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Consumer Reports joined Into Tomorrow this week to tell us whether they think the time has finally come to consider a 4K TV:
Is it finally time to buy a 4K ultra HDTV? Consumer Reports thinks this might be the year. Their electronics spokesman James McQueen is here to explain.
Despite the hype over 4K TVs during the past two years, we held off on recommending that people go out and buy them. Now that’s changing.
We had a few reasons for hesitating. First off, there were barely any 4K movies or TV shows to watch. Secondly, the sets were considerably more expensive, and we knew the prices would drop, as they always do. And, finally, the higher resolution by itself wasn’t that noticeable to most viewers sitting a typical distance from the screen.
What mattered more, we thought, were additional enhancements to UHD picture quality including high dynamic range, or HDR, and an increased range of colors via wide color gamut, or WCG, technology. When done well, these features can produce impressive, more lifelike images, but we were concerned that these technologies were still evolving.
After meeting with TV makers at CES 2016, we think that the industry has progressed enough so that it now makes sense to consider a 4K UHD TV, especially if you’re looking to future-proof a purchase.
For more info on this story, visit ConsumerReports.org.
Chris recommended an app he’s been playing with:
Revisiting an app I first highlighted a couple years ago. But there are some cool updates. Songza was a music app, similar to Pandora, only better in my opinion. They were recently acquired by Google, and as of this weekend, the app is now part of Google Play Music. When you first launch the Google Play Music app, it will say at the top something like “It’s Friday afternoon, play music for:” and then you have some choices, based on the day and time of day. It will be things like Summertime, An energy Boost, A sweaty dance party, taking the day off, and things like that. Once you choose, it gives you a few more choices. Let’s say you chose “Taking the day off.” the next screen tells you to pick your activity or destination. You can choose things like “Lying on a beach,” Driving on the open road or walking through the woods.Chose one of those, and it gives you a few specific playlists to choose from. Pick one of those, and the music that they feel is best suited to your mood starts playing. It seems like of lot of choices to go through, but it does a really good job of fitting the music that plays to your current mood. This is a free app, available on iOS devices, and no surprise, Android devices, as well.
