The Gamers Arms

My current TV is a decent Sony model, maybe 3 years old. Great picture, very happy with that. The Android interface is serviceable - not perfect, but it only crashes maybe two or three times a year. Honestly, I don't think there's a TV manufacturer out there which has an interface that's as good as it should be in this day and age. I use loads of built in apps on the Sony and generally don't have an issue with them, which is as good as you can hope for.

The Philips TV I bought about 18 months ago is awkwardly shaped so that a soundbar won't fit comfortably in front of it because the feet don't raise it up high enough, the interface is horrible and slow and it if the TV detects a software update while watching an app it closes the app without warning, the remote has quick access buttons for services I'll never use and that I can't modify the function of, along with about 80% of the remote being useless, the HDR looks washed out and you can't turn it off if the source supports it, the default settings for everything have hideous motion smoothing, and for some unfathomable reason it assumes I want separate settings for every single input and app so I had to set my preferred picture settings up about five or six times.

....but I bloody love the Ambilight feature. I don't think I'll ever buy another TV without it, because as frustrating as the thing was to set up, Ambilight is so fundamentally an improvement to the watching experience that I'm willing to put up with all of the above shite.

The ambilight is lovely isn't it. I particularly love watching Bladerunner 2049 on it. The cinematography and light direction in that movie is so beautifully done, it basks the whole room in the ambience.

I'll miss it for sure, as I don't think I'll be buying another Philips again.

You can just stick ambilight into any tv now. Is about £300 stand alone right enough so it ain’t cheap.

I actually recently bought the 55 inch LG CX, and it's been fantastic so far. Hope I don't have the same hardware issues you guys have had with your LG TVs...

It's the first time I've really watched UHD and HDR stuff at home, and it's great. My mouth was genuinely hanging open when I started watching a random HDR video of someone walking around Tokyo. OLED is great, especially for HDR as it's on a per pixel basis, it just has its long term downsides. Hopefully burn-in won't be a problem as I'm not using it as a work monitor for my PC, mostly for shows, films and games.

I bought myself one of Amazon's Fire TV Cube 4ks, partially because I wanted the voice-controlled TV stuff (and it's pretty well set up for that), but also because it gets me away from using the god awful TV remote and TV-based apps that are really sluggish. It's also the only streaming device that I know of that can stream live TV in the channel 4 app (every version will stream the box set stuff, but for some reason it only seems to be the Amazon versions that will do live) - important because I don't have any regular TV-receiving antennae, all of my media comes via the Internet, and I want to watch the F1 as soon as possible.

Anyway, other than a brief teething issue with a flickering display connection (I think I've sorted it now but it took a bit of fiddling in the Cube's display settings), it's a lovely bit of kit. Firstly it's a much better Echo device than my old 2nd-gen Dot that its replaced, I guess the 4K processing hardware gives it a bit more oomph to work on voice recognition as it responds far quicker. The voice control makes for a much snappier experience; I can simply say "Alexa, open Disney Plus", and it'll turn on the TV and open the app ready, rather than having to use two separate remotes (TV and an XBox controller). It'll even let me play films by name, from services other than Amazon's own, although trying to do this with a TV show will play the first episode only.

I think it's still quite steeply priced even at the £60 half price figure I bought it at, but as I got a £50 Amazon voucher when I left my old job, a tenner seemed perfectly reasonable.

I can finally lay the old PS4 to rest before it blows us all to kingdom come.

Nice!

I figured I had more chance getting a PS5 than I did getting the parts for a new PC without selling a kidney or two.

Ohh very nice, where did you snag that from?

AO of all places.

I actually managed to get it last week, but as I'm too cheap to pay for delivery this was the earliest free slot I could manage.

Popped a second Noctua fan on the heatsink and a quick cable tidy.
Not too bad for a really old case (as you can tell by the dvd burner )

Hatredsheart wrote: ↑

Mon Jul 05, 2021 9:02 pm

Popped a second Noctua fan on the heatsink and a quick cable tidy.
Not too bad for a really old case (as you can tell by the dvd burner )

Looks good! What are the specs?

Also, does the second Noctua fan make that much difference to what I am assuming is a UH-12S?

Pew-Pew wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 06, 2021 9:13 am

Looks good! What are the specs?

Also, does the second Noctua fan make that much difference to what I am assuming is a UH-12S?

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/grees0 ... iew=Tthjyc

The second fan only cost £15 and shaved about 4-5 degrees with no extra noise.

Nice build. The fan is only £15? Would have thought they'd be more than that.

Is the monitor from a previous build? I'd go for a 1440p 144 Hz (or higher) if I were you. My system is very similar (5600X, 32 GB RAM, RTX 3070) and 1440p 144 Hz is a great sweet spot for it!