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Kevin Collins

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I had the pleasure of being one of the judges for the CE Week 2017 TV Shootout in NYC today.  I flew in earlier in the week to be part of the calibration of the 6 UHD HDR 65” TV sets on Tuesday.  The TV Shootout originated from our friend Robert Zohn at Value Electronics.   Robert has been doing this for years previously at his location in Scarsdale, NY.  It recently has switched to being dealer led to being hosted by a neutral party (CE Week) and hosted by Joel Silver (founder of ISF) and Kevin Miller (one of the first certified ISF calibrators).  Unfortunately, we were only able to judge the displays from 9AM to 2PM and I personally didn’t have enough time to go through test patterns and familiar content to spend as much time as I would have liked to, but I did have enough time with enough patterns and reference content that it was easy to pick the first three display units.
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DavidMiller

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If they could only make a OLED in the 85" range for the $10,000 or less the "traditional" 4K TVs I would be at the store buying one today. :)
 

daimler2015

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Do you guys know if there is a layman's explanation as to the interpretation of the types of graphs and charts shown above?
 

Kevin Collins

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Do you guys know if there is a layman's explanation as to the interpretation of the types of graphs and charts shown above?

Hi Michael,

The saturation sweeps or what I refer to as the color gamut show how well the display is tracking to the primary (RGB) and secondary colors (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) for each display. They are also five point readings for each color. A black dot represents where the display actually was reading in comparison to where the reading should be. Three things to look for are saturation, accuracy and linear tracking.

Under saturation would be where the black dot is not as far out as the associated square. The Westinghouse shows this flaw for red.

Proper saturation is looking at the outer most squares and seeing the black dot in side the square. The LG is almost perfect.

Accuracy is how close each black dot is to the corresponding square. The LG is the best here and the Westinghouse is the worst.

Linear tracking is how straight the black dots are coming from the center. The Westinghouse has crazy curves for blue and red.

The gray scale is how closely the display is tracking to D65 (Calvin 6500 temperature). This is shown in the sweeps by looking at the center square and the associated white dot. If the white dot is in the square, then it is accurate for the equivalent of a 100 IRE pattern (solid white). The gray scale graphs show a reading for each IRE pattern (10-100 in 5 IRE steps). IRE of 100 is solid white. IRE of 0 is full black. Looking at the gray scale provides much more information about how accurate the color temperature is across all levels of light output on the display. Having a graph that matches the 0 line is what is desired. The Sony LCD was the best of the bunch here and the Westinghouse was the worst. The Westinghouse was accurate at 100 IRE, but all over the place for the other IRE's. Gray scale is most noticeable on B&W movies like Casablanca and the Westinghouse would be showing different color temperatures for the different shades of white (not good).

The gamma is how accurately the display is tracking to brightening or darkening darker areas. If the graph isn't flat then the display will be either brighter or darker depending on where it should be tracking. The biggest offender here was the Westinghouse and the closest was the Samsung. Unfortunately, none of the displays we say had as good of gamma as I have seen on other display systems.

At the end of the day, the data is one thing and what you see is another thing. This is why it is always important to use both. This is why we had a reference Sony BVM reference monitor so we could always look over at what displays are being used in the studio when the title is being color graded. At the end of the day, you want to be seeing what the colorist is seeing in the bay. The colorists are typically using the Sony BVM's and you want your display to match that. Unfortunately, no display does that, yet.
 
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Kevin Collins

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If they could only make a OLED in the 85" range for the $10,000 or less the "traditional" 4K TVs I would be at the store buying one today. :)

It will happen.... Yields will eventually improve and the price will drop. The fact that the Sony LCD costs more than the Sony OLED is a head scratcher.... Panasonic is making OLED panels, just not selling them in the US. Supposedly they are excellent displays. Eventually the tech will improve and more manufacturers will be making OLED and then the prices will plummet even more.
 

Sam Posten

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I know. I keep going back and forth between 65" OLED and 75" 940E...

That was me. I went with the 940E, no regrets. My only complaint is on cable shows with fast pans the lighting gets a wonky vertical dark spot. On 4k material and Blurays it is PERFECT. I'll love an OLED when they get to the right price. We got 1/3 of the way there with the early 2017 price drops and 2017 model additions of DV. See you for a 75" OLED in 2022 =)
 

sidburyjr

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Is there a chance that in the 2018 shootout that this year's winner could be included. It would allow us to see how much units have improved.
 

gadgtfreek

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I don't think they do that generally. I always look for techincal posts from the calibrators after the model has been out a little bit to determine what is actually better.

It did not take long for them to report the 2017's had better ABL tendencies, even more accurate color and better tone mapping than the previous year. Also that near black uniformity was improved.

I'd also recommend subbing to the HDTV Test channel on youtube, Vincent Teoh does excellent 15 minute reviews on a display that are highly informative.
 

Kevin Collins

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Is there a chance that in the 2018 shootout that this year's winner could be included. It would allow us to see how much units have improved.

