn't seem to slow me down.

Overall, great purchase lol. It's pricey but my parents were so far behind on the tech and we didn't know just how bad it was until we upgraded. It wasn't even meant for the home initially and instead for the clinic, but I'm glad it worked out for the home first.

I told my dad if he appreciated the wireless range and speed increase from this, imagine the world of a difference a new TV would make lol. He's still looking to upgrade that but wants to wait a bit thinking that the prices will drop in a few months when everything opens back up and manufacturers look to unload old stock. I use a cashback service and there are occasionally 15% cash back offers from Dell. Turns out, Dell sells TVs lol. So if there's ever another one of those insane cash back offers from Dell, it might be worth getting it from Dell with with a $200+ discount via cash back. But it looks like Dell's inventory of OLEDs is dwindling down to just 55" models. And if I remember correctly, it's the LG B9 model.

dilla · May 27, 2020

LG is going to be manufacturing Apple's displays, it seems: https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/27/oled-iphone-screens-2/

From reading the comments, LG is literally just producing them but not designing them prior. But it's still LG screen hardware and Apple is just calibrating it, or whatever else goes in to making a screen, to their specifications?

It was always strange to me how the OLED market worked. Samsung makes some of the best ones for their phones and LG's is kind of trash, but LG makes the vast majority of OLEDs in TVs and Samsung just can't muster the money to go from QLED to OLED in their TVs?

I know TV screens and mobile screens are very different, but Samsung has been using AMOLEDs since the original Galaxy S ten years ago. They still haven't shifted to making TV panels with that tech?

dilla · May 30, 2020

The Lenovo 8 Smart Display is $20 at Walmart right now. The Lenovo Smart Clock is also down to $40 or so.

Is Lenovo leaving the smart device game, or something? You typically see these kinds of sales when some division of a company is getting shut down.

Jokerman · May 30, 2020

Lenovo's sales and profits are being impacted by the pandemic, so...sale time. Computers too. And probably lay-offs at the company.

masta247 · May 31, 2020

Jokerman said:

That plus they are clearing inventory. Those products are no longer available here in Canada (no longer on their website).

Apparently laptop sales are still doing good with people working from home - but between the pandemic closures, reduced business demand and factories running in limited capacities to manufacture consumer-grade laptops they are having trouble making enough of products that are selling at lower profit margins anyway, which definitely makes it difficult to sustain the workforce in the back offices / R&D.

dilla said:

Korean companies make some really extraordinarily dumb decisions at times, and Samsung is a good example. I don't mean to hate, but while some western companies make mistakes, Koreans with their more authoritarian leadership based on a really "interesting" seniority system really trump everyone else, and this is speaking from experience too.

Samsung is the same company that decided it won't be selling Galaxy Note series phones in Europe (then they brought them back to the UK), then they decided they are pulling out of the laptop market (except of the US where they are still releasing a couple of models every year or two, and some ultraportables that sometimes reach Europe). Those products used to be market leaders in their categories and they are largely making them anyway, they just decided they don't want to make money I guess, and there was some probably really stupid argument behind it that they just went with. They also left the camera market believing it will completely go away due to smartphones, which completely crippled their smartphone camera leadership as in 2017 they closed the plants and R&D operations that were also working on mobile camera tech. It doesn't help that they left at a time when they became the second largest camera maker in the world, making several hundred million dollars in pure yearly profit on their cameras alone.

Samsung makes LCDs and OLEDs. Someone 5 years ago looked at the numbers and decided that R&D for large OLEDs is expensive, while LCDs are mature and dirt cheap and can be sold for a similar-ish price at much higher profit margins. So in 2015 they decided to stick to QLED LCD TVs as competitors to OLED and thus market the benefits of QLED LCD over OLED (which you don't see much of because there aren't almost any apart from burn-in) and thus not make OLED TVs to prove a point, despite having the best OLED tech at the time after already having invested billions in it. Yes, that might have been one of their most ridiculous decisions. Now they are backtracking:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/31/...-quantum-dot-oled-south-korea-china-factories

The irony is that Samsung's OLED tech was so far ahead of everyone else that even after 5 years of not investing in or making OLED TVs LG still didn't manage to catch up with their technology (based on what we see in Samsung's existing OLED devices that aren't TVs). Samsung would likely be able to come up with something at least on par if they launched an OLED TV now.

dilla · May 31, 2020

masta247 said:

That plus they are clearing inventory. Those products are no longer available here in Canada (no longer on their website).

