2021 Sony Master Series A90J (55", 65" and 83") [Owners' & Discussion Thread]

[DDH]

Sony A90J Setup

Sony A90J Setup - YouTube

[tama]

I'm very excited.

[Staying Salty]

Live Sony A90J Calibrated Measurements, Review, Q&A: Come with Questions! - YouTube

[NeilZ]

That was great and lots of fun to watch, but what’s this about it not being the Evo panel? If it’s not the evo panel there’s going to be some concerns over burn in at these insane levels (800 nits and potentially 900+ speculate highlights calibrated).

[tama]

Originally Posted by NeilZ

That was great and lots of fun to watch, but what’s this about it not being the Evo panel? If it’s not the evo panel there’s going to be some concerns over burn in at these insane levels (800 nits and potentially 900+ speculate highlights calibrated).

From D-Nice:
I’ll talk to Robert about this tomorrow. It is the new panel design that LGE calls EVO. The Spectral Response proves that. Blue is totally different compared to previous years. I’ll post the individual RGB Spectral Responses tomorrow

[ray0414]

Got a very quick in person with the A90J yesterday. Drove about an hour and half to see it but unfortunately best buy is now closing at 7pm in Michigan so I hardly had any time. Tv looked absolutely amazing. Made the A8H next to it look very dull and flat. This new A90J definitely makes my C8 oled look very 1st Gen and "old". The contrast and 3d like depth is a sight to be seen in person. Can't wait to get the 83 in May!

[ray0414]

Originally Posted by NeilZ

That's going to depend who you ask, Dnice is also controversial too, he's also made mind boggling statements (and stands by them) such as "tv led Dolby Vision doesn't make much difference", despite any average user on any av forum thinking the complete opposite based on their own two eyes.

Dnice also measures mostly every tv lower than they get reviewed, so pretty confident the A90J is not going to be a 700~800 nits tv but an 800+ on most other reviews. So yeah for a Sony, and for an accurate hdr experience on oled, it's a significant achievement.

I know a lot of people who watch their hdr on lcd's such as the x900 or qt80 series, and even the brighter x900 rarely goes over 800 nits, so yes the A90J isn't going to give you the specular highlights found on Z9 series, but it's still about the level of a good lcd. Once you factor in the perfect blacks which are the prime asset of any oled, the experience is not going to be the same anyway, comes down to viewing environment (dark vs bright room). In a dark room the A90 will outperform even the Z9 series in my opinion.

Yes Sony could have driven the panel a bit harder and aim for the finish line at 1000 nits, but they favor durability, and from what I see it does pay off for those who have great fear of burn in as I know quite a few gamers who are ready to pay extra for a Sony set even at a loss of nits. Since LG isn't going for the heatsink this year, I think you get the best of both with the A90J.

Went to magnolia to see the A90J. They had it right next to a 75"900H. Thr 900h is rated at 500 nits full screen brightness and around 700 peak. But I'm telling you, the A90J just destroyed that 900 in every possible way. It was brighter 99.999% of the time including the full screen APL. How is this A90J beating a TV rated at 500nits full screen? Probably because the pattern nits are overrated.

The current theory is that even though the A90J only measured 780 nits on patterns, that the tv may actually do real scene brighter closer to 1000. Someone on AVS got a real brightness of around 1060 on the Matrix. The whites on this A90J are certainly brand new and never seen on an oled before. It made the A8H look extremely dull which had super dull whites in comparison.

[dontpokethebear3893]

There was some discussion yesterday on the FOMO stream that Sony's XR processor might not recognize small white boxes as "specular highlights" and may reserve the highest peak brightness for real scene content. I find that an interesting screen saving technique, as going above 780 nits when you're contrasting against true blacks is not worth much IMO.

[NeilZ]

That makes a lot of sense actually. So the tv might actually be a 900~1000 nits display calibrated, but the processor can tell the test patterns are not actual content and displays them more conservatively.

This would explain why some other user on the avs forum was getting 1000 nits in actual uhd content. No wonder everyone sees this tv and is blown away by the brightness, but when measurements were done we were somewhat puzzled.

[samlop10]

Originally Posted by dontpokethebear3893

There was some discussion yesterday on the FOMO stream that Sony's XR processor might not recognize small white boxes as "specular highlights" and may reserve the highest peak brightness for real scene content. I find that an interesting screen saving technique, as going above 780 nits when you're contrasting against true blacks is not worth much IMO.

