Why 24fps is not enough for HDR movies

[Flatpanels]

Our review of the Samsung QN95A / QN90A is online. Samsung's new flagship 4K LCD TV is its first with miniLED backlight. It also features Tizen 6.0 with Game Bar, a new remote, and more
Link: https://www.flatpanelshd.com/review.php ... 1623645585

If you have questions please use this thread.

Enjoy.

[jwb1]

I own the QN90A and this review makes things sound terrible when it isn't.

1) You only tested properly with calibrated SDR results
2) HDR is tested with default picture mode presets, when every knows you need to tweak them
3) You did not test contrast with LD properly
4) You are purposely showing photos with exaggerated blooming that you do not see in person.
5) They showed a photo with Sony X90J and QN90A, yet with my calibrated HDR the Samsung image they showed does not look like theirs
6) I don't know what they are talking about with the light sensor still being on even though its disabled.

In terms of HDR Presets, Samsung seems to target their HDR presets to assume you will watch HDR content in the day. Ideally you should at night or in a dark room. They probably should have a HDR day and night mode really like LG does. If you were to watch most HDR in the day you would find it too dim or dark, that's why most of the HDR presets have things like contrast enhancer on low or high.

Game mode in my experience has been amazing. Deep blacks and no noticeable blooming.

A lot of your issues come down to personal preference and simply adjusting the settings. If you think Game Mode is too bright, simply turn it down? It seems like you simply wanted everything to be out of the box ready with no adjustments?

I think also for people who are use to OLED, going back to a QLED will seem pretty jarring because of all the brightness you are getting back. Its like when some people go from QLED to OLED and are like shocked with how dim it is.

[eivind.halvorsen]

Hi.

Regarding Atmos sound. If you connect AppleTV 4K and Atmos compatible sound bar (HW-Q950A), would you then get Atmos sound when running apps like Netflix/iTunes movies with Atmos through the AppleTV 4K then?

[XRaVer]

Hi Rasmus,

Thanks for the in depth review as usual!
I noticed that the Q90R still scored higher than the QN95 in Picture Quality.

Is it still your opinion that the Q90R is Samsung's best 4K LCD TV to date in your testing?

Please keep up this kind of non biased reviews as usual.

Best regards,
Daniel

[eivind.halvorsen]

Hi,

Regarding Atmos output. If you run AppleTV 4K + Atmos soundbar through eARC (HW-Q950A) - would you then be able to get Atmos sound through apps (Disney+/Netflix etc) on the AppleTV 4K?

[Rasmus Larsen]

I own the QN90A and this review makes things sound terrible when it isn't.

1) You only tested properly with calibrated SDR results
2) HDR is tested with default picture mode presets, when every knows you need to tweak them
3) You did not test contrast with LD properly
4) You are purposely showing photos with exaggerated blooming that you do not see in person.
5) They showed a photo with Sony X90J and QN90A, yet with my calibrated HDR the Samsung image they showed does not look like theirs
6) I don't know what they are talking about with the light sensor still being on even though its disabled.

1. Less than 1% of buyers have the equipment to calibrate a display. We show the potential of calibration but in our review we focus on what buyers will actually get, meaning the display technology, video processor, predefined picture modes etc.
2. If everyone knows that, surely it should be Samsung's job to make it right, no?
3. How do you know?
4. It's hard to capture both dark and bright elements on camera so some elements will be blown out or drowned. The photos are the best representation of what we saw in a dark room, which we always use for critical testing. Of course your perception of blooming will be different in a bright room, because... your pupils.
5. Surely it should be Samsung's job to design and tweak it to look right, no? Why else are you paying a TV maker?
6. Then ask, if you wish

In terms of HDR Presets, Samsung seems to target their HDR presets to assume you will watch HDR content in the day. Ideally you should at night or in a dark room. They probably should have a HDR day and night mode really like LG does.

Movies, games and other content are not graded for bright room viewing. If you want to watch TV primarily in a bright environment that's fine but it should not be the starting point for any proper picture mode.

A TV's picture mode should conform to the picture standards that the industry participants have defined in collaboration. Without standards or specifications everything will break down.

A lot of your issues come down to personal preference and simply adjusting the settings. If you think Game Mode is too bright, simply turn it down? It seems like you simply wanted everything to be out of the box ready with no adjustments?

No, actually not. A TV's picture mode should conform to the picture standards that the industry participants have defined in collaboration. A signal that defines a given nuance of red at a given luminance should be reproduced by the TV as signaled. It's very straightforward.

A lot of your issues on the other hand come down to personal preference. If you don't want the picture to look as the creator intended it to look – the standards are there to make sure that's even possible in the first place – feel free to change it. It's your TV. But that's personal preference, and we can't really argue about preferences.

Almost everything about the game mode (SDR color gamut, SDR color accuracy, SDR grey tones as well as HDR PQ luminance curve, HDR color accuracy etc) is wrong. We document that extensively in our measurements, graphs, and photo examples. If you are not sure about how to read the graphs, that's totally fine. I will be happy to explain.

SDR Game Mode:


HDR Game Mode:

I think also for people who are use to OLED, going back to a QLED will seem pretty jarring because of all the brightness you are getting back. Its like when some people go from QLED to OLED and are like shocked with how dim it is.

