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It's very rare to get worse overtime, your best bet is to gently massage the spots with a soft cloth for a couple of minutes.
MAKE SURE YOUR TV IS CLOSED WHEN YOU DO THAT.
I'm relieved, Thanks for the clarification. I will try that out
Your welcome. Read more about clouding and potential solutions in the link below:
https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/picture-quality/black-uniformity-clouding-flashlighting
Hype! Between this review and seeing one in person, I'm really damn tempted. The price is a bit high, but I'll be damned if I don't like the aesthetics and one connect box.
SONY KD-70XF8305 / Review
I finally pulled the trigger and entered the 4K - HDR world with the Sony KD-70XF8305 (XBR 70X-830F in U.S.).
At first i was planning to purchase the KD-65XF9005 which has better specs (brighter HDR, local dimming and a faster processor) but a 24 hour sale here in Athens Greece was to good to ignore, from 1899 Euros i bought it for only 899 Euros, so for this price it was no brainer.
I didn't want to go for an OLED because i game a lot and Burn in is a crucial factor (ten years with a Plasma and careful viewing are a lot to handle, i finally wanted some piece of mind).
The truth is that i was really anxious about the picture quality of this Tv mainly because for the past decade i was owner of the Pioneer KRP600A the best Tv ever build.
The KRP600A was the elite monitor from KURO Line and Pioneer manufactured only 3.000 worldwide.
At 2008 was a reference tv and a technological milestone. Until this day a lot of people compare modern Tv sets with the KPR600A.
https://www.trustedreviews.com/revi...a-60in-plasma-tv-pioneer-kuro-krp-600a-page-3
So after two weeks with my new set here are my impressions. Firstly this model is different from the 850F Series mainly because it uses a VA panel and not an IPS like the 850F.
I professionally calibrated (ISF Protocol) the Tv and the end results surprised me a lot because this panel it can get a lot brighter from the given specs.
Sony gives 422 Peak brightness (100% Window) but we managed to hit 588 Nits (the trade off was that we calibrated the white balance to 6.900K and not 6.500K).
Blacks are just ok, lets just say the serving the panel well but nothing to brag about.
The uniformity of the panel was excellent with no DSE, and with a mild clouding in the blacks that you have to look for it in a pitch black room.
What amazed me more was the volume of the colors and especially the Reds, in this department the Sony is getting really close to the Pioneer,
of course if i want to be fair the color spaces are different you cannot compare a 709 color space to a 2020 one.
Motion handling is very good with no noticeable blurring except for the blacks, there you can notice (in fast pans) a minor blur trail.
The scaling capabilities are state of the art, Sony really excels in this area.
Overall the Tv has a great bright and colorful picture and most of the times (dark demanding scenes) you forget that it lacks local dimming,
in the other hand there is no blooming at all.
Gaming with a PS4 Pro is more than great, due to the minor input lag.
I finally pulled the trigger and entered the 4K - HDR world with the Sony KD-70XF8305 (XBR 70X-830F in U.S.).
At first i was planning to purchase the KD-65XF9005 which has better specs (brighter HDR, local dimming and a faster processor) but a 24 hour sale here in Athens Greece was to good to ignore, from 1899 Euros i bought it for only 899 Euros, so for this price it was no brainer.
I didn't want to go for an OLED because i game a lot and Burn in is a crucial factor (ten years with a Plasma and careful viewing are a lot to handle, i finally wanted some piece of mind).
The truth is that i was really anxious about the picture quality of this Tv mainly because for the past decade i was owner of the Pioneer KRP600A the best Tv ever build.
The KRP600A was the elite monitor from KURO Line and Pioneer manufactured only 3.000 worldwide.
At 2008 was a reference tv and a technological milestone. Until this day a lot of people compare modern Tv sets with the KPR600A.
https://www.trustedreviews.com/revi...a-60in-plasma-tv-pioneer-kuro-krp-600a-page-3
So after two weeks with my new set here are my impressions. Firstly this model is different from the 850F Series mainly because it uses a VA panel and not an IPS like the 850F.
I professionally calibrated (ISF Protocol) the Tv and the end results surprised me a lot because this panel it can get a lot brighter from the given specs.
