*** General TVs Talk Thread ***

Soldato
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https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/samsung/q80-q80r-qled

Damn, lots of little things wrong with this TV. Samsung really likes gimping next year's products after a good year.

Seems like this wide va layer is another thing to worry about and which causes issues. Figures. Also, poor input lag results for 120hz, esp @ 1080p. I wonder why that went back up.

A lot of disappointment for this year's TVs I have to say. Kudos to LG for HDMI 2.1 but everything's (for all TVs) looking the same as last year qualitatively (at best) but with a bigger price tag. Yikes!
 
Soldato
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Damn, lots of little things wrong with this TV. Samsung really likes gimping next year's products after a good year.
I'm more sceptical about the value of FALD solutions, to create an enjoyable image viewing in the dark (I wouldn't pay a premium for it), but,
for light conditions, a good IPS produces acceptable contrast and black level, and if the 'wide' VA layer is giving you better than that IPS (and cheaper panel to boot) then in the flesh they/samsung maybe fine.
 
Soldato
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thought this thread had some good comments about fald and the bipolar aspect to the uhd premium classification
https://www.avforums.com/threads/fald-worth-the-money-gaming-usage.2196894/page-2

The Q6 isn't bright enough to pass UHD Premium standards and therefore isn't classified as UHD Premium. It does have a 10bit panel though, and surpass the minimum requirements for black level and colour gamut. When calibrated, a Q6 isn't as bright enough and has similar Peak Brightness as a calibrated OLED TV which passes UHD Premium standards because the requirements for Black Level and Brightness are different for OLEDs (0.0005nits Black Level - OLEDs pass as they can deliver 0.0000nits, and 540nits Peak Brightness and OLEDs tend to be in between 650-800nits). The fact the Q6 doesn't deliver at least 1000nits is why it fails UHD Premium Certification

so Q6 fails the max nits, which would make it good for the oled classification .. so the uhd premium badge is just advisory (and sony don't play the game anyway)

and threads re-iterates.
FALD itself isn't exempt from bloom either - it may have more dimming zones but what that can mean is that bloom is limited to those zones only. This works well for movies because the Black Bars tend to remain black because the zones below those black bars can have the lights turned off where as edge-lit - specifically top/bottom edge-lit TV's - still have to illuminate the Picture. The more zones you have - which FALD can offer - the more you can reduce the bloom and control the light behind the panel.

You can get Edge-Lit TV's with better 'filters' to block light than FALDs and the bloom can be more obvious on a FALD because it doesn't 'fade to black' like a natural aura but ends up having a hard edge where the zones meet. You can see the arrangement of the zones by the Bloom. White text on Black for example may end up as white text on blocky looking 80% Grey with great blacks around it where as a edge-lit will be white on 95% Grey that fades out quickly to black in a more natural looking way like an aura around candles. If you watch a movie, you may notice the blacks aren't perfect with an Edge lit, but with a FALD, parts of the Picture may show the zones.

Point is, FALD itself isn't necessarily better than edge lit. If you have two equally excellent LED's that really do their best to minimise Bloom, then chances are FALD will be the better TV.
 
Soldato
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Tbh I have never, nor will I ever, pay attention to these sort of "badges". That's just marketing to make a quick buck from unaware customers (i.e. 99% of them).

As for the FALD vs Edge Lit bit, it strikes me as a "in theory, theory & practice are the same..". I simply haven't seen an edge lit rival a decent FALD TV for HDR, let alone put up a fight versus the best FALD. Fair enough though, no one really makes the attempt anymore.

I do wish I had a Q7FN to test for HDR gaming vs the XF90. I'd love to see how it handles Odyssey comparatively.
 
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New Samsung sets are beyond spendy.

Looking at a 75Q7F as it looks to be the best value of the 2018 sets. The Q9 is still £1200 more and not worth it for general TV viewing with the odd HDR HLG/Netflix/Amazon.

Would be nice to see the Sony 9000XF come down from £2300 and be more competitive.

I'd love an OLED, but as I'm needing a 75"+ screen, the £5k+ for the 77' is hilariously bad value.

Never has it been soo hard to pick a large TV, more so down to choosing the best combination of negatives rather than just picking the perfect one.

*Goes back to the snug with the 9G Kuro and watch TV without any issues* :p
 
Caporegime
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RTINGS' review of the 55'' X950G

https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/sony/x950g

Tl;dr it's an XF90

i would say it's a XF90 with much better brightness across the board for HDR but not worth double the price for a minor increase.

it's very similar though. if you have an XF90 you would be mad to upgrade. but if you don't i would wait for them to become cheaper. should be a cracking tv. will need to look at samsung offerings within the same price range.
 
