Best 4K HDR TV's for One X, PS4 Pro [2017-2020]

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I think only the 2019 models that have hdmi 2.1.

I might be buying a 55" C9 this weekend. Price dropped 150 YFC in a week and if the store is willing to match the Amazon price, which is another 150 lower, I'll get it. Financial year will be ending here at the end of the month and the stores are fairly empty as well due to corona so hopefully they are willing to sell. Looking at how the C8's price evolved, it won't get much cheaper than what its sold for on Amazon unless I wait another year.

Decided not to go for the 2020 models because they are basically the 2019 models including the downsides such as a inability to passthrough HD audio from built in apps over earc.
 
I would double check on the C9 and other 2019 models. I saw some complaints that they didn't put out a firmware update which had been promised.

LG obviously wants people to buy CX and the 2020 models.
 
I might be buying a 55" C9 this weekend. Price dropped 150 YFC in a week and if the store is willing to match the Amazon price, which is another 150 lower, I'll get it.
This is something I've been debating.
LG C9 55"
Or
LG CX 48"

Would rather the smaller size, but it could end up being same or more expensive.
Couldn't see much difference between the 2 models either.
Also feel like I'm ripping my self off if I go for smaller screen when bigger one costs the same.
 
I don't know about the 48-inch but the CX models should be shipping soon if they haven't already.

So there will be reviews and user feedback about whether the CX is worth it over the C9.

Some hope that motion handling would be improved.
 
FlatpanelsHD already has a review. Peak luminance and color gamut hasn’t improved from last year’s panel. Dynamic BFI seems implemented, but a bit wonky ATM. (Luminance drop from 25% setting is 15%, 60~75% when put on High setting) From other reviewers, the processor seems a match for last year’s Sony. (almost identical upscaling/motion processing) Input lag is still the same 13ms. Uniformity seems to be greatly improved though. LG Germany has actually made this a point saying improved production process has contributed to higher uniformity yields. All in all, an excellent product when it comes to feature levels and price, but mediocre core panel improvement. New OLED stack improving color gamut should have been included for this year’s model. They skipped top emission, now they skipped a new stack too.
 
I would double check on the C9 and other 2019 models. I saw some complaints that they didn't put out a firmware update which had been promised.

LG obviously wants people to buy CX and the 2020 models.

What was that firmware update suppose to solve? I know there should be one coming out around june/july along with the release of the CX models that fixes PCM audio which is currently limited to 2.1 or something. Reading avsforums I can't find any outstanding issues that can be fixed with a firmware update.
 
I would double check on the C9 and other 2019 models. I saw some complaints that they didn't put out a firmware update which had been promised.

LG obviously wants people to buy CX and the 2020 models.

On my previous TV that's an lg, the firmware update are not released at the same time for all region.

To get it ASAP you need to look for what region has the file on their support website, download it, and do the upgrade via USB.

Crossing firmware region is Okay. It's one firmware containing all region. If it's incompatible, the TV probably gonna refuse to start the update
 
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It will still not be possible to output HD Audio (Dolby Atmos, DTS-MA) to eArc from the internal apps.

I know, I mentioned that in my first post ;) The same will apply to the 2020 models hence the earliest that obvious functionality as this is going to work is 2021. Why they designed the hardware to be incapable of this is beyond me. Whenever I look at tv's I always have the feeling that apart from the panel itself the rest of the hard and software is always kinda half assed.

I'm kinda hoping affordable hdmi 2.1 soundbars will be available in the not too distant future in case I'm not happy with the built in speakers.
 
Maybe licensing issue/business decision? Similar with why Nvidia didn't have Dolby digital live thru HDMI. They also didn't provide optional Dolby license to be purchased.

With hacked driver, DDL works just fine.
 
I still can’t believe Panasonic will stop selling TVs in Canada. Hope they are ok financially... Now I’m having a serious look at buying the GZ2000. Even though it’s last year’s model, it is still more than enough to defeat consumer Micro LEDs and Dual layer LCDs. No HDMI 2.1 is a big bummer though.
 