Again, no. The TV should conform to the signal it is getting. There are no SDR sources from any studio with 1600+ nits brightness in the signal.

So you are not "getting brightness back". You are getting brightness that shouldn't be there.

[Rasmus Larsen]

Hi.

Regarding Atmos sound. If you connect AppleTV 4K and Atmos compatible sound bar (HW-Q950A), would you then get Atmos sound when running apps like Netflix/iTunes movies with Atmos through the AppleTV 4K then?

That should work.

[Rasmus Larsen]

Hi Rasmus,

Thanks for the in depth review as usual!
I noticed that the Q90R still scored higher than the QN95 in Picture Quality.

Is it still your opinion that the Q90R is Samsung's best 4K LCD TV to date in your testing?

Please keep up this kind of non biased reviews as usual.

Best regards,
Daniel

I didn't have a Q90R available for side-by-side testing but from memory I would say that it's a very close call. Not identical but minor pros and cons for each model.

If it hadn't been for the horrendous Game mode in QN95A I would have given it the same picture score as Q90R.

[Steve]

What's the point. Even though they have me a refund on my Q7, the purple haze problem on backlit screens is terrible, the rec2020 and P2 are still low. I see a number of back out screens where the caps on the cheapo led strip has dropped off (for real, it's basically an led strip and they still can't do enough zones. Who cares if the industry chip supplier is around 1000 zones. You are the industry leader, you make your own at 960x540 (too late now, non industry leaders led there) independently lit. What's the difference between 1000 zones, and 1000 zones with 20 microled, or whatever?

Samsung has done what, but hold back. They refused to go dual layer LCD, QD colour filter. All of which would have kept their lead in recent years going into the time their QDOled finally comes out.

Why do we have LG and Samsung, if they are going be like this? The General Sun Tzu Chinese can taste the blood, while they stand around like target practice.

Chairman Moas statement that the West would sell them the rope to handle them with, should have been "..if they do business with us". There is even more to do than even the Chinese are doing. They are frightened of offering premium sets at premium prices, to offer more. Instead, we get this, and white elephant microled. Look at Hisense, they know that eventually they can deliver cheaply desirable laser projection screens. They say it's the future, and I know it too, because I have been hoping to do something special too. The price of your 8k, 16k, 32k projector, can be $200. You can't do conventional cutting edge LCD or OLED that price. Only the printable screen is potentially comparable. So, Hisense can make $20, $200, $1000 profit, depending on pricing for features.

But, there is another contender, which a friend of mine got a viewing of, two decades ago, from NZ now American military controlled, they announced they would be using in the battle field around 2005. Volumetric hologram projection. You may not even need a screen, it projects mid air. You can use it to emulate a flat 2D screen. My own design proposals aren't that advanced. American could lead premium tv sales for decades. I'm thinking if they can do that with light, they are not far off being able to do that with sound. So, they could lead the complete and audiovisual field. Given the fpga tech they also hoovered up back then, and optical and magnetic computing. The Americans could lead fur decades while also pricing so low, as to push the margins of foreign companies to next to nil. If they do the right thing, and not give it away. This is all real stuff tucked away, except the magnetic computing stuff, which I don't know if they have completed. Anyway, MQDCA, even at the old slow speed is enough to do massive parallel processing and server farms. You could put a server farm in a seat, and sit on it, and not get burnt. But, here we are getting dross, expensive and white elephants, but not from the Chinese.

[Ledin]

@Rasmus Larsen, Hello, I'm currently trying to decide between the 55'' Samsung QN94A, and the 55'' Sony X90J. I hope you can help.

It would be used in a dark bedroom environment, used for games, and movies, so how it performs in HDR in the game mode is valuable to me.
In your reviews, you have criticised both TV's for their poor motion handling, and HDR performance in game mode.

In the QN9xA review, you highlighted that the QN9xA is overbright in HDR mode, whilst the XJ90 stays closer to the source video. I am in agreement that the game mode should stay true to the source material.

But you've also said that the X90J is not great in game mode either, X90J: ''In HDR 'Game' mode, X90J scales back its zone dimming system to ensure to lowest possible lag, which negatively affects HDR picture quality and contrast in general.''

I understand that the QN9xA in 55'' will reach 1500 nits peak brightness, whilst the 55'' X90J is half that number? But you have said ''For HDR picture quality, native contrast and brightness control are more important factors than peak brightness levels.'' So i'm curious which one performs the better in HDR.

The QN9xA has much better input lag than X90J, & native vrr, whilst it's unsure as to whether X90J will ever have competent vrr. Do you believe the XJ90 will get a competent vrr update eventually?

Corncerningly, I have also read that there's a major fault with the QN95A models, with people reporting a 1cm line running down the middle of the screen with units. Did you come across that fault in your testing? I read that someone had it replaced 3 times, and it had the same fault each time. They said that apparently Samsung told them that the fault is ''where the 4 panels of mini LEDs at the back join, the mini LEDs are giving out the same amount of light, making it extra bright creating the thick 1cm line running top to bottom''. They said that Samsung blamed the pandemic for lack of time to properly quality check.

There's also the DSE risks with the Samsung QN9xA. Do you know if the Sony X90J has any DSE risks?

It's extremely difficult for me to pick. There's not a clear choice I feel.