* General TVs Talk Thread *

Poneros · 15 Mar 2019 at 19:02

Hey, so I wanted to post a news article and didn't think it really deserved its own thread but figured we might want to have a dedicated thread for general TV talk for 2019, so here it is.

To start it off, LG 2019 OLED prices have been revealed:
https://www.highdefdigest.com/news/...ng-availability-for-2019-oled-tv-lineup/43763

Compared to last year:
55C8: $2,999.99
55C9: $2,499

65C8: $3,999.99
65C9: $3,499

77C8: $9,999.99
77C9: $6,999

55E8: $3,499.99
55E9: $3,299

65E8: $4,499.99
65E9: $4,299

65W8: $6,999.99
65W9: $6,999

77W8: $14,999.99
77W9: $12,999

US pricing, I know, but we can infer what it's going to be for Europe. I think we might actually be able to buy a 4K 120hz OLED with VRR for £2k by the end of the year. Really exciting stuff on the display side! Now we just have to hope we actually see HDMI 2.1 on GPUs as well this year (come on Navi!).

EDIT: 05-02-20 Changed title for general talk rather than yearly.

Poneros · 16 Mar 2019 at 10:41

RTINGS' review of the 55'' X950G

https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/sony/x950g

Tl;dr it's an XF90

Psycho Sonny · 16 Mar 2019 at 11:17

What we need is someone to really shake up the market. Someone to come out with a FALD LCD which is comparable to Sony / Samsung offerings but for half the price.

TV's should be getting cheaper but $2500 for the lowest model OLED from the biggest producer LG isn't good enough. I think it will be another 3 years before I go OLED.

bakes0310 · 16 Mar 2019 at 12:45

Poneros said:
RTINGS' review of the 55'' X950G

https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/sony/x950g

Tl;dr it's an XF90

Nice TV but I think I'll go ahead with the xf90 for the price difference.

Psycho Sonny · 16 Mar 2019 at 13:57

Poneros said:
RTINGS' review of the 55'' X950G

https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/sony/x950g

Tl;dr it's an XF90

it's better than an XF90 for HDR and gaming (due to half the input lag) but worse in other areas from what i can see making them on par with each other overall.

unless you really like HDR and competitive gaming then XF90 is a no brainer

Poneros · 16 Mar 2019 at 17:00

Psycho Sonny said:
it's better than an XF90 for HDR and gaming (due to half the input lag) but worse in other areas from what i can see making them on par with each other overall.

unless you really like HDR and competitive gaming then XF90 is a no brainer

It's not half though, it's 21.4ms XG95 vs 24.1ms XF90 (4K HDR). Strangely, RTINGS now says in their XF90 article that it accepts 1440p 120hz. Will have to test that out.

Psycho Sonny · 16 Mar 2019 at 17:02

Poneros said:
It's not half though, it's 21.4ms XG95 vs 24.1ms XF90 (4K HDR). Strangely, RTINGS now says in their XF90 article that it accepts 1440p 120hz. Will have to test that out.

1080p @ 60 Hz

40.9 ms
19.7 ms

in terms of console gaming it is

Poneros · 16 Mar 2019 at 17:08

Psycho Sonny said:
1080p @ 60 Hz

40.9 ms
19.7 ms

in terms of console gaming it is

Right, didn't even pay attention to that. Can't the consoles run in 120hz mode though at 1080p?

Tested out @ 1440p, but so far only works for 90hz straight from AMD settings. Hmm.

Psycho Sonny · 16 Mar 2019 at 17:25

Poneros said:
Right, didn't even pay attention to that. Can't the consoles run in 120hz mode though at 1080p?

Tested out @ 1440p, but so far only works for 90hz straight from AMD settings. Hmm.

i would doubt it. tv's are mainly used for console gaming and although xbox one x and ps4 pro can output at 4k the majority of console gaming is done at 1080p 60hz. especially with things like the switch.

chaparral · 16 Mar 2019 at 18:22

Psycho Sonny said:
TV's should be getting cheaper but $2500 for the lowest model OLED from the biggest producer LG isn't good enough. I think it will be another 3 years before I go OLED.

What really no helps us these days is the crappy dollar vs GBP rates

But TV's are cheaper now then they have ever been..
I remember paying £1500 for my first widescreen TV a Toshiba 32" CRT almost 20 years ago

Psycho Sonny · 17 Mar 2019 at 09:04

chaparral said:
What really no helps us these days is the crappy dollar vs GBP rates

But TV's are cheaper now then they have ever been..
I remember paying £1500 for my first widescreen TV a Toshiba 32" CRT almost 20 years ago

Toshiba those were the days we had one. i think was 38" CRT but widescreen it took 3 guys to lift it into the house. the van got robbed that day so our delivery was 6 hours late from when they said they would be there. they took everything apart from our tv as it was too heavy. the tv came with it's own stand to carry it. they stole that too so the tv had to sit on the floor until they could re-deliver the second half of it. that tv lasted something like 12 years too before it gave up the ghost and it was used for a stupid amount of hours.

lucid · 17 Mar 2019 at 11:15

Psycho Sonny said:
What we need is someone to really shake up the market. Someone to come out with a FALD LCD which is comparable to Sony / Samsung offerings but for half the price.

TV's should be getting cheaper but $2500 for the lowest model OLED from the biggest producer LG isn't good enough. I think it will be another 3 years before I go OLED.

And there you have the reasons why there's no-one shaking up the market on FALD LCD and why OLEDs are going to be a premium product for the foreseeable future.