FlatpanelsHD already has a review. Peak luminance and color gamut hasn’t improved from last year’s panel. Dynamic BFI seems implemented, but a bit wonky ATM. (Luminance drop from 25% setting is 15%, 60~75% when put on High setting) From other reviewers, the processor seems a match for last year’s Sony. (almost identical upscaling/motion processing) Input lag is still the same 13ms. Uniformity seems to be greatly improved though. LG Germany has actually made this a point saying improved production process has contributed to higher uniformity yields. All in all, an excellent product when it comes to feature levels and price, but mediocre core panel improvement. New OLED stack improving color gamut should have been included for this year’s model. They skipped top emission, now they skipped a new stack too.
That's disheartening to hear, it really sounds like Oled tech has hit a dead end at least in peak/sustained brightness especially at larger windows. I hope Mini LED would take off soon, it feels more like a perfect balance between Black level, bloom control and peak brightness.
 
Especially unfortunately because WOLED already had an roadmap to 4000 nits of peak brightness and IGZO burn in eradication was so near with top emission. Financial woes has engulfed LG and their LCD business wasn’t as strong as Samsung’s to continue providing protection for their OLED business. Now, OLED has to go on without relying on LCD and that’s when severe cost cutting happens. Top emission, while a spectacular technology, still cost considerable coin and they don’t need it to beat up Samsung’s QD OLEDs, both in cost and performance. Samsung’s weak flagship roadmap also led to LG’s complacence. LG’s parity game with 8K OLED has also lead to this. 8K OLED is 20% less brighter then 4K ones so they simply couldn’t see their flagship 8K dimmer then their mainstream ones. Same tactic as Samsung, they have also downgraded number of dimming zones in their 4K LCD TVs and moved last year’s 4K flaghship dimming zone exclusively to their 8K lines. Now they will only concentrate on producing as many units as possible, and it will certainly get much cheaper.

I also think Mini LED will have pretty good balance of black level, bloom control, and brightness. Traditional FALD LCDs have way too few controllers so intra scene brightness is actually lower then OLEDs. Consumer Micro LED’s are way too dim compared to the one you see in Samsung store because it sucks up too much juice. Same for Dual layer LCDs, The Hisense measures the same 500 nits brightness as the Wall, blooming reduction, while the best out of EVERY LCD technology, still wasn’t anything to write home about, and a good FALD would give it a run for money, and in several scenes, its IPS rooted black wasn’t even as good as VA. However, Samsung doesn’t seem interested in patterned QDCF Mini LED after they’ve tried patterning once and failed and it has upset their Quantum Dot parter Nanosys because they want to continue with LCDs while Samsung doesn’t think LCD has no future in premium market anymore and is secretly concentrating on their QD OLED/QNED roadmap. So Taiwanese/Chinese makers will have to be brave enough to try but their panels simply does not have as strong black as Samsung’s. The fabled Sony Z9D quickly lost steam too as consumers found the Sony’s AUO panel’s black level simply couldn’t compare to Samsung’s latest black enhanced SPVA panel (World’s first Tri-Domain VA), so even an edge-lit was more then enough to be competitive. To achieve Tri-domain VA, Samsung has divided light domain as low brigtness section and mid,high section lets two domains control mid,high and another domain control low brightness/shadow detail section. To compress such wide dynamic range, they’ve employed pentile like tech to low brightness domain. Though recently, they’ve decided to use some of that headroom into improving viewing angle, so black level hit is evident.

Of course, Panasonic OLEDs will still remain as the best consumer HDR TV in the world. They have their own custom heatsink so they do not abide by LG’s own limitations. They can stay over 984 nits in 10% APL and still keep considerable brightness in 25~50% area. Almost no content codes peak brightness to 25%~50% kind of wide area because of eye fatigue hit anyways. And with their outstanding 3D LUT calibration capability, they will continue to remain as a reference display for HDR1000 contents. I would actually consider this superior for 1000 nit content in terms of dynamic range then the $30,000 Sony Dual Layer LCD professional monitor, considering how mediocre the hyped Hisense U9E was when I saw it in person in China.
 
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/31/...-quantum-dot-oled-south-korea-china-factories

Looks like Samsung Display will close all LCD factories in 2020 and move to OLED for smart phones and QD OLED for TVs. Samsung Electronics will then continue to use LCD panels for their TVs but only from other manufacturers from China. The faster LCDs disappear the better. More competition against LG Display will also improve OLEDs.
 
