My TV died on Sunday. To be fair, i bought it for £50 many years ago and we have had our monies worth from it.
So it's new tv time. I started looking and then i got confused. There are so many different features about this and that and after much googling it appears that majority of features are not comparable between the brands.
So i want a 32" (apparently this is now classed as small tv.. ) Smart TV with bells and whistles. Bells & whistles being the tv apps and stuff, amazon/bbc/all4/youtube etc. I'm thinking Samsung brand maybe Sony.. so i've done my looking and found
THIS TV HERE!
Can anyone who is in the know tell me if that is any good? Does it have the right gubbins? Are there "better" ones i should look at?
Looking to spend £50 again, but not being overly optimistic i'll stretch to £300 ish.
Fanks!
Comments
Personally I wouldn't bother with a "smart" TV. All the software in it will be out of date in 3 or 4 years time. Just get a dumb one with a decent screen and get something like an Amazon Fire Stick for the smart content.
If you need a new version of the Fire Stick in 4 years time that's probably a lot simpler for £35.
I just got a new 58" Panasonic , and they sales guy said it should last 5 yrs...after that your lucky...cheap tech in side.
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So you need something external anyway. Unless there is no price difference you are better off saving money on the TV and using something external to get the content.
It's very difficult to get everything in one place on any device. Google and Amazon are having a spat at the moment. You can still get YouTube on a Fire Stick via the browser, and it doesn't function all that differently, but it can be a pain.
Don't think you can get Now TV on the Amazon devices either, but the Now TV device also doesn't have certain things on.
I have a 5 year old Sony that surprisingly still handles Amazon Prime plus some obscure stuff that I never use. You Tube dropped out of it's compatibility a while back. The 1st Smart TV I had was a Panasonic - it appeared to fall out of love with YouTube within 6 months of me buying it (it was a brand new model as well).
I've found Samsung to be poor with respect to iPlayer support...it does the catch-up bit but not "Live Streaming / Play from start" for programmes that are "On air now".
The BT / Humax external box is very good for iPlayer / Netflix / Now Player (excluding live content purchased via one day / month passes).
So all in all - go for external boxes / sticks for the smart bit...it's cheaper and less frustrating when it stops working!
both my smart TVs regularly get app updates so not sure why yours doesn’t
So Firmware version is 1520....no firmware update available via online updater.
I can launch iPlayer, put it into "beta mode" etc.
I can watch live streaming via iPlayer BUT if I select a programme that started 10 minute ago, the latest iPlayer should give you a choice "do you want live" - "do you want to play from the start". My TV doesn't - it only plays live.
My BT/Humax box on the other hand supports this function perfectly
The TV is about 2 years old - it was latest model when I bought it, 55 inch UHD, wasn't cheap.
https://i.imgur.com/kUzhyup.jpg
iPlayer via embedded Samsung
https://i.imgur.com/3GL75Bz.jpg
iPlayer via Huamx/BT Box
https://www.richersounds.com/tv-projectors/tv-projectors-label/all-tvs.html?tv_screen_size_breaks=1377
That said, it proves my point about smart TVs, you're better off getting one with loads of HDMIs and plugging every cheap smart device into it to give it "brains".
That's all I've used for years, small Dell Opliplex PC and HDM1 cable into TV, wireless keyboard and mouse
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