Sony introduces high-end ZD9 TV series with HDR

[pbz06]

Nice, good job Elway. Don't forget to tuck in the power outlet cables a little more, and perhaps zip tie them together too

BTW, has anyone noticed on their Z if there's an ever so slight tilt while it's sitting on its stand? Mine leans back by about a degree or two. Very subtle, but definitely noticeable from the side.

[JimShaw]

Originally Posted by elwaylite

Well, I made my jump into 75" land, its not a ZD9 but its baby brother and I am pretty dang impressed.

First impressions, coming from a 65" E6 OLED (keeping in mind no pitch black room viewing yet):

• Doesn't look big sitting there, but dang when its on from 9.5 feet, took a little getting used to. Going to be great during movies.
• As expected, motion is much better than the OLED. After some testing I settled on Standard MotionFlow mode, which is what I used on my 930C when I had it. Saw a little artifacting on Smoothness 3 (Still not near as much as an LG's TruMotion), and it did not present in live content on Standard, so knowing Standard is 650 lines of motion rez, Ill just go with it. Now it is a tad soapy, but I actually prefer that, so YMMV.
• Video processing in familiar content streaming and Directv is very surprising. I see less noise in the lower quality feeds than on a 65" OLED, but they do not generally do as well as an LCD in that area. The cool thing is, the content is blown up 10" more and mostly looks as good or better. On Amazon and Netflix high quality streams from an X800, I think the image is cleaner than the 65" was.
• HDR on Netflix and Blu-ray looks great, and it def has the nit power.
• Styling wise its a lovely display, and I love the wire hiding panels and the way they disappear in the stand legs.
• Screen uniformity on mixed content looks great.
• Really happy with Cinema Pro mode out of the box, I read they were pretty dang accurate in these modes, and it appears so. Chad B should be here next month for my cal.

Now for the warts:

• Picture is a little flat compared to the OLED (some scenes), but it was fully expected by me. You can't really trump zero blacks on pixel with the ability to light the one next to it, FALD can't do it.
• View angle... My wife and I are lucky enough to be right out in front and eye level, so its lovely. I did some moving around, and I'd estimate if you have a 7 cushion couch, the center cushion as well as 2 to each side (5 total) would get a excellent view from 10 feet, but 6 and 7 on the outer edge start to wash. I think this is better than my 930C.

This thing is a beauty, no doubt it is a way to go if you want larger than 65" and can't afford a 77" OLED. And it is obviously better than LG's OLED in a few ways. Can't wait to watch King Kong or GITS UHD this weekend and check out the dark room performance. I used to use my 930C in a dark room, and other than some flashlighting it did a good job, so I imagine this one will do fine.

I am in the same boat. I have an OLEDE6 and a Samsung JS9500

Been considering changing out the JS9500 and I also keep going back and forth, OLED or Sony's LED.



.

[Canada]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHdqjtuE03Y

The winner was LG OLED followed closely by the Z9D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps-JIttlB8c

[Gillietalls]

Originally Posted by Canada

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHdqjtuE03Y

The winner was LG OLED followed closely by the Z9D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps-JIttlB8c

No no no. The LG E7 won, with the Sony A1E coming in a close second. The Z9D came in third place.

[elwaylite]

They were all so close according to two people I talk to that were there, its not really worth arguing.

The Sony's will get brighter, but be worse in a dark room, but none are "bad" in a dark room like the Samsucks. The real kick would be LCD view angle, but I don't think that was judged.

[elwaylite]

Watched episodes 4, 5 and 6 on Amazon of their series Lemans in UHD. Started getting dark so I cut all the lights out and closed the blinds, because 4 and 5 were night racing. I swear this tv is like a wall of image in the dark, and it is going to be so good with football. I had to cut Brightness down from 25 to 20, going to throw a test disc in later and check my black level setting.

I tried to nitpick, but I just can’t see the zones working, I mean this is well designed. I guess it is a combo of the number of zones, their response time, and the base black level the panel itself can hit when turning on pixels and turning them off. No banding in the bright white skies either on day shots, leaves a very clean look.

This is full screen, last big test will be some letterbox stuff this weekend. Still liking Standard for MotionFlow.

[elwaylite]

Couple of more observations in case any 940E owners read this thread, and then its all over but the watching until I get a proper calibration done in Sept.

