Anyone have an OLED TV?

Discussion in 'Geek Cave: Computers, Tablets, HT, Phones, Games' started by AllanMarcus, Nov 27, 2016.

  1. AllanMarcus

    AllanMarcus Friend

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    I'm thinking of upgraded my 55" Plasma. I love the TV<m but I wants something bigger; many 65" or 70"

    My TV room is fairly dark, and we set pretty much directly in a straight line in front of the TV. Mostly we watch TV, but an occasional movie or football game, but mostly TV.

    Not interested in curved or smart features. 95% of our viewing is from Kodi (formerly XBMC). The rest is OTA.

    The 65" LG OLED is $2800
    The 65" Vizio P is $1500 - plus I would need to get an external tuner ~$80
    Both have excellent reviews. I've seen the LG and it's gorgeous. I haven't seen the Vizio and LG side by side. :-(

    Anyone done any research or have personal experience with these TVs? Worth the extra money for the OLED?
     
    Last edited: Nov 27, 2016
  2. TwoEars

    TwoEars Friend

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    I have the curved 1080p 55 LG Oled. It's fantastic and I can't say enough good things about it.

    Some points:

    * For me Oled is so much better than anything else on the market it's not even funny, it makes even Plasma look bad. Samsung got caught with their pants down and are now scrambling to jump on the Oled bandwagon. Oled is the future in the mid to high-end.
    * LG was the brand that took OLED to mass-market and they make their own panels. So if you're thinking about OLED I would definitely go LG.
    * For me personally 55 was more than big enough. I would honestly have been fine with smaller but 55 was the smallest oled they had!
    * I bought the curved one because it was the only one they had back then. It doesn't really matter to me, I don't mind it but would have been fine with flat too.
    * I am very senstive to flickering and all the Plasmas I looked at had this high-speed oscillating effect. Some people can't see it but I saw it very clearly. The Oleds have none of this, it's very relaxing to look at.
    * I personally don't care about "smart TV's". I just hook up a small pc and wireless keyboard-mouse to it and it's so much better for that kind of thing.
    * I personally don't care about 4k. At that distance my eyes aren't good enough to really see the difference and BlueRay is 1080p anway. So I personally save a bit of money by not being the least bit interested in 4k. I do however love the blacks and smoothness of oled.
    * Only real downside with oled (if you call it that) is that you shouldn't leave it on all the time or have sitting with still images for too long. Some people like to have pictures of their family and stuff like that on their TV's and with oled that's a bad idea. Oled is more about turning it on, watching a movie or a TV show, and then turning it off. If you're the kind of person who like to have lots of still images, or have the TV on all day, Oled might not be for you.
     
  3. AllanMarcus

    AllanMarcus Friend

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    Very informative. Sounds like OLED might be right for me and the wife. We aren't those types that leave the TV on all the time, so that is not an issue.

    $2800 for the 65" sound like a lot, but I've certainly spent way more than that on headphones, and we watch TV more than I listen to headphones (sad, but true).

    If only the 77" weren't $20km I might consider it :)
     
  4. Thenewerguy009

    Thenewerguy009 Friend

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    Quoted for the truth!
    Once you taste infinite contrast & perfect blacks, you will NEVER go back. The Vizio P series can't come close.


    The only downfall for OLED is it has the same sample & hold blur that all LCD TVs exhibit.
    That & it has the same ABL that plama panels are forced into.
     
  5. AllanMarcus

    AllanMarcus Friend

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    Thanks @Thenewerguy009

    We usually watch at night, so brightness is not generally an issue. We also don't watch sports too often. I'll have to go to ListenUp and look really closely at the images; hopefully get them put on some sports.

    The price difference is significant. 2X for the 65" to get the OLED. I could get a P series 75" for the OLED price!
    Heck I could get an M series 70" for $1700

    Just like headphone, pay more, get more. Decisions decisions decision. As you can tell, I'm not great at them :)

    Looks like I have trip to the TV store to make a decision.
     
