Like the light pervert that you are.

Looks like there's gonna be a 42 inch LG C2 next year, for people that want a smaller OLED.

Bit pissed of with my Samsung panel as it seems to have some clear backlight bleed issues. Only visible in very dark scenes there are clear 'clouding' patches, most of the time they're not visible at all. But sometimes they are, which is enough to annoy me. Looking online it seems that they are fairly common and may not be considered a fault as such. Online opinion appears to be that maybe they go away by themselves, maybe rubbing the area with a cloth will help, maybe they get worse, maybe they're my imagination etc etc. Does anyone have any experience with this issue? I already RMAed the first tv as defective so not sure what they'd make of a second return.

Nah, I've checked on various sources - Xbox, built in apps, fire stick etc. I'm trying with the brightness down and other things to see if it's tolerable.

I think mine doesn't have local dimming anyway.

Recommendations/advice sought please, chaps.

Since the start of the pandemic, I've been using a 32" Samsung TV as the monitor for work, but also for the PS5. However, it's several years old now and now has a tendency to switch off randomly. I think I'm due a replacement.

As I'm going to be using it everyday for work, I think a monitor is probably the best way to go? but would equally like the option to use it for the PS5 and to stream Netflix etc. The monitor market seeks even more complicated than the TV one, so I'd just like to narrow things down a tad.

Doesn't have to be 32" as I understand 27" seems to be a more common size, so happy to go down to that. Would preferably like 1440p or above. How big a deal is the refresh rate? A lot seems to be made of it in the reviews I've seen.

Budget is probably upto £350 or thereabouts. I've been looking quite heavily at the LG GP850 which seems to have decent reviews but it's all a bit of a minefield if I'm honest.

Edit: just been reminded by a work colleague, that the PS5 doesn't do 1440p, so in that case would a 4k res that only does 60hz be better than a 1080p one that does 120hz?

Thanks Escape. That was both enlightening and bewildering at the same time. There's so much about this stuff I simply have no clue about, but that was an interesting read.

One thing I missed is the problem of frame insertions at 120Hz for 60fps content, which causes double images that can look as bad as blur. So the downside is that Hz and framerate have to match.

Hence VR launching at 90Hz — just high enough for most people to not notice flicker, and just low enough for games to manage 90fps (else a horrible feeling if they don't). LCDs, at that. I think it's a great compromise for a performance mode, supposing TV manufacturers supported low-lag insertions for it.

Rolling scan's a slightly more complex form of black-frame insertion. Whereas BFI does what it says on the tin and blanks for a given amount of time each frame (the length of this is often called strobe duty), rolling scans use vertically scrolling black bars to reset our eyes:



Except you never see them because our eyes aren't that fast and reconstitute each frame. It has the advantage over BFI of preserving more brightness with potentially reduced flicker (SEGA Rally maybe!), since peak brightness is still an OLED weakness, but shouldn't be with microLED.

Much easier to watch this!



Overlooking flicker and just commenting on performance, I believe the LG CX has the best OLED implementation at the minute. Better than the C1 and A80J at least, as mentioned previously. It's a shame that LG have regressed, but then it's a tiny minority who've noticed, so I get their return to brightness and flicker as priorities.

In the case of modern DLP projectors, their pixel response (actually tiny mirrors rather than pixels) is incredibly fast. So you can record footage of rapid motion and not see any blurring in stills.

This is a dry old 13 minutes, but he does a brilliant job of explaining the beautiful simplicity of beamers (and the stroboscopic effect for analysis):



At the end you can see how some DIYers have created their own BFI by blanking out sections of their colourwheels, to the obvious detriment of colour quality.

The main tech drawback is heat from the bulb, thus noise from a cooling fan; although some of the newer DLPs are impressively quiet. And laser projectors are increasingly common now, but have their own shortcomings; and for the time being, much higher input lag.

When I run mine in frame-sequential 3D mode (basically BFI, but higher input lag because you can't use it in game mode), I can read all the names on the BlurBusters streetmap: https://www.testufo.com/photo#photo=toronto-map.png&pps=960&pursuit=0&height=0&stutterfreq=0&stuttersize=0

That blurring's caused by our eyes 'dragging' each frame (unscientifically speaking), because unlike CRTs that fired each frame as a bright scanout flash, modern displays show the same image for the full duration (minus transition time). At 60fps that means every frame is shown for 16.7ms, and so by reducing this to 8.3ms with another 8.3ms of blanking (50:50 or 1:0 strobe duty), motion blur appears halved to us.

https://www.testufo.com/blackframes

OLED pixels are still a mite slow at transitioning between colours at times (grey-to-greys are quick), but motion blur's more a case of implementation from manufacturers than tech at this point; our own eyes the deficiency to appease. 60Hz rolling scan with a few timing options, lag penalties stated, should be a standard feature now.

Here's a nice pixel-level look, including CRT scanlines (very cool from 2:17, where you can see how retro filters get them wrong):



If you see me criticising YouTube TV reviewers, it's not because I think them shills, as per the common accusation (I've seen Teoh praise LG, Sony and Panasonic this year). It's because they don't have the game-motion knowledge to influence manufacturers towards building better gaming sets. If they consider the current options good, they're just not professionally critical enough IMO.

