Buy now or wait? OLED (1 Viewer)

[scottyh73]

Looks like $1k off the LG C1 65" is a great deal, but then again I just started shopping. Would anyone recommend holding off and seeing if a better deal comes along black friday for same or different tv, or just pull the trigger on this?

Ps: old tv works, but I cracked it moving the baby gate.. the gate that prevents the baby from damaging the tv

 

[Carlo_M]

If picture quality is of ultimate importance to you, the upper end lines (of which the C1/G1 was and C2/G2 is) rarely if ever are discounted on Black Friday. Those deals are usually for their lower end, mass market lines.

You will undoubtedly find a cheaper television for Black Friday, but it likely won't be of equal quality. As a C1 owner myself, I bought my 65" for I think $1800 or so on sale and I've never regretted it.

 

[uncledougie]

The LG C2 right now at a major warehouse store is $100 less than what you paid for the C1, $800 more for the 77” which if you’ve got the room looks well worth that difference. I’m sorely tempted, but worried about burn in since I’d be replacing the almost 10 year old daily viewer den set (CNN, MSNBC, etc, logos always annoyingly on the lower right), and also considering the Sony X90K 75” which wouldn’t be susceptible to the issue and is $200 less than the LG 65”. My resistance is waning but I’m seriously on the fence between the two. Reviews for LGs and Sonys are all quite high.

 

[Carlo_M]

The LG C2 right now at a major warehouse store is $100 less than what you paid for the C1, $800 more for the 77” which if you’ve got the room looks well worth that difference. I’m sorely tempted, but worried about burn in since I’d be replacing the almost 10 year old daily viewer den set (CNN, MSNBC, etc, logos always annoyingly on the lower right), and also considering the Sony X90K 75” which wouldn’t be susceptible to the issue and is $200 less than the LG 65”. My resistance is waning but I’m seriously on the fence between the two. Reviews for LGs and Sonys are all quite high.

Did you end up making a decision? I know the Sony X90K was larger (and there's something to be said about larger screens) but once I went OLED it was hard to go back.

One thing you may want to do if you are still deciding is to look at a site like rtings which runs the TVs through a bevy of tests. Before I even knew what it was called, I always knew that the edge dimming and local dimming artifacts of LED TVs always bothered me but given how expensive OLED used to be (2X-3X the price of comparable LED) it was always "well I don't want to shell out $5K on an OLED so this is what you get at the $2K-$$2.5K price range.

Now that you can get 65" OLEDs routinely under $2K, I can just never go back. The true blacks. The infinite contrast ratio. The unmatched local dimming. The ridiculous wide viewing angles. The downside of the OLED is that it doesn't get quite as bright as LEDs. If you're in a bright sunlit room all the time, then LEDs are a viable option because of the extra brightness. But if you have ambient light control, there's really no matching an OLED at this point.

 

[uncledougie]

As of last week I’d reduced the choice to two 75 inch sets (largest the room will reasonably accommodate, and had to rearrange a little even then). One was the LG C2, which had a terrific picture and a really good price at Costco. But I’d been checking Best Buy regularly and they came down for a final clearance of last year’s Sony Z9J, which was more than the LG but not a huge amount. I’ve loved my 65” Z9D, so that replaced the excellent and utterly reliable 9 year old Panasonic 58” set in the den (which went to a nephew-in-law whose upstairs set was going out). I must say, the brightness (it’s opposite slender tall windows with pull down shades) is like the Z9D outstanding, and if black levels aren’t quite OLED inky, they’re pretty darn close. We finally got around to watching Paint Your Wagon on DVD with the eldest nephew (it’s obvious Paramount has no interest in upgrading the film to Blu-ray, though like washing the car right before an unexpected rain maybe this will result in seeing it soon). Anyway, after the final fade-out and Paramount logo, the exit music plays over a dark screen (no typical Exit Music title), and the screen was pitch black, no Panavision letterbox lines or milkiness of any kind. First film watched after hookup was Cafe Society Blu-ray. The clarity was just incredibly sharp and detailed. Watched the new Dressed to Kill Kino Lorber 4K, and it looked really nice. Anyway, thanks for your interest, Carlo. Valued input and well considered opinions on films and equipment are always welcome.
A side note: my brother wanted and could accommodate an 85” set, so I got him and his family the Sony X90K last Saturday for Christmas - again a great price from Costco and a five year warranty protection included. He and the nephews are thrilled at the picture quality (lots of football already in that household, as you might imagine). LG and Sony make great sets; Samsung looked great, too, but it’s a mistake in my opinion not to support Dolby Vision.
Doug

 

[Carlo_M]

If you have the TV directly opposite windows and do a significant amount of viewing with any light coming through them (e.g. reflecting directly off the TV to your eyes at the common viewing positions) then going LED was the right way to go. Any ambient light directly reflecting off of the TV will make any meaningful "true black" improvement by OLED nearly imperceptible to most eyes. It's only under very low light with little to no light directly reflecting off of the TV to the viewer, that the pure blacks really stand out.

For me, the main gain of OLED is my viewing habits. For some reason, being a sci-fi/fantasy fan, I seem to watch a lot of movies with a lot of dark scenes that are punctuated by small bright things. Even MCU movies now have a lot of space scenes. My eyes are fairly sensitive to haloing (yes even with FALD sets that have hundreds of dimming zones) and I always just put up with them when OLEDs were price prohibitive. Now that OLEDs are affordable, because of my viewing tendencies and sensitivity to that effect, it's hard for me to go back

Oh one other use case where I love the non-halo effect of white on black: subtitles in black bars. So I sometimes watch movies late at night, which I then turn on subtitles so I don't disturb others. Then I use my UHD player's subtitle shift function to move those subs down to the black bars for 2.35:1 aspect ratio films, thus giving me undisturbed picture image with the subs below. I do this type of viewing at least 2X a week so it pays off dividends with regularity for me.

 

[uncledougie]

The LG G2 Gallery edition TV seems to be the best reviewed set available now to the general public, with the C2 being its near equivalent. It was pretty much a toss up between that and the Z9J. The thickness difference didn’t bother me one way or the other, the LG stand is preferable, the onscreen graphics with Sony maybe a little better, but since this was the home theater space for movies the deciding factor was the backlit remote and as you mentioned, brightness potential opposite tall windows (albeit with two layers of pull down shades). The clarity and depth of most of the top tier sets are generally exceptional. My 3D set in the back of the house is a passive LG and while black levels are only pretty good, the 3D is excellent without much crosstalk blur. I don’t much care for the magic wand pointer remote system they use, but once the input is active the content playing is what matters.
On the Sony, the 8K upscaling so far isn’t appreciably superior to 4K, but it’s excellent. The only reason I ruled out the Samsung was the lack of Dolby Vision, but it’s worth a look if that feature isn’t important, since it does HDR10+ instead. Some have an anti Samsung bias, and I may have a slightly pro Sony bias based on decades of satisfactory experience with the brand. It’s hard to go wrong with any of these products, to be fair.