C7 to C9 - Upgrade worth it?

Steedie · 10 May 2019 at 14:42

Hey guys,

Fancy upgrading my TV to a 65" from a 55" so looking at replacing my LG C7. Richersounds have the 65" C9 for £3200, which I know will come down pretty sharpish towards the end of the year, but I'm happy to pay a premium depending on the answer to the below:

Size aside, am I likely to notice much of an upgrade going from a C7 to a C9 in terms of picture quality? Not that I feel my TV is lacking at the moment, I love the picture, it's purely a size upgrade I'm after. That said, I don't really want to buy a 65" C8, as cheap as they are, as I don't really want to buy "old tech".

Save my money and wait for the next model or go for it?

Thanks

Spook187 · 10 May 2019 at 14:51

I feel like a peasant now you saying the C8 is old tech

Psycho Sonny · 10 May 2019 at 14:52

the difference in PQ will be so small that it would be hard to distinguish IMO. where it will fare noticeably better is HDR. it also depends on how much you are clued up on tv's. for example you could put and oled or an lcd in front of most people and they wouldn't really know the difference unless they saw them side by side and even then they wouldn't be able to spot all the differences.

only you can really answer the question. my opinion. not worth it unless you really want 65"

Grimley · 10 May 2019 at 14:52

My advice is to obtain a demo clip of something you like & put it on a flash drive. Play it back on your own telly with the settings you have that you think are best. Take said flash drive to the shop & ask sales person to play it back on the shop telly with the settings you have on the telly at home. Then decide if you think the 'improvement' & what you would pay for the shop telly & what you would get for your old telly is worth it.

Steedie · 10 May 2019 at 14:53

Spook187 said:
I feel like a peasant now you saying the C8 is old tech

Haha it's not at all, hence the "" round it. I just meant buying last years model when a new one is out

And thanks guys, good idea with the demo clip. Richersounds are very flexible with stuff like that so will see if they have any C7 or C8 models to compare against

Psycho Sonny · 10 May 2019 at 14:53

Grimley said:
My advice is to obtain a demo clip of something you like & put it on a flash drive. Play it back on your own telly with the settings you have that you think are best. Take said flash drive to the shop & ask sales person to play it back on the shop telly with the settings you have on the telly at home. Then decide if you think the 'improvement' & what you would pay for the shop telly & what you would get for your old telly is worth it.

do you think he would be able to remember every detail for the 2 hours inbetween?

also the shop will have different lighting to his home.

i would say the advice you have given is terrible.

if he could demo the 65" side by side in his home then yeah it would be good advice. but not as above.

Grimley · 10 May 2019 at 15:02

/\/\ You have a point, I was just making a suggestion (It's what I would do). I'm not certain if RS do home demos of tellies (I think they do with other stuff with a deposit) a compromise would have to be made to do a comparison if you cant find a retailer that doesn't do home demos for tellies.

Psycho Sonny · 10 May 2019 at 15:12

tbh if i was spending £3K i'd be looking at a 75" FALD

OLED is good but screen size beats marginally better PQ.

if it was a vast difference like projector to OLED then I would go OLED but FALD and OLED are so close now in the high end models.

Warbie · 10 May 2019 at 17:21

I doubt you'll notice much pq wise but the size bump will be nice. It might be hard to go back to LED once you're used to OLED blacks - I couldn't - but as Sonny pointed out you could look into a 75" fald.

Entai · 10 May 2019 at 17:39

Psycho Sonny said:
do you think he would be able to remember every detail for the 2 hours inbetween?

also the shop will have different lighting to his home.

i would say the advice you have given is terrible.

if he could demo the 65" side by side in his home then yeah it would be good advice. but not as above.

If you notice in the last post by @Steedie

Steedie said:
Haha it's not at all, hence the "" round it. I just meant buying last years model when a new one is out

And thanks guys, good idea with the demo clip. Richersounds are very flexible with stuff like that so will see if they have any C7 or C8 models to compare against

So that obviously means he has thought of the problems highlighted and he would compare the two side by side in the same environment within the shop's testing area, so no need to remember details for two hours or worry about different lighting environments.

200sols · 10 May 2019 at 18:09

It’s worth it for the size. However if you look at reviews c8/c9 picture will be almost the same.