  6. batriq

    batriq Probably has made you smarter

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    Our current TV is a Sharp 40" from 7-8 years ago, so I ended up buying a TV this sale season. I looked at LG OLED, but at $780 (taxes and shipping included) through a corporate discount direct from Samsung, the 55" KS8000 was very difficult to resist. It's the second best 55" TV (after the LG OLED):
    http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-size/55-inch/best
     
  7. TwoEars

    TwoEars Friend

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    @AllanMarcus

    Might be obvious (?) but don't forget that the TV also will seem bigger the closer you sit to it, so it's not just about the size. If you're usually just two people you can easily buy a 65 oled and sit maybe 0.5m meter closer to it, the viewing experience will be that of a 70-incher compared to what you have now.

    [​IMG]

    Getting anything too big has it's own issues really. Low quality broadcasts and movies will look REALLY low quality when you blow it up on a 70-incher. It's no wonder they always demo those 85-incher with 4k footage... they tend to look like shit with anything else. :p
     
  8. bazelio

    bazelio Friend

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    I still find that going from Plasma to xLED takes some getting used to, and I've not yet done it. Two main reasons are: The off axis viewing is still inferior with LED from what I've seen - curved or not. Plus curved is just weird. When you are off axis, what good does it do to have a third of the screen curved *away* from your viewing position? And secondly, the high speed (e.g. sports) tracking still isn't as smooth. Much better than a few years ago, but not as smooth still. Both in my opinion. Although if someone knows of a LED that fully addresses these issues, I'd love to know.
     
  9. batriq

    batriq Probably has made you smarter

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    The KS8000 (LED) addresses the speed issue. rtings is quite a good review site for TVs: http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/samsung/ks8000
    OLED addresses both issues, but has it's own other (minor) issues: http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/lg/b6
     
  10. bazelio

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  11. AllanMarcus

    AllanMarcus Friend

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    If I could get a 65 plasma, I would.
     
  12. zonto

    zonto Friend

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  13. mkozlows

    mkozlows Friend

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    "xLED" is a bonkers formulation that conflates two completely different things that have literally nothing to do with each other.

    OLED is an emissive technology, like plasma. Pixels that aren't on don't turn on, ones that are do. Off-axis performance is great (similar to plasma) and speed of response/motion blur is excellent.

    "LED" is a fake marketing name for LCD TVs with an LED backlight (as distinguished from a CCFL backlight, which basically no TV has anymore). It's a transmissive technology where polarizers are blocking light from getting through... mostly. Pixels that aren't on still leak light. Off-axis performance is better than it used to be, but still not great (in particular, most TVs used VA panels, rather than the IPS panels that you see in phones and tablets, which are better off-axis; VA gives better black level, though, and it's generally deemed that its advantages are more important for TVs), and speed of response/motion blur is again better than it used to be, but still ghost city compared to OLED or plasma.

    Going from plasma to LED-backlit-LCD is a tradeoff, with wins and losses (mostly losses, but you do get a brighter display and -- these days -- higher resolution). Going from plasma to OLED is pretty much a straight upgrade. OLED is amazing futuretech.

    It's sad that plasma died a few years back, because plasma combined the virtues of superior image quality with low price, which OLED doesn't do yet; but we're finally getting to the point where OLED is vaguely in the range of practical pricing ($2800 for 65", $1800 for 55" right now), so if anything it's time to take off the plasma mourning clothes.
     
  14. bazelio

    bazelio Friend

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    Maybe Plasma vs non-Plasma works better for you. I'm not interested in comparing the alternative technologies here, but everything/anything else vs Plasma. They are all technological upgrades in certain regards. Power consumption for one, right? But visually I still find Plasma better than OLED. At least from what I've seen, it's still a winner for sports where speed matters, and oled off axis is similar but not equal. I asked for a plasma alternative that fully addresses these issues. OLED isn't it, IMO. Not yet, anyhow.

    If I were to recommend Allan, I'd still say keep your plasma. But if you must go bigger then I've been most impressed with the LG, too. I've wanted a bigger screen for a while too. But each time I've seriously evaluated alternatives, I've come home empty handed.

