2014 Value Electronics Shootout.

[punisher]

Originally Posted by Mati

For those that were there in person. What 4K LED was the best in your opinion? Thank you.

I also thought the 2 Sony's were the best 4k sets..the one with the speakers has 2x processing of Sony's special whatchamacallit and the other 3x's and it was really good off angle.

I am excluding the monstrous 105 inch Samsung as it kept changing aspect ratios on it's own zooming in and out of picture size and its 120k price. Robert said it was sold. Just goes to show you, there's a sucker born every day

[punisher]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

ZoetMB and punisher, don't know if I casually chatted to either of you throughout the night but I was wearing a white F1 Michael Schumacher shirt and it was nice to inadvertently meet you if I did.

Took me 8 hours to drive there on Saturday, stupid border crossing cost me 75 minutes though. Should have been about 6.5 hours with just one quick stop for gas.

I was wearing a Rangers hat and sitting in the 2nd row on the left..if you watch the replays..I also asked the last question of the night saturday which was.."are you happy with these tv's and which one would you recommend to own"....the answer was none by D-nice, Kevin kidded and said it was unfair and then they said that this group of tv's left more room for improvement than any group ever in the shootout. You can also see 2 old buddies, me and Robert hug at about the 4:44 mark. He told me he was so happy I made it. Heart attacks will do that.

[BaerGriggs]

Table with scores from the shootout:



Really great to see the 4K LG OLED get such amazing scores for black level and contrast.

[BaerGriggs]

Measurements from the TV's:

[Penton-Man]

Lyris,

I watched a tiny bit of the show…scrolling right to what you and the other calibrators had to say about the TVs and skipped quickly through that because of lack of time. Good job.

Little advice though for a finer professional touch. Despite how you may have heard it pronounced from some other video folks, “temporal” resolution is, and always has been, correctly pronounced by those in-the-know (American or British vision scientists) as temp-erul with the emphasis on the first syllable not, tem-POR-ul. The later just sounds funny.

I missed a lot of the discussion on the LG OLED 55 incher, so I apologize for any misinterpretation but am I correct to assume that particular display has a brightness limiting function and no setting for it to be turned completely off?

[Blu-Dog]

It was the DNR that couldn't be turned off on the LG OLED. Very strange.

[Wingman1977]

Originally Posted by Blu-Dog

It was the DNR that couldn't be turned off on the LG OLED. Very strange.

I'm sure LG will issue a patch to fix that. With that said, congrats to LG winning the shootout. I'll have to eat my words. I was very skeptical of their OLED sets at 1st, but it looks like LG is turning things around. Hopefully, if they will have a 2015 plasma line, their hard work on the OLED will pass down tho the plasma line (granted, if LG stays in the plasma game). Another good thing about LG is that they are cheaper in price than Samsung and Sony.

[David M]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Lyris,

I watched a tiny bit of the show…scrolling right to what you and the other calibrators had to say about the TVs and skipped quickly through that because of lack of time. Good job.

Little advice though for a finer professional touch. Despite how you may have heard it pronounced from some other video folks, “temporal” resolution is, and always has been, correctly pronounced by those in-the-know (American or British vision scientists) as temp-erul with the emphasis on the first syllable not, tem-POR-ul. The later just sounds funny.

Thanks, re pronunciation, I think everyone understood what was being said. Potato, po-tatt-o...

Yes, all of the OLEDs have ABL. Some more aggressive than others.

The LG also has undefeatable spatial NR and very high frequency edge enhancement on top of the color and gamma issues. From what we were told, the NR will not be fixed with firmware.

[punisher]

one issue with the LG was that when there was no signal on black screen...the center to right glowed white like a big hot spot. Calibrators said it might be from getting hot or something to do with the bend in the screen causing the glow. I at first thought it was a light in the room reflecting on the screen like a flashlight, but it wasn't.

[David M]

LG later said this feature was designed to prevent image sticking (retention).
We did not see any similar issue on the older Samsung OLED.

[Blu-Dog]

Looks like LG OLED beat everything.


The calibrators gave the edge to Samsung's OLED, with Samsung Plasma placing.


Sony's $25,000 84 inch unit won for the LED's.


Interesting results...


http://www.cnet.com/news/lg-wins-val...shootout-2014/

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Lyris

Thanks, re pronunciation, I think everyone understood what was being said. Potato, po-tatt-o...

David, I’m sure your Scarsdale audience (who apparently, or at least hopefully, doesn’t belong in this category - http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...818-story.html ) well understood what you meant but, that was not the point. Someday I have faith that you will be speaking in front of a more discerning professional audience like at NAB or SMPTE.

Think of the correct pronunciation in this way….would you go into a pub with a reputation for having great Chelsea football patrons and speak to supporters at your table by referring to the team as “Chel-SEE” or, if you’re not a fan of your nation’s sport, then think of pronouncing software as “soft-WE’RE” to a listening audience….not to be confused with the common proper pronunciation as in this interview -

About CalMAN video calibration Windows Presentation Foundation WPF app - YouTube

Originally Posted by Lyris

The LG also has undefeatable spatial NR....

Thanks for the info. IMO, rules it out even as just a client display in any serious post production facility as you will not be getting to view the Blu-ray as the director intended be the feature derived from film source or digital movies shot purposely with some camera noise in order to provide the imagery some texture, for example as in 'The Knick' - https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...ck#post9602278

Speaking of which, unless the grading system was explained sometime during those sessions, I don’t have a handle on the magnitude of the point system which was used by the voters. In that regard, what I’m getting at is, was the difference between the *best* and *worst* TV chosen in this competition of the same magnitude as the difference between watching a typical Blu-ray (from one of the majors) and the same movie on a cable or satellite feed? Or, was the final total tally from best to worst, more akin to splitting hairs?

