Plasma / LED - why do people put up with it?
Discussion
Now that Sky are rolling out 4K, I may have to bite the bullet and get the LG OLED 55E6V screen in time for the new footy season. I'll keep the Pioneer for the spare room.
Does anyone know if the LG OLEDs are OK with standard definition sources and whether the sound is any good? Of course, I'll try before I buy but it's worth getting real world opinions.
Does anyone know if the LG OLEDs are OK with standard definition sources and whether the sound is any good? Of course, I'll try before I buy but it's worth getting real world opinions.
^^^^^^^^
SD is crap but then I expected it to be. BBC HD for example is good, 1080p off a Bluray is superb and 4K off Netflix is stunning.
Edit. Remember what you are trying to stretch a SD signal out to fir on a 4K tv, sort of four times more than HD ( in general terms)
Edited by jmorgan on Friday 5th August 12:50
toasty said:
Now that Sky are rolling out 4K, I may have to bite the bullet and get the LG OLED 55E6V screen in time for the new footy season. I'll keep the Pioneer for the spare room.
Does anyone know if the LG OLEDs are OK with standard definition sources and whether the sound is any good? Of course, I'll try before I buy but it's worth getting real world opinions.
Have you considered the Loewe? Does anyone know if the LG OLEDs are OK with standard definition sources and whether the sound is any good? Of course, I'll try before I buy but it's worth getting real world opinions.
I know it has a £4500 retail, but many were offering £500 off and I am sure you could get it close to the price of the LG if you haggled hard.
Proper sound bar built in (screen slides up to reveal when you turn it on). DD+ 5.1 decoder built in if you wanted to add speakers later. Plus Loewes processing and filters etc. used.
It uses the E6 panel but adds some fine tuning.
Fermit The Krog and Sarah Sexy said:
No idea what it is, the gf bought it before we met. It does for now whilst we're house renovating, but if they ever arrive it shall become a kids toy chest 
I just bought a load of that Ikea line for my son's bedroom, including that bench, was really pleased with the quality for the price. It's solid stuff, it comes in some fun colours too. I bought a Pioneer Kuro many years ago and still don't plan to replace it anytime soon. I've seen some OLED screens that are close or slightly better but don't warrant an upgrade in my eyes.
Once 4K content becomes standard on over 50% of all channels (not just pay tv/sports) I'll begrudgingly buy a new TV but it'll probably take another 5 years until we are there.
When I bought the Kuro it seemed like a grossly overpriced indulgence. I remember feeling bad for spending so much money on a TV but in retrospect it may have saved me quite a bit of money.
Once 4K content becomes standard on over 50% of all channels (not just pay tv/sports) I'll begrudgingly buy a new TV but it'll probably take another 5 years until we are there.
When I bought the Kuro it seemed like a grossly overpriced indulgence. I remember feeling bad for spending so much money on a TV but in retrospect it may have saved me quite a bit of money.
That's the thing, our Kuros cost a small fortune, but they still stand up very well today 7/8 years on and would appear to have (barring failure) a good number of years left in them. The alternative would have been repeated "upgrades" to maintain an edge, which probably in the longer term would have cost more.
toasty said:
Does anyone know if the LG OLEDs are OK with standard definition sources .
^This is one of the key things, one of the mains reasons I bought into the plasma was it's ability to do a far, far better job of flattering SD images, something criminally neglected in industry tests - yet at purchase there were only a few HD channels on sky, we were unfortunately restricted to virgin media at the time who had one channel - BBC HD previews - and the woefull V+ box would crash if you had the temerity to try to record something in HD. I remember a lot of people sounding off about having sky but not paying extra for HD, to a man they all had LCD sets too! While the balance has shifted to a majority of HD now there's still a lot of SD stuff I'll watch regularly including music DVD's etc that will probably never get a HD release never mind 4k, and if a 4k set can't do a "least as nice to look at" job on HD/SD as the plasma I have now I don't really see it as an upgrade and scarcely worth paying for.
