Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Made a HUGE mistake today

I went to the local AV retailer in town today to check out what I thought would possibly be my next TV.I had decided on a Sony XBR65x850c , but while I was looking my phone rang and so I was wandering around talking when I happened upon a LG OLED 55inch tv. Well, after seeing that TV there is no way in hell I will buy a LCD tv , I mean that thing was friggin gorgeous.
I sure hope they come down in price some in the coming year or I may have to get crazy and spend 5grand for my dream tv. If you haven't seen an OLED make a point to have a look. or don't because you will be unhappy with what you already have.

Peace

Stop it.

I have taken a look at the OLED and yes they are really bright and vivid colours.

But then the other part of my brain kicked in and started me thinking. This is effectively overdrive burner mode. Would you like to watch that sort of output day in day out in a dimly lit room at that colour intensity? Me...NO WAY.

So you get the set home and then go about setting the brightness down about 1000% to match better the light in the room. Then you will start to obsess about the vividness. Does anything in real life around you look that saturated in colour. So you turn that down. And by the time you are finished, you will be left with about the same level as every other TV both LCD and Plasma.

The honest question is how black and how clean the white is. In a store it's just about impossible to really compare one set against another. It's like wondering through a store and trying to say if one type of speaker is better than another.

I don't think that vivid colors are the best thing about these OLED's - it's the black levels and contrast. I have been waiting for many years for this to become mainstream. Black levels exceeding the best plasmas. I'd like the price to drop under $3k for a 70 inch and I would pull the trigger.

I still have the SonyXBR Series and it's still doing its duty, as I never was into the LED/LCD panels. I paid about $4k in 2005

Most TVs in stores are demoed with the factory 'Torch Mode' in an attempt to stand out in the crowd in a brightly lit room. This is completely not watchable to me as I like the 'natural' look, kinda like my preference for accuracy in speakers.

It's somewhat like those who turn their subs up +10 Db or more over normal calibration levels - overwhelming bass levels that is not natural & quite frankly, annoying...

TAM

The local audiotronics here has very dim lighting and they have different areas sectioned off with low lighting. The demo included scenes from Fast Seven and the clarity, and depth along with black levels is what stood out for me. It was much more like plasma than any LED which to me have a fake look to them compared to plasma. The local store is actually really good about their lighting compared to going to Walmart where they have bright halogen overhead lights and the sets are cranked right up to burn. Personally I don't care about vivid and intense colors, I prefer close to real life and subtle with good definition. Since plasma's are gone I will skip over LED and move to OLED which imho is the next best thing.

Unfortunately my Best Buy is a large brightly lit warehouse type room where one wall is covered in TVs - not good.

When first plugged in, these new TVs often come up with a menu selection for something like 'Retail' (Torch Mode) or 'Home Use'. So Torch Mode is a factory 'Vivid' type setting that would look pretty awful in a HT - at least to me...

TAM

Its easy to chose a tv if money is no object but the way things change its hard to justify 5g. The OLED was on for 3g but it was 55 inch and I want at least a 60 so I am in the holding pattern again. Honestly though a guy could wait indefinitely give the speed of technology. HMMM

I just saw the 55" LG at our Best Buy for $3000 - $500 off. It actually looked smaller than my present Sony 55 incher for some reason.

I must say that it was really nice although I don't know about the curved shape. Blacks are really good - just like the OLED screen on our Samsung Galaxy Tablet S.

When my LED blows up, this probably will be the only technology available at a decent price unless they invent something else.

I was there to buy another Sony 5-Disc CD Changer because they hardly exist in the marketplace anymore. BTW, it is Amazon's #1 Best Seller in CD Players. A product for us old pharts I guess...

TAM

I thought the same thing, I think it must be the curve of the screen and the fact it has no real border. I have 50" panny in my bedroom and it has a 3 inch border on it and it looks huge compared to the 55. Still cant justify 3g will see what the new year looks like.

Supposedly Visio has an answer to the OLED that's about 1/2 the cost possibly in our Canadian market already. Haven't looked in last little while, I read some preview article about it a couple months ago.
It's not really a name brand though they seem pretty good. I know a few people that have had their Visio T.V.s for 5 plus years.

Funny you can find record players around again in the shops and the C.D. players have gone. I picked one of the Sony's a couple years back, has a pretty decent D.A.C. in it.

I've been waiting for OLED for years and i'm still holding out for more mainstream offerings and technology revisions.
LG does have some flat screen versions, a 55" and 65".

Maybe I could start a go fund me so I can get the new tv I want. I love the new OLED's but I just cant justify the money, YEt

I had to change my 7 year old samsung in the livingroom, the lcd screen was giving problems lately... I had bought it at the time because brand name.. had a ton of issues.. (power supply caps and so on) after opening it up a few times to fix it and examined some of the parts inside noticed that it had the most cheapest parts you can find on the market and was made to fail within 5 to 6 years.. to top it off it was a the higher end tv model from samsung and had paid over 3.5k from future shop... anyways bought a vizio m65-c1 at bust buy for 1800$... with some tweeking so far so good and picture is damm good for the $$$ for the HT room have an epson projector had it for a while and solid picture with a decent price....

Good to know JB. I have looked at a M70 C3 for 2200 bucks but had read their upscaling engine was not the greatest so I was on the fence and started looking at Sony. My dad bought a Sony XBR 55 inch at BB on sale and really likes it. I checked out downtown but they have like 15 TV's all next to each other and it just makes it so hard to tell if I would like it or not. I am not sure the OLED's will come down to my price range any time soon so I may have to bite the bullet we will see.

I did try out the Visio M65 for a bit. I am told it's a wonderful TV but I just could not stand it. I could not find any settings to lower the motion correction and it was stuck in the Soap Opera effect mode.

This is something that they have fixed but the kicker for me was that the TV would not auto download the new firmware that fixed this issue. After a call to Visio I was told that the TV will do it at some point, but there is no way with the current shipped firmware to force this to happen. I just gave in and went to the more expensive but I think better looking Panasonic TV.

You get to the point sometimes of if truely seeing some TV's side by side properly calibrated you might see some things of one being better over another but they are all pretty much on common ground. You eyes will become adapted to whatever you buy and it will look great.

Out of the box the vizio didn't look good at any of the video presets.. after some tweeking and trying a few of the internet forum settings for that tv I found what seems works best, I did get a vizo sound bar with wireless sub (found a 5.1 soundbar on kijiji for 100$) ...funny thing as when I was buying that tv someone was going for warranty with their sony tv, I doubt any major brands have high quality components inside of any of their tv's, they are made with lowest quoted supplier parts that said I just can't justify paying over 3k anymore for something that will fail within 5 or 6 years. I had no trouble with any of vizo updates (Matt perhaps something wasn't ok with your wifi settings on the tv)

Richard:

SONY sent me an email today on their new HDR technology TVs that is showing at the CES that boasts about improved contrast & brightness:

http://www.sony.ca/en/electronics/high-contrast-ratio-led-backlit-4k-hd-tvs

Watch the short video here:

http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/05/sony-4k-hdr-tvs-and-ultra/

Might be worth a look but undoubtedly will initially be pricey...

TAM