Apparently laptop sales are still doing good with people working from home - but between the pandemic closures, reduced business demand and factories running in limited capacities to manufacture consumer-grade laptops they are having trouble making enough of products that are selling at lower profit margins anyway, which definitely makes it difficult to sustain the workforce in the back offices / R&D.

Korean companies make some really extraordinarily dumb decisions at times, and Samsung is a good example. I don't mean to hate, but while some western companies make mistakes, Koreans with their more authoritarian leadership based on a really "interesting" seniority system really trump everyone else, and this is speaking from experience too.

Samsung is the same company that decided it won't be selling Galaxy Note series phones in Europe (then they brought them back to the UK), then they decided they are pulling out of the laptop market (except of the US where they are still releasing a couple of models every year or two, and some ultraportables that sometimes reach Europe). Those products used to be market leaders in their categories and they are largely making them anyway, they just decided they don't want to make money I guess, and there was some probably really stupid argument behind it that they just went with. They also left the camera market believing it will completely go away due to smartphones, which completely crippled their smartphone camera leadership as in 2017 they closed the plants and R&D operations that were also working on mobile camera tech. It doesn't help that they left at a time when they became the second largest camera maker in the world, making several hundred million dollars in pure yearly profit on their cameras alone.

Samsung makes LCDs and OLEDs. Someone 5 years ago looked at the numbers and decided that R&D for large OLEDs is expensive, while LCDs are mature and dirt cheap and can be sold for a similar-ish price at much higher profit margins. So in 2015 they decided to stick to QLED LCD TVs as competitors to OLED and thus market the benefits of QLED LCD over OLED (which you don't see much of because there aren't almost any apart from burn-in) and thus not make OLED TVs to prove a point, despite having the best OLED tech at the time after already having invested billions in it. Yes, that might have been one of their most ridiculous decisions. Now they are backtracking:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/31/...-quantum-dot-oled-south-korea-china-factories

The irony is that Samsung's OLED tech was so far ahead of everyone else that even after 5 years of not investing in or making OLED TVs LG still didn't manage to catch up with their technology (based on what we see in Samsung's existing OLED devices that aren't TVs). Samsung would likely be able to come up with something at least on par if they launched an OLED TV now.

That's unfortunate, because the options in the US for OLED TVs is still LG or an LG panel in a Sony TV. And it's not all that different internationally since I think you said Panasonic makes them too. Samsung would have been a breath of fresh air in the OLED market and wouldn't be playing down to the LCD OEMs with their QLED tech.

There's a 77" C9 being offered on Greentoe for $3600, or so. Since it's a site where you submit your proposal, I'll have to try it first to see if they'll accept it but several users on SlickDeals have reported that being the asking price that was honored when proposed to them. That might be about as low as it goes before inventory runs out and LG pushes the CX line in the wake of the two-plus month shutdown that affected sales.

THEV1LL4N · Jun 1, 2020

masta247 said:

We've procured a much higher than normal number of Lenovo laptops at work due to the COVID-19 response for remote-working. It was also nice to see them opt for some AMD models over the standard Intel ones they routinely go for (with perhaps no real justification). I am sure cost-cutting was the primary factor in going for AMD models and the users won't notice any difference in performance either.

Technology Android

Trumpfan17 aka Coonie aka Dilla aka Tennis Dog

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Trumpfan17 aka Coonie aka Dilla aka Tennis Dog

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Trumpfan17 aka Coonie aka Dilla aka Tennis Dog

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Trumpfan17 aka Coonie aka Dilla aka Tennis Dog

Trumpfan17 aka Coonie aka Dilla aka Tennis Dog

Trumpfan17 aka Coonie aka Dilla aka Tennis Dog

Trumpfan17 aka Coonie aka Dilla aka Tennis Dog

Trumpfan17 aka Coonie aka Dilla aka Tennis Dog

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Trumpfan17 aka Coonie aka Dilla aka Tennis Dog

Trumpfan17 aka Coonie aka Dilla aka Tennis Dog

Trumpfan17 aka Coonie aka Dilla aka Tennis Dog

Well-Known Member

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Trumpfan17 aka Coonie aka Dilla aka Tennis Dog

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