Home Theater | CX Gang

By HasphatsAnts Go To PostAny good deals for Prime Day?

By RobNBanks Go To PostMy Apple TV won't display HDR, do I need a different type of HDMI cable? I thought they were all the same shit

I was at the HDTVTest shootout. Here are my 2 sets of impressions:

Results:

Best overall TV: Panasonic FZ802 OLED

Best HDR TV: LG C8 OLED

Best gaming TV: Samsung Q9FN QLED

Best living room TV: Sony AF8 OLED

Best home theater TV: Panasonic FZ802 OLED

My notes:
Samsung: Black, near black and uniformity performance is awful when next to the oled’s. Great sets for gaming. Sweet spot is very narrow with major PQ deg. off axis. This set had a major dse issue making it not viable for purchase.

LG. Great all around but not masterful at anything. Still the price to performance leader. Opposite of Sony for strengths and weaknesses.

Sony: Great SDR, upscales the best, best gradation. HDR lacks punch significantly when compared to ref monitors and other oleds.

Panasonic: by far the best colors and closest to ref monitors there. Combine LG’s HDR with Sony’s video processing and you a Panasonic. Came at the expense of black crush.

Overall: all the oleds were quite close with nitpicking and individual use cases being the decider. Outside of hdr brightness, the Q9 falls well behind. The LCD tech, outside of a major breakthrough is going to struggle.
Another great event ran by Vincent and company!

Adding more thoughts from the shootout:

- It's important to note that the difference in scoring between the top 2 were often a low as three place beyond the decimal point! These sets are really close and one of the challenges Vincent had was actually finding content that would highlight the differences between the OLED's. Even then you had to have an eye. No detail was given on what to look for specifically in the content so it was purely your ability and sensitivity to issues that determined your score.

- Tyler form Calman (most familiar brand) mentioned that gaming studios they have worked with are becoming focused on following standards and mastering their games to hollywood like standards while respective artistic intentions. So it's no longer about gaming PQ taking a back seat to latency. TV manufacturers will have to step up and provide low latency along with good adjustability in gaming mode. That's great news all around

- There were a total of 4 calibrators there. Vincent from HDTVTest. Tyler and his coworker from Calman and the main guy (and highly respected) from HDTV Poland. If I missed anyone, please jump in and correct me. This means you had multiple perspectives which is important

- All sets had 100+ hours on them before calibration

- There is a sense of depth and saturation to the picture that OLED's seem to have natively that the Q9F and even last year, the Z9D simply couldn't touch. The perceived depth and saturation is likely due to each pixel being a black canvas that the color is extruding from thus giving it natural richness. I'm not sure if this shows up in measurements but side by side, it's clear as can be

- Having the Sony mastering monitors is a huge plus and we had 2 this time allowing each set to be adjacently compared to the Sony RGB oled monitor. This takes all the guess work and "what if" out of the equation. You simply look at the picture as it's intended and then determine how close each sets comes. Simple but powerful.

- I brought up the point about color volume and this led to a good discussion. Vincent stated that he found such little value in this parameter that he's stopped measuring it as part of his review process. Other professionals didn't protest this finding either. One of the calman guys mentioned a specific scene in a movie where's a clown's nose fell outside of the working range of the color gamut and in that particular instance, you could see a difference.

- We also had a good discussion about the future of LCD. Vincent stated that they can keep upping the brightness and adding more zones but the problem, as @rogo has mentioned here for years, is the cost to manufacture. The more LCD's try to match OLED's on quality, while the OLED's continue to drop in price rapidly, the harder it becomes from an economics standpoint to stay in the fight

- Tyler mentioned a new LCD mastering panel out by Panasonic (could be wrong on the brand) that is 2 LCD's packed together. The 1st LCD acts as the light control and the 2nd LCD is there for color. This allows the 1st LCD to control the light at a per pixel level. Currently 20k for 30 inches if you're wondering about feasibility. Hopefully we get to see one next year at the shootout. I believe it was limited to 1000nits and some issue with off axis along with cross talk due to the panel sandwich approach.

By The Frankman Go To PostPCMag reviews the TCL R617

In terms of design, the Z9Fs look… OK. Their use of a highly sophisticated direct backlighting system inevitably means they look a bit chunkier round the back than most modern TVs, and their large, angled feet supports look a little clumsy. The Z9F does, though, continue Sony’s recent policy of providing cable tidy channels in the feet for hiding away your cabling.

