The Case Against OLED

[jbattman1016]

In support of OLEDs: After having mine for over 6 months, either the panel has changed or my eyes are broken, but I find the colors and everything just perfect.

I did have to adjust a bunch of settings to get it here, but this is typical even for my previous LCD panel. I needed to spend months doing minor tweaks to get the visuals just right. So out of the box, it was very dark, but it appears to be brighter and mostly in a just use it state, which is best for the rest of the family.

I will say that the just turn on and use state for LED/LCD panels is much easier and quicker to get to.

Would I recommend an OLED panel? Depends on the person, if they like to play with settings, then I would.

 

[levimax]

I was trying to decide between a 77" OLED and a 85" QLED (both cost the same). In the end I went with the OLED because of much better off axis viewing which comes into play when I am working in the kitchen which is adjacent to the TV room. These big new TV's are so good that it is hard to go wrong.

 

[Sal1950]

My only complaint about HDR is it's always bundled with 4K, when it can be supplied with a any resolution. Oh well.

That's the way I feel about them bundling Atmos sound only with 4k videos now.
They force us to pay the premium to get any of the top codings, all or nothing.

 

[rdenney]

I have an ancient plasma 50" display. It's heavy, power-hungry, and featureless. It's also limited to 1080 resolution, which is actually fine with me.

(I also have a not-quite-as-old 42" plasma TV in my workout room, and it's limited to 720p resolution. Also abundant, considering that most of what I watch on it is Youtube content.)

In a fit of itchy wallet--and wanting a display with a over-the-air tuner built in which my old plasma does not have--I bought a 55" QLED TV. It looked as good as any of the others at Costco. When we got it home and set it up, it was just...flat. Even a little off-axis turned to cartoons. Sure, it was light and much more efficient. But why oh why should a TV bought in 2021 have worse color and contrast than a 15-year-old Maxent plasma display, no matter what the technology? We took it back.

I haven't compared it side by side, but I suspect only the OLED technology can keep up with outdated plasma displays in color and contrast, as long as they are working properly. But it's too expensive, so it's back to the old Maxent, which still works perfectly in its (now) 18th year. I had to buy an external TV tuner and a more feature-rich AVR (a slightly used Yamaha) to make it work, but all that cost far less than an OLED and I probably needed that new AVR anyway.

(Note that the "home theater" is not the optimized sound system in our home. The sound system is a pair of old Linn Index plus at L and R, a cheapie Pioneer BS-whatever "center", a pair of Polk RT-15's as surrounds, and an old Boston Acoustics sub bought at the same time as the Maxent plasma display. It's all equalized using the built-in routine that resides in the Yamaha AVR, and to my ears it sound "fine." My music-playing stereo system is far more carefully selected and set up, though not any newer.)

Rick "finding some wood to knock on" Denney

 

[Tim Link]

I have an ancient plasma 50" display. It's heavy, power-hungry, and featureless. It's also limited to 1080 resolution, which is actually fine with me.

(I also have a not-quite-as-old 42" plasma TV in my workout room, and it's limited to 720p resolution. Also abundant, considering that most of what I watch on it is Youtube content.)

In a fit of itchy wallet--and wanting a display with a over-the-air tuner built in which my old plasma does not have--I bought a 55" QLED TV. It looked as good as any of the others at Costco. When we got it home and set it up, it was just...flat. Even a little off-axis turned to cartoons. Sure, it was light and much more efficient. But why oh why should a TV bought in 2021 have worse color and contrast than a 15-year-old Maxent plasma display, no matter what the technology? We took it back.

I haven't compared it side by side, but I suspect only the OLED technology can keep up with outdated plasma displays in color and contrast, as long as they are working properly. But it's too expensive, so it's back to the old Maxent, which still works perfectly in its (now) 18th year. I had to buy an external TV tuner and a more feature-rich AVR (a slightly used Yamaha) to make it work, but all that cost far less than an OLED and I probably needed that new AVR anyway.

(Note that the "home theater" is not the optimized sound system in our home. The sound system is a pair of old Linn Index plus at L and R, a cheapie Pioneer BS-whatever "center", a pair of Polk RT-15's as surrounds, and an old Boston Acoustics sub bought at the same time as the Maxent plasma display. It's all equalized using the built-in routine that resides in the Yamaha AVR, and to my ears it sound "fine." My music-playing stereo system is far more carefully selected and set up, though not any newer.)