BTW are SD channels being over compressed to save bandwidth? Sure there's a few things I've watched recently and thought they look appalling.
hairyben said:
toasty said:
Does anyone know if the LG OLEDs are OK with standard definition sources .
^This is one of the key things, one of the mains reasons I bought into the plasma was it's ability to do a far, far better job of flattering SD images, something criminally neglected in industry tests - yet at purchase there were only a few HD channels on sky, we were unfortunately restricted to virgin media at the time who had one channel - BBC HD previews - and the woefull V+ box would crash if you had the temerity to try to record something in HD. I remember a lot of people sounding off about having sky but not paying extra for HD, to a man they all had LCD sets too! While the balance has shifted to a majority of HD now there's still a lot of SD stuff I'll watch regularly including music DVD's etc that will probably never get a HD release never mind 4k, and if a 4k set can't do a "least as nice to look at" job on HD/SD as the plasma I have now I don't really see it as an upgrade and scarcely worth paying for.
BTW are SD channels being over compressed to save bandwidth? Sure there's a few things I've watched recently and thought they look appalling.
Zoon said:
Register1 said:
Just looked at the back of our 50 inch Panny Plasma
265 watts
What year is it?265 watts
"One more thing. Plasma TVs are current hungry. This set continuously drinks 750 watts of 120 volt socket juice. Compare that with the same size LCD TV which sips a paltry 265 watts."
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/543228-REG/P...
Edited by Zoon on Thursday 4th August 17:15
In store
Free 5 year warranty
paid 675 seem to remember
best tv ever
interesting tidbit from a recent article on the verge:
mossberg said:
Last Thursday, my beloved Pioneer Elite 50-inch plasma HDTV suddenly died. I had owned it for nearly a decade, and when it was new it was regarded by many as the best TV on the market. I distinctly recall Steve Jobs recommending it to me, among others, and I sprang for it even though its roughly $5,000 price (with optional side-panel speakers) put a much bigger dent in our family’s budget than it had in his.[...]
http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12364022/walt-mossberg-smart-tvs-lg-oled-b-seriesEricE said:
interesting tidbit from a recent article on the verge:
The reviewer goes on to say that motion processing is great on the LG - anyone who owns or has interest in an LG oLED knows the first thing you do after powering on for the first time is to turn TruMotion off/zero !mossberg said:
Last Thursday, my beloved Pioneer Elite 50-inch plasma HDTV suddenly died. I had owned it for nearly a decade, and when it was new it was regarded by many as the best TV on the market. I distinctly recall Steve Jobs recommending it to me, among others, and I sprang for it even though its roughly $5,000 price (with optional side-panel speakers) put a much bigger dent in our family’s budget than it had in his.[...]
http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12364022/walt-mossberg-smart-tvs-lg-oled-b-seriesThe Kuros are cracking sets but they're getting on now and I reckon the latest OLEDs are a step above.
legzr1 said:
The Kuros are cracking sets but they're getting on now and I reckon the latest OLEDs are a step above.
Yeah without doubt. I sold both mine last year, I had a 500M and a 5090 (think I said 5080 earlier in the thread) they were very, very good sets. My 5090 was actually better than the 500M, cleaner image and always looked much sharper.
I tweaked it in the service menu to lower the black levels even further, it was stunning at times.
Although my old PF11 Panny monitor was sharper than any Kuro I owned and I preferred the overall image of the panny. I kept the 5090 as I used it with the built in soundbar and a sub.
However, I bought a Sony 923 with local dimming, although it couldn't do the blacks, or rather it struggled to do blacks when they were on screen with brighter content, there was a lot to like about the Sony, so much so I let the 500M go.
I liked the Sony so much that I bought a W905 as well for the conservatory and sold the 5090 as well.
The W905 is the better set out of the Sonys.
But the point of me mentioning the above is as good as the Kuros were/are, they are certainly not the best in certain areas, in fact never were.
