THE BUDGET HDR CONUNDRUM

Putting together an affordable home entertainment system has been made a lot tougher by the arrival of HDR. Even many expensive TVs struggle with HDR’s challenging brightness and contrast requirements – never mind the wider colour range HDR is also typically accompanied by. So for budget TVs, where contrast and brightness are traditionally limited, HDR is pretty much a nightmare. In fact, many budget TVs look worse with HDR than they do with SDR. So what are your options?

One would be to get a TV that simply doesn’t support HDR; unfortunately, though, precious few budget TVs dare to ditch HDR when so many rivals carry it.

The other thing to look out for is a budget TV which, like the Hisense R50B7120, combines direct LED lighting (where the LEDs are placed directly behind the screen rather than around its edges) with a VA panel (which sacrifice viewing angles but provide good contrast).