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

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Bought myself a LG OLED C9 65" at black friday for €1999.
PS4 Pro is connected to the TV and from TV an optical out goes to AV Receiver (old model, no ARC)
The TV manual says Instant Game Response works only when sound output is Internal TV Speaker or headphones.
Does that mean if I get a receiver with ARC, I still would not be able to get Instant Game Response with surround sound through the AVR?
What is the difference between Game Picture Mode and Instant Game Response?
Should I get the same low latency if I choose some more accurate picture mode (like Isf Bright) and IGR, as the Game picture mode colors are a bit off?

Edit: Seems like the eARC is not functioning fully, but a software update is hopefully in teh works.
A bad aspect of LG's 9-series
https://lgcommunity.us.com/discussion/4423/oled-c9-edid-limitation-regarding-hdmi-earc-pass-through

And I was planning to buy one on black friday....
 
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Sometimes I wonder if it is worth buying a 4k TV now for gaming.
So this is the big catch that most of us ignore. Most PS4 Pro games are under 4k and both the Pro and XBox One X have modes that run under 4k for some games. Then we ve got the fact that HDR TVs are 4K TVs so if you want to enjoy HDR on your XBOX S or PS4 vanilla you have to buy a 4K TV.
But.....any content that is below 4K requires upscaling, and upscaling means that the input lag is much higher than what is normally stated by the manufacturer.
So if I bought a 4K TV for my Vanilla PS4 I would have been experiencing much more lag for my fighting games like Tekken 7.
 
But.....any content that is below 4K requires upscaling, and upscaling means that the input lag is much higher than what is normally stated by the manufacturer.

Just look at Rtings reviews for the TV you are interested in. Then go to the latency section and see what the latency is for the resolution you are interested in. They provided tested latency for both 1080p and 1440p. The TV is doing the upscaling in those tests.

Short answer, it's not an issue for good TVs.

Regards,
SB
 
My Sister picked up the 2019 TCL 65R625 tv set for $700 delivered. It's mostly better or the same in all areas over the 2018 model 615. It's such a great set for the price that I was considering picking up the 55" for now and upgrading in 2021 for all the HDMI 2.1 goodies.

The input lag on these bargain sets is incredible, a mere 11.3 ms for 1080p60, 10.7 ms for 1440p60, 10.8 ms for 4K60, 13.3 ms for 4k60 10bit HDR,, and it has Auto Low Latency Mode support.
 
But.....any content that is below 4K requires upscaling, and upscaling means that the input lag is much higher than what is normally stated by the manufacturer.
So if I bought a 4K TV for my Vanilla PS4 I would have been experiencing much more lag for my fighting games like Tekken 7.

I'm quite sure the mid gen consoles output 4k signal in pretty much all the games even when the rendering resolution is lower than that if you have 4k output selected in the console settings, thus no upscaling by the TV, it is done in the console. 1080p games might be different...
 
Sometimes I wonder if it is worth buying a 4k TV now for gaming.
So this is the big catch that most of us ignore. Most PS4 Pro games are under 4k and both the Pro and XBox One X have modes that run under 4k for some games. Then we ve got the fact that HDR TVs are 4K TVs so if you want to enjoy HDR on your XBOX S or PS4 vanilla you have to buy a 4K TV.
But.....any content that is below 4K requires upscaling, and upscaling means that the input lag is much higher than what is normally stated by the manufacturer.
So if I bought a 4K TV for my Vanilla PS4 I would have been experiencing much more lag for my fighting games like Tekken 7.

I'm one of those folks who thinks chasing ridiculous resolutions is a giant waste of resources. Still, there's this one neat feature that's unfortunately locked away behind the 4K label in the tv market, and that is HDR. There's just no 1080p panel with HDR support. As far as input lag is concerned: at least on LG Oleds, input lag is exactly the same with a 1080p source as well as a 4K source.
 
Thing is, I wonder if consumers will care about HDR.

There's a lot of fake HDR being sent now, supposedly most of Disney+ offerings.

So if people aren't overwhelmed, maybe HDR gets dropped like 3D. Or the content owners won't bother to pay for Dolby Vision licenses.
 
I dont see it ever being dropped. There are multiple implementations of HDR standards, but they all deliver HDR.
 
As long as the big streaming services support it in some form, probably okay.

But for most people HDR is not a make or break thing for what they watch, just as people in general don't care about lossy compression for audio.
 
Not to mention that Proper HDR is mindblowng!!
Far more impressive that HD -> UHD.
Perhaps similar to 30-60 though ( content dependent on the fps thing tho)

Source: I've attended enough film/broadcast tradeshows to see the tech at it's absolute best ( NAB, IBC )
 
As long as the big streaming services support it in some form, probably okay.

But for most people HDR is not a make or break thing for what they watch, just as people in general don't care about lossy compression for audio.

The only thing most people care about is that the thing is big, affordable, relatively light weight and energy efficient. Also maybe that four times the resolution sounds good on paper. Not like they'd ever reap the benefits of said resolution viewing mostly free cable, but still.
 
Well I just went through an early middle-life crisis and got myself an LG OLED 65" C9.
TV of the future, for the future consoles and future content.

Taking the thing out of the box was super stressful!
We're supposed to lift the 25Kg panel from horizontal position to vertical by holding the panel which has a thickness of 2.5mm (0.1" yes, zero point one inches) with some help of the styrofoam. I don't know how we didnt' break that whole damn thing.
Sure it's nice to show off something so thin, but I think I'd rather have some more structural components throughout the panel's back for easier handling..


