Yes this is nothing to do with Vero but figured i would ask here seeing that some people have LG OLED’s and I am thinking of getting one purely because the Vero plays 4K HDR so well (and the main reason I got it) - so really, it is the Vero’s fault
Anyways trying to decide between an LG E8 OLED and Samsung QLED Q9FB 65 inch. Lots of pro’s and con’s but overall OLED has a more accurate picture and true blacks which is important to me.
My worry is burn in - given that we all use Kodi with lots of static images, logos etc (skin dependent). Has anyone experienced this and what do you to do to mitigate please?
I have a Panasonic plasma, which also can have issues with image retention, and so I set the Kodi screensaver timeout to 1 minute, and haven’t had a problem. My DVR has a 5-minute screensaver timeout that can’t be changed, and even that isn’t a big deal.
Bright images have had to be on the screen for many hours before I have had a retained image, and all have cleared up with at most an overnight run of the moving bar. Since the one built in to the TV was only white, I made my own video that has red, green, blue, and white moving bars. Set on repeat, it clears it up even faster.
The only “issue” I see with oled is f*cking bright subs (Hopefully in Leia subs can be transparent) in HDR content. Burn in should not be an issue. Real-Life OLED Burn-In Test On 6 TVs - RTINGS.com
I think the important issue here is - do you have small kids that will be watching their channels with those damn logo’s on for hours?
If you are the main user then happy days, no worries. It’s the ‘others’ in the house that would worry me.
My TV is a 2016 OLED, and the tech has moved on a bit since then, but I think modern OLEDs do suffer from the same issues, just not to such a degree.
Certainly, when I was buying, OLED had three major weaknesses:
Very poor luminance performance at the black end of the brightness scale. Everyone will tell you that OLEDs has “perfect blacks”, and that’s true as far as it goes - you can turn a pixel off completely and get absolute black. But the performance just above black is very weak indeed in 2016 models. The issue is that the luminance goes up in jumps rather than smoothly: so if black is zero, then you may not be able to see any difference at all between 1, 2 and 3, then there’s a big jump to 4 & 5, etc. That leads to significant posterisation and shimmering in dark, shadowy scenes, which is hideously distracting.
Poor colour performance at the bright end of the scale (“colour volume”). OLED potentially suffers from short lifespans, particularly for the blue subpixels. To get around that, the manufacturer doesn’t use an RGB sub-pixel structure, instead it’s RGBW - each pixel contains a white sub-pixel as well as red, green and blue. At high brightness levels, a lot of the light coming from a pixel is produced by the W sub-pixel. The effect of that is that, at high luminance levels, the display becomes incapable of displaying properly saturated colours.
Poor brightness uniformity. Often, the individual pixels on the screen have different brightness levels when fed the same signal; so, when the screen should be displaying a uniform grey, instead you see lots of vertical streaks of brighter and darker greys. This varies from TV to TV, so two different TVs of the same model can vary significantly in terms of how much streaking you see. (This is referred to as the “panel lottery”). This effect is particularly visible in dark, shadowy scenes, and combines unfavourably with problem (1).
LCD (or ”LED") displays generally avoid those issues, and they can also have higher maximum brightness; but the downside is that they have poorer viewing angles, and can’t do absolute black. In cases where the screen uses Full Array Local Dimming to improve black-level, the dimming of the blacklight happens across a number of pixels, meaning that small, bright objects on a dark background can have a “halo” around them. Cheaper LCD displays tend to have poor colour saturation (although quantum-dot / QLED compensates for that).
Both types of display tend to have poor motion handling.
I’d recommend auditioning properly-set-up screens in person if you can; there’s no way to tell which set of issues you personally will find more annoying. But bear in mind that viewing a screen in a typical TV shop means A: it will not be calibrated correctly (the white balance will be pushed to blue, and contrast and colour saturation set much too high) and B: you’ll be viewing in bright conditions, so all of the black or near-black problems will be masked.
I have a 2016 OLED and your point #1 explains some stuff.
I was able to improve things myself by taking the “brightness” setting down a single point from the isf expert dark settings (only change i made i think). I think all i’m doing here is making some of the stuff thats “very nearly black” into actually black, but it defo seems less distracting.
If you’re brave, you could try the effect (for dark rooms) of turning the OLED Light setting up to 100 and turning the Contrast down (as opposed to keeping the Contrast at around 85-90 and turning the OLED Light down to ~25).