Hi,

That's a great idea, but I don't know if they would be able to get their hands on the same display. Unfortunately consumer displays have a good variance display to display. We were talking between the judges and the calibrators about how displays can be -+ 100 nits for the same display. The same happens in projectors where there are 3 chip designs and they all have a variance of error on registration. I think we had a bright LG based on what others were saying.

The good news is that we have the calibration results (above) and will be able to compare them to next years calibration of the displays and that is the best way to make an apple to apple comparison.

If I go again next year, I would post the same test results with the winner from this year.
 

sidburyjr

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Hi,

That's a great idea, but I don't know if they would be able to get their hands on the same display. Unfortunately consumer displays have a good variance display to display. We were talking between the judges and the calibrators about how displays can be -+ 100 nits for the same display. The same happens in projectors where there are 3 chip designs and they all have a variance of error on registration. I think we had a bright LG based on what others were saying.

The good news is that we have the calibration results (above) and will be able to compare them to next years calibration of the displays and that is the best way to make an apple to apple comparison.

If I go again next year, I would post the same test results with the winner from this year.

I sort of skimmed the data that you gave above (but promise to go back and look at it more carefully RSN) so I'm not sure how much difference there was from set to set in the above evaluation. Is the following statement too liberal an interpretation of the quoted comment. "There's a lot of sample to sample differences between consumer sets even with high quality calibration so that possibly if you had different samples the results might have been different this year." Your original post as to the subjective difference between the various sets caused me to wonder how much difference one would notice without a side by side comparison.

Final questions: How is it decided what brands/models will be evaluated? And who supplies the sets and how do they pick them? That is if they are supplied by the manufacturers do they hand pick the units being evaluated?

Thanks for the original detailed report and the additional answers that you provided.
 

Kevin Collins

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Big announcement on the LG 65" OLED!

The price has been reduced to $3197 at Value Electronics and you can get a free LG Slim wall mount. This is a sizeable discount from where it was when we did the shootout.
 

Kevin Collins

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I sort of skimmed the data that you gave above (but promise to go back and look at it more carefully RSN) so I'm not sure how much difference there was from set to set in the above evaluation. Is the following statement too liberal an interpretation of the quoted comment. "There's a lot of sample to sample differences between consumer sets even with high quality calibration so that possibly if you had different samples the results might have been different this year." Your original post as to the subjective difference between the various sets caused me to wonder how much difference one would notice without a side by side comparison.

Final questions: How is it decided what brands/models will be evaluated? And who supplies the sets and how do they pick them? That is if they are supplied by the manufacturers do they hand pick the units being evaluated?

Thanks for the original detailed report and the additional answers that you provided.

Hi Dick,

It was difficult to see a difference side by side with the LG OLED and the Sony OLED. There was a big difference between both OLED's and the rest of the LED local dimming sets and a huge difference between the all the sets and their LED edge lit competitors. In most cases you pay for what you get. The exception to the rule was the Samsung where unless there is steep discounting, it is not a good value for the money. If you don't care about picture quality and all you want is size, then the Westinghouse is something to look towards. If you want the best bang for your buck with local dimming, then the Vizio is a great choice. If you need super bright and accurate, the the Sony LED is great. If you want the best picture quality and best price for that quality, the LG with its recent price drop is the best deal.

I don't know how the displays were picked, outside that they had to be the latest models. AFAIK, the displays were sourced from manufacturer inventory. CE Week is independent as is ISF, so there are no potential or perceived conflicts of interest with a dealer running the show. The units we had were not hand picked.
 

Robert_Zohn

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LG lists my 2017 TV Shootout on their website and credits Value Electronics for our Trademark ownership and as the creator of the event.

497f7e5c85ea54f592b00f7f1a45d068.jpg
 

Edwin-S

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I really don't get the hatred over a curved display. I had one for awhile and you don't even notice the curve after a short period of viewing.
 

Edwin-S

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Sony has different electronics driving the panel and that resulted in different performance.

For a short time I was considering the Sony A1 as a replacement for my flawed EG9600, since I was so damn mad at LGs terrible response to the problem. I was watching a comparison of the A1 to a B7 on a British calibrator's website: my current set is the B7. Apparently, the Sony tone maps differently than the LG sets and is set to clip anything above 1000 nits when it comes to bright detail, while the LG will try to resolve bright detail even if the material is mastered out to 4000 nits. He used a piece from a film where (I believe) Alec Baldwin is wearing a bright white dress shirt. The mastering had been done out to 4000 nits and there was a noticeable difference between the two images.

It is interesting that Panasonic's OLED offering was selected as the general favorite during a similar shoot out put on by the website that Vincent (the calibrator I was watching) writes for.
 

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After reading this I'm glad I didn't opt for the Q9 as the replacement for my EG9600. The colour volume on Samsung's Q series TVs looks incredible; however, the set lacked in overall PQ, even with the greater colour volume. I'm glad these test results supported my general impression of the these sets from just looking at them.
 

Aaron Silverman

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I don't get the whole kickstand thing with the Sony. Sounds like it's basically a dealbreaker if you aren't mounting the set on the wall.
 

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