[Closed] New TV time - 100hz or OLED worth it?

OLED, coming from someone who wouldn't stretch to one, if you want the best then go for it*
*Newest QLED owner.
PS a mate that sells the latest & greatest recently offered me a couple of Pioneer Kuro sets for nothing, one 50" & the other a 60", as great as the picture is & yes they are/were the benchmark I just couldn't put up with the bulk of them, my mate got the 50" & it's stunning even at nearly 10 years old 🙁

if you don't like flickering, most modernish sets have motion smoothing, which avoids the flicker (as in, the ball or whatever jumping from one frame to the next), but I personally feel it looks bloody wierd in any non-sports settings (its known as the 'soap opera effect').

what about images looking 'smeary' do you see? I'd be surprised if a refreshrate was really the cause

ps. oled is worth it

We have got a Panasonic OLED and it has by far the best picture of any TV I've ever owned.

I grew up with CRT and the best picture prior to this TV was a 32" Sony VEGA widescreen TV that was great but at 95KG rather a huge beast.

The OLED reminds me of that with great colours and deep blacks.

If you can afford it, get one - if you can't, save till you can ;o)

I've just bought this as I thought it was a bargain. The picture is awesome and they do it in 55 flavour.
SAMSUNG UE43RU7470UXXU 43" Smart 4K Ultra HD HDR LED TV
Not OLED but it recieved great professional reviews from what hifi, maybe worth a look?

OLED is worth it if you watch a lot of UHD TV but unfortunately not within your budget.

100Hz only makes sense if your source if 100Hz (which I doubt it will be) otherwise it will just be the TV set adding in frames which leads to the soap opera effect mentioned by 5lab. I can't stand it myself and would much prefer to put up with a bit of blurring in fast moving scenes than try and fast a falsely up-refreshed image.

If you are intending to watch UHD sources like Netflix then also make sure the TV supports HDR (I would have thought any current set would) as that makes the biggest difference in picture quality

FuzzyWuzzy - didn’t realise that about 100Hz

I’m normally a technical person but having not delved into this for a while I’m a bit confused!

We watch all TV through a SkyTV box and do watch Netflix through that too BUT not sure if I’d upgrade to 4K broadcasting yet. Mind you I said that about HD when that came out and promptly subscribed to all the HD content I could find a week later!

So - don’t bother with 100hz but go for HDR. I don’t think I can justify OLED yet.

LG OLED here, 2.5 years in and screen replaced twice already on warranty (Currys). Brilliant picture quality, but high defect rate with screen burn issues. Pages and pages of discussion on AV forums etc all taking about screen burn and LG's refusal to acknowledge the problem. I wouldn't buy another one. I don't know if Panasonic etc have similar issues with their OLED.

OLED is worth it if you watch a lot of UHD TV

whilst HDR (I think thats what you mean) certainly brings out the best in oled, because of its wider contrast ratio it makes pretty much any source material just look better - even old DVDs look mint compared to an LCD or plasma tv.

that said, the new one world show using the UHD HDR features in iplayer looks bloody amazing

I meant if you're going for the best picture quality (and therefore the source is UHD + HDR) then OLED is going to give you that. Non-OLED with UHD + HDR can give a brilliant picture as well but you need to be a bit more careful about models as there's some utter shite budget UHD sets out there.

100Hz only makes sense if your source if 100Hz (which I doubt it will be) otherwise it will just be the TV set adding in frames which leads to the soap opera effect mentioned by 5lab.

Quite.

Motion blur isn't really because of the TV but how our eyes / brains interpret the image, a TV picture is a series of rapidly changing still images and our brain tries to 'fill in the gaps' between them. a 100Hz TV gets around this by either showing a blank screen every other refresh or, on the more advanced models, interpolating a hybrid image between the next and previous frames. It's highly unlikely to be a true 100Hz picture as I'm not aware of any 100Hz sources (not to say that there aren't any, just that if there are I'm not aware of them).

Is it worth it or just a gimmick? Only you can decide that, I'd suggest going to a shop and demoing some models.

Bought one of these a few month ago Samsung 55".

I'm really happy with it, yes you can pay up to double for QLED but for £600 its a great picture. The UI is really slick and the new Samsung TVs come with a really clever universal remote.

If you use Netflix then its worth paying an extra few quid for 4k and HDR its probably the best source of 4k content, although as other have said its the HDR that makes the difference rather than the 4k

OLED is worth it... if...

I really don't agree that it's worth paying 2-3grand for a telly. I bought a £600 Samsung and the picture is amazing. I'm sure people sit there convincing themselves they've spent well, and if you've got it to burn then sure, but if you [i] can’t afford an OLED really[/i], just get the one you can afford. Modern TV pictures are superb and it's just a telly at the end of the day.

TBH, if you're thinking of throwing a few extra quid to get a better TV, my first consideration would be to go with a decent brand (which you've already said you're doing). I love my Toshiba, Panasonic would have been my second choice.

Mate of mine got a supermarket special a couple of years ago, half a mile wide and cost about ten quid. Might've been Hannspree or some such. He demoed it to me saying how awesome he thought it was, I didn't have the heart to tell him I thought it was an absolutely shocking picture, washed out and pixelated to ****.

I really don’t agree that it’s worth paying 2-3grand for a telly.

I don't think anyone was suggesting spending that much. All the OLED tvs use (or certainly used to) the same LG panels, so the picture quality is pretty much the same on them all. Last year's bottom end 55" LG oled is frequently available under a grand. Whether that's worth it to you or not is your own choice, but even if you assume it'll only last 5 years, that's just over 50p an evening, or the buy-up over the TV you bought is just 20p an evening.

I’ve never bought the cheapest brands, tend to stick with Sony or Panasonic mostly. Went with Panasonic last time as the viewing angle was the best and it’s still a cracking TV but it’s just too small for our lounge now - we sit about 3.5m away from the TV. I’ve negotiated that 55” is an acceptable size for the room which should be ok - our current 37” Panasonic has a large bezel compared to new TVs.

Looking at a Sony model in Richer Sounds now, has the 2 types of HDR we need and I know the remote will be nice to use too.

We have Sky Q and am wondering whether to upgrade to get 4K or just upgrade Netflix only in 4K.

I predict that there'll be a few £900 priced OLED 55" TVs around on black friday.

A couple reached that price in the July sales.

Look out for Costco as that wasn't originally on our radar, but have an amazing number of tellys on display more knowlegable staff than I expected. Their price undercut Richer Sounds by £300 on our Panasonic 65"

The main differences between the different OLED Tvs (they all share an LG panel) is in-built accurate colour modes (Panasonic) saving you the cost of a calibration vs Dolby