Psycho Sonny · 10 May 2019 at 18:20

Entai said:
If you notice in the last post by @Steedie

So that obviously means he has thought of the problems highlighted and he would compare the two side by side in the same environment within the shop's testing area, so no need to remember details for two hours or worry about different lighting environments.

If you had noticed the timing of the posts it was written whilst his post was being posted.

But keep on pointing out things that dont need to be pointed out

jpaul · 10 May 2019 at 21:56

if you are watching a lot of low bitrate rec709 material , maybe for the newer processor/algorithms will improve pq .. see qled/oled thread. ...
but I can't see why you wouldn't jump ship to Panasonic or sony for better processing, if you're ready to fund it.

... may not count, but is there some 2nd hand value to recover from a 55" c7

Steedie · 11 May 2019 at 17:23

After a lot of shopping today and comparing in Richersounds and Currys (although they aren't setup as well), I think I'm actually going to for a Panasonic TX65GZ2000B when they are available. Nearly a grand more than the C9 I was looking at though :eek:

The equivalent F models are just incredible. I always thought the very first Panasonic OLED's were too subtle with their HDR but that seems completely different now, seems so much more vivid than the last time I looked at them.

The C9 was also an amazing TV, picture is still brilliant and colours equally as impressive, the one thing that Panasonic seemed to win on was motion. The guy in Richersounds put on some very slow panning shots courtesy of Planet Earth and with the LG, there was ever so slight juddering, that to be fair, I doubt I'd have noticed if he didn't tell me to look out for it

@jpaul, I'd hope I would get around 5-600 for mine, maybe more? It's 18 months old and has a six year guarantee with Richersounds (not sure if that's transferable) so hopefully still worth something

jpaul · 11 May 2019 at 23:09

Steedie said:
very slow panning shots courtesy of Planet Earth

planet earth+2 was reprehensibly 24fps .. I have not watched any of netflix's our planet, but hopefully, like some of the 60fps youtube 4k material, it will do better justice to animal movement shots.

Bigpig · 12 May 2019 at 11:29

Bigger screens generally = worse picture uniformly.

Grim5 · 13 May 2019 at 21:45

200sols said:
It’s worth it for the size. However if you look at reviews c8/c9 picture will be almost the same.

The main difference is the C9 has HDMI 2.1 port which support eARC, uncompressed Dolby Atmos passthrough both ways, 4k 120hz image output and 120hz refresh rate for games and also Variable Refresh Rate to removed screen tearing in games.

The main reason to upgrade to the C9 would be if you're a gamer

In saying all of this, please be aware most of the HDMI 2.1 features cannot be tested as you will note in any review of the C9. This is because the C9 reverts into HDMI 2.0 mode when a non HDMI 2.1 source is plugged in. As such the TV cannot be properly tested until graphics cards, AV receivers and set top boxes have HDMI 2.1 ports too

Broken Hope · 14 May 2019 at 08:58

Grim5 said:
The main difference is the C9 has HDMI 2.1 port which support eARC, uncompressed Dolby Atmos passthrough both ways, 4k 120hz image output and 120hz refresh rate for games and also Variable Refresh Rate to removed screen tearing in games.

The main reason to upgrade to the C9 would be if you're a gamer

In saying all of this, please be aware most of the HDMI 2.1 features cannot be tested as you will note in any review of the C9. This is because the C9 reverts into HDMI 2.0 mode when a non HDMI 2.1 source is plugged in. As such the TV cannot be properly tested until graphics cards, AV receivers and set top boxes have HDMI 2.1 ports too

Plenty of AV receivers support eARC so you can plug your XBox into the TV and still get lossless audio and utilise VRR.

Grim5 · 14 May 2019 at 09:10

No console, including the Xbox One X supports VRR at 4k 120hz which is what I was alluding too.

Yes you can do VRR at 1440p 120hz but you didn't need HDMI 2.1 for that

Also, as I mentioned it doesn't really matter which features your input device says it supports, the C9 is programmed to disable a bunch of features when your input device you plug into the HDMI 2.1 port on the TV isn't HDMI 2.1 certified. I don't know if that can be modified in the software, it's just something reviewers picked up on. All the non HDMI 2.1 exclusive stuff will continue to work, like 1440p 120hz, eARC can work too

Another thing of note is that VRR/Freesync still works at 4k 60hz - but just about every TV including this one only operated between 48hz and 60hz, making it not very useful for a console anyway, since most of them run games between 20 and 30fps