Originally Posted by NeilZ

That makes a lot of sense actually. So the tv might actually be a 900~1000 nits display calibrated, but the processor can tell the test patterns are not actual content and displays them more conservatively.

This would explain why some other user on the avs forum was getting 1000 nits in actual uhd content. No wonder everyone sees this tv and is blown away by the brightness, but when measurements were done we were somewhat puzzled.

Why would the processor do that? Like, what would be the purpose of it doing that and limiting the brightness of test patterns (which includes white boxes)? If that were the case it would mess up the calibration since calibration requires test patterns. Doesn’t make sense.

And if that were the case (despite the fact it does not make sense) what happens when you turn the processor off because you want 4K/HDR content to be accurate to the source? Does the peak brightness drop because it’s not doing any recognition of objects for bright highlights?

[tama]

From John over at AVS Forum:






Well, what you guys don't realize, this year like some previous years D-Nice and i have been discussing the testing of these new sets off line since he got his. So when we looked at the Sony yesterday at the store, i had a pretty good idea of what i was going to see based on D-Nice's testing to date. Now that i have my set, we will continue to compare notes and validate what we are both seeing.

That said, i was up very late last night comparing my A90J to my CX, side by side, calibrated running the same content. My CX has very slight tinting in the lower left side and virtually no banding or vignetting. I can measure a 10% HDR patch at D65 at 730 nits reliably. This is one of the brighter CXs i've seen all model year. My A90J measures about 760 nits at D65, 10% window and has absolutely no banding or vignetting all the way down to 1% and no tinting. So between the two sets, the measured HDR peak luminance is not that different and shouldn't be readily visible between the two.

When comparing the Sony and the LG with all kinds of stock content that i'm very familiar with, there is no question that the Sony looks brighter with certain content in SDR and HDR. Not only are the specular highlights brighter but in some cases the overall picture appears brighter. No more do you see the Sony's full white screen dim out while the LG stays bright. I believe this is based on the way the Sony does it's picture processing. If you have content where the sun is shining on a spot on a table for example, the Sony will make that highlight brighter, making it more realistic vs the LG which basically makes the whole area brighter, for example. I left Reality Creation set to the default of Manual/20 and both D-Nice and i believe this feature is enhanced by the new processor and probably their new database. In my opinion, the RC on the older Sony's made objects look overly sharp so i turned it off but on the A90J, the slight sharpening makes most objects look more "real" while not over sharpened. You get a little more depth as well for whatever reason.

Near black is improved. I wasn't able to make the set fail with overshoot or anything else. I can clearly see slightly more shadow detail on the Sony than the LG which was tweaked to get this as near perfect as possible. D-Nice feels the Sony comes out of black a little faster than the LG which is ok but again in my opinion i like the way the Sony handles this better. Looking at the 10 bit brightness patterns visually, the Sony was near perfect.

Motion on the Sony looks great as always but the LG's motion on the CX was improved as well. Gradation on the Sony of course, is near perfect where the LG gets challenged with some content.

I feel the upscaling of cable on the Sony is slightly better than on my LG as well.

D-Nice measured the lag time at 16ms for gaming. I don't game so i don't have any other information to add.

The Google TV interface is "similar" to the old Android interface in some ways but it's something new that you will need to get used to. Some will like it and some will hate it. Overall response of the interface was very good.

When running content from Stacy's disk, HDR in my opinion looked a little brighter on the A90J but Dolby Vision looked almost identical. Both sets use TV Led Dolby Vision. It was very clear to me that the picture processing differences on both sets is very dependent on the content being played.

All this said, so far, i feel the Sony A90J is a winner. We will need to see how the LG G1 performs side by side with the A90J but the A90J is a significant improvement over what we have currently in my opinion.

The Sony also calibrated very well. My results were consistent to what D-Nice observed. No crazy spikes with certain colors in the CMS like we sometime see on some of the older sets. What's interesting, my CX has an new large 3D LUT made with Color Space and on paper looks close to reference. With the A90J because we just took it out of the box with no break-in i may have spent 1/2 hour with the user calibration controls and side by side calibration wise, it's hard to tell the difference between the two sets. This is a result of the great engineering on the Sony. I also feel skin tones on the Sony look more natural to me than on the LG. Not everyone ages on this one but the picture and color processing in my opinion is very close to the Panasonic's i've been recently working on.

[samlop10]

Very close to what Dnice got (~750 nits calibrated and accurate settings seems correct for these sets).

