Best 4K TV for sporting events?
 

Hey everyone, I have been learning so much about technology both old and new from this forum, so glad I came across it. Hopefully after a couple more weeks/months of reading all the articles and tips that gets posted here I won't need to ask any stupid questions like these but here it goes.

I am surprisingly outdated when it comes to TV's. The last time I bought a new TV was in 2011, maybe even 2010. Since then I have bought a cheap TV overseas when travelling so I had something in my room but that was just a simple Samsung LED that I can't even find sold anymore. Now it is time for me to finally upgrade, I have some money saved up and with NFL preseason starting up I haven't a moment to lose. I am looking to spend $1,500 on a TV, maybe a couple hundred more if it is a huge upgrade. Samsung seems to still be corning the TV market, so would that be a good place to look? I saw some Samsung 4K TVs online that were priced really well ( I think ) while still being quite big machines. Just looking for some advice from smart, normal people instead of reviewers who are looking out for themselves. Thanks for all the suggestions in advance everyone!

My 2 cents worth. The big question is do you have access to sufficient 4K content (especially live sports which appears to be your priority) to make it worth the expenditure today? (Many if not most people do not, and on-line sources may be bandwidth limited.)

Keep in mind that set prices drop and features are added quite quickly over time. No compelling point in buying until there is sufficient content of interest/importance to YOU to make the upgrade worth it.

That is a really good mention, I had read earlier that the NFL was filming all their games with 4K and 8K cameras, but after reading some more it seems that the networks then scale down the resolution (especially Fox who don't even broadcast in 1080). Whether or not a game will be broadcast this year in 4K from a TV station apart from the couple of games that had 4K Chinese stream is up in the air. I will have to do some more research, it seems possible that all of the sudden a game might be getting broadcast in 4K without any prior word from the station from what people are saying online. Never would have thought of that before though, cheers.

So I have decided to wait on the 4K TV, at least until I hear something definitive from either the NFL, NCAA, or even the CFL airing games in full 4K resolution. I assumed that in 2017 all major sports that we pay a lot of money to watch would be in 4K, but I guess not. Oh well.

Shooting in 4K (or even higher) now makes sense for the NFL, etc. for future-proofing their archives (at least for the near term) and it can be of help in things like instant replay/slo-mo/special effects for broadcast (e.g., digital zoom) and for official review of calls on the field. But broadcasting higher than HD only makes sense only when sufficient potential viewers have 4K capability, either 4K sets, or seamless 4K down conversion in their set top boxes. That they can charge for ads is based on the number of viewers.

However, if cost is not a significant issue for you, may be worth evaluating 4K sets with current HD material anyway. It is possible that other improvements in set video processing would allow the set to display a noticeably nicer image from the same HD material than a current HD set. (That certainly happened in the case of DVD material.)

There are other benefits to getting a 4K TV besides 4K native content. The vast majority of OLED TVs are 4K if you are interested in the technology. Also people seem to be raving about the picture that HDR (high dynamic range) content produces from sources like Ultra HD BluRays. Once again, the majority of these TVs are coming in 4K resolution although Sony recently committed to rolling out the feature to all of their 1080p sets.