On paper they beat the Panasonics like the PHD8, PHD9, PF11 etc. etc. But I always preferred the overall image of the Pannys, they were just cleaner and sharper, plus they went a bit brighter, not much, but just enough to give a bit more pop.
The Pioneers were never really designed for 50hz, if you fed it a sky signal through a processor and converted to 60hz you could see how much cleaner the Pioneer picture became, it went razor sharp too. In 50Hz if you stand 2 ft from the screen you can see PWM noise, best way to describe it is like you are projecting onto a screen covered with ants, obviously you never notice this when viewing but it does affect how sharp the image is, switch to 60hz and you can see all that disappear and the image sharpen up.
The Pannys never had this issue, although they had noise in the lowest ire range, from 1-5ire you could see green pixels, like a dithering.
Even the 930/950 1080 OLEDs that you can pick up for £900 now trounce the Pioneers imho.
I reckon they are a very good buy for now, yeah 4k is better, but not that much in it from everything I have seen. Not sure if it is worth over 3x the price screen wise anyway.
jmorgan said:
Thing is though, if you are after 4K, SD is a casualty no matter the make. If you stay HD then as you say, stick with what you have, that will deal with SD far better than a 4K set. 720x576 stretch to 3840x2160 was never going to be pretty. Unless there are some superb upscale sets around.
Why would a 4k panel be worse than a 1080 panel at display SD images? One is just using less of the capacity it has avaliable. My experience is more that either plamas makeup or the way the sets were made made them better for SD than LCD, and as marketing/industry were a little misleading I'm going to be pretty carefull when upgrade time comes (which so long as my plasma soldiers on I dont see coming for a bit)
From what Ive seen of OLED it does seem closer to plasma than LCD in appearance, sharp without being clinical or artifical.
hairyben said:
jmorgan said:
Thing is though, if you are after 4K, SD is a casualty no matter the make. If you stay HD then as you say, stick with what you have, that will deal with SD far better than a 4K set. 720x576 stretch to 3840x2160 was never going to be pretty. Unless there are some superb upscale sets around.
Why would a 4k panel be worse than a 1080 panel at display SD images? One is just using less of the capacity it has avaliable. My experience is more that either plamas makeup or the way the sets were made made them better for SD than LCD, and as marketing/industry were a little misleading I'm going to be pretty carefull when upgrade time comes (which so long as my plasma soldiers on I dont see coming for a bit)
From what Ive seen of OLED it does seem closer to plasma than LCD in appearance, sharp without being clinical or artifical.
Strangely, not looked at my SD DVD yet, should pop a few in and see how a better bit rate works on it.
Not sure how well av amps cope with upscaling.
hairyben said:
Why would a 4k panel be worse than a 1080 panel at display SD images? One is just using less of the capacity it has avaliable.
My experience is more that either plamas makeup or the way the sets were made made them better for SD than LCD, and as marketing/industry were a little misleading I'm going to be pretty carefull when upgrade time comes (which so long as my plasma soldiers on I dont see coming for a bit)
From what Ive seen of OLED it does seem closer to plasma than LCD in appearance, sharp without being clinical or artifical.
I think the problem with most LCDs is just how bright they can go, which means they tend to be cranked up in stores and often people don't set them properly when they get them home. My experience is more that either plamas makeup or the way the sets were made made them better for SD than LCD, and as marketing/industry were a little misleading I'm going to be pretty carefull when upgrade time comes (which so long as my plasma soldiers on I dont see coming for a bit)
From what Ive seen of OLED it does seem closer to plasma than LCD in appearance, sharp without being clinical or artifical.
You can calibrate an LCD to look very natural, but it often means a lot of the settings are much lower than on a plasma.
gizlaroc said:
Yeah without doubt.
I sold both mine last year, I had a 500M and a 5090 (think I said 5080 earlier in the thread) they were very, very good sets. My 5090 was actually better than the 500M, cleaner image and always looked much sharper.
I tweaked it in the service menu to lower the black levels even further, it was stunning at times.
