Getting the best out of your TV viewing
Television has come a long way in recent years. From Netflix to projectors, here's how to get the most out of your viewing.
The best subscription service: The Sky Q box offers the best viewing experience you can get right now and is perfect for telly addicts, says Stuff magazine. You can watch one channel while recording four others and stream to other devices,such as tablets. Sky's mammoth catalogue of viewing includes blockbuster films and big-name TV shows, including the hit drama Game of Thrones. It "works seamlessly and could change the way you watch TV".
£100 and £42 a month, Sky.com
The best TV: "OLED" screen technology is the future of television, says T3 magazine, and the LG 65EF950V has all the attractions you could need on a flat screen. It is "gorgeously designed" and comes with a more reasonable price tag than you might expect. The picture is near perfect and a dream come true for home-cinema fans.
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£3,600, LG.com
The best streaming service: You could spend the next decade systematically watching everything on leading TV streaming service Netflix (see below), but it's easier than ever to broaden your tastes, says Stuff. Mubi, for example, is the online equivalent of a "cool indie cinema". Whereas Netflix has more than 30,000 titles, Mubi has just 30, with a new offering swapped every day. But the quality is high: "everything's worth watching and major blockbusters sit among the more artful selections".
£4.99 a month, Mubi.com
The best projector: The Sony VPL-VW520ES big screen projector will set you back more than £8,000, but that actually looks very fair value for such a cutting-edge beast, says TrustedReviews.com. The HDR (high dynamic range) picture quality is ground-breaking and "sumptuous".
£8,800, Sony.co.uk
The best speakers: Soundbars tend to be anonymous-looking black boxes that sit unnoticed under your telly, but the Dali Kubik One comes in a variety of colours to match your curtains and shout about how great it is, says Stuff. The sound is so good you could even use it as your stereo when there's nothing on the box.
£800, Dali-Speakers.com
Five of the best Netflix shows
The Watchmaker's Apprentice
Breaking Bad is perhaps the best TV drama show of our times a Dostoevskyan tale of crime and punishment that makes for incredibly addictive yet disturbing viewing. Fans who miss the show should now tune in to Better Call Saul, a prequel that shows how the corrupt lawyer in Breaking Bad broke bad himself. It is a "gripping" story of the "tug and war" for a soul, says Brian Moylan in The Guardian, and is "a thrill to watch".
You may never have heard of yoga guru Yogananda, but you have almost certainly seen him he's standing just below Bob Dylan on the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Awake is the story of his life and it might, if George Harrison is to be believed, "regroove your mind". Even if you like your mind in its present groove, the documentary is a fascinating insight into a cultural moment when East met West at the beginning of the modern era.
Yogananda wanted to bring enlightenment to the West; the West worried what this "snake-charmer" was doing to its women. Not everyone proved resistant to his charms: oil tycoon and self-made millionaire James Lynn renounced his wealth to become a disciple.
Finally, Battlestar Galactica, an epic reimagining of the 1970s TV show, is "light years ahead" of other sci-fi, says Stuff. The crew ranges over the galaxy, but also over such themes as trust, religion, death, love and what it means to be human.
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Stuart graduated from the University of Leeds with an honours degree in biochemistry and molecular biology, and from Bath Spa University College with a postgraduate diploma in creative writing.
He started his career in journalism working on newspapers and magazines for the medical profession before joining MoneyWeek shortly after its first issue appeared in November 2000. He has worked for the magazine ever since, and is now the comment editor.
He has long had an interest in political economy and philosophy and writes occasional think pieces on this theme for the magazine, as well as a weekly round up of the best blogs in finance.
His work has appeared in The Lancet and The Idler and in numerous other small-press and online publications.
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