Gadgetory

expert service unbeatable price Best Buy a lots changed in the TV aisles since we last talked about a year ago I'm Brian Cooley with the things you need to keep in mind when you go shopping for a TV now perhaps the biggest news is plasmas gone Panasonic was the first to get up the ghost in mid-2014 LG followed late in the year and samsung says 2014 walls to me their last year of selling plasma TVs in the u.s. so here the technologies you're looking at now LCD now today that means typically LED LCDs that means a liquid crystal display on the front like on a computer monitor or most televisions but then in the back it's lit by high-performance LEDs like the light-emitting diodes you see in flashlights today but specially tuned for television production then there's Oh le D organic light-emitting diode these televisions tend to be very thin have amazingly deep black saturated colors low power consumption and in fact the best TV in the world to our eyes right now is an OLED TV the downside is this is a maturing cutting-edge technology so you're gonna pay quite a bit if you wait a couple of years you'll probably get a better more refined OLED TV for even less money but if you're an early adopter go ahead and jump in they're amazing now the next technology to be aware of is resolution the current TV mainstream is called Full HD or 1080p that refers to a thousand eighty lines of picture counted from top to bottom this is the vast majority of TVs out there and that also matches very well to the majority of content and player devices that exist out there then there's the much talked about 4k which is a TV with twice the lines and twice the columns of pixels and therefore four times the resolution of 1080 now that doesn't mean it looks four times as sharp but in a really large TV it can make a noticeable difference the TVs are coming on market and good numbers the content is one of the big questions though there's not a lot now though it's growing fast you'll typically find it on streaming platforms actually Amazon and Netflix for example the satellite guys are beginning to get into 4k distribution in a limited way and there's also talk of a Sumer blu-ray Disc 4k standard but you have to ask yourself do you really want to rebuy your library of discs now 4k TVs as I mentioned are coming on the market in good numbers and the prices are starting to fall rapidly as well which is a hallmark of the flat panel TV industry however we're still at the earlier stage where not all models are considered very good or better so make sure you shop carefully and check our reviews in detail before you lay down some money on a 4k set here's where it all comes together the bottom line is the best LED LCD TVs in the market right now are also 4k models so you may end up buying a 4k TV even though you don't necessarily want one but it's good future proofing and they're all also excellent full HD televisions finally streaming everybody's streaming video these days so make sure you've got a good plan to get to that in your new television just about all TV's arrive with some form of built-in streaming in the television itself however we remain big fans of the add-on set-top boxes like a Roku box or an Apple TV there's an inexpensive class of add-ons that you've called the sticks if you will streaming sticks like Google chromecast and Amazon fire TV that work really well are very cheap and a great way to gift someone into the streaming era if they're not really up on it just yet also the first TV just arrived on the market in 2014 with built-in roku technology their interface their streaming and their library of content some final thoughts first curved screens they've been on the market about a year now and a year in we still need their basically gimmicks don't sweat buying one and when it comes to brands I'm sure you think about the big boys like Samsung LG Vizio Panasonic but don't leave out some of the upstarts that are making some very interesting products they would be companies like TCL and Hisense and higher you can find all of our reviews and more tips on buying a TV at cnet.com slash