What 49" 4K HDR TV - Now stuck!

zom247 · 2 Jan 2018 at 12:17

I had a look at the Panasonic 50EX750B yesterday and I like the stand as it's adjustable. I can currently get it for £725 with a gift card but still not sure whether to push the button or not. I've been reading the threads over on AVForums and now I'm not sure if I need to get rid of my Plasma. I'm not really interested in any of the apps as my Humax freesat has them so I really only need a 4k tv with no apps if there is such a thing.

pepp77 · 2 Jan 2018 at 12:24

Amazon Prime HDR is now working. There is no indication on the TV that HDR is being shown, but when you go into picture and turn HDR off and then back on you can see the change it makes very clearly.

Watched a few episodes of Stranger Things in HDR yesterday and was very impressed with the black levels (its quite a dark show), and then the day scenes just popped.

Cant even see where the screen ends

pepp77 · 2 Jan 2018 at 16:14

Looks like currys have a £100 voucher code now - and RS will match and beat by £10 so a new one can be had for £840 - https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/so...s-price-matching-currys-deal-2869628#comments

Pickers · 2 Jan 2018 at 16:55

Currys have upped the price to £999 now! Time to cash in my £874 at JL?

pepp77 · 2 Jan 2018 at 21:33

Doesn't look like the HDR for Blue Planet II has been enabled on the XE9005 iPlayer app. Even so in normal 1080 it still looks pretty damn good.

And whilst posting this I had a fiddle and I can manually change to 2020 colour and it does change the colour shown.

grahamjenks · 3 Jan 2018 at 14:32

pepp77 said:
Doesn't look like the HDR for Blue Planet II has been enabled on the XE9005 iPlayer app. Even so in normal 1080 it still looks pretty damn good.

Yeah - doesn't appear UHD from Iplayer is available either on the built in app - lots of discussion on the AVForum thread. Looks like Sony (or maybe Google) need to pull their finger out!

I also got the same model last week, loving it so far, just need to get Fibre now to make 4k streaming on Prime and Netflix a bit more achievable!

Lanz · 3 Jan 2018 at 14:53

Got the 49XE9005 last weekend for 875 at RS. Loving it so far - Managed to get rid of both Kodi and Fire TV boxes, as the Android TV has replaced them both.

pepp77 · 3 Jan 2018 at 14:59

Yeah I got rid of my Roku box as well (to be sold shortly

) as the apps on the TV work great IMO. I have setup the Discovery button so now I just press that, which brings up Netflix options, with one down to iPlayer, and 2 down to Plex, Amazon Video and the built in Video app (not VLC) that plays 4K h265 MKV files with HDR from my server without issue.

I also managed to get the free Google Movie they had on offer last year - so got Spiderman HomeComing in 4K.

Lanz · 3 Jan 2018 at 15:29

pepp77 said:
Yeah I got rid of my Roku box as well (to be sold shortly ) as the apps on the TV work great IMO. I have setup the Discovery button so now I just press that, which brings up Netflix options, with one down to iPlayer, and 2 down to Plex, Amazon Video and the built in Video app (not VLC) that plays 4K h265 MKV files with HDR from my server without issue.

I also managed to get the free Google Movie they had on offer last year - so got Spiderman HomeComing in 4K.

Yup, good stuff. I haven't chosen my free 4K movie yet, was hoping some more come out soon that I haven't seen, might opt for Close Encounters as that is a classic.

I don't own any H265 MKVs, as up until now i've been running a RPi3 - I've been reading that the network adapter isn't great for this TV (its on a USB2 bus), and the wired is 100mbit only. I cant see myself needing more than 100mbit to the NAS, that would mean 20GB+ MKVs huh?

pepp77 · 3 Jan 2018 at 15:37

Yeah it is annoying that the Ethernet is only 10/100 but to be fair on a decent internal network you should be fine regardless with that. The h265 file I got to test with is about 22Mbps bit rate (so 2 hours totals about 20GB) HEVC and it played without issue on both Ethernet and Wifi and the TV automatically put itself into HDR mode when it played.