Rick "finding some wood to knock on" Denney

I don't what "flat" means for you, but after looking at OLEDs, and even my QLED on a lot of content that's out there, the vast majority of reality looks much more "flat" to me than what these TVs are capable of. I've softened the gamma and brought up the shadow detail on my QLED to make it look more like reality, where colors seem softer and more pastel, and shadows are definitely not so dark. Even now wtih my gentle settings, I look around the room and in to other rooms, and out the windows, and the closest thing to "inky black" that I'm seeing is coming from my Samsung television. The actual dark areas in my room look relatively grey and washed out compared to the TV. The TV's contrast and saturation capability is seriously intense, and it's hard to find real scenes that have that much. What I do find in the real world is a lot of luminance of more pastel colors. It's amazing to me how well my TV can match reality at least on light overcast days, and even direct sunlight on darker surfaces. I tested it when I first got it by taking raw photos with my camera out the window or in the room and then color grading them and presenting them on the TV as HDR movies. I could compare reality directly with what was on the screen and it was very close in brightness, saturation, contrast, color accuracy overall. Most impressive to me the brightness because I never had a TV before that could even come close in that regard except for dim scenes, like heavy overcast days.
I can surmise that the "cinema" look that some people want has less to do with realism and more to do with a dramatic artisitic effect. That might explain why I find that a lot of movies look very impressive at first, but unrealistic in a way that I quickly find tiresome. It's weird when after watching an HDR movie I look away from the screen and everything looks relatively flat and washed out. Our visual system adjusts for contrast, which is why printed material limited to a 600 to 1 contrast ratio can look really good.

 

[Sal1950]

When we got it home and set it up, it was just...flat. Even a little off-axis turned to cartoons. Sure, it was light and much more efficient. But why oh why should a TV bought in 2021 have worse color and contrast than a 15-year-old Maxent plasma display, no matter what the technology?

Off-axis, maybe, if that's important to you go OLED.
Color and contrast, somethings wrong, new QLED's should be killing that old plasma.

 

[rdenney]

Great video. The description of the motion resolution largely matches my own experience. I moved from a plasma (panasonic GT50) to OLED (Sony A8H) and with motionflow smoothness (interpolation) and clearness (BFI) both set to their lowest levels, the results are pretty good with no detectable SOE, flicker, or dimming. I do see SOE if I turn the interpolation level up higher, so I don't. I still feel like it's not quite as good as my plasma was, but pretty close. I actually feel like it's quite good with sports and worse with lower frame rate broadcast-quality content.

And of course the OLED is superior in almost every other way. There are a few annoying visual glitches - cinemotion works well on most content but makes tickers judder badly so I turn it on and off a lot, and I'm still trying to figure out what setting on what content types causes occasional weird aliasing effects on busy backgrounds, but overall I have to say after holding on to the plasma for over a decade, the OLED is an upgrade on the whole. I'm hopeful the next one will be even better.

Yes, it is a good video.

And I do not in any way diminish the advantage of OLED, except for price. But it requires a holistic system view to see those advantages in real life. For example, the guy in the video extolled the virtues of 4K and high frame-rate video, mentioning that Netflix can stream at 100 Mb/s. When I stream at all, I'm using terrestrial microwave that can deliver, at best, 8 Mb/s. Even 1080P content pushes the limits of my internet service. We've been told we will get fiber infrastructure here "next year", but we've been hearing that for a decade.

I don't use a television for gaming. In fact, the only game I play is Solitaire on my iphone. My main use case for my desktop computer at home is photo (NOT video) editing, and for that I need accuracy far more than vibrancy--I'm calibrating for prints that have less visual contrast than any back-lighted display technology. The monitor I use on that system is a 27" Eizo high-accuracy display with hardware calibration. I paid real money for that puppy, but I had requirements that lesser monitors never fulfilled, and I went through several.

My plasma display, ancient as it is, is no match for the Panasonic display described in the video, I'm sure. It displays all the negative features the guy mentioned: posterization in shadows, washout in very bright conditions, green trails for moving highlights against black backgrounds, and burn-in, though I have found that the burn-in was temporary and getting the chroma blue letterboxing for 4:3 content undone was the key to eliminating even that. And I'm sure some 4K content takes better advantage of the wider gamut of modern OLEDs.

But I wasn't comparing against $1500 OLED TV's (Black Friday overstock prices for almost-discontinued models), I was comparing against $600 (and less) LED TV's, including QLED options. I'm just not prepared to spend $3000 for a TV.