Sony gives 422 Peak brightness (100% Window) but we managed to hit 588 Nits (the trade off was that we calibrated the white balance to 6.900K and not 6.500K).
Blacks are just ok, lets just say the serving the panel well but nothing to brag about.
The uniformity of the panel was excellent with no DSE, and with a mild clouding in the blacks that you have to look for it in a pitch black room.
What amazed me more was the volume of the colors and especially the Reds, in this department the Sony is getting really close to the Pioneer,
of course if i want to be fair the color spaces are different you cannot compare a 709 color space to a 2020 one.
Motion handling is very good with no noticeable blurring except for the blacks, there you can notice (in fast pans) a minor blur trail.
The scaling capabilities are state of the art, Sony really excels in this area.
Overall the Tv has a great bright and colorful picture and most of the times (dark demanding scenes) you forget that it lacks local dimming,
in the other hand there is no blooming at all.
Gaming with a PS4 Pro is more than great, due to the minor input lag.
it's a shame it was nearly twice the price of my 65" for the same size - it looks damn good
Right? I can dream of that set, but I can't justify spending that much money. Realistically, I'm looking at the 55" C9, or the 65" for either the X950g or the Q8. I'm not getting my TV till around August so I'm hoping the B9 comes in lower and doesn't cut too many features. I'd benefit greatly from the viewing angles of OLED.
This is why you don't trust those early reviews/impressions with comments like "OLED like" blacks. As suspected, the native contrast is poor in exchange for that wide angle tech. Its still the best of those wide angle TVs, but nowhere near what you get with an OLED in terms of dark room performance and pure picture quality. Even the Q9FN has better contrast and even that TV was not up to OLED standards in that regard (it always finished last behind every single OLED it measured against in the TV shootouts).
This would be an excellent TV choice if it cost less and supported Dolby Vision.
Even has some of the issues the Q900R has:
Color gamut and color volume are also not as good as the Q9FN.
Honestly if you wanted an LCD TV right now, I would save some money and get an X950G.
thankfully my sofa is straight on to the TV, so viewing angles aren't an issue
i also think the advice i got was great - a slightly less quality TV at a bigger size is the way to go. i prefer the immersion of the extra 10" vs increased PQ on a smaller set
dallow_bg was 100% spot on when he said it's the same thing every year, "they have oled like blacks this year, for reals!"
Vincent's review of the Q90R is up:
Rates it as the best LCD on the market, but not without flaws.
That's an interesting review. Contrast ratio does suffer some, not as bad as the Q900R with wide angle views, and nowhere near the Sony Z9F. What's the deal with the supported refresh rate? Supports 4K120 but only 48-60Hz in FreeSync mode?
Rates it as the best LCD on the market, but not without flaws.
That's an interesting review. Contrast ratio does suffer some, not as bad as the Q900R with wide angle views, and nowhere near the Sony Z9F. What's the deal with the supported refresh rate? Supports 4K120 but only 48-60Hz in FreeSync mode?
Thanks again for the useful link. You really helped me.
:plugs ears:
Lalalalalalalalalalalalalala!!!!!
I won't be convinced there is a better tv than the 950G I just bought!
(Deeply concerned I may have remorse when the A8G OLED drops in a few months)
lol
I'm glad black levels have improved so much for LCDs over the years but getting tired of hearing that line.
We're not likely ever going to see "OLED like blacks" until mLED. Normal LCD isn't going to have the same blacks without some kind of haloing. Emissive displays (including CRT) always had one thing in common: the best black levels. For strictly gaming though, it's not really a problem, and if I was only using my TV for games, I would likely have really considered something else. I regularly game on an extremely cheap IPS monitor, and the black level is rarely an issue (as in, it's terrible, but it doesn't bother me) with full screen content, except the rare dark scenes where the IPS glow appears. But, despite my TV having a much better picture, I don't believe I even spend 20% of my time playing games that would be a good fit with a large, 4K set, and I definitely won't play 1080p games on it.
