well the new football season has arrived
the whether or not yet but the season
has and if you're thinking about frying
a brand-new big-screen TV to watch your
favorite team now is the time you might
find some of those good deals but not
every TVs great at showing all that big
game excitement the experts at Consumer
Reports test hundreds of TVs each year
their senior tech editor Jim Willcox
joins us now to talk about their top
recommended sets for watching football
thank you so much for joining us Jim
first off now is a good summer stop for
TVs what should people be looking for so
you know you'll get some discounts now
but if you can wait a little bit Black
Friday and the Super Bowl both tend to
be better times to buy TVs in terms of
discounts you know if you are shopping
obviously you want to have great picture
quality all the TVs and our recommended
models and our ratings have either very
good or excellent picture quality but
also consider things like viewing angles
some TVs look great when they look at
them head-on but if you're looking at
them from an angle picture can look
washed out and that's important if you
have a lot of people over to watch the
game and then with sports there's a lot
of fast motion some TVs blur a little
bit and you know there are some TVs and
our ratings that do better with that and
other TVs that you'll see some of that
blurring and then finally the last thing
is sound quality so there's a lot of
action and excitement in sports and a
lot of it is related to sound quality
not all TVs do a great job and if they
don't you might want to consider getting
a sound bar so definitely sounds like
there are some important things to look
for for sports fans what do you guys
recommend your specific TV
recommendations I know you test hundreds
each year yeah so if you have the budget
LG makes a TV called the b8 it's an OLED
TV it's one of the top TVs in our rating
it's a little bit pricey it's around
$2,800 for 65 inch set but it really
does everything well for those in a you
know a little bit more of a budget
looking for mid price TV samsung has a
series the Nu 8000 series
it's about $1,300 for a 65 inch TV again
great picture quality doesn't it does a
good job with motion blur and it's got
very good sound and for those people who
just are really on a tighter budget is a
company called TCL that's making some
good TVs the are 615 model another 65
inch TV great picture quality it costs
only nine
hundred and seventy dollars if you need
a smaller TV the 55 inch version of that
said is $600 so much more affordable
yeah it sounds like there are a lot of
good options that you guys recommend now
if we're out shopping what are some
quick and easy ways to tune our TVs for
the best viewing experience so it's
funny it sounds probably
counterintuitive but most TVs have a
sports mode don't use it it tends to
artificially boost pickney of the color
as a contrast and all so we recommend
using the cinema or movie mode which
gives you a more natural looking image
the other thing too is on our website
there's a thing called the TV optimizer
what we're doing now is actually giving
you the settings that we used when we
optimized the TVs you can just plug in
your TV model and see if we've tested it
and if so you'll get the actual settings
that we used wow I had no idea that any
of that was actually a thing do you
think a lot of just average consumers
who are out shopping for TV are clueless
kind of when it comes to those different
settings yeah I think for most people
you know we just wanted to there's a lot
of presets and so we just want to get
people to use the right preset mode but
then there are some people who are a
little more adventurous they want to go
in and find to know all the settings
themselves the great thing is that most
TVs have a factory default mode where if
you screw it up you can just hit that
mode and it'll go back to the original
settings that the TV came with very cool
so again for folks who are out shopping
bottom line what is the top thing that
we need to look for it just in a
nutshell you know for if you're looking
for TV for football make sure that it's
a decent sized TV a lot of people regret
not getting a bigger TV and just make
sure it has good picture quality they
can do justice to the excitement of the
game all right very cool thank you so
much for joining us lots of good tips I
know lots of people are excited about
football season so thank you for taking
time this morning Jim Willcox from
Consumer Reports