Although my old PF11 Panny monitor was sharper than any Kuro I owned and I preferred the overall image of the panny. I kept the 5090 as I used it with the built in soundbar and a sub.
However, I bought a Sony 923 with local dimming, although it couldn't do the blacks, or rather it struggled to do blacks when they were on screen with brighter content, there was a lot to like about the Sony, so much so I let the 500M go.
I liked the Sony so much that I bought a W905 as well for the conservatory and sold the 5090 as well.
The W905 is the better set out of the Sonys.
But the point of me mentioning the above is as good as the Kuros were/are, they are certainly not the best in certain areas, in fact never were.
On paper they beat the Panasonics like the PHD8, PHD9, PF11 etc. etc. But I always preferred the overall image of the Pannys, they were just cleaner and sharper, plus they went a bit brighter, not much, but just enough to give a bit more pop.
The Pioneers were never really designed for 50hz, if you fed it a sky signal through a processor and converted to 60hz you could see how much cleaner the Pioneer picture became, it went razor sharp too. In 50Hz if you stand 2 ft from the screen you can see PWM noise, best way to describe it is like you are projecting onto a screen covered with ants, obviously you never notice this when viewing but it does affect how sharp the image is, switch to 60hz and you can see all that disappear and the image sharpen up.
The Pannys never had this issue, although they had noise in the lowest ire range, from 1-5ire you could see green pixels, like a dithering.
Even the 930/950 1080 OLEDs that you can pick up for £900 now trounce the Pioneers imho.
I reckon they are a very good buy for now, yeah 4k is better, but not that much in it from everything I have seen. Not sure if it is worth over 3x the price screen wise anyway.
Agreed.I sold both mine last year, I had a 500M and a 5090 (think I said 5080 earlier in the thread) they were very, very good sets. My 5090 was actually better than the 500M, cleaner image and always looked much sharper.
I tweaked it in the service menu to lower the black levels even further, it was stunning at times.
Although my old PF11 Panny monitor was sharper than any Kuro I owned and I preferred the overall image of the panny. I kept the 5090 as I used it with the built in soundbar and a sub.
However, I bought a Sony 923 with local dimming, although it couldn't do the blacks, or rather it struggled to do blacks when they were on screen with brighter content, there was a lot to like about the Sony, so much so I let the 500M go.
I liked the Sony so much that I bought a W905 as well for the conservatory and sold the 5090 as well.
The W905 is the better set out of the Sonys.
But the point of me mentioning the above is as good as the Kuros were/are, they are certainly not the best in certain areas, in fact never were.
On paper they beat the Panasonics like the PHD8, PHD9, PF11 etc. etc. But I always preferred the overall image of the Pannys, they were just cleaner and sharper, plus they went a bit brighter, not much, but just enough to give a bit more pop.
The Pioneers were never really designed for 50hz, if you fed it a sky signal through a processor and converted to 60hz you could see how much cleaner the Pioneer picture became, it went razor sharp too. In 50Hz if you stand 2 ft from the screen you can see PWM noise, best way to describe it is like you are projecting onto a screen covered with ants, obviously you never notice this when viewing but it does affect how sharp the image is, switch to 60hz and you can see all that disappear and the image sharpen up.
The Pannys never had this issue, although they had noise in the lowest ire range, from 1-5ire you could see green pixels, like a dithering.
Even the 930/950 1080 OLEDs that you can pick up for £900 now trounce the Pioneers imho.
I reckon they are a very good buy for now, yeah 4k is better, but not that much in it from everything I have seen. Not sure if it is worth over 3x the price screen wise anyway.
Only thing I'll add is the 950 is 4K and will accept HDR over HDMI and is quite a different beast to the earlier 1080P sets. I wish they were available for £900!
The 65" at £3200 has my attention and once work on the house is finished I'll be jumping in - stock is getting light so there's a chance I'll get it sooner than intended.
It's the screen Panasonic used on last years rather fine attempt albeit with superior processing - similar idea to the set you're interested in - an E/G series LG panel with Loewe know how.
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