Rick "would be more tempted by an affordable high-quality 55" OLED 1080P television" Denney

 

[pseudoid]

I am glad this topic is going away from the "neener, neener, mine is brighter than yours" replies.
If a single folk sitting - dead-nuts - in front of their TV, was saying the above, I'd probably cut him some slack! [gulp]
But if you are going to share your viewing experience with others, field-of-view (FOV) becomes a more critical parameter to seek optimization and may beg for your dollars.
Okay, so you are not going to be able to watch your SuperBowl event party - in your giant OLED tv in your backyard - because a guest may just use that "neener, neener,...." line on you. But then again, at least the rest of your guests will - at least - get to see the game due to the OLED wider FOV... though, a bit darker.

Rick "finding some wood to knock on" Denney

If you start a gofundme, I'd gladly chip in. Lemme know.

 

[rdenney]

I don't what "flat" means for you, but after looking at OLEDs, and even my QLED on a lot of content that's out there, the vast majority of reality looks much more "flat" to me than what these TVs are capable of. I've softened the gamma and brought up the shadow detail on my QLED to make it look more like reality, where colors seem softer and more pastel, and shadows are definitely not so dark. Even now wtih my gentle settings, I look around the room and in to other rooms, and out the windows, and the closest thing to "inky black" that I'm seeing is coming from my Samsung television. The actual dark areas in my room look relatively grey and washed out compared to the TV. The TV's contrast and saturation capability is seriously intense, and it's hard to find real scenes that have that much. What I do find in the real world is a lot of luminance of more pastel colors. It's amazing to me how well my TV can match reality at least on light overcast days, and even direct sunlight on darker surfaces. I tested it when I first got it by taking raw photos with my camera out the window or in the room and then color grading them and presenting them on the TV as HDR movies. I could compare reality directly with what was on the screen and it was very close in brightness, saturation, contrast, color accuracy overall. Most impressive to me the brightness because I never had a TV before that could even come close in that regard except for dim scenes, like heavy overcast days.
I can surmise that the "cinema" look that some people want has less to do with realism and more to do with a dramatic artisitic effect. That might explain why I find that a lot of movies look very impressive at first, but unrealistic in a way that I quickly find tiresome. It's weird when after watching an HDR movie I look away from the screen and everything looks relatively flat and washed out. Our visual system adjusts for contrast, which is why printed material limited to a 600 to 1 contrast ratio can look really good.

By "flat" I mean highlight expression as much as shadow expression, particularly off-axis. Our house is an open-concept design and the viewing breadth of our main TV is about 90 degrees, or 45 degrees off-axis. OLED can come close to doing that. Our crappy old plasma display isn't as bright off-axis, but it sustains its gradations and color, which the QLED model we tried did not do. Even a little off-axis, that QLED looked like a sun-faded water-color cartoon compared to on-axis.

When the sun is shining, blacks don't look black if for no other reason than the glare in the air and in our eyes. But the contrast ratio is still vast, because the bright areas are simply brighter. But to my eyes, most of what makes watching a movie not realistic has to do with motion more than vibrancy. But I do not equate "flatness" or its opposite with the Vibrancy or Saturation sliders in photo editing software. I equate it more with the lack of micro-contrast tonal gradation. That's the veteran photographer in me speaking.

Rick "sunny days have 15-20 stops of subject brightness range in photographic terms--millions:1 contrast" Denney

 

[Deleted member 48726]

Off-axis, maybe, if that's important to you go OLED.
Color and contrast, somethings wrong, new QLED's should be killing that old plasma.

It does. But not because of quality blacks but because of high nits. Black crush is a pronounced issue which most LED's inhabit. Plasma doesn't.

 

[jbattman1016]

That's the way I feel about them bundling Atmos sound only with 4k videos now.
They force us to pay the premium to get any of the top codings, all or nothing.

You'd be lucky to get 7.1 with some of the 4K releases.

 

[Aerith Gainsborough]

I can't understand how a consumer can spend €2000 on a TV, with the risk of it having a defect/fault after the two-year warranty.

You have to punish modern OLED devices pretty hard (always max brightness and hours of the same program per day) or use them for non intended things like a computer monitor that mostly displays static content to run into the "burn-in" problem.

In normal movie watching conditions, image retention due to blue LED wear is a non issue.

 

[jbattman1016]

You have to punish modern OLED devices pretty hard (always max brightness and hours of the same program per day) or use them for non intended things like a computer monitor that mostly displays static content to run into the "burn-in" problem.

In normal movie watching conditions, image retention due to blue LED wear is a non issue.

I have subtitles always on and this is causing additional wear on the lower section of the screen, nothing I can do about it when using an OLED and this is what I consider normal usage of the device.