DF almost have to pretend they didn't make this vid when reviewing new panels:



So it's not that I hate 4K or anything, just that it's not an improvement during a lot of gamespeed motion, at the cost of the framerate needed to solve that without perceptible flicker. Which went away at 85Hz for me on a CRT, with 100 feeling really comfortable.

Most gamers are either too young to remember CRT, or have forgotten how blur-free they were. Again on my PJ with sequential 3D blanking, I could scroll up and down this page with the text remaining legible. But on the laptop I'm writing this on, no chance!

My PJ only goes up to 1280x800 at 120Hz, but the motion's so, so good in 3D mode, to the point that the res doesn't feel like a downgrade at all. It's almost a giant CRT with unfortunate input lag.

120Hz halves motion blur by itself, by the way. 240 quarters it from 60. But good luck running owt at 240fps! This is the third console gen chasing resolution that, a lot of the time, we don't get to see. If I were a PC gamer, I'd target 720/120 with strobing in new games. High details with DLSS. At least for competitive play; not for slow stuff.

The Last of Us II's crafty in offering a blur slider, where 10's horrific and 0 much better, creating the impression that Off really is off. Games trying to counter perceived motion blur with more spread on top isn't the way.

Quick report on our new Philips ambilight oled thingy.

It took a while to get the settings right (turning off that motion smoothing stuff for movies for eg) but it’s great. Coming from a backlit lcd it’s amazing how much difference HDR makes. 4K frankly not noticeable, but big frame rate and high dynamic range makes a shit ton of difference especially to dark scenes. And the ambilight is just great, lovely effect when the lights are down. Two thumbs up

Syph79 wrote:

Unless you’ve got an OLED, bleed is basically unavoidable. It can be mitigated by having more backlight zones, but not removed altogether. You could see whether there’s an option to reduce local dimming. I’ve now got mine turned off altogether. No doubt this reduces the pop on HDR bright scenes, but it has improved blooming. Feels like a choice you have to make nowadays - backlight bleed on a LCD/LED, or the risk of dead or frozen pixels on an OLED.

Bit late on this one, but I have a FALD LED TV and blooming is really noticeable in some white on black high contract images (subtitles are a given). Stuff like this doesn't tend to bother me as long as I knew its expected and just a compromise of the tech. Contrast and luminescence are absolutely amazing in general, so it's a happy trade-off.

What's yer budget? And what size you looking at.

Most sets are obviously 4K now and with HDR (to show off your console and movies). Samsung's only main limitation is they don't support Dolby Vision (dynamic HDR) and pretty much all streaming services are supporting DV.

When looking at HDR sets you ideally want one that can pump out around 1000 nits, otherwise it's not really HDR. OLED's are slightly different, they have less brightness, but overall greater contrast, so you still get the range, but more at the darker end.

If your soundbar has an HDMI port then I'd look for a TV with an E-Arc port (this is an HDMI port used to route sound from your TV and all connected devices through this port). The older Arc port had some limitations on bandwidth, E-Arc basically allows more stuff down the pipe (think Dolby Atmos, though only if your soundbar accepts it).

Any sets you shortlist checkout rtings.com and also HDTV Test YouTube channel.

If you've got the budget and going OLED basically go LG (CX or C1 are top notch) - for example you can pick up the 55" CX for £900 on amazon which is a great price and it comes with 4 HDMI ports (all real for next gen - VRR, 120fps gaming etc.)

Thanks Boris, that's useful info. I was thinking ~43" as I don't like the set to dominate the room, and tbh I just move it closer to me if I want. Budget probably ~£600 or so. Could go higher but would prefer not to. Interesting point about DV, will have a look. I was leaning towards Samsung mainly from familiarity but happy to broaden my horizons if needed.

You can get this years C1 at 48" which is about as top a set as you are going to get for £939 from these guys, used them myself and excellent customer service:

https://www.sevenoakssoundandvision.co.uk/p-51856-lg-c1-series-oled48c16la-48-4k-smart-uhd-oled-tv.aspx

Personally feel 4K TVs are a bit of a 'go big or go home' item tbh because the HDR makes a bigger impact than the higher resolution but you need a more expensive set for decent HDR performance. If you're already willing to budget £600 and have the funds to top it up to £900-ish then I would do because it's the difference between a slight improvement (or perhaps even a mix of gains and losses) from your current decent Samsung 1080p set and an unequivocally much better and genuinely next-gen TV experience.

LG are releasing some smaller OLED TV sets in 2022 so that might be of interest, although if you're concerned about budget it might be worth waiting until they're discounted in Black Friday 2022.

I'm genuinely a bit baffled about your comment re: having console sound through your soundbar and TV sound through the telly. That sounds awful? Why would you not just pass it through the TV and have everything go through the soundbar?

Don't forget that if you're comparing it to your old screen take into account the size of the bezels. New screens have almost none, which makes a surprising big difference.