Edit - oh and be sure to turn on the enhanced HDMI setting

Set HDMI signal format to Enhanced format
- Press the HOME button on the remote control
- Select Settings
- Select External inputs in the TV category
- Select HDMI signal format and set to Enhanced format

Lanz · 3 Jan 2018 at 15:52

Yeah I set my HDMI to Enhanced - I have a PS4 Pro that goes through a Pioneer 4k Receiver so I needed that setting as my games were throwing up 2K warnings. Only thing I had to do was buy a better long HDMI cable that goes to Pioneer from HDMI3(ARC) as the original one didn't work when I set the port to Enhanced.

I also changed the Android TV last night so it only works with a max of 4 open apps using the dev options, it has speeded up the GUI quite a bit, but apparently it might go back to defaults once I do a hard power down. https://www.reddit.com/r/bravia/comments/69q9fe/performance_tip_limit_background_processes/

Heinz57 · 3 Jan 2018 at 16:46

I get horrible audio sync with our XE9005 from Sky Q and the inbuilt apps (albeit to a lesser extent). It's not perfect through the inbuilt speakers, but the soundbar (CT290) makes it even worse. The TV doesn't seem to have any audio delay settings so I'm not really sure what to try!

pepp77 · 3 Jan 2018 at 18:50

Lanz said:
Yeah I set my HDMI to Enhanced - I have a PS4 Pro that goes through a Pioneer 4k Receiver so I needed that setting as my games were throwing up 2K warnings. Only thing I had to do was buy a better long HDMI cable that goes to Pioneer from HDMI3(ARC) as the original one didn't work when I set the port to Enhanced.

I also changed the Android TV last night so it only works with a max of 4 open apps using the dev options, it has speeded up the GUI quite a bit, but apparently it might go back to defaults once I do a hard power down. https://www.reddit.com/r/bravia/comments/69q9fe/performance_tip_limit_background_processes/

Cheers for the link, I have given it a go and will see if I notice any difference.

Heinz57 said:
I get horrible audio sync with our XE9005 from Sky Q and the inbuilt apps (albeit to a lesser extent). It's not perfect through the inbuilt speakers, but the soundbar (CT290) makes it even worse. The TV doesn't seem to have any audio delay settings so I'm not really sure what to try!

Odd, I don't

On my old TV I had to set the Amp with 100ms delay to keep sync (which worked perfectly across all the inputs). I haven't touched the amp and the sync is also fine on the new TV.

Oh and on a separate note I think the 4K upscaling of 1080p on this TV is really good. Sky Q (non 4K box) HD channels look better than on the old TV.

ichabod crane · 6 Jan 2018 at 11:32

We are currently looking at getting a Sony KD-XE9005, does anyone know if you can record to an external HDD via the youview function?

pepp77 · 7 Jan 2018 at 18:15

ichabod crane said:
We are currently looking at getting a Sony KD-XE9005, does anyone know if you can record to an external HDD via the youview function?

Doesn't appear so - https://support.youview.com/youview-on-sony/about-youview-on-sony/youview-features-on-sony-tv-s

I have been doing a little experiment into the network capabilities of this TV and have come to the following conclusion.

Make sure you have a good 5G Wifi router and connect the TV to the network via that.

Got myself a little HEVC h265 4K HDR rip that has an overall bit rate of 41.7Mbps. I used the cast to feature within Windows to cast the video to the the TV (you could just use the built in video app as well as this is what it automatically plays back via, but VLC seems to struggle with h265 files and Plex will require it to be Transcoded), when on ethernet Windows Task manager showed about 55Mbps network utilization on the casting service when stuttering started occurring in the playback. I got the same experience when connected to 2.4Ghz Wifi, but on 5Ghz Wifi I often saw Task Manager show 80Mbps network usage on this service and stuttering disappeared.

jpaul · 7 Jan 2018 at 22:23

Is windows cast sending the original compressed data stream/codec to the tv (and thus putting zero load on the PC) I had thought it was an inferior re-code MS miracast ?

pepp77 · 7 Jan 2018 at 22:30

CPU usage on the server never went above about 2-3% when casting the video, so yep can only assume it sends it all raw.

Pickers · 10 Jan 2018 at 18:30

£850... Do I push the button??? Got a week to decide...

jpaul · 10 Jan 2018 at 21:48

they are subject to stock being available - no ? see how many they have (some people missed out on oled matches)
nonetheless price tracking on last years models would suggest another 10% in a months time - ring up RS and make a deal at £800 ?

Pickers · 10 Jan 2018 at 21:57

Rs currently have it at 949. You really think they'd go for £800 over the phone?!?