How to choose Television for Yourself?

Nowdays wide array of high-definition (HD) and 4K Ultra HD sets are in stores.The paramount factors for most shoppers will be screen size and price. Choices, from 30 inches to up to 110 inches, is available in LED (light-emitting diode) LCD standard HD models.Manufacturers continue to shift to the Ultra HD, or 4K, format, which offers four times the number of pixels of an HDTV.

Things to remember:

1. Don’t buy a TV with less than 1080p resolution.

2. Don't buy a TV with less than a 120 Hz refresh rate.

3. Consider a 4K Ultra HD TV if you want your TV to be acceptable five years from now.

4. OLED TVs look much better than a typical LED LCD, but they are considerably more expensive.

5. For state-of-the-art models, look for an HDR-compatible set, which offers more realistic colors.

6. Look for at least 4 HDMI ports; 4K shoppers should ask about HDCP compatibility.

7. Curved TVs are a fashion statement. They don’t benefit image quality.

Whether you're looking for a basic or high-performance TV, the biggest factor in your decision will probably be screen size. Consider how many people in your family typically watch at once and where you're going to put your new set. A good rule of thumb is that you should sit at a distance from the TV that is three times more than the height of the screen for HD and just 1.5 times the screen height for 4K Ultra HD. In other words, you can sit twice as close to a 4K UHD TV.So choose a screen size and resolution appropriate for the distance you will sit from the screen.

Resolution describes the sharpness of the TV picture, usually in terms of horizontal lines of pixels. A bargain HD set may support only 720p, which means the set displays 720 lines scanned progressively (or in a single pass). You should consider — support the 1080p HD format, also called Full HD, which has 1,080 lines of resolution. Even in the smallest TV sizes, we recommend avoiding 720p models.

TV manufacturers are rapidly shifting over from HDTVs to Ultra HD sets (also called 4K). These 4K models have four times the number of pixels as current HDTV screens. We’re talking 2,160 horizontal lines, or 3840 x 2160 pixels. The biggest benefit of 4K TVs is that small objects on the screen have more detail, including sharper text. Overall, images appear richer and more lifelike than on an HDTV, but the benefits can be subtle.

The refresh rate, expressed in Hertz (Hz), describes how many times per second a picture is refreshed on the screen. The standard refresh rate is 60 times per second, or 60 Hz. However, in scenes with rapidly moving objects, a 60 Hz refresh rate can make things look blurry or jittery, particularly on LCD HDTVs. So, to create a more solid picture, manufacturers doubled the refresh rate to 120 Hz (and in some cases up to 240 Hz).

A word of caution: beware of terms like "effective refresh rate," which means the actual frame rate is half of the stated rate (e.g., a "120 Hz effective refresh rate" is actually a 60 Hz refresh rate).

Don't buy a TV with less than a 120 Hz refresh rate.

Another innovation intended to attract shoppers' attention is curved screens — mostly used for OLED TVs and 4K LCDs. The idea, say manufacturers, is to make the TV-watching experience more immersive.

However, not only do curved screens have no technical advantage over the other sets, but they actually have some distinct disadvantages. For one, the slightly curved aspect distorts the image and reduces the available side-viewing angles, thus limiting the best view to a few people sitting in a narrow, center sweet spot. LED models also are less likely to produce uniform brightness across the screen.

An increasing number of sets come with built-in Wi-Fi for connecting Internet-based services. Smart capability is becoming a standard feature in TVs, so it's less and less of a factor in your buying decision.