It's not "too small" in terms of having better picture quality, and HDR/DV, but pretty much wasted in terms of seeing finer details over what can be seen with 1080p (IMO that's a secondary concern for watching TV shows/movies). I sit six and a half feet away, and a few years ago I upgraded from a 42''. Now though, that set looks tiny at the same distance. Depending on what kind of panel you want, and whether or not you're in desperate need of a TV right now, LG is going to be making a 49'' OLED soon.
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How much do you want to spend though? The A8G and Q90R are a lot more expensive. You'll be happy with your 950G (remember you get dolby vision support too!).
I'm sitting 1.6-1.7m away from a 49 inch UHD TV and it's nice, good size for that distance. But sometimes I want an even bigger screen. I would always get the biggest TV that you can afford, or you will probably regret it later.
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Yeah, but isn't that because the early reviews and impressions are based on what the TV actually looks like when you are watching real content? Whereas the native contrast measurements come from going into the service menu and disabling local dimming, which is one of the main features of the TV. It's kind of like removing the heatsink from your CPU and then complaining that it is running at a lower clock speed.
I have the LG C8 and all of a sudden the handshake between my Xbox one X has gone to hell. If I switch over from another input to the Xbox input the screen flickers every 30 seconds or so. The only way to fix it is to hard reset the Xbox one and shut the TV off which will correct the problem until I switch the input once again.
Anyone ever run into this?
I have changed HDMI cables and tried different inputs.
Thanks for any help
Anyone ever run into this?
I have changed HDMI cables and tried different inputs.
Thanks for any help
Yea, but in this case the contrast is not even as good as a Q9FN, so the blacks actually got worse this year for better viewing angles (which are still not as good as OLED viewing angles either). This is in stark contrast to the early "Reviews" we got saying this TV had OLED like viewing angles and blacks, and it turns out neither of those is true lol. I even remember reading a review saying this TV made OLEDs pointless lmao.
I agree with the TV being great for people that only use the TV for video games and price is not a problem for them. Personally if I had to pick an LCD, I would still pick a X950G over it and use the extra $1000+ saved to get a good sound system.
Those early reviews were in an extremely controlled environment using hand picked units all under Samsung's watchful eye in Korea.
Rtings, Vincent and any respectable reviewer also use regular content to test the TV. And they also measure the contrast with local dimming on, which again, is much lower than a Q9FN from last year. The same Q9FN that also lost all the shootouts against every single OLED it was compared to by experts last year.
And all TVs get the same contrast measurements from Rtings so I don't get that point. We can get direct comparisons under the same tests with similar TVs like the Q9FN and see how it measures up.
I was not really talking about any specific TV, just LCD in general. If I was getting a TV strictly for gaming, I probably wouldn't spend an extra thousand either. I guess maybe the confusion was when I said that I would likely get something else, but the something else was the C8 that I ended up getting (basically something other than any OLED).
Not to nitpick, but it actually won best gaming TV in Vincent's shootout. The OLEDs did better in the other categories, but we are here in the gaming section of a gaming website.
My point was that it seems silly to focus on a metric that requires you to intentionally disable one of the TV's main features. Like if you ran a burn-in test, but disabled compensation cycles and pixel shift on OLEDs because LCDs don't have those features.
Gaming section takes into consideration other things like input lag, vrr, and burn in.
We were talking about contrast, which directly relates to picture quality. In that sense the Q9FN lost to the OLEDs, and the Q90R with a further reduced contrast (both native and with local dimming on) would do even worse.
The Q9FN even lost the HDR section to OLED.
That's the thing, they also measured contrast with local dimming on, you seem to be ignoring this for some reason.
The Q9FN has almost double the contrast ratio with local dimming turned on.
And my general point in all of this, is that those reviews called the blacks the Q90R had as "OLED like" when in reality it does even worse in that regard than a Q9FN, which already had been proven to not have OLED like blacks at all.
Left side is the Q9FN, right side is the Q90R.
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maybe i should go for the 55" NU8000 instead. My tv stand is only 80cm long. Oh boy its going to be tight lol
If you want significant improvements in near black performance you need to buy a Sony or Panasonic OLED as LG continue to offer less bit-depth allocation to black quantisation than their rivals.
Finally I'm going to send back my 55Q90R and go the LG C9 road.
