TVs, including LCD/LED, plasma, OLED, and more. Ask for buying advice, or help others, share experiences etc.
By Steve
#17064
Finally got a Q7 for equivalent to around 794 pounds.

I had found the hisense P9 65 inch rather exciting. It looks terrible, particularly on TV, but I found one in a store that allowed me to adjust for an hour or so on dome non TV feeds, and I found I could easily get it to match Panasonic and Sony Oled's for a viewing look, and far outdo them in that look. It looked grades better. The Sony oled demo started to look cheap. The salesperson was stunned. But it has a few quibbles and is 8 bit 10 bit FRC. It is great, but no dynamic HDR either. I rang Hisense about the release date of the replacement model they had announced on their blog, and was told they were not releasing it this year (seriously). That one would have had true 10 bit panel, Dolby vision, hgl, Dolby atmos, likely even more rec2020 coverage over the Q7, and probably better overall. They also announced a u9D version last year with over 5000 dimming zones, but heard of 15,000 or something microleds (not normal 9 series models). So, that wasn't great. So, the Q7 was here now, with superior picture processing and real 10 bit panel, but unfortunately no led array.

Of the three stand out TV's I found on sale. The hisense 65P9 was around equivalent to 1208 pounds (there is a 75 inch out there aswell). The TCL c6us, I couldn't find any reference on rec2020, but 95% DCI, fald, Dolby vision, jbl sound bar inbuilt I think, 49 inch around 367 pounds for a picture you could turn away from a oled for, with 400cd brightness. So, a great budget buy.

The u9a is claimed 90% rec2020, but 81% in a test I found. So, this years R9 / U9F replacement models I was keen to see.
By Steve
#17065
OK. After trying some settings and fiddling around with it. I can say I can't get as good viewing look as I could on the hisense P9. It is likely the colours I could get on the P9 were more saturated and less deferential on chroma toning, resulting in a more solid look, like the Sony demo. I think on the Q7, if I put the back light up with local dimming, light bleed was an issue with color purity. It was there on the P9 of course, but colours were more solid. Lower back light were more colour. 100 nits is about 5, around 26+ it gets more noticeable, which might be around 700 nits peak, so not really a loss over oled. Even if it is HDR 1500, I am more interested in HDR 1000 delivery and HDR 700 is still great.

Has substantial shift in image quality viewed from above though, and side to side, but for one or two people sitting in front fine. I believe hisense has a system to send 8 copies of the same image out in different directions (I don't know which TV) which should substantially improve viewing zone.

Now, it is exaggerating problems with badly shot television footage. The hisense looked far worse though, but I wasn't allowed to adjust anything in that shop, and it was stuck on dynamic. Interestingly enough, a few modes are bright like dynamic on that set. Anyway, maybe the Hisense has better black options. But seriously, even a side lit TV should have 1000 zones, it is so few, even have 100,000, which would be well over 400 zones across, not much.

Now, when doing the settings, it is not allowing me to do custom and save separately, or test before saving, and changing something's still have the menu over the picture, so you can't see the differences it makes.

Putting my old PVR stick over to the Q7, I can watch the recent recordings in folders, but can't quickly get to the recent folders as it does not have sort by recent date, but only by oldest date first, and it scrolls through slowly. Its not the best. It should have picked up the previous recurring list, and it won't let me delete them because they are not recognised as recordings, when I should be able to delete anything. It also won't let me schedule recordings without formating and deleting everything on the drive (plus no drive in the expensive TV). Rubbish!

New, I forgot to keep taking pictures when I was changing color balance and color space settings, but think that white balance already had figures in it, and potentially different ones in color space, then the ones it reset to. So, I wonder if somebody had a go at this before. It was a demo model, but now I think of it, I thought they sold out, and maybe this is a return. The remote with it is not pairing, as maybe its been mixed up.

Semi happy with it, but I didn't just get it for pretty pictures.
By Steve
#17068
After extensive playing around I tried a number of looks. Much better, but I think I'm fooling myself a little to try to match the hisense. I can't really even match movies to the store demo (that was a joke. There is a cover image in netflix of Queen Elizabeth the golden age, which stands out. So, it is a matter of how, the original image was shot then processed, which most are not done like the demo). Anyway, the hisense not only has more nits and allegedly more color gamut, they also have experience with THX certification, so likely have put some effort into the top model). So, they probably did that and biased it towards a pleasing look when you play around with things. The Samsung does not seem to be. I'm getting closer though.

I'm also more appreciative of my old screens 10-12 year old black filter, it did a wonderful job for the day. I'm not sure if it was 300 or 500 nit model. My guess is 300 nits, it is not as bright as the 500 nit Samsung rear projection of the day (if they are serious about home cinema, they should try that again. After they got away from the previous low lamp life and picture quality technologies, it was rather good by the time they canceled them. Also the latter Mitsubishi model).

Interestingly, dynamic is a useful mode. Back years ago, dynamic was basically useless. Horrible, like most modes. This one is very blue biased, but not so whacky.
By Steve
#17073
OK. The horror truth (another horror truth, about view angles, at the end). It's much better watching normal programming in retail mode, dynamic, contrast expansion high, color time set to standard, with -3 brightness in a out room, and -5 (the bottom brightness) in a dark room. It is closer to the hisense, but the hisense was a different preferred look, but this is great. Unfortunately retail mode resets new settings every 5-10 minutes, so I'm going try to emulate those in home mode.

Movie mode, is good for 100 nits emulation, but I struggle to get the crispness and color range out if it.

Unfortunately these pseudo modes may have functions that push the image in certain directions, but no manual controls on custom manual modes to take control of it. I estimate I could use several such custom manual mode slots, to change between a number of looks and for different household members. It's a bit disappointing that that this is missed out.

Now, back to it. The dynamic mode lifts the backlight bleed too much. I'm going have to explore this, but it should he many times better than my old viewsonic. In store, closely looking at the screen, very little bleed is evident. I suspect the store demo scenes are designed to not push the backlight up much in blacks. But, I'm wondering if this was a return screen with something wrong with the black filter. I thought all these 55 inches had vanished from the store, to run into this one, plus I had seen child hand prints on it, on the top shelf. I would have missed it if it had been on a bottom shelf.

A second shocking truth, is that dynamic retail mode makes it much more watchable over a wider viewing angle. Which is good, I can sit and get color glory and visitors can sit a bit further away. So, seating for 4 maybe 5 is possible on a plane 8 feet away. When I first got it and set it up in movie mode, it was bad to watch on much narrower viewing angles, pretty much for two people side by side. This is worse then my ancient viewsonic. I suspect retail mode was setup to give the sense it wider viewing angles when customers walk past. The blue biase in retail dynamic cool, plus over saturation in bright colors chosen, helps hide the viewing angle shift. No wonder they were so will to sacrifice color gamut to get wide viewing angles. If only they had retained the color gamut I would have bought a Q70.

But struth, how come I haven't read a review that explores these things.

I need to look at if backlight plays into angle image shift, to see if strong backlight produces more shift in pixel, and if it compromises the ability of the black filter to filter out the stray light component.