Can I see the issue? I can depending on the image shown and if no subtitle is present at the time. Does it take away from the viewing experience, no.

 

[Timcognito]

I have subtitles always on and this is causing additional wear on the lower section of the screen, nothing I can do about it when using an OLED and this is what I consider normal usage of the device.

Not if you turn off the box the subtitles are in, because the the letters are not static but the box location is.

 

[jbattman1016]

Each movie/app displays subtitles in their own special way, can't always control this. I was able to remove most of the black boxed subtitles, but not for all cases. I have gone down this road it's really not a problem, just an observation.

 

[Sal1950]

You have to punish modern OLED devices pretty hard (always max brightness and hours of the same program per day) or use them for non intended things like a computer monitor that mostly displays static content to run into the "burn-in" problem.

In normal movie watching conditions, image retention due to blue LED wear is a non issue.

But this is a MUSIC listening based website and I'd say for large number of us here, using the TV as a monitor of our music server is done extensively. Yes there are ways to minimize or maybe totally avoid any burn damage. It's just that the claims of it being a non-issue today are not the reality. I find that after the pros and cons of the best of the two platforms is honestly examined, the two come very close to being a toss-up as to which is "best", with the final usage factor becoming the deciding manner.
In my system and IMHO, the risks of putting thousands of dollars in a OLED just aren't justified..
Once bitten, twice shy the saying goes.

 

[Aerith Gainsborough]

I have subtitles always on and this is causing additional wear on the lower section of the screen, nothing I can do about it when using an OLED and this is what I consider normal usage of the device.

Can I see the issue? I can depending on the image shown and if no subtitle is present at the time. Does it take away from the viewing experience, no.

Yeah I can see that being an issue long term, especially in HDR mode when they think the subs need to be always displayed with the brightness of the sun. >.<

But this is a MUSIC listening based website and I'd say for large number of us here, using the TV as a monitor of our music server is done extensively.

Uuh... you can always "mute" the display while the music is running, there is no need for the TV to stay on once you created your playlist and initiated playback.

I can totally understand going with LED for the peace of mind and taking the hit in image quality whenever small bright objects on a dark background are displayed. I did the same, after all. While OLED may look nicer, it's not as if VA panels are ugly slouches where viewing is no longer fun. Far from it.

 

[Sal1950]

While OLED may look nicer, it's not as if VA panels are ugly slouches where viewing is no longer fun. Far from it.

Nicer in a darkened room, in real world bright living quarters, not so much so.
A Neo QLED can take the day.

 

[Bleib]

Well. For monitors 240hz seems necessary for VA panels as they have black level smearing otherwise. Tried a 165hz from Gigabyte and it was awful.

 

[Neddy]

But this is a MUSIC listening based website and I'd say for large number of us here, using the TV as a monitor of our music server is done extensively. Yes there are ways to minimize or maybe totally avoid any burn damage. It's just that the claims of it being a non-issue today are not the reality. I find that after the pros and cons of the best of the two platforms is honestly examined, the two come very close to being a toss-up as to which is "best", with the final usage factor becoming the deciding manner.
In my system and IMHO, the risks of putting thousands of dollars in a OLED just aren't justified..
Once bitten, twice shy the saying goes.

I hadn't even considered this.
Thanks for making that point - my main listening room needs a TV upgrade, and I DO mostly leave JRiver up (tho only) while playing music, so that really puts the OLED or not question to bed for me. It's also a very bright room, with all glass on the south side, so had already had been questioning OLED for that space.

Movies are mostly via projector to the wall behind the TV (which is on a power mount, so it 'hides' down below the subwoofer) so movie quality is not an immediate concern (tho any OLED will slay my old sony projector, nothing beats a 12 foot wide display!). (Room has blackout shades for the occasional daytime movie watching.)

(I'm actually hoping for one of the Samsung The Frame models, as 'the artwork' would fit better in that space anyway, and 'ultimate vq' is not the goal anyway....but till hoping that next year they up the game on the panels they use for those....)

Someday, I will have to replace the ancient 50" Panny plasma downstairs - and that will definitely be OLED, since it's mostly dark there (replacement probably driven more by energy consumption/heating concerns, as the display quality is still amazing).
Interesting to note that it's predecessor, a 36" Sony Trinitron, also lasted about 20 years....tho disposing of that 200lb monster was a chore (the Panasonic plasma is just under 100lbs).

Thanks for putting that debate in a coffin for me!!


(TV still on, and only partially lurking, but you get the idea.)