    Edit: The OLED sounds like a winner now. Maybe I will move up too!
     
    Last edited: Nov 27, 2016
  15. SoupRKnowva

    SoupRKnowva Official SBAF South Korean Ambassador

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    Plasma is great and all, we had a side discussion about TVs in my recent for sale listing coincidentally. but even they have their host of problems. They were the undisputed kings of picture quality in their day, but by basically any measure the OLEDs are better. They might slightly crush the absolute darkest blacks( though that is getting better every year), and they have peak light output issues(which plasma also had...worse), but other than that they are drastically better in the single most important metric which is contrast ratio.

    and when it comes to "speed", OLEDs are every bit as fast as any plasma was, faster even since they dont have the green phosphor issues many plasmas had
     
  16. mkozlows

    mkozlows Friend

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    I understand what you're saying, but what you're saying isn't really true anymore. Here's a plasma rotating through 90 degrees to evaluate off-axis performance. Here's an OLED. The OLED actually maintains its color and contrast better (though they're both more than fine -- anyone watching TV at 80 degrees off-axis is guaranteed a miserable experience no matter what display tech is in use).

    Speed is a little more complicated, because as a couple of people have alluded to, plasma is an impulse-decay thing (i.e., the plasma-emitted UV excites a phosphor, which then decays quickly and has to be refreshed) whereas OLED is sample-and-hold (the OLED element lights up, and stays lit up continuously until it's turned off), which look different in subtle ways. But that's not worse or anything, it's just different, and the response time of OLED is excellent.

    And OLED is better in a whole bunch of other ways, either inherent to the tech (the absolute zero black levels that make a Kuro look like an LCD; higher brightness levels; ability to have denser pixel grids, so higher-dpi displays) or to the changes in the industry since plasma was killed off (DCI-P3 color space instead of Rec.709, HDR support). The difference between an old high-end plasma and a new high-end OLED is significant, in favor of the OLED.
     
  17. bazelio

    bazelio Friend

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    Yeah that's impressive - the off axis. Better than I remember. It seems to be time for a second look. I'm happy to stand corrected!

    Metrics aside, do you guys find sports just as watchable - smooth, natural, etc, subjectively speaking, as plasma? It has probably been well over a year, but tbe last time I read the specs and went to the store to eval, I left disappointed.
     
    Last edited: Nov 27, 2016
  18. TMRaven

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    OLED panels are the way of the future, if you can get one then get one. That said they're still in their infancy and have some downsides. The list of their negatives is considerably less than the list of negatives that other panel technologies have (IPS, VA, or TN).

    Perhaps the best site to get information on TVs is RTings.com. They break down every aspect of the TV and give them objective numbers for quality, so it makes it easy for you to compare them.

    OLED panels require no backlight, as each pixel is its own source of light. This means the TV will consume less energy and be considerably thinner than other panel types.

    Because each pixel is its own light, it will literally turn off if the source calls for black, that means the TV will give true blacks, and you'll get infinite native contrast ratio. Contrast ratio is the number one determining factor in picture quality.

    The viewing angle of OLEDs match and/or beat the best IPS panels, so the quality of the picture will look the exact same no matter the angle you view the TV.

    The pixel response time of OLED panels is basically instantaneous, beating out even the best TN panels used as gaming monitors for computers. Lower response time means less ghosting and blurring during fastly-moving scenes. This means OLED TVs have the potential to become even the best computer monitors (providing the input lag is low enough). A good 4k 40inch OLED will be the sweet spot for the next generation of high screen real estate, highly-immersive, great productivity computer monitors.

    Right now the only real downsides of OLEDs right now are lack of lifepsan-- they will shift color and degrade over time, but we're talking multiple thousands of hours here. They also have issues with burn-in like CRTs and projection TVs of old. These two factors makes them less than ideal as monitors for now, but as the tech matures, I'm sure they will be solved.
     
  19. AllanMarcus

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  20. AllanMarcus

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