I wonder if the CX John tested had DTM turned on or if it was using the static tone mapping. I prefer static since it is more accurate to the source (and if he had DTM turned on that might explain why the image on the CX was brightening more around bright objects compared to the Sony).

Overall though, the improvements still seem small imo. It definitely improved on previous Sony OLEDs but in other ways it seems to be catching up more to previous LG OLEDs instead of surpassing them in everything. I wonder how it’ll compare to this year’s LGs. I wouldn’t be surprised if the G1s turn out to be brighter than the A90Js.

[tama]

Originally Posted by samlop10

Very close to what Dnice got (~750 nits calibrated and accurate settings seems correct for these sets).

I wonder if the CX John tested had DTM turned on or if it was using the static tone mapping. I prefer static since it is more accurate to the source (and if he had DTM turned on that might explain why the image on the CX was brightening more around bright objects compared to the Sony).

Overall though, the improvements still seem small imo. It definitely improved on previous Sony OLEDs but in other ways it seems to be catching up more to previous LG OLEDs instead of surpassing them in everything. I wonder how it’ll compare to this year’s LGs. I wouldn’t be surprised if the G1s turn out to be brighter than the A90Js.

John makes it clear the new A90J is a significant improvement over any OLED models currently available. D-Nice over the last few days has echoed the same in comparison to his C9 and A9G/A9H. Doesn't sound small as a whole all things considered.

While we wait to see what LG offers I'm hard pressed to believe it'll be any better then what Sony is doing now. Likely sideways with each likely having something to cater to certain folks on certain subjects/issues. Maybe pricing?

[tama]

[Show spoiler]

Originally Posted by samlop10

Why would the processor do that? Like, what would be the purpose of it doing that and limiting the brightness of test patterns (which includes white boxes)? If that were the case it would mess up the calibration since calibration requires test patterns. Doesn’t make sense.

And if that were the case (despite the fact it does not make sense) what happens when you turn the processor off because you want 4K/HDR content to be accurate to the source? Does the peak brightness drop because it’s not doing any recognition of objects for bright highlights?

This was posted: Post #1497

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/202...184217/page-75

Completely agree with John on this.
The links in my previous post to the BBC HDR pages explain this.

HDR peak white should be at 75% leaving 2 stops for HDR specular highlights. That works roughly with what is being measured here and Sony sets have always done this, hence lower peak ire reading with outgoing sets. Real peak capabilities are much higher

This is technically the correct way to do it.

“The nominal signal level for white objects, known as “HDR Reference White”, is specified by the ITU-R for HDR TV production, in ITU-R report BT.2408. A value of 75% signal is recommend.”

This leaves extra headroom for specular highlights those probably don’t need to track EOTF as they are above what needs to measured accurately as the HDR target white point.

[dontpokethebear3893]

That makes a lot of sense and I'm glad that more "light" is being shed on how HDR brightness is both calculated and displayed!

[samlop10]

Originally Posted by tama

John makes it clear the new A90J is a significant improvement over any OLED models currently available. D-Nice over the last few days has echoed the same in comparison to his C9 and A9G/A9H. Doesn't sound small as a whole all things considered.

While we wait to see what LG offers I'm hard pressed to believe it'll be any better then what Sony is doing now. Likely sideways with each likely having something to cater to certain folks on certain subjects/issues. Maybe pricing?

What exactly makes it significant though?

I guess if you use post-processing settings (motion interpolation, the XR processor) it might be more of an improvement depending on personal priorities for how you like your image too look. Even then I think ‘significant’ is stretching it though. If you only use settings to maintain accuracy as much as possible, the only improvement really is APL. Otherwise peak brightness is very similar to previous LG OLEDs, as the other improvements affect accuracy from the source.

Originally Posted by tama

[Show spoiler]

This was posted: Post #1497

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/202...184217/page-75

If that’s the standard and correct way to calibrate peak white (75%), then wouldn’t it mean that other OLEDs also have a bit more headroom on top of their peak brightness after they are calibrated? Or is that specific to Sony OLEDs?

Didn’t they also just say peak brightness between the CX and A90J wasn’t significant?

[Kingchin]

Originally Posted by tama

John makes it clear the new A90J is a significant improvement over any OLED models currently available. D-Nice over the last few days has echoed the same in comparison to his C9 and A9G/A9H. Doesn't sound small as a whole all things considered.

While we wait to see what LG offers I'm hard pressed to believe it'll be any better then what Sony is doing now. Likely sideways with each likely having something to cater to certain folks on certain subjects/issues. Maybe pricing?