Agreed that older OLED’s did suffer from Black Crush but 2018 models are reported as much better to the point its no longer an issue. One thing that swung me to OLED is the scene from Gravity where LG is displaying twice as many stars as the QLED Q9FN. The halo effect is much reduced on a Q9FN but still there.
Colour volume especially in HDR is a problem. The Q9FN excels here but Samsung deliberately adjust the colour curve for extra brightness so almost impossible to get accurate colours even after expert calibration (Vincent Teoh).
Brightness especially with ABL on OLED is never going to be QLED level. That is one of my concerns. I do tend to watch movies in a dark room but even then bright scenes would be dimmer than a Q9FN. LG turn up highlight at the expense of the overall picture which is fine but not as eye popping as a Q9FN. The DSE issue is present more on LCD then OLED i believe but 2018 models are much improved.
The QLED poor viewing angles is a good point too but I grab the central seat and push my gf and/or son to either side
I wish i could compare properly in a showroom but that’s nigh on impossible in HK.
So basically, I am back to square one. I guess it depends how much i value OLED Black levels & colour accuracy vs QLED brightness & HDR pop. Other minor considerations are looks (prefer the LG E8 over the Q9FN - hate the 1 inch thick panel and One Connect box), price (Q9FN is 300 quid cheaper) etc.
Sigh. Will keep you posted on what i finally decide on. Hearing that the Samsung 2019 Q9FN replacement is quite a bit better than current but will be a crazy price in HK - 2018 models being heavily discounted but still more expensive than UK even with 20% VAT (which HK does not have)!
I’m using an LG B8 OLED and to be honest there are the occasional scenes in HDR that if they were any brighter they’d be uncomfortable on my eyes, especially watching in a dark room. I really don’t think OLED’s brightness is a concern unless it’s a room with loads of windows getting constant sunshine.
As for the OSMC UI and burn in I changed the background to be black instead of the default blue and also changed the OSD to a transparent black. The TV’s own fireworks screensaver doesn’t kick in when using HDMI sources btw, only for built in ones so i changed the Vero’s screensaver from dim to pure black.
The only issue I have yet to solve is 4:3 content. Kodi still sends a 16:9 1080p signal so the TVs (Panny plasma) settings for a grey bar at either side rather than black are redundant. When you binge watch older series you have a noticeable change in brightness along the lines for quite a while afterwards.
The problem (on 2018 models) isn’t so much lack of absolute brightness as the fact that it can’t both go bright and sustain proper colour saturation while it does it.
Having said that, HDR10 and its relatives don’t work like SDR. With SDR you can vary the peak brightness of the picture quite a lot (for example, you can increase it for bright-room viewing) and the brightness of non-peak pixels is defined relative to the brightest possible value - so, raise the peak brightness and the whole curve from 16-235 shifts upwards with it.
HLG also works like this; but HDR10 defines luminance in terms of fixed light levels - so, if you’re displaying what the video file says you should be displaying, you can’t adjust the peak brightness of the image up and down to allow for viewing conditions; any given pixel is supposed to have exactly the same brightness on all TVs in all rooms. So, if HDR looks too bright, that means your room is too dark and you’d benefit from a bias light behind the screen.
A fair bit of HDR10 material is mastered to a peak brightness of 1000nits, which a 2018 OLED can just about reach; but some is mastered with a peak brightness of 4000nits, and even QLED displays can’t yet go that bright, so there are inevitably some compromises on that kind of material. (Dolby Vision can potentially go up to 10,000nits with a 12-bit signal).
You mean the fireworks? That screensaver doesn’t turn on when you’re viewing HDMI, only on internal apps.
@OP: I also enabled the “Black” screensaver in Kodi in combination with the dimming option and set it to 2min. I have over 1500 hours on my OLED+Vero4k and no burn-in whatsoever.
In 2018 I also had to make the choice and after owning a few (Vizio) LED sets I opted to pay more and switch to OLED. I did so because screen (grey) uniformity issues were making me nuts and I couldn’t ‘not see them’ no matter how hard I tried. The OLED has similar issues but only at about 5% grey and the blacks and details in dark scenes are much better.
I transitioned from a 1080p Panasonic plasma because back when plasmas were available I always preferred their pictures to that of LED. It’s the same with modern OLED and LED though the latter keep getting better and I do have one upstairs that work’s well for my wife’s less demanding viewing.