[HDTV1080P]

http://www.twice.com/news/tv/lg-s-55...-king-tv/49964

[punisher]

just remember what was answer to my question....which tv would you own or recommend..answer: NONE

see Saturday night's replay ..4.40 mark


The LG OLED is the King of Pain

the best tv you wouldn't want to own

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

David,

Follow-up question(s).

Did the audience vote on any 4K source content fed into the TVs? Perhaps not as sophisticated as this - https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...ng#post9547368 but 4K (BT. 709) material compressed with h.264 or HEVC the best you could?

Also, I recall some advertising from a couple weeks back (unless I’m now confusing consumer shootouts) is that some 4K P3 color gamut material was to be shown on one? or more of the 4K televisions on display for the event. Did that come to fruition?

[Blu-Dog]

Kane was ranting about color space for most of his time speaking. There was no real 4K color gamut testing - trying to do anything in 4K gave the video switcher fits.


Colors were so far off on these sets that they gave up the ghost even in 2K, and the calibrators were scolding about this throughout the presentation on both days.

[dobyblue]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Follow-up question(s).

Did the audience vote on any 4K source content fed into the TVs? Perhaps not as sophisticated as this - https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...ng#post9547368 but 4K (BT. 709) material compressed with h.264 or HEVC the best you could?

Also, I recall some advertising from a couple weeks back (unless I’m now confusing consumer shootouts) is that some 4K P3 color gamut material was to be shown on one? or more of the 4K televisions on display for the event. Did that come to fruition?

After the Q&A on Saturday night there were two of us, maybe three, that watched some 4K content on the Sony 950 from their 4K module, I saw some clips of Brazil 2014 which up close looked amazing...none of the artifacting and loss of high frequency detail you see in the OTA broadcast...really great. We were asking for some 4K movies but he seemed to be unable to put those on which was a shame. He also showed us some of the footage he shot on the $2,000 4K Sony camcorder on the 4K Sony TV that was at the back of the room from his 4K laptop, the desktop looked awesome to begin with but I was super impressed with the detail and colour of the various Lamborghini and Ferrari cars he had shot. The file said the stream was averaging 75Mbps. Sorry if there are lots of run on sentences here, typing stream of conscious.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Speaking of which, unless the grading system was explained sometime during those sessions, I don’t have a handle on the magnitude of the point system which was used by the voters. In that regard, what I’m getting at is, was the difference between the *best* and *worst* TV chosen in this competition of the same magnitude as the difference between watching a typical Blu-ray (from one of the majors) and the same movie on a cable or satellite feed? Or, was the final total tally from best to worst, more akin to splitting hairs?

It's the latter and each person interpreted for themselves what number to assign to a given level of quality. Some people may have scored with the ideal assigned "10" (which is what I did, so I scored nothing a "10") and others may have scored what they felt were the best displayed set as "10" and marked the others down from there.

While I didn't keep a copy of how I scored, I was very surprised that my results were very consistent with the final results (and with the measurements). In past years, I scored very differently than everyone else and especially as compared to how the calibrators scored.

As I and others have posted, all of the sets were very good. That's not to say they looked the same, but if a set was less than ideal in one area, it excelled in another. Most of the differences (except for the exceptional black levels on the OLED sets) were very subtle. In past years, there were sets that had such obvious flaws, I completely ruled them out. That wasn't the case this year.

I was actually surprised that the Sony 85" scored so well because in past years, I felt there was a bit of bias against Sony, especially by the calibrators. That set did look very good except it still has the glow problem when displaying white on black, as my HX929 has.

Personally, I would advise not obsessing over small point differences in the scores, instead looking more at the relative positions, but consider anything within one whole point (and maybe a little more than that) of each other to be equal.

I actually consider it a bit unfair to declare a winner, since they were all so close (aside from OLED black levels).

[dobyblue]

Value Electronics has announced the winner is actually a tie between the 55" LG OLED and the Samsung plasma after recounting...hanging chad issue I believe.

As I said it was really neck and neck for me between the LG OLED and the Sammy plasma which really held its own as defending champion. The LG OLED and Sammy plasma between them won all of the categories.

[dobyblue]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Speaking of which, unless the grading system was explained sometime during those sessions, I don’t have a handle on the magnitude of the point system which was used by the voters. In that regard, what I’m getting at is, was the difference between the *best* and *worst* TV chosen in this competition of the same magnitude as the difference between watching a typical Blu-ray (from one of the majors) and the same movie on a cable or satellite feed? Or, was the final total tally from best to worst, more akin to splitting hairs?

For me it was closer to splitting hairs than the other example, probably 80% towards splitting hairs rather than being somewhere in the middle of the two examples. I fully agree with ZoetMB's point earlier about the overall quality of the sets when watching real world material (we watched a good chunk of Skyfall), the overall PQ was excellent all round which was most definitely NOT the case last year. Last year the four plasmas were head and shoulders above the other sets, the 4K Sony in particular looked very washed out to me whereas this year's 950 was hugely improved. The local dimming is the biggest issue and this was very clear when the Oppo had the A-B repeat in the black bars of the Harry Potter movie, it was like someone had a bright flashlight shining behind it illuminating far more than the A-B lettering. If a movie had subtitles encoded in the black bars it would ruin the movie.