OLED TV/Monitor Owner Thread ver. Dolby Vision is neat

For a set this good, you gotta hire a guy to come in and calibrate it. Once you do that, you'll see how great it can really look.

Nobody can deliver 12 bit. We actually master films with 16-bit internal processing, but you're never gonna get that.

The reality is that all broadcasting, all cable, and Blu-ray HD is all 8-bit. And 8-bit really sucks. Once they go 10-bit, that can help out quite a bit... provided you have a 10-bit capable set. And it's calibrated.

 

Most OLEDs have 10bit processors and HDMI 2.0. Sony OLEDs claim to have 14bit processing. 4K Blurays, UHD, HDR10, Dolby Vision is all spec'd for BT2020?

Sony A1E 4K HDR OLED TV with Acoustic Surface™

Super Bit Mapping™ 4K HDR
Super Bit Mapping™ 4K HDR creates a smoother, more natural picture by minimizing its color banding. With 14-bit powerful signal processing, it breaks up the solid bands of color of an 8-bit or 10-bit source, up-converting to 14-bit equivalent gradation, with 64 times more color levels. It delivers graceful reproduction of faces, sunsets, and other areas of subtle color gradation.

Besides lack of content these panels are ready for the wider color gamut. The bottleneck, I think, would be in how many nits they can produce.

 

Ten years time it will be a new ballpark methinks. Safe to say SONY will be around.

 

I wonder what most HDR T.V. sets with 8 bit panels do with a 10 bit video signal, truncate? Downconvert dithering video?

 

Naw, the bottleneck is panel consistency, black detail, freedom from motion artifacts, enhancement you can't bypass, shading problems, and color management problems. "Wider Color Gamut" is just a sticker they put on the box. All the Apple iMacs claim to have P3 color gamut, but the truth is they can't even display ordinary Rec709 (from 1998) accurately. It's a buzzword and a selling point, not an accurate description of the truth.

I gotta say, though, the Sony A1 OLED displays are getting consistently good reviews, and I hope they live up to the hype. The key for me is if you can bypass all the automatic controls (automatic brightness, black level, backlight level, color, motion compensation, noise reduction, enhancement, etc.) and just get an honest calibrated picture with no funny business.

 

That is completely wrong. The new panels do support wide color gamuts. In fact in order to have the UHD certification, you need to be able to reproduce at least 93% DCI-P3 colorspace. Many panels now approach 99%.

If you read the various in-depth technical reviews which measure colorspaces with a colorimeter, you will see that the wide color gamuts are not 'just stickers'.

Note, to experience the benefits of a wide color gamut you will need a UHD HDR source because the source takes advantage of this capability (SDR, not so much).

 

There are plenty of settings you can fine tune. On my tv you can calibrate the HDR settings with a 20 point grayscale. All those problems with artifacts and judder hasnt affected me yet, OLEDs have almost 0 response time. With 120Hz native refresh rate and 240Hz through processing and HFR (on the newer models). Also, I turn off those extra processes anyway. I've read about input lag but I dont play video games so I wouldnt know. *Interestingly, most of the settings get thrown out the window when playing encoded HDR content which maybe what you are talking about?

You are right about the black detail, it's something of a problem I've noticed on all these flat panel tv's. While OLEDs have intense black levels they can easily get crushed and colors washed out. Thats why I mentioned the bottleneck being nits. OLEDs dont have the benefit of back lighting.

This is a good read for anyone lurking:

What You Need to Know Before Buying an HDR TV | WIRED

 

I would never call backlighting a benefit - it's a primary drawback of such displays in producing realistic pictures, as the absence of illumination in the source still produces light output. That's why LCD panel makers go to great lengths to make blacks actually black.

FALD LCD/LED displays try to do this with zones which can be completely turned off or some part thereof, but then you end up with blooming or haloing around bright objects on a black background (like starfields, text, etc).

Backlit displays, particularly those that are edgelit, are terrible at reproducing HDR content, despite their overall superior brightness levels (the blacks are also brighter).

Selfemissive displays will always be superior. The 'black-crush' aspect has already been addressed in the latest models and it's more to do with drivers/processing than to do with lack of backlighting. I remember a while back when Panasonic was using LG panels, they came out with a model which largely eliminated this problem while LG was criticized, as their TVs were far worse. Panasonic's experience with plasma and superior picture processing engines enabled them to make the same LG panels perform much better. These days though, things have equalized much more.

 

Actually I never liked the LCD/LED tvs and monitors I've had. They always had some areas of light bleeding and difficulty dialing in colors without giving the overall panel a weird tone. I'm really happy OLED brought us to the next level. I wish in some respects I would have held off for a 2017 model but I really wanted 3D.

*Edit My Plasma is great too despite the low resolution and huge dot pitch.

 

What plasma ya got ?

 

I dont want to get up to go look but its a mid tier model from about 8 years ago. TC50 or 55? The bezel is ridiculously big and it buzzes. Beautiful screen though and watching sports on it was fun.

 

Plasmas had a good run.
OLED is king now.

 

It really has to be calibrated with proper test signals -- my pro monitors are generally set up with Calman, but Light Illusion is also very good. In LA, all that's necessary is you hire a guy.

Display Color Calibration
Light Illusion
Imaging Science Foundation, Inc.

The ISF people are pretty decent and they're all over the country (and some are available overseas). I leave all the settings to the experts and don't touch a thing, but I do make sure each input on the monitor is kosher.

 

Anyone here used Best Buy's "Geek Squad" for calibration? I admit I've always assumed their employees aren't especially knowledgeable, but the ISF website lists the Geek Squad as ISF certified...