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This is why I kept emphasizing all those wacky zany new techs for LCDs didn’t really have a chance. When I was in China, I was seriously worried about the prospect of China’s premium TV business, it was complete unlike their booming smartphone market. Thus, China went cheap and cheaper, and this downward spiral has seriously hurt Korean display giants too. You can now get Samsung’s latest (2020) budget QLED model (Q6) at 65 inches for under $1000.

Samsung has tried numerous times to make their LCDs a premium products, but consumers simply don’t want to pay big money for LCDs. This is why after their failure to move up LCD to patterned QDCC, they did not try again and started concentrating on self-illuminating techs such as QD-OLEDs and Micro LED instead. This has created a rift with them and their Quantum Dot partner, Nanosys, however, and the CEO, Jason Hartlove has gone out and say LCDs can beat MicroLED.


This is true as only LCDs can reach 4000~10000 nits in the near future. (And this does not apply to smaller sized LCDs either as Sony Z9G could also hit 4000 nits, but only in 85 inches and 98 inches size) Samsung’s Micro LED “The Wall”, (which is not quite Micro sized yet, but they will be by this year) can hit 1,600 nits, but only in commercial application. Home products are capped at 500 nits for power consumption reasons.

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Thus, the best output we can expect from LCDs is not dual LCDs, as that also has power consumption disadvantage due to usage of two cells, but Patterned Mini LED LCDs with Quantum Dot Color converter. Pattern an LCD panel to RGB level, then put numerous blue micro LEDs behind panel as backlights, then use Quantum Dot color converter to convert blue micro LEDs to full RGB (blue LED + red/green QDCC) This much, we can expect from the Chinese makers, but from Samsung, not so much. To apply QD to blue micro LEDs require a patterned LCD, so unless they also go for patterned, their required usage of RGB micro LEDs to make their own Mini LEDs will cost 3 times the LED costs then the Chinese, so I bet they will simply stay QDEF (Quantum Dot Enhancement Film) all the way with their LCDs. Patterned Mini LED FALDs are also the most expensive form of FALDs. WOLEDs are already only 15% expensive then LCDs and that gap is closing fast as LCDs are already mature and there is no more cost reduction possible, thus, any attempt to increase cost of an LCD over OLEDs like Dual layer LCDs and FALDs have no future.

Thus, Samsung did the sensible thing and went with QD OLEDs instead. They are using only blue OLED, and use Quantum Dot Color converter to convert that into RGB, same method as Mini LED LCDs. They will be using same method to create Micro LEDs that will only use blue LEDs and apply QDCC to make RGB, which will save required number of LEDs by 1/3. But blue OLEDs have the lowest lifetime, so relying on blue OLEDs only unlike LG will put them in a big disadvantage both in terms of performance (lower brightness, lower lifetime) but also cost. (they will have to use 2~3 blue OLEDs to counter lower lifetime)

But their bet could still pay off if TADF takes off soon. TADF can provide 50% efficiency increase to blue OLEDs. Since they only use blue OLEDs, they will be receiving the lion’s share of efficiency improvements, not LG. But TADF as of now, can only provide such big efficiency gain at the expense of even bigger lifetime drop.

So, they have another one under the hood, QNED. QNED takes current QD OLED and replace blue OLED with blue micro LED. QD color conversion will still be applied so full RGB can be maintained. Because micro LEDs have higher lifetime then OLEDs, Samsung can also use it to be competitive with LG while waiting for lifetime on TADF to be improved. Because it is backwards compatible with current QD OLEDs in terms of manufacturing, Samsung can easily offer two at the same time. Cost for QNED will be about the same as current QD OLED when everything’s accounted into, so when QD OLED sheds cost reduction by imroved lifetime TADF (so they can use only 1 OLED instead of 2~3 like now), QNED can remain as more premium products.
 
I don't think there are high expectations of Samsung QD OLED being even as good as LG W-OLED, at least at the start.

Even if they do manage to equal or surpass LG in PQ, Samsung doesn't support Dolby Vision, which may lock it out of a lot of HDR content, unless one is satisfied with HDR10.
 
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