That's a globally really fantastic TV picture wise, and whatever you read about contrast, in real life it is absolutely fucking good. After the honeymoon period though, here is what is bothering me :
Picture wise :
- The four corners are somewhat darker with bright colors (especially light gray). In movies / games it doesn't bother me, but on most of the Apple TV interface I cannot unsee it now.
- The blooming is nowhere to be seen during movies and games (and believe me, I searched for it), but when there are subtitles on the black bars, or during credits, it's really there, on what seems to be rather large areas. I picked Q90R over Q85R especially for the 480 dimming zones, except...
- There are in fact 280 zones on the 55 inches model. And to find that you either have to go in the service menu, or search deep inside the model specs. This is one if my main complaint as Samsung really seems to hide this fact.
OS wise :
- Tizen is an easy to use and fast OS, BUT the ads are annoying as fuck. In your apps row, there is sometimes (at random) a new item for an add. On a 3000€ set this is a thing I cannot understand to stay polite. But the worst offender is the first icon in all your apps row, which you cannot delete nor move, and is a Samsung VOD service (this is the blue selected icon in this picture).
- Ambient mode is half finished. You cannot disable sound, which means that I cannot play music on my Sonos Playbar while using ambient mode on the TV, since the Playbar will always automatically switch to TV sound. Also, uploading a single picture from my iPhone XS takes almost 3/4 minutes, this is insane. Otherwise it's a cool looking gimmick, but something you'll try the first few days and never come back again. Don't buy it for this, seriously.
- The apps are sometimes slow to load, for no apparent reason.
- Still no plex support. They say that it is planned, but with no ETA.
What I'll miss :
- The One Connect Box, this is a godsend for mounted TV. Well, I'll pass 4 HDMI cables through my wall...
- The aluminium remote, it has a really nice premium look and feel
- The bundled black hole that absorb reflects. Seriously it's fucking impressive
I gave it a lot of thought, but what finally made me change is this reasoning : I won't see that my OLED is less bright, I won't see that it has more cables going through the wall, but I'll see that credits and subtitles don't have any blooming.
Be aware that I am far for being a professional display reviewer. If I could go back to the days where I didn't know what were blooming, DSE, local dimming, etc, I'd probably be MORE than happy with this set.
I should get the LG C9 next week, I'll get back to you once it is set up.
That's a globally really fantastic TV picture wise, and whatever you read about contrast, in real life it is absolutely fucking good. After the honeymoon period though, here is what is bothering me :
Picture wise :
- The four corners are somewhat darker with bright colors (especially light gray). In movies / games it doesn't bother me, but on most of the Apple TV interface I cannot unsee it now.
- The blooming is nowhere to be seen during movies and games (and believe me, I searched for it), but when there are subtitles on the black bars, or during credits, it's really there, on what seems to be rather large areas. I picked Q90R over Q85R especially for the 480 dimming zones, except...
- There are in fact 280 zones on the 55 inches model. And to find that you either have to go in the service menu, or search deep inside the model specs. This is one if my main complaint as Samsung really seems to hide this fact.
OS wise :
- Tizen is an easy to use and fast OS, BUT the ads are annoying as fuck. In your apps row, there is sometimes (at random) a new item for an add. On a 3000€ set this is a thing I cannot understand to stay polite. But the worst offender is the first icon in all your apps row, which you cannot delete nor move, and is a Samsung VOD service (this is the blue selected icon in this picture).
- Ambient mode is half finished. You cannot disable sound, which means that I cannot play music on my Sonos Playbar while using ambient mode on the TV, since the Playbar will always automatically switch to TV sound. Also, uploading a single picture from my iPhone XS takes almost 3/4 minutes, this is insane. Otherwise it's a cool looking gimmick, but something you'll try the first few days and never come back again. Don't buy it for this, seriously.
- The apps are sometimes slow to load, for no apparent reason.
- Still no plex support. They say that it is planned, but with no ETA.
What I'll miss :
- The One Connect Box, this is a godsend for mounted TV. Well, I'll pass 4 HDMI cables through my wall...
