Black and white movies and OLED banding

[Matt Stieg]

I watch a lot of older black and white movies and just wanted to ask about people's experiences with b&w films and OLED's issues with near black uniformity and banding.

I'm coming from a 2012 Samsung E550 51" plasma, by no means the end-all-be-all of plasma picture quality, but it's a TV I've been happy with for the last eight years and I watch in a near pitch black room at night with no ambient light.

Anyway, with everything I read about OLED near black banding I would think lowlight level b&w movies like the Criterion BDs of SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS or THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER would be absolute torture tests for an OLED. Also thinking about dark noir type lighting, ie TOUCH OF EVIL or OUT OF THE PAST or even CITIZEN KANE as well.

I was also thinking about Woody Allen's MANHATTAN, with its dark nighttime scenes of Allen and Michael Murphy, and later Allen and Diane Keaton walking around town. Not to mention also the scene with Allen and Keaton in the planetarium.

While I'm certain my plasma's black levels are nowhere near OLED or the best late generation plasmas, its near black is perfectly and beautifully uniform. Anyway, thanks in advance for anyone's time and input.

[revgen]

With my E6 panel, banding only seems to be a serious issue occasionally with HDR material.

My understanding is that plasma TV's in the late 90's and early 2000's had their issues too. But the technology matured, just as I believe OLED will do.

The problem with plasma's is that you have to produce TV's over 100 inches to do 4K.

[Matt Stieg]

Hi Revgen, thanks for your input. I see from your signature link about Pre-Code and early talkies you're obviously a classic movie buff. I take it then that you've had plenty of experience watching black and white movies on an OLED? I guess if banding occurs more with HDR material I don't have much to worry about in regards to b&w BDs.

[GenPion]

A lot of the time banding can actually be source related. Sometimes it’s the display. Criterion is exceptional at encoding films so I wouldn’t worry about those black and white films too much. As long as you dial in the right settings, banding shouldn’t be a big issue.

[Matt Stieg]

Hi GenPion, I always kind of thought a lot of it might be source related and in particular even more related to people's settings. But you still get posters who swear up and down that their settings are dialed in correctly and still have banding. (It can be hard sometimes to separate the wheat from the chaff at places like AVS and even here, too).

I guess my reasoning is that a lot of what I read about vertical banding on OLED seems to be in 2% to 5% grey just above 0% black. And so I figured a lot of the black and white movies I like to watch have many dark and low light level scenes that I was thinking might be conducive to showing vertical banding; just for instance ALL of the nighttime scenes in movies like MANHATTAN and SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS.

While the black levels on my Samsung plasma are fairly middling (I think they're somewhere around .10 ftL maybe?) they are nicely uniform. I've yet to see some stray vertical band pop up in the middle of a dark black and white 1940s movie anyway!

[revgen]

Originally Posted by Matt Stieg

I take it then that you've had plenty of experience watching black and white movies on an OLED? I guess if banding occurs more with HDR material I don't have much to worry about in regards to b&w BDs.

Yes. I have quite a few B&W blu-rays in my collection. And I've yet to have any major problems with them.

But I can only speak for my panel. OLED's seem to be a bit of panel lottery with different users complaining about different issues.

[JulesAndJim]

I went from a 51" plasma to a 65" C7 OLED a couple of years ago. I've never once wished I had kept the plasma. Near-black banding sometimes occurs but is fleeting and not very noticeable. It does not occur on black-and-white films with any more regularity than it does on color films.

[Auditor55]

Originally Posted by JulesAndJim

I went from a 51" plasma to a 65" C7 OLED a couple of years ago. I've never once wished I had kept the plasma. Near-black banding sometimes occurs but is fleeting and not very noticeable. It does not occur on black-and-white films with any more regularity than it does on color films.

Black crush and near black performance continue to plague OLED, even into the current models, although reports are their have been slight improvements.

[oddbox83]

Oh he's back.

[Robert Zohn]

@Auditor55, your claim is seriously exaggerated. For the 2019 model year, Sony has slightly better near black shadow detail, but all OLED TVs exhibit very good shadow detail and is the only display technology that starts the dynamic tonal range with perfect pure black.

Glad you gave me the opportunity to reply to your post and bring out the most important attribute of MLL and that's having a black floor that starts at 0 Nit and actually has very good near black performance. Once we calibrate Sony's A9G and view in a dark room I can see 1% luminance stimulus and also see each 1% luminance level increase as we step through the luminance levels at 1% intervals.

[Matt Stieg]

Hey just wanted to say thanks to everyone for their continued feedback on this topic! It's been very helpful and useful in my decision-making.