The four contenders for the HDR TV shootout in Leeds, 23-Jul-2016

[spiny norman]

I can confirm the LG is a cracking TV and I plan to keep mine for many years.

 

[bigboss]

Well I guess it will always come down to opinion.

In some of the demo scenes I saw, the LG was superb - there was a costume musical / drama scene and the faces and clothes and everything really had very nice natural beige tones. On other sources though, greens looked fluorescent especially on grass eg because of this, I got the store to switch sources to a pre-recorded BT Sport 4K football match and again the pitch was fluorescent looking. The tv was also superb with motion (which kind of flies in the face of the WhatHiFi review as I didn't see any of the jerkiness they talked about, albeit maybe football is too slow to cause issue). However, the crowd was another matter and when a goal was scored, the jumping around of so many people did cause so slight issues although whether that was BT's encoding or LG's tv is impossible to say. Motion was ver good though.

Don't get me wrong, the LG is superb but for me, at least on the settings I've seen in both shops now, it has 3 main issues:

1. Oversaturated colours, especially greens in HDR which can result in them looking un-natural

2. On blacks and dull scenes especially, the screen is very matt (not sure if this is the result of an anti-reflective coating or just a characteristic of OLED). However, to me it looked un-natural in some scenes compared to the shine I was seeing on others.

3. The lack of greys was very pronounced in the Moon Sweep demo as the moon went from almost white to black in avery defined line as the shadow swept across, which again looked un-natural as you would expect a grey margin as a transition between light and dark.

By contrast the 902b, had very few faults I could discern. I couldn't see anybacklighting issue or the overblown highlights I'd read about, instead the picture looked superb. My only critisism would be that upscaling was very poor with SD which meant that you need to really pay attention to the panel size because if you sit too close it's going to be very apparent - by poor I mean pixellated and heavily artefaced - I was watching BBC news in SD.

As for the Sony, saw it in JL, and it looked very nice in there. Curry's didn't have it which was a shame as thier viewing area was much darker and much more like a home viewing area.

Overall though, I feel so far, there's very little to choose between them with 4K / HD. The Sony to me is the more middle of the road set. Very impressive but it lacks the dynamics of the other two sets. The LG is overblown at times but very impressive on blacks and motion. The Panasonic in 4K HDR was the most impressive to me on non black pictures, somehting which LG seemed to avoid in their demo mostly - maybe because they can't compete on brightness? The impressive pictures on the 902B from memory were the surfing, the lake looking into the sunlight and the fruit in HDR. In the fruit scene, I felt the colours were up there with LG's OLED. In the city night scene, black levels weren't OLED standard but nevertheless, very good.

Shop floors aren't the best environments to compare. Q5's experience was a comparison between leading televisions which were professionally calibrated.

 

[Alsone]

Shop floors aren't the best environments to compare. Q5's experience was a comparison between leading televisions which were professionally calibrated.

I do agree although equally I don't think professionally calibrated sets are a good comparison either as how many people can afford to spend £2,000 getting an engineer in to do the calibration?

Don't get me wrong, HDTV test do some wonderfully insightful and useful tests eg: http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/oled55e6-201604274285.htm

The information on offer is mindblowing.

However, how many people can ever afford such precise calibration in their home? It's a great way of comparing what sets are capable of. However, it doesn't represent what most people will see.

Personally, I think the best viewing comparison (as opposed to technical comparison), is always going to be with THX disc calibration eg the calibration section of a disc such as Star Wars, as that's far more realistic a proposition to 99% of the population who even bother to calibrate, than a professional calibration session. Equally it has to be remembered, that probably 99% of the general population don't calibrate a set at all but simply bring it home and either "stick it on" or might adjust some settings slightly to their taste but without any reference to what any kind of calibration should be and resultantly are way out from achieving the best picture.

So to that end, an in shop comparison, although not good, isn't that unrealistic for many.

However, for those who care about picture quality, THX would give a more realistic comparison. Maybe it's time ALL manufacturers gave away a dedicated THX calibration disk with every tv and included running the THX disk as a part of the setting up / unpacking process in the manual. That would really shake up the market and might encourage some shops to start showing off THX calibrated displays.

As for which tv to buy between the E6, 9405 and 902B, for me the jury's still out as they all have their strengths and weaknesses and the overall position is very very close.

 

[rocketrazor]

I haven't had mine calibrated but i'm sure its somwhere in the region of £250-£350 depending on where you live and the calibrator lives. If you spend £5000 on a tv your gonna get it calibrated, if you spend £1500 on a TV maybe not, but shop viewing isn't to be relied on. When I got my GT50 it ws the worse looking TV in the shop, but due to reviews I knew exactly what I wanted. The others were just set up better and feed better feeds, oh and the contrast was set sky high!

When buying a TV if your serious you need to look at reviews and shop floor, not just one of them.

 

[ellisdj]

calibration puts the tv's on a more equal playing field, essential for side by side testing

 

[bigboss]

1) Calibration can cost as low as £175 if you look around. The main point is about the potential of TVs. Even though you may not get it professionally calibrated, tinkering with settings can significantly improve picture quality. Also, there are various calibration discs in the market for self calibration.

2) Some specialist shops offer side by side demo with calibrated TVs.

 

[Son_of_SJ]

Shop floors aren't the best environments to compare. Q5's experience was a comparison between leading televisions which were professionally calibrated.

I do agree although equally I don't think professionally calibrated sets are a good comparison either as how many people can afford to spend £2,000 getting an engineer in to do the calibration?

Where on earth did you get that figure of £2,000 from??? Calibration of a single display by a certified professional costs between £175 and £300 depending on the work that is done (calibrating for day and / or night and / or 3D), how difficult the particular display is to calibrate, and the distance between your home and that of the calibrator. Further, if you are having more than one display calibrated at the same time you may get a discount on the other displays, though not on the first.

But, I'd really like to know where you got that figure of £2,000 for a single calibration from. Please.

 

[Son_of_SJ]

The official report from the shootout has now been published, a fortnight after the event. Here: http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/shootout-hdr-201608054331.htm