- The aluminium remote, it has a really nice premium look and feel
- The bundled black hole that absorb reflects. Seriously it's fucking impressive
I gave it a lot of thought, but what finally made me change is this reasoning : I won't see that my OLED is less bright, I won't see that it has more cables going through the wall, but I'll see that credits and subtitles don't have any blooming.
Be aware that I am far for being a professional display reviewer. If I could go back to the days where I didn't know what were blooming, DSE, local dimming, etc, I'd probably be MORE than happy with this set.
I should get the LG C9 next week, I'll get back to you once it is set up.
I mean you will. As long as you have decent light control, you should be ok.
In terms of brightness, the difference will be in those scenes where large portions of the screen are supposed to be super bright (think like a sunny day at the beach), those scenes will not be as bright on an OLED compared to a high nit LCD like the Q90R. OLED really shines when you have dark or mixed luminance scenes with some bright features, those highlights will pop like crazy thanks to the OLED contrast.
Do keep us posted on your impressions of the C9.
OP
OP
I've been most impressed by nighttime scenes with neon lighting - e.g. Blade Runner 1+2
I have to admit Vincent's review of the Samsung completely took it off my radar too. I can't live with blooming like that.
Got home from work and these were waiting for me. :)
Watch Spider-Man first and then Alien immediately after for the maximum contrast in tone and emotional effect for massive damage!
Has Sony pulled that far ahead now with their OLED screens and worth the $1000 premium? Or has LG dropped the ball that much? I've been lurking here and there in the thread, and I've noticed that the C9 seems to be half baked and devoid of most of the features that were promised, at least for now.
Sorry for being a bother but when comparing tv's on Rtings to see which has a higher score, do you know what category covers near black / black crush? Is it white balance DE, gradient? I'm having a hard time understanding some of the terminology on their site.
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What is C9 missing? Only thing is the multi option BFI, everything else is there. And supposedly per an LG rep they may be adding that back after fixing bugs.
I want to know this too. I've been dead set on a 77 C9 for a while now, but if Sony (which apparently had the best OLED last year) repeats their performance this year, I don't know what to do.
Idk i've been ducking in and out of the thread, and that's the sense that i got. And i can't say I'm the biggest fan of taking features away and then putting them back after fixing other shit. These sets close $2000+.
I only have time for Alien tonight due to Friday Night Fights™
Every Friday late night is for a kung fu film and junk food
OP
OP
Do you happen to have the Blu-Ray too? I'd love to hear a comparison on PQ between the two
I wouldn't say LG have dropped the ball, but the macro blocking and dancing blacks in above black detail is *still* more present on the C9 than it is on any Sony OLED and indeed the Panasonic. By all accounts the C9 isn't a massive improvement on the C8 in that regard. See the video below for what I mean.
Watch from 30 seconds in. The LG is compared to a Panasonic in that video and the Sony offers even better performance than the Panny. When watching low-quality sources near-black performance is even more difficult to get right, which is where the LG sets do suffer. The more recent sets are better than my B6 but still not close to the Sony and Panasonic and considering most of the material I watch is poorly compressed, I need a display able to handle smoother gradation, which is why I won't be buying another LG till they get it right. Whether you think the Sony is worth the extra money is a question only you can answer, but in the next week I will be buying the Af9 as I would rather have a 2018 Sony than a 2019 LG and they are comparable prices here.
I don't think rtings measures or even comments on black crush etc. HDTV test reviews on Youtube are far better for such matters, and VT mentions shadow detail performance in nearly every TV review he does.
Oh well. Promise me you shall be properly scared out of your wits!
Thanks holygeesus i'll make sure to watch Vincent's review when it comes up. That's weird that rtings don't post about black crush, you'd think that'd be an important part of their review. Oh well as long as somebody is out there saying which TVs are doing it right and wrong is all that matters I guess.
To be honest, I don't really understand why so many people hold Rtings in such high regard. They always do a lot of measurements, which is absolutely great, but they lack the necessary in-depth analysis that is needed to interpret those results. Their comments nearly always only scratch the surface, and rarely deviate from their usual template. I would never buy a TV based only on a Rting review. To me, reviews like the ones from Vincent are much more valuable.
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