The state of HDTV

I was thinking of replacing my excellent 40in hisense with a 50in for my bedroom, so I started reading reviews and got put off somewhat.

I've noticed that in many instances the manufacturers don't use their best tech below 55in, they downgrade the tech, and might even be doing a bait and switch, though not a 1000% sure on that.

Anyway I noticed that the manufacturers are finally starting to take LCD seriously, though all is not well.

I'm referring to mini LED, it's mind boggling they've taken so long to introduce mini LED, but it has the potential to make hexy oled redundant, granted its perhaps 1-3 yrs away from being near its peak.

Hopefully this tech will improve and start to appear in the smaller tvs.
Hisense have just released a 75in U9DG will 2 million LEDs.

This means they're able to produce excellent black levels and brightness levels, and in theory have precise control of the mini LEDs enabling excellent PQ overall but especially in dark scenes.

Dark scene and dark room performance have often been lcd weakpoints, but with very low blacks and the ability to control shadow detail, these new mini LEDs could be the best all rounders.

Good during day or night and durable for extended gaming.

Tcl are also making some expensive mini LED sets as well, but by all accounts even their mid range 4k and 8k mini LEDs are very good.

Tcl and hisense are players these days, especially as Sony don't take their lcds seriously and Samsung need to get their shit together.

 

Micro-LED should be even better... annoying to see this tech not being brought forward, but I suppose LED LCD is cheap to make with a healthy profit margin and is "good enough" for most. Another problem is in a bright store LED LCD looks better upfront.



JSmith

 

I think the Sony oleds handle store lighting well as they produce the best instore PQ that I've seen.

That said, most of the 40 or so hdtvs running a 4k 60mbps signal look fine instore, but 4k of that quality is rare.

They way I see it, it's a matter of time before there's scores of top notch mini LEDs...atm, some of them either lack enough LEDs, or they choose not to spend the effort on the algorithm.

Samsung seem intent on stuffing up some of their tvs with garbage backlighting, and even when they use mini LEDs on their 8k models, they can't seem to control their high zone count and compromise dark scene performance, the very thing that high density full array was supposed to fix.

Based on what I've read about the Hisense U9DG and also the zero tech in upcoming tcl, it should be possible to buy a TV that can be used effectively day or night, dark scenes/bright scenes and no worries on burn in.

I'm just saying, we shouldn't have to wait for micro LEDs, which might be a decade away from being available and affordable.

 

This is true, good TV's below 55" are basically dead.

TBH I think I'd figure out how to make a 55" work for you rather than try to find something smaller and still good.

There is the 48" LG OLED but $$$

 

OLED, or keep waiting...

 

Sounds like a first world problem to me. Quite honestly we're currently in what is a fantastic age of quality TV vision....we are spoilt for choice. Yes we pay for it but quite frankly I'm more than happy to pay thousands for the brilliant experience I get. Whether it's oled or microled, we've never had it so better imo.

 

Could not agree more,

It's not that long ago, when we chased an analogue signal round the lounge room with a wire coat hanger, attempting to get a signal on our ultra modern 20 inch Tellie, And when we did get a picture we also got a serving of snow, which was considered normal.

 

mini LED still needs the space though...
the smaller TVs just don't have the room to fit all the mini LEDs in at 4k resolution, that's why they NEED the larger TV size

 

i remember when the channels i wanted were always the ones with the worst signal, that made me sad because I loved the x-files But stupid Ch2 had a great signal.

oh wait HDTV, oh yeah awful stuff. LCD is the worst tech but the ones that people always buy because cheap. just like anything the shit floats to the top. $500 tv's from big w ftw!

everyone else buys OLED.

 

https://www.microled-info.com/buying-microled-tv-2021



Maybe mini will do better than micro.



JSmith

 

Yes, but there's a middle ground with high resolution array backlighting. Apple ship a 10,000 LED, 2500 zone microLED display in a 13" device, so it's clearly not just a matter of density holding it back from 32-55" displays. Somebody could make a similarly specced display at 40", but (aside from Apple's other micro-LED product in the Pro Display XDR) there's just nothing in that market segment.

 

Some people complain about oled HDR performance and also the screen dimming during gaming.

Some of you would be aware, but I like what I'm hearing from the hisense u9dg tech, and 2 TCL very high end zero tech tvs.

It sounds like there's enough tech out to make LED the goto on almost every use case.

 

Yep, OLED can't get as bright... LED can't get as dark. ABL is fairly agressive on OLED too.



JSmith

 

Yep...and we don't need infinite blacks, we just need something similar to the U9DG.
One ytube reviewer said his favourite LED of 2021 was the Sony x95J(up from Samsung qn90)...but he hasn't reviewed the hisense U9DG which "should" be better.

LED can make OLED redundant unless OLED can fix its share of problems, however OLED probably only has 2yrs before the new LED tech becomes more available/affordable.

 

For a dim room OLED is very easy to recommend.

You will, occasionally, find the pathological case where the ABL is very obvious. Content shot in a snowy landscape on a sunny day will look wrong. I can think of one time this has ever really bothered me.

The room doesn't even need to be THAT dim. I find my normal brightness, set up to look good at night, is still comfortable with the light from my south-facing windows. If your viewing environment ever gets direct sunlight you'd probably need to draw a curtain. But you certainly don't need a blackout-curtained theatre.

 

I don't want to be at the mercy of any weird dimming etc ....transitions bother me, but that's just me.
I'm not sure about any given model, however one would assume that dimming would also occur during gaming as clearly OLED tech cannot sustain high brightness.

I want LED to either force OLED to match it or simply eliminate it.

 

I just had another look at my tv. Yep oled is hard to beat. And it’s only running 50%. And it only cost 1k

 

Exactly. And the reason I have three Oleds in the house. I don't notice any apparent lack of brightness, who needs 50billion nits, appears plenty bright to me. Every single type of tech has it's shortcomings and positives, as an all rounder I absolutely love oled.

 

what is it though?

 

LG C8