The TV industry is on its arse. The Koreans started a price war and now no-one can afford to compete with them across the board. Consumers cheered at the lower prices without ever stopping to think that one day there'd be no genuine Toshiba or Sharp or Mitsubishi or Hitachi or JVC or Fujitsu or Pioneer or NEC or Sanyo or Thomson or Ferguson or Philips etc.

What we have then is an LCD TV industry stripped of all costs, and as a result there's very little R&D budget to drive innovation. The OLED market is driven by ONE panel manufacturer........ not four, or three, or even two.... but one. I'll take nothing away from what's happening with the high-end TVs, but the rest of the market is populated by also-ran products. Sad days.

Psycho Sonny · 17 Mar 2019 at 11:31

lucid said:
And there you have the reasons why there's no-one shaking up the market on FALD LCD and why OLEDs are going to be a premium product for the foreseeable future.

The TV industry is on its arse. The Koreans started a price war and now no-one can afford to compete with them across the board. Consumers cheered at the lower prices without ever stopping to think that one day there'd be no genuine Toshiba or Sharp or Mitsubishi or Hitachi or JVC or Fujitsu or Pioneer or NEC or Sanyo or Thomson or Ferguson or Philips etc.

What we have then is an LCD TV industry stripped of all costs, and as a result there's very little R&D budget to drive innovation. The OLED market is driven by ONE panel manufacturer........ not four, or three, or even two.... but one. I'll take nothing away from what's happening with the high-end TVs, but the rest of the market is populated by also-ran products. Sad days.

I thought another company was going to start OLED production soon though? I'm sure I heard another factory was opening next year iirc.

Now that you mention it this sort of explains why PC monitors are so expensive.

lucid · 17 Mar 2019 at 14:35

There's talk of Sharp opening an OLED production facility in Japan, but not for TV screens. There's a much bigger and far more lucrative market for small OLED displays in bits of tech. The obvious ones are mobile phones and tablets, but you have other applications such as in-car entertainment systems, high colour/full colour displays in other handheld devices, portable monitors, medical displays, instrumentation displays. Compared to these, the TV market is a low yield, low return, short life-cycle market.

Sharp is still manufacturing its own TV product in Japan. It's a sort of premium high-end product range for aficionados. We think of Sony or Panasonic being the leading Japanese tech' brands for TVs, but in Japan Sharp is right up there at the top. Sharp's high-end range is very niche-market though. It would be hard to make a commercial case for setting up large-screen OLED panel production simply to service a few hundred-thousand sales per year.

LG is rumoured to be opening additional OLED production capacity, but I think they're trying to have a go at Samsung's dominance in the mobile phone screen market (Apple contract). Having said that, Samsung caught a bit of a cold when Apple's iPhone X failed to meet its volume forecasts, and Huawei is currently fighting a raft of law suits.

Poneros · 17 Mar 2019 at 15:26

It's just the natural progression of any mass market consumer good tbh. In the end, so long as the higher-end segment is still somewhat affordable (in context) & that's what pushes innovations, I'm fine with that. Personally, I don't feel like the TV market is lacking in innovation or progress even though you won't see massive changes year on year - I think that's understandable. Heck, if you look at the monitor market things are WAY worse.

beachBOYken · 17 Mar 2019 at 15:46

Keeping my options open for now, but I'm looking at getting a new TV in 2019, I currently have a LG B6, been great but it does have its issues, black glow (not something I really notice), occasional audio drops in Netflix DD 5.1, posterization in the picture when exiting a HDR picture mode.

Anyway I use it for gaming and movies.

I'm not that fussed about HDMI 2.1, but do want Dolby Vision, especially when owning an OPPO 203.

The C9 looks great but I don't think I want to spend as much on an OLED this time round.

Might go for a 2019 Sony or Panasonic, I think Samsungs don't support Dolby Vision.

Poneros · 18 Mar 2019 at 11:26

wellibob · 18 Mar 2019 at 12:23

Until oleds are sub £500 (say for a 50 inch unit) they will never sell loads of them. It's a niche market for nearly all oled tvs and only a small percentage of consumers actually notice any real benefit. Those who do notice I fear prices will stay high for the next few years at least. I'm ok with this as I want my Panasonic 55inch 4k oled to last at least 5 years (purchased Oct 2018)

An essential upgrade for me will be the 120htz hdmi feature on newer units.. I'm ok with 60htz although I believe my panel can do 120 but only 1080p via input.

Psycho Sonny · 18 Mar 2019 at 13:45

wellibob said:
Until oleds are sub £500 (say for a 50 inch unit) they will never sell loads of them. It's a niche market for nearly all oled tvs and only a small percentage of consumers actually notice any real benefit. Those who do notice I fear prices will stay high for the next few years at least. I'm ok with this as I want my Panasonic 55inch 4k oled to last at least 5 years (purchased Oct 2018)

An essential upgrade for me will be the 120htz hdmi feature on newer units.. I'm ok with 60htz although I believe my panel can do 120 but only 1080p via input.

That is a pipe dream I am afraid. They will never be below £1000 at launch. Maybe after they go EOL you may find some sub £1000 and close to £800 but never £500 or less.

Not even plasmas went that low that were full HD. Now add 4K, HDR, etc into the mix the tech is just getting more expensive.

You could hope for a 50" 1080p OLED for sub £500. But will also never happen as 1080p is dead now.

In fact you can't get a decent LCD for sub £1000 at launch these days. It's only crap available at the sub £600 level.

wellibob · 18 Mar 2019 at 20:08

Be interesting to see in another 5 years where we stand with tv's and the pricing . What I require is oled pc monitors and laptops (120+ htz)

*** General TVs Talk Thread ***

* General TVs Talk Thread *