After setting it up.. for someone who came from a 55" Hisense with 5 zones of edge-lit local dimming and 350nits maximum.. the difference is like night and day.
Turning up Netflix's Planet Earth I found myself just staring at it with my jaw open in disbelief. It's just beatiful.


All I wanted was for the TV to be there on time for The Witcher, and now I have a friend who'll lend me his XboneX with Star Wars Fallen Order to play on it.
What a time to be alive! :D


And they yield amazing results when used properly. Mostly just annoyed that we ended up with multiple "standards".
Honestly, it's probably going to be Dolby Vision winning the battle of the 9th-gen console and content providers.
Optical discs don't matter all that much more, and only Amazon is making content with Samsung's HDR+.

So if people aren't overwhelmed, maybe HDR gets dropped like 3D. Or the content owners won't bother to pay for Dolby Vision licenses.
HDR is already too big to fail.
Everything from Netflix is Doby Vision, and everything from Prime is HDR+. Both of which are supersets of HDR so they all fall back to HDR if you're using a panel that doesn't support it.
 
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Btw what do you say to explain HDR to layperson?

I usually says something like this, dunno how accurate / inaccurate that is

"imagine you are holding a paper. It's white and it's bright right? Look up, and you also can see a bright white lights.

Which one is brighter?

Yep. Despite both paper and light are white, the light is brighter.

A good HDR TV will allow you to see that in movies, just like real life."
 
The difference between looking at a printed photograph and looking out the window (with one eye closed if you want to lose the 3D effect). ;)
 
Btw what do you say to explain HDR to layperson?

I usually says something like this, dunno how accurate / inaccurate that is

"imagine you are holding a paper. It's white and it's bright right? Look up, and you also can see a bright white lights.

Which one is brighter?

Yep. Despite both paper and light are white, the light is brighter.

A good HDR TV will allow you to see that in movies, just like real life."

HDR by itself doesn't define how bright a TV or monitor must be, unless you're talking about VESA standards like "HDR400" which say your panel must be able to output at least 400nits for compliance, but that's a different story.



HDR video (not to confuse with HDR image capture like you have on cameras and smartphones) brings an additional set of data that tells the panel how bright each zone or each pixel is supposed to be in a given scene.
Say a scene where you're inside a cave looking at the exit with a bright, sunny day outside, like this one:

fBXHnvi.jpg



In a typical (SDR) setup, the image/video stream and the TV / monitor will normalize the brightness for the whole picture by making the cave's interior appear much brighter, and the sky much darker.

In reality, if you were standing where the picture was taken, you'd know that the cave's interior is a lot darker and if you were looking at the bright sky through the exit you'd probably even need to squint a bit for how bright it was. I'm guessing you're not squinting while looking at this picture through your monitor / TV / phone.

So there's always been a lot of brightness information lost, which was okay until recently because display technologies weren't capable of showing different levels of brightness within a single frame. All you have on regular LCD panels is a single backlight that defines how bright each frame is, not how bright each zone within each frame is.


Enter OLED panels and LCD panels with local dimming and the TV is now able to show different levels of brightness on the same frame. The cave's interior can be shown with low brightness, while the blue sky can be shown with high brightness, and no color information needs to be lost.

HDR also helps a lot in reducing e.g. color banding because there's now more bits to define color itself.



Now, as for the brightness part, in truth you'll need a display that can output a bright image or HDR won't be able to do much. That's why VESA is mandating minimum levels of panel brightness for their HDR mode compliance levels, or there's little to no point in supporting HDR at all.
And on TVs and monitors, cheap models that "support" HDR but have no local dimming will simply just accept 10bit color that will reduce banding and little more, ultimately being incapable of showing different levels of brightness.
In the end, don't think that a low-cost "HDR" TV with low brightness and no form of local dimming will inherently be able to show you a better picture than the TV you might already own.
And as for PC monitors, there's little reason to waste money on the HDR tag as all but the ultra expensive ones will have a single backlight with no local dimming, or just edge lit which isn't great.
For sane prices on PC monitors, just get one with decent brightness and refresh rates instead, or pay ~1000€ for a 55" LG B9 which is the lowest you can pay for an OLED that just happens to be future-proof with HDMI 2.1 support.
 
So, it looks like LG wants to double OLED panel shipments from ~3 million (2019) to ~6 million for 2020. To do this they really need to get the problems at their China OLED fab sorted. Hope they do as to reach that figure it means that they'll have to drop the price of OLED panels as even the current Bx series TV sets are almost never out of stock anywhere.

As a sign of this, Vizio has announced that they'll be shipping 55" and 65" OLED TVs. This matches LG's Bx series (55" and 65") so I'm guessing those are the panels that Vizio is going after. The Cx series goes up to 77".

Also good news for those that might be interested in trying an OLED panel for their PC or a small room where even 55" might be too large, LG also announced they will be shipping 48" OLED panels (Both LG and Sony have announced 48" OLED sets for 2020).

Regards,
SB
 
I’m super disappointed in the announced Sony lineup at CES. Only 1 TV, x900h has HDMI 2.1. I really thought they would roll that out across their lineup this year with the PS5 coming.

I’m in the market for a 75” 4K TV. The size makes OLED too expensive and I’ve always liked Sony TVs. Bummer.
 
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