Wii U, New TV's and sound lag.

Hello. Recently i purchased a 46" LED Sony TV (kdl46r473) which unfortunately was rubbish. Decent HD picture but terrible on SD channels. It also had too much sound lag between the gamepad and the TV. This was especially prominent whilst playing Street Fighter 2 and F-zero because the beats were out of time. Needless to say, i took it back for a refund and i'm now in need of some advice on which TV's in the 46-50" range are best for WiiU compatibility. Preferably it would also cost less than £600 and would not be fussed if it didn't have 3D smart functions. Plasma or LED...i don't mind.

Can anybody help me ?

For that money I would go smaller like a 32-37 and get decent spec, it's not the size it's what you do with it. But if you want big I would look at Panasonic plasma's.

Cheers. Unfortunately one of the conditions attached by the wife when i said i wanted to get a new telly was that we went bigger. Already at 37". I just wish there was a way to know prior to paying up whether it was going to have acceptable levels of sound lag.

That's a shame about your Sony, and in general about how Sony started cutting back on quality with their TV panels since they weren't very profitable to begin with. My Bravia from 2007 still holds up incredibly well, with little image or sound lag too.

I'd try to have a look at your next TV in person, perhaps head to John Lewis and look there. Though you won't be able to gauge speaker quality there I guess, too many TVs come with awful speakers these days.

As a general rule of thumb, anything with a matte screen coating (glossy will reflect your surroundings), a wide viewing angle (or 'IPS' as it's known more widely), good speakers, little post processing or a 'gaming' mode should fit the bill.

This may help too: http://www.edge-online.com/features/how-hdtv-killed-rhythm-action/

Nice one. I'll take a look at that.

I suppose i could take my WiiU to the shop and ask to plug it in to whichever TV grabs my fancy.

Cheers Fronk for pointing that article out; I just assumed that these things got better, not worse, over time.

masofdas wrote:

But if you want big I would look at Panasonic plasma's.

Panasonic Plasma's are definitely the best, especially for gaming (due to a very fast response time).

However, it looks like prices have gone up since Panasonic announced their Plasma division is closing down. Which is a massive shame.

The second best used to be Pioneer, but they also stopped making Plasma TVs.

It's a shame that Plasma TVs have gone out of fashion (likely due to TV companies making people think that LED is better, when they're just LCD with better lighting), especially as OLED TVs aren't quite cheap enough yet.

My current TV is LED, but last two have been Panasonic plasma's and not that expensive £1200 in 2010 & £800 in 2008 (i think), I was thinking that £1200 TV would be around £600 mark now to buy new, if they still do it.

Also I just realized I buy a new TV every 2 year's ish as I'm sure I got my 1st HDTV in 2005/2006 then 2008 then 2010 and bought current last year.

So next year 4K time then.

As Cube pointed out Plasma is also a good bet if you can find one.

LCDs aren't all bad for response times, the annoying amount of post processing on the image (which *every* TV seems to do) seems to be the culprit of bringing lag into games. So much so that the Wii U GamePad renders ahead of most HDTVs, and that only has 2 frames of pure lag overall. I think Sony's 3D PS3 TV thingie was good for response times. My Sony Bravia from 2007 has no post processing whatsoever (I think Sony call it "Bravia Engine, which actually significantly decreases colour reproduction quality) and I've had no trouble playing rhythm games on it.

I'd be more willing to stay away from any OLED TV until the technology overcomes its flaws, namely large amounts of 'grain' on the screen when brightness isn't super high (especially noticeable in pretty much every scenario when using a Vita, and on my phone when it's showing darker colours), large susceptibility to screen burn-in (the web browser bar burned into the screen of my Lumia 820 after having one for just two months), the reliance on PenTile (effectively you get 2/3 of the advertised resolution because of that) and the fast degradation of blue subpixels compared to the other pixels, meaning your image quality actually degrades over time.

And that's before the problem of OLED displays having too wide a colour gamut, as such displaying gaudy, unrealistic and oversaturated colours which make me feel a bit sick after moving from a properly calibrated high quality LCD panel (like on my HDTV, an iPad, or my Surface Pro 2). Vita's screen is especially bad at this, as is my Lumia 820's. Only Samsung have gotten it right on their latest phones, which include a "professional photo" image mode that calibrates the OLED screen so it produces colours which don't look oversaturated. Hats off to them.

On the other hand the post processing on a lot of LCD HDTVs (and smartphone screens) seems to ruin a good quality panel too, so again the best solution before buying is to take a look with your own eyes. I'm not a fan of post processing or oversaturated colours but you may well be, I know many people who are.

Of course they are many benefits to OLED screens, my favourite being how it produces black colours by simply switching off the screen in the relevant part (which is great if you have a Windows Phone), but for me the costs far outweigh the benefits. And I've been through many OLED devices.

Cube didn't point it out I did, he just expanded on it.

masofdas wrote:

Cube didn't point it out I did, he just expanded on it.

My bad.

What about this one http://www.amazon.co.uk/Panasonic-TX-P50U30B-50-inch-Widescreen-Freeview/dp/B004P1I9TE/ref=sr_1_6?s=home-theater&ie=UTF8&qid=1383739274&sr=1-6&keywords=panasonic

Don't get me started about HDTV sound/picture lag. :xI hope you have some luck tracking down a suitable alternative, Rattlecat.

That TV looks just the ticket Mas though i would be inclined to wait for it to be a little cheaper as funds are a bit tight at this time of year ( i have 4 kids haha and xmas around the corner ). If sound lag is no problem on that it would be perfect.

I've also been wondering about soundbars too as my father in law has just bought one and claims it has options to sort out soundlag.

I was hoping fronk would of popped up to see if that's any good. But it's big like your misses wanted, plasma, 600hz, 1080p, 20,000,000:1 contrast etc so well speced as well. It's 8 inch bigger then the one i bought 3 years ago and I paid £1200, can't remember if sound good or not, it's something that's never bothered me about lag or anything. So can't help about soundbars.