The Sony A90J does look like a overall improvement from last year's model. But we still don't know if the improvement is just from Sony's new processor and the new custom heatsink. As Robert Zohn stated the Sony engineer who worked on the Sony A90J told him their's no EVO panel used.

LG Display actually have two new panels for 2021 the new standard panel and the new EVO panel. So it's possible LG Corp have kept the 20% more efficient EVO panel exclusively for themselves this year. While the Sony A90J improvements are from their new processor and new custom heatsink. We will find out for sure once someone qualified gets their hands on the LG G1 EVO.

The videos on Sparechange and Stop the FOMO were good. But It would have been better if John Reformato turned off Reality Creation completely as it uses artificial processing and artificially removes noise. Another video of the Sony A90J shows the Reality Creation setting. You won't get a accurate picture directors intent of a dvd, blu ray, 4K blu ray if you leave settings like that on.
Screenshot_20210311-183608.jpg

[tama]

[Show spoiler]

Originally Posted by Kingchin

The Sony A90J does look like a overall improvement from last year's model. But we still don't know if the improvement is just from Sony's new processor and the new custom heatsink. As Robert Zohn stated the Sony engineer who worked on the Sony A90J told him their's no EVO panel used.

LG Display actually have two new panels for 2021 the new standard panel and the new EVO panel. So it's possible LG Corp have kept the 20% more efficient EVO panel exclusively for themselves this year. While the Sony A90J improvements are from their new processor and new custom heatsink. We will find out for sure once someone qualified gets their hands on the LG G1 EVO.

The videos on Sparechange and Stop the FOMO were good. But It would have been better if John Reformato turned off Reality Creation completely as it uses artificial processing and artificially removes noise. Another video of the Sony A90J shows the Reality Creation setting. You won't get a accurate picture directors intent of a dvd, blu ray, 4K blu ray if you leave settings like that on.
Attachment 256969

D-Nice has confirmed that the panel on the 55 is a newer panel.

Also it's been discussed that the spectral response of the panel is different from the panels from the last several years, which all had the same response and thus could keep using the same alternate white point even if they made tweaks to the subpixel structure. This panel requires a new AWP due to that underlying change.

Another poster also mentioned that how the panel is performing is consistent with the engineering description of the EVO panel with the new green layer. This, combined with the measured increased brightness + lower power consumption.

[Kingchin]

Originally Posted by tama

[Show spoiler]

D-Nice has confirmed that the panel on the 55 is a newer panel.

Also it's been discussed that the spectral response of the panel is different from the panels from the last several years, which all had the same response and thus could keep using the same alternate white point even if they made tweaks to the subpixel structure. This panel requires a new AWP due to that underlying change.

Another poster also mentioned that how the panel is performing is consistent with the engineering description of the EVO panel with the new green layer. This, combined with the measured increased brightness + lower power consumption.

We won't know for definite until someone gets the LG G1 and properly tests it.

D-Nice is a expert but he has been wrong on a few occasions before. LG Display have two new panels for 2021 not just the EVO panel. So we don't know what the other new panels spectral response will be like. Could be completely different from last year's OLEDs.

Plus Robert Zohn's statement that the main Sony engineer confirming the Sony A90J doesn't have the EVO panel. That the Sony A90J achieves the high brightness by only Sony's new processor and new custom heatsink.

It isn't fact that the Sony A90J uses the EVO panel and it isn't fact that it doesn't use the EVO panel. Until we actually find out for sure

[ray0414]

Originally Posted by Kingchin

We won't know for definite until someone gets the LG G1 and properly tests it.

D-Nice is a expert but he has been wrong on a few occasions before. LG Display have two new panels for 2021 not just the EVO panel. So we don't know what the other new panels spectral response will be like. Could be completely different from last year's OLEDs.

Plus Robert Zohn's statement that the main Sony engineer confirming the Sony A90J doesn't have the EVO panel. That the Sony A90J achieves the high brightness by only Sony's new processor and new custom heatsink.

It isn't fact that the Sony A90J uses the EVO panel and it isn't fact that it doesn't use the EVO panel. Until we actually find out for sure

It had been pointed out that the term Evo panel is actually used by LG Electronics, it LG Display, therefore Sony could get into copyright trouble using the term or saying they use it.

And also, the evo panels are not exclusive to LG. Both Panasonic and Philips have confirmed they will also be using them this year. I'm not sure if they used the actual term evo or not but the green Emmitter will be in their top oled tvs this year.