What you’re really interested in, though, is the Z9Fs’ picture quality. And we can kick things off here with some overwhelmingly good news: Sony really does seem to have finally cracked LCD’s viewing angle problem.

Side by side comparisons were available against both one of Sony’s own X940E TVs and Samsung’s 65Q9FN QLED TVs, and in both cases the Z9F won by a landslide. In fact, the new ‘X-Wide Angle’ optical panel design Sony’s engineers have come up with is so good that it genuinely puts LCD on a par with OLED in viewing angle terms. The importance of this cannot be overstated.

Turning to other aspects of the Z9F pictures, the thing to have in mind is that Sony has shifted focus from where it was at a couple of years ago when the Z9D came out. Now, as part of its new ‘Master Series’ high-end TV promise, Sony is focused on trying to deliver accurate pictures. An approach which essentially seems to revolve around trying to match the Master Series TVs’ pictures as closely as possible to the pictures of Sony’s much-respected (and widely used in mastering houses) PVM-X300 OLED professional monitor.

By Kibner Go To Posteh, those are small price cuts

By Smokey Go To Postexcuse me mr.porsche, some people might be hyped about a few hundred off!

By Kibner Go To Postit's like 10% cuts, which, whatever. that's not enough for someone to splurge

By Mariosalic Go To Post8k is still a little to much for the 77" and 65" just ain't cutting it no more. i'll bite at around 6.5k.

By Mariosalic Go To Postsays the doc.

The Vizio P-Series Quantum is slightly better than the Samsung Q9FN 2018. The Vizio Quantum is a bit brighter with SDR and HDR content. The Quantum also has better motion handling with a faster response time. The Samsung Q9FN has better gradient handling and has new features that improve gaming performance, such as VRR and automatic low input lag.

Excellent TV for watching movies in HDR in a dark room. The excellent native contrast ratio and great local dimming produce nearly perfect blacks. The Vizio P-Series Quantum is extremely bright in HDR, and small highlights in some scenes will really pop. It also supports Dolby Vision, so you can get the best quality possible. Colors pop thanks to the wide color gamut and great color volume

By Adam Go To PostCan't afford that kinda TV yet.

By Kibner Go To PostThe outgoing XMC-1: https://emotiva.com/products/xmc-1

By reilo Go To PostIt's hideous

By Smokey Go To PostOh shit. Vizio with the come up
RIP Q9

By Kibner Go To PostYeah, but who gives a fuck. Couldn't be me.

By reilo Go To PostIf I am dropping $2500 on something it better look like it was designed by Dieter Fucking Rams himself.

By Kidjr Go To PostWhy would anyone buy the zf9 over af9? If oled is the superior tech

By Kidjr Go To PostWhy would anyone buy the zf9 over af9? If oled is the superior tech

By Smokey Go To Postayyyyyyyy

https://slickdeals.net/f/11973099-77-lg-oled77c8pua-oled-4k-hdr-ai-smart-hdtv-2018-model-4999-free-shipping?sdxt01=2018-08-24+16%3A22%3A39&sdxt07=0&utm_source=dealalerts&utm_medium=em-i&utm_term=40516&utm_content=152234&utm_campaign=tu-9999&p=119196191&src=da_si_v2_ni_27384984#post119196191

77'' c8 (2018 model) for $5,000 o_o

By Mariosalic Go To Postcheck local stores

$11,000

:(

By The Frankman Go To PostWTF you telling these are deals? I CAN'T AFFORD THIS SHIT MAN WHY U DO DIS???

If you love inky blacks and vibrant colors—and who doesn’t?—this 55" 2017 OLED LG TV is down to $1149 today at Walmart as a refurb, or an all-time low $1590 for 65", with small additional discounts available if you pick up in a store.

As you’d expect from any high-end TV these days, that gets you a 4K panel and Dolby Vision HDR, but OLED technology means the blacks will be far richer, and the colors more vibrant than any LCD-based screen you can buy. Whichever size you choose, it’ll still cost you, but your eyes will tell you it was worth it.

By Smokey Go To Posthttps://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/lg-88-inch-8k-oled-tv-introduced-ifa2018/amp/

88" OLED

we here

Sure to generate oohs and aahs by all who pass by, LG’s latest, incredibly large 8K creation sports four times the pixel count of 4K and sixteen times that of standard HDTV. For number crunchers, that’s over 33 million pixels at a 7,680 × 4,320 resolution. Another way to imagine it is four 4K televisions in a 2×2 grid.