 

I took a frugal way about it and followed some templates from AV forums and youtube videos. Then tweaked the settings a bit to suit my tastes. Adjusting for day and night viewing. But as soon as an encoded HDR signal gets sent it doesnt matter. Threads like these have been helpful for DIY:
LG OLEDs - how to enhance near black detail - AVS Forum | Home Theater Discussions And Reviews

At first I was into it, but found it is dependent on the source because it can vary so much from video to video. You are right, there are special tools for the job. HDR settings get really deep and cant be accurately set by eye. Depending on the environment the settings can differer too.

 

What's the best month for TV sales, December or January?

 

^It seems to me that January is better but there's probably definitive stats out there somewhere.

I heard that the first 4k BR Dolby Vision releases are due sometime this month or next. I have close to 400 mbps download spead (yeah 40 MB/s) so although I get great streaming with Vudu, I'd like to take advantage of my dedicated player. Planet Earth II has shown me how amazing natively filmed 4k material can be (Seriously, tears in my eyes when it first panned out to an orbital view of the Earth).

Most of the HDR or 3D blu Rays I bought include a digital code to redeem through the UltraViolet service. When I finally got around to trying it, I found that 80% of the films allowed me ownership of the Dolby Vision enabled versions on Vudu (even 3D BRs that were not part of a 4k or HDR package). I'm not sure why the disks aren't already able to show Dolby Vision since it doesn't seem to be an issue of file size. I'm guessing that once the first BR players are patched to play DV in the next month that they might be backwards compatible with a lot of the newer films as well.

I mainly use Netlix, Amazon Prime, and now recently Vudu. Surprisingly Vudu is far more reliable in terms of streaming quality. Netflix can get near to 4k but takes a few minutes and usually seems to hover between 2k-4k unfortunately. Amazon Prime used to be more reliable in 1080p for me but now seem to be struggling despite not offering any Dolby Vision content.

What are you guys using as a UHD BR player? Besides XBone consoles (which have a 4k drive but probably the lowest quality UHD drive I've seen), I don't know many people with 4k enabled players yet. Is it worth spending money to get the higher end players? In the $2-400 category I had a choice between a samsung model, a sony model, and the LG which had been released that same week and had no reviews. I took the chance on the LG UP970 because it was the only player I could reasonably count on getting a DV patch. For $250 and am not disappointed in image quality. The software is a bit rough (though I have never owned a blu ray or DVD player with great software interface besides my PS3/4). Thankfully they seem to be updating it regularly. I can watch Netflix with Dolby Vision titles enabled through SmartOS 3.0 on the TV, but if I try to watch the app on my player the Dolby Vision titles can only be viewed in HDR. I'm guessing this will be fixed soon, since the software on the LG smart TV's is actually really good. The 2017 models have version 3.5 (not sure what differences are), but 3.0 is the best TV interface I've used.

The motion sensor remote that comes with the TV is surprisingly handy as well. Makes entering passwords/payment info and other things less of a headache without hooking up a keyboard.

 

I use a Panasonic UB700 which I think is great but the LG is a good choice especially because it can support Dolby Vision playback in the future. I think the ultimate player is the Oppo, but I couldn't afford it.

Despicable Me 1 & 2 were released last week. The first DV discs.

 

You are mistaken. The set still has to be calibrated for HDR as well. It is not magically adjusted at the factory.

You're flying blind if you just use the same numbers that somebody else with a similar set is using. The numbers are arbitrary and reflect only a moment at the factory, and don't take into account the aging of the panel and a dozen other factors. It really, really has to be calibrated by a good technician.

I don't think they're all ISF-certified but some of them are, and you can demand that as part of the deal. It's a few more bucks, but it's basically a 2-hour service call.

 

Unfortunately, HDR calibration is still a bit of a minefield. Early sets supporting HDR10 didn't even have a separate HDR calibration mode, locking out all normal calibration settings and changing the backlight and contrast settings from the calibrated settings for SDR to maximum!

Newer sets now do have separate calibration settings, but there are often limitations with respect to grayscale calibration (2-pt vs 20-pt), white point setting, etc. And these issues are all slightly different between different models and manufacturers. Fact is, this area of calibration is still evolving, both on the panel side and the test equipment side.

This article is will give you some insight and examples of the issues involved:
https://hdguru.com/calibration-for-hdr-evolves-through-challenges/

 

Did you read the rest of what I posted or just the parts you quote me?

I didn't take anyone's templates at face value. I realise to have a perfectly calibrated panel I'd need a color meter. But its not worth it to me to pay some stranger to hang around my bedroom to setup a TV. I'd rather do it myself and watch the tv the way I like. If I setup a home theater then I would hire someone.

Here is the rest of the post.

"... Then tweaked the settings a bit to suit my tastes. Adjusting for day and night viewing. But as soon as an encoded HDR signal gets sent it doesnt matter.

At first I was into it, but found it is dependent on the source because it can vary so much from video to video. You are right, there are special tools for the job. HDR settings get really deep and cant be accurately set by eye. Depending on the environment the settings can differ too."

 

Yes, that would be ridiculous. You can get strangers to hang around your bedroom for free!

 

Thank you for the link. I think I've skimmed over it before when I was looking into the settings on my TV. Some UHD content does switch my presets and lock out certain options. I havent really bothered to look further into it (there is a work around for it according to the article). The movies that go into automatic HDR modes look outstanding anyway.

 

Even if you're watching it wrong? I gave you the facts -- this is not an opinion. Consumer sets are pretty much always wrong out of the box. Any settings you come up with are not going to be nearly enough. You might get what you believe is a pleasing picture, but it most likely is not an accurate picture.

It's your life and you have to do what you think is right. But don't come on a forum and tell people who know what they doing that doing less is good enough. It isn't, not for people who care and people who give a damn about what they see.

 

Or you can drop the set off to the company's office (or store), let them adjust it, then drive by, pick it up, and take it home.