Once it got real dark I went through some demo stuff (LG Colors of Journey, LG Chess and Samsung Chasing Light) and test patterns. The HDR demo files were very good, lacking a little pop from the OLED in certain scenes, but man they still looked great. When the wine glass splashes in LG Chess against the black background, WOW.

Using HDR10 and SDR test patterns I noticed the following:

• Custom Pro was well over 1000 nits, but you only got 2000 nit and 4000 nit tone mapping in Custom Home for whatever reason.
• 50 black level was appropriate for HDR mode, Gamma left in stock 0.
• With SDR patterns, I found 90 contrast to be fine with regards to clipping, and Black Level needed 49 not the stock 50, using Gamma -2 (2.4 gamma).
• Of course wide mode full and the full pixel setting shows 0 overscan, which is what I want. I noticed these are blocked out with 2160p and only adjustable with lower incoming resolutions. Fine with me as long as it is pixel for pixel.

[Geoff D]

The ZD9's pro and home modes map in much the same way.

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

The ZD9's pro and home modes map in much the same way.

Turns out they map the same way, just that 90 on both for example, has Pro brighter and clip white around 1800 bar on the test pattern, whereas Home can show around 3500 bar or so. This made most of us think the Home has more aggressive tone mapping. In reality, it's just shifting contrast down but something like 85 on Pro is the same as 95 on Home.

[elwaylite]

Ah, I did not mess with contrast, Ill check that out.

Naturally to me, people would choose CInema Pro just because of the name, and I wondered why they chose to have them perform differently stock.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by pbz06

Turns out they map the same way, just that 90 on both for example, has Pro brighter and clip white around 1800 bar on the test pattern, whereas Home can show around 3500 bar or so. This made most of us think the Home has more aggressive tone mapping. In reality, it's just shifting contrast down but something like 85 on Pro is the same as 95 on Home.

And is the luminance/EOTF tracking the same on both when set to the same level?

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

And is the luminance/EOTF tracking the same on both when set to the same level?

I would rely on you for that I just use test patterns but no measurements.

[Geoff D]

That's the thing, matey at AVS (10 something?) covered this a while back, that adjusting contrast either way will bring back the levels that are being clipped on Pro vs Home but the luminance is not the same between them.

[elwaylite]

Sa basically use Cinema Pro for SDR and Cinema Home for HDR...

Hopefully Chad B will be here in the next 30-45 days, and we can test some of the modes on the 940.

[Geoff D]

That's exactly what I do.

[elwaylite]

Yeah, if you look at the AVS post, it shows you out of the box for both Home and Pro HDR, and Home is much closer to the line.

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/166-lc...l#post46576609

Odd by Sony, but who knows.

[Geoff D]

And 10K's graphs do indeed show that Home with contrast on 90 or below is shallowing a bit when it comes to the PQ luminance curve from, say, 50% upwards, but I'm happy to have the upper ranges of luminance rolled off slightly in order to retain 3500-nit-ish mapping. The lower brightness ranges are far more important to me in nailing the correct luminance in HDR, too bright and things will look too washed out, too dark and you'll be crushing your shadow detail.

Currently using Home with contrast set to 90 and gamma at 0.

[elwaylite]

That's what I am gonna do, just swap over to Home and let it be. Considering I don't have my meters anymore, I just want to use the best OOTB Mode for SDR and HDR. The good thing is these 2017 Sony's are damn accurate OOTB.

[gkolb]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

And 10K's graphs do indeed show that Home with contrast on 90 or below is shallowing a bit when it comes to the PQ luminance curve from, say, 50% upwards, but I'm happy to have the upper ranges of luminance rolled off slightly in order to retain 3500-nit-ish mapping. The lower brightness ranges are far more important to me in nailing the correct luminance in HDR, too bright and things will look too washed out, too dark and you'll be crushing your shadow detail.

Currently using Home with contrast set to 90 and gamma at 0.

Geoff, did you find something that made you switch from Contrast 88 & Gamma +1 ? Or just more visually satisfying ?

[Geoff D]

I was previously concerned about maintaining the luminance in those lower registers with the slightly lower contrast which is why the gamma was nudged up, but on a recent recal (using my X800 as the playback source rather than the UB900) I noticed that the curve was doing okay with gamma on 0 and the contrast bumped up to 90. It does clip a little more but I wasn't getting bang on 4000 nits anyway, so anywhere between 3000-4000 is fine.