OLED 4K is no joke!

[homerdog]

Wasn't sure what forum to put this in but I saw a 4K TV in action for the first time at Sam's Club the other day. I thought all this time that 4K was a total gimmick since even with my 20/13 vision I can hardly tell the difference between 720p and 1080p, but DAMN! Reminded me of when I was a kid at the state fair and saw an HDTV for the first time. And I'm sure the screen was horribly calibrated and all but it just didn't matter. The little hairs on Stephen Amell's face looked so real I wanted to lick them.

P.S. What's the situation with 4K content? Netflix was advertising 4K support but is that only for a select few titles? And I know cable/broadcast television isn't even 1080p yet so if I go out and buy a shiny new 8 megapixel screen what am I supposed to watch on it?

 

[pjbliverpool]

I can't say I was blown away by 4K on it's own (although it did look great) when I got the recent chance to look at one, but 4K OLED was truly, absolutely stunning. And that was without HDR. I just can;t imagine how eye wateringly beautiful a 4k OLED Dolby Vision ready TV must look with the right content.

 

[Sigfried1977]

I was blown away by the Oled part, but certainly not by the resolution when viewed from the kind of distance I'd describe as reasonably close yet still comfortable. It was a 65 inch set I believe. A great 4K monitor on the other hand? now that seems like a much more sensible investment to me. At this point just Oleds seem to have annoying issues here and there, though. Chief among them a tendency to produce weird double images and image latency I wouldn't be willing to put up with with for the kind of cash these things are going for.

Right now I'm on a 50 inch 1080p Plasma, and at 2, maybe 2.5 meters viewing distance I cannot see the pixels anymore.

 

[Malo]

The problem with streaming 4k is that it's compressed to about 13mbps which is half to a third of most bluray 1080p content. Not to mention the crappy audio.

 

[homerdog]

Are OLED screens in stores now? How likely am I to find one at the local BestBuy?

The problem with streaming 4k is that it's compressed to about 13mbps which is half to a third of most bluray 1080p content. Not to mention the crappy audio.

13mbps, let's say 24FPS, so a little more than .54mb per frame, ~8.3 million pixels = ~.065bit per pixel am I right?!? Wow what kind of encoding does Netflix use for 4k?

 

[pjbliverpool]

Are OLED screens in stores now? How likely am I to find one at the local BestBuy?

They are in the UK so I imagine the same for the US. My local Currys had a couple of LG OLED screens at 55". One curved and one flat. I had to drag myself away from them!

 

[Malo]

Are OLED screens in stores now? How likely am I to find one at the local BestBuy?
13mbps, let's say 24FPS, so a little more than .54mb per frame, ~8.3 million pixels = ~.065bit per pixel am I right?!? Wow what kind of encoding does Netflix use for 4k?

HEVC apparently, so not quite as bad but still less than bluray average at much higher resolution.

 

[London Geezer]

I saw a new LG OLED 4K TV in a shop the other day and it was just something else. It's really the only technology I will ever choose to replace my baby Panasonic plasma. One day. When it's not £3000 or so.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

I'm using a 40" curved 4k TV as monitor and while it's not perfect, I am not going back in size or resolution. While the content in Internet is compressed quite a bit, even many of the Youtube 4k videos look pretty stunning in 4K, way better than the 1080p versions. Games also look very good, but getting to 60fps is often hard. 1440p at 60fps is a very good alternative to 4K at 30fps in many games.

 

[homerdog]

What about scaling from 1080p? I know it should be a super simple thing but do 4K TVs and monitors get this right? I've read in places that some 4k displays' scalers butcher even 1080p content.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

What about scaling from 1080p? I know it should be a super simple thing but do 4K TVs and monitors get this right? I've read in places that some 4k displays' scalers butcher even 1080p content.

I am using the GPU for the scaling and it does a good job imo. The problem with 1080p for me is that I sit so close to the monitor that the resolution simply is lacking. 1440p looks good and 4k great. For 1080p I need to move the monitor back and then it's ok, but you of course lose immersion by doing that.

edit: custom 21:9 resolutions also work very well in supported games and reduce the rendering requirements.

 

[homerdog]

Oh yeah GPU scaling to the rescue. I'd forgotten about that.

 

[Malo]

It was exactly the same situation when we were shifting from 480p->1080p. Scalers were quite important and they varied greatly in quality. Don't expect an excellent upscaled 4k picture on a [random cheap china brand] 4k TV. Of course with PCs your GPU scaling is awesome usually.

 

[nutball]

They are in the UK so I imagine the same for the US. My local Currys had a couple of LG OLED screens at 55". One curved and one flat. I had to drag myself away from them!

It wasn't this one, was it??! Costy.

 

[pjbliverpool]

No that's the very latest HDR set as far as I'm aware and I've not seen that on display here yet. I saw last years non-HDR OLEDs and they were still eye bleedingly gorgeous.

 

[London Geezer]

It wasn't this one, was it??! Costy.

In the shops right now the 'older' model of that is everywhere (I think model number 960 or something, as opposed to E6 or B6 depending on the variety, which are the new HDR panels). Still beautiful but we seem to be in another phase of fast changes and I will definitely wait until things settle with 4K and HDR and all that. Future proofing is the way to go for me when I spend the kind of money I usually spend on TVs.

 

[nutball]

Is OLED lifetime still an issue? I'm a bit out of the loop on this. If I was going to spend that much on a TV (which I'm not!) it would have to last the best part of a decade. Being an old fart an all...

 

[BRiT]

I saw a new LG OLED 4K TV in a shop the other day and it was just something else. It's really the only technology I will ever choose to replace my baby Panasonic plasma. One day. When it's not £3000 or so.

Same here. I'll use my Panasonic Plasma until the OLEDs come down in price. They're still too pricey.

The 4K TVs I saw that were only LCD were still sub-par quality compared to the 1080p Plasma. Some had horrible in-motion resolution.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Are OLED screens in stores now? How likely am I to find one at the local BestBuy?

Yes. You should be able to head down to your local Best Buy and see one.

Is OLED lifetime still an issue? I'm a bit out of the loop on this. If I was going to spend that much on a TV (which I'm not!) it would have to last the best part of a decade. Being an old fart an all...

It's not an issue anymore for TV and movie viewing. Basically if you use your TV as a TV. Not sure about prolonged display of static content, however. Will be interesting to see how the Dell OLED monitor does over time.

Regards,
SB

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

I don't get the obsession with 4k. On any tv set that is going to fit in a normal sized living room with people looking at it from a normal viewing distance its not going to make much, if any difference. Especially not with the pretty low bitrate offered by the likes of Netflix and Youtube. I rather have prettier pixels than more pixels in this case.

For monitors and VR? Yeah I'm sure 4k will be useful there but tv's? Not so much IMO. I'm looking forward to slightly more affordable OLED tv's much more than resolutions over 1080p. About a year ago the local store had one of the early LG OLED models set up next to a actually more expensive Sony tv and the difference was very obvious. And it wasn't like the Sony was a poor model because on its own it looked pretty good to me. Even my girlfriend who really doesn't care about these things at all noticed right away and she's the kind of person that calls every car that is red a Ferrari.