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Yeah the XF9005 is looking mighty fine, just need it to come down a little more.

How do you find the Android OS?

In comparison I found the Samsung Tizen system a joy to use, plus it has a Now TV app so we don't need another stupid dongle and remote.
 
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First reviews for the Sony A9G OLED are out.

Tldr: the A9G is basically just the 2018 TV repackaged.

Compared to the LG C9: the Sony has no HDMI 2.1 and so you don’t get 4K 120hz, no VRR, no ALLM etc. The LG gets brighter than the Sony and also has the better image quality.

You’d be hard pressed to find a reason to buy this years Sony OLED
 
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First reviews for the Sony A9G OLED are out.
;) I had similarly just read a new c9 review (flatpanels are the Carlsberg of tv reviewers)
https://www.flatpanelshd.com/review.php?subaction=showfull&id=1559035462

caught my eye that the c9 is dimmer than the c8 in hdr etc

Another new feature that affects SDR video is LG's "AI Picture" setting that can be activated to have the TV analyze content on-screen and adapt its picture settings on the fly. LG explains that it is tied to a database with over 3 million samples of content and a machine learning system. This is basically next-generation picture enhancement and it is not something we can endorse. We do not agree with the sentiment that a TV's job is to enhance the picture. In our view, a TV's job is to respect the content (colors, frame rate etc) and present it in the most accurate way possible
...
Switching our attention to HDR (High Dynamic Range), we measured 725 nits peak brightness on LG C9, which is actually around 100 nits lower than what we measured on last year's C8. The next milestone for OLED is hitting 1000 nits, and 100 nits difference is not too important in actual use but it is a curious development - or perhaps just variance in samples. As you can see in our measurements table, brightness starts to drop significantly at a 25% window, which means that 25% of the screen is white (while the rest is black). This is due to an embedded system called ABL (automatic brightness limiter) that regulates power consumption and driving intensity. With full-screen white (100% window), the TV manages to pump out 154 nits brightness. For HDR, LG - and LG Display - should be focused on increasing those 25-50% brightness levels. No one wants to be blinded by 500+ nits on a full-screen, so that number is less of a concern to us.

We reiterate this because it seems that many do not fully comprehend peak brightness for HDR. While 1% of a screen sounds like a small area, it is actually not very small (for example, the bright spots in the photo of the lady below are far smaller than 1%). A 1% window takes up 82944 pixels on a 4K panel. Many of the brightest elements in an HDR picture fall within such small segments. Stars, lamps, reflections in surfaces, subtitles etc. So while some LCD TVs today can theoretically hit 2000-4000 nits peak brightness, the limited luminance control of all commercial LCD panels mean that they often produce visibly lower peak brightness than OLED in actual HDR viewing, unless a much larger segment of the picture is bathed in light, for example a bright sky or a big explosion that takes up a considerable amount of screen estate. But then again, that bright sky is very unlikely to coded to 1000 or even 600 nits in the content. That is not healthy to look at and most organizations involved recommend that content creators reserve those peak brightness pops for specular highlights in the picture.
....
Before we switch our attention to HDMI 2.1, we want to address the subject of brightness flashing and blocking issues. LG has released a solution for its existing TVs. We never had a chance to examine it on a 2018 LG OLED but based on what we have heard this solution seems to have been employed in 2019 LG OLED TVs as well. It works in the sense that we did not observe the issues with any of our real scene or pattern tests. But the solution bothers us. As you can see in the shot to the right, the panel now uses dithering to reproduce shades of grey
 
Soldato
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We had a chance to compare Sony A9G (AG9) and LG C9 side-by-side. It is clear that LG has caught up in key areas while surpassing Sony in others. Sony A9G is considerably more expensive than LG C9 but it is not justified, if you ask us. Picture quality is so similar that it is hard to justify even before adding in the fact that LG's OLED TVs feature four full-fat HDMI 2.1 ports, several HDMI 2.1 features, and better gaming performance.

In the end, A9G feels like a repackaged Sony OLED TV with a new artificially high price tag.

https://www.flatpanelshd.com/review.php?subaction=showfull&id=1559897568
https://www.flatpanelshd.com/review.php?subaction=showfull&id=1559035462
 
Soldato
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Philips 65PUS6753/12 on offer for £599, looks pretty unbeatable at the price. I am very tempted myself, I posted here a while back of another deal I saw but I didn't end up going for it. This looks to be superior in every way however!
 
Soldato
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so link us up with a review .. the deal on hotuk has no links .... still have a philips ips with ear speakers used as a bedroom tv
Well it would take you 2 seconds to google it, im not too sure if I can link a few sites which have user reviews. But looks a good deal either way.
 
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