I usually spend ages on reviews of something before i buy.

However argos had a sale on this certain philips 55 inch 4k tv for 450.

It was cheaper than full hd tvs, unless it was a cheap brand like bush or hitatchi.

I think this tv may be newish so theres no comparison on them tv comparison websites.

On the HD channels, xbox, and youtube cast through chromecast it looks lovely. However channels such as e4 and other non HD channels actually look a bit crap dependong on what show is on.

Is this normal? It apparently upscales.

non hd channels look crappy on full hd tv's and will only be worse on 4k tv's.

I think you'll find a few people on here who rate Phillips closer to the "cheap" end, like Bush and Hitachi you mentioned, rather than the top end of Sony and Panasonic and maybe even below middle ground makes like Samsung and LG.

That may be a factor in how well or otherwise they scale up SD to 4k resolution. A lot of Freeview SD channels look pretty rubbish on a HD TV so are almost inevitably going to look worse on a 4k set due to the extra processing required.

There lies your answer, price - whilst it upscales HD well, mostly because HD is generally a good source, it will struggle with poor sources like SD because the scaler will be low quality.

Even though 4k have come down in price I would always recommend full HD over 4k at the same price point, I'd certainly wouldn't recommend one that was cheaper.

Oh well too late now lol

It's a cheap low quality brand and not even Philips any more (who weren't very good anyway).


Upscaling merely makes the picture fit the screen - and a good scaler is what makes the difference between cheap set and a good one.

Arghhh, i always get the bloody wrong product, to be honest for the price i cant complain and the picture is a lot better quality than my previous hitatchi full hd i had

Can a good 4k tv actually make an sd source look crisp and hd like when upscaling on a 55 inch tv?

Or is the size of the tv the main problem.

It should be able to make an SD source look smooth anyway, through the processing. Can't make it look HD like though.

A good 1080p set can make SD look good (my Samsung 5 series does), so no reason why a 4K set shouldn't, as it's basically just 4 pixels for every 1 in the 1080 set.

Obviously the size of the screen is the deciding factor, and a 55" screen is probably pushing it, for an SD source to look good, whether the set is 1080 or 4k.

It does look smooth just not sharp at all, a rather soft image

Well smooth is better than jaggy lines, I'd have thought?
No matter how good the scaling it can't create detail that isn't there.

If the picture is too soft for your taste you can probably turn off some of the processing in the settings.

The results partly depend on the settings on the TV. For example, if you're using the default picture modes then the TV might have a lot of unnecessary (and conflicting) processing going on to sharpen the image and smooth out image noise. The two things are in opposition. It's the same with motion processing.

The other factor is the inherent limit of definition in an SD signal, particularly one from Freeview where there's additional compression for broadcast that reduces the definition even further. On average SD from a DVD will look significantly better than SD from Freeview.

SD done properly should look perfectly acceptable from a normal viewing distance for that screen size.

I took a lot of the processing features off such noise reduction/mpeg reduction artefact/dynamic contrast etc

And the picture has actually improved, weird, its sharper and doesent look as washed out.

Personally I think it's down mostly to the quality of the scaler.
I can only speak from HD experience on this so far, but we have 2 Sony tv's at home. One is older than the other. The older unit is a bit smaller and is only HD ready. The newer unit is bigger, and is full HD. The bigger set does a decent up scaling job on SD pictures. The older, smaller unit is quite frankly a bit rubbish when showing the same channel. And that one is only HD ready so I imagine there's actually less scaling involved. You can visibly see the difference.

When you feed in a very good SD source such as a modern film or tv's prog on pre recorded DVD, the difference between them is much less.

If you feed an HD channel from satellite or a Blu-ray Disc, the difference is less again (they are quite similar).

I can only conclude then that the newer, higher spec (at the time), larger tv simply has a better SD scaler inside it.


As someone who would like to be future proofed (as much as u can be) I would naturally lean toward replacing these older sets with a current 4K unit, but I am fearful that the scalers may not be that good, and as a result won't upscale very well - maybe with a worse picture than we have now for SD. I wonder if as time goes on, SD 4K scalers will improve and get cheaper meaning future 4K sets will do a better job at SD scaling (same issue we see now with our 2 sonys) & be cheaper in the process. It would bug me to buy a 4K this year and suffer a poor picture for most of its life while we wait for more 4K content.

As I said above, the main difference between cheap and expensive sets is the scaler - if you feed them all from a good HD source even cheap sets look good.

We used to have a Sony 'wall' at work, with all the sets fed from the same HD source - I couldn't tell which were cheaper, and which were more expensive.

Was the previous TV a smaller screen?

If a 55" TV is situated at the same distance from seating as the older TV then an SD channel is going to look less sharp than it did.

I've just looked at the Argos site and they are lying liars from Liarville:

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/ArgosP...elevisions.htm

Above some splitscreen fakery they state: "Current HD TVs offer a resolution of 1920 X 1080. With 4K Ultra HD TVs almost quadrupling this resolution to an incredible 3840 X 2160, the difference in brightness, colour and definition is clear to see."

The Full HD side is dull and low-contrast while 4K side is smashingly bright. A complaint to the ASA would resolve this I imagine.

Previous tv was 40 inch, same distance away

That's not too surprising that it's better. If you were.to sit in an edit suite at a TV or film production company and look at the programme monitor that they're using to judge the final output then you'd notice a conspicuous lack of those 'enhancement' features. The monitor there is trying to represent the picture as accurately as possible. All thats required in the way of controls is brightness, contrast, colour and maybe a gamma control. Our TV and DVD/Blu-ray pictures are mastered to a set of standards that defines brightness, contrast and colour levels. The aim when setting up a consumer TV should be to display those levels correctly. Nearly all the rest of a consumer TV's list of other picture controls are artificial add-ons designed to paper-over one or more of the set's deficiencies or some problem elsewhere in the signal delivery chain.

In no longer follows that a smaller to will have a sharper picture than a larger one. Due to multiple variables (various settings being obvious), but the quality of the scaling makes a massive difference to lower res channels.

Even with HD sets, our 32in LCD looks sharper on SD channels than our smaller 26in LCD (on the same SD channel).

i have recently bought a Samsung 55" curved 4K TV and i can honestly say that straight out of the box SD TV is waaaaaaaay better than my old LG 47" 3D Smart TV, and the quality of the HD channels, well, unreal! and i am yet to fiddle with any of the settings but i will at some point.

For what it's worth, I have a full hd 40" samsung smart tv - top of the range model 3 years ago

I have freeview sd set as smart view 2 - this actually reduces the size of the image to roughly the equivalant of a 28" tv

In some cases the image will look better the smaller you go - sd will look better on a smaller screen so maybe u have a image reduction setting somewhere

IMO I think philips are rubbish - tvs, kettles, sonicare - only good product I've had is a led floor uplighter

I would also only get a 4k tv with hdr - ill probably get one when a ps5 comes out and / or freeview 4k (probably 2020+)

Philips electric shavers are good and reliable.

what is the technical term for an SD scaler?? where is it listed in specifications ??

forget about 4k

the next big thing is.....HDR 4k