What TV should I buy and how do I get the picture to look the way I want it

[DaneClark]

I want to replace my vizio smart tv with a new one that doesn't have the same annoying problems with black levels and saturation. What's the best brand/model for me to buy? And how should I have my picture settings set up - my vizio had 2 sima color correctors hooked up, I got used to how my setup had the sharpness turned all the way down and had some hard-to-describe imperfections with the color that I actually liked because it reminded me of 90s cable (I just didn't like the problems with the black/white levels and saturation, and the hard-to-describe imperfections that I'm describing could have just been in my head), I need to take into account the fact that the Simas may have been responsible for smoothing out some artifacts that were on my homemade ripped-from-vhs DVDs that I might want to be able to smooth out without the Sima correctors, and the fact that I increased the brightness/contrast/saturation settings that are built straight into my Samsung DVD player and need to know whether or not I need to set them back to normal in order for the settings I'm given to look the way they were intended

[davexnet]

I would read the reviews , consider perhaps TV's with local dimming or possibly even OLED

[usually_quiet]

OLED is the only flat screen technology in use today which is capable of perfect blacks, but all such TVs are UHD resolution, and the smallest (55 inches) and cheapest ($1500+) current model is the LG OLED55B7A. Every other type of flat screen TV is incapable of perfectly black blacks. TVs with FALD (full-array local dimming) are next best to OLED, but most of them are also large, UHD resolution models.

It is unrealistic to expect any flatscreen TV to have settings which will hide the defects in your homemade VHS to DVD conversions like a CRT would.

[LMotlow]

So far, the O.P. has ignored everything suggested earlier about calibrating TVs and monitors. I suspect this time next year he'll be making the same requests here and elsewhere.

The AVS forum has a ton of threads and sections detailing everything that can to be done to adjust tvs, and get certain effects, the characteristics and limits of a great many old and new tvs, all kinds of links and free test methods and software. And here's a whole page of TV tests and how the tests were made, with the results: http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/category/reviews . American models of these same TVs have similar characteristics.

I don't see why you keep wasting your time doing the same thing again and again. Get the proper equipment and stop beating your head against the walls.

[Cornucopia]

I would also hope the OP would honestly face the fact that SD, and even moreso, VHS does now and has always "looked like crap". Back in the old SD/VHS/CRT days, we didn't have anything to compare against (except film, which we know was "different"), so we didn't know better. We do now.

Yes, CRTs and Plasmas and OLEDs have blacker blacks than LCD/LED or DMD, but those devices (LCD/LED) still show great pictures in a great way and with (arguably) decent blacks, and (arguably) even brighter whites. It's only that the poor pictures get truly exposed for how poor they are.

Learn to live with the past being what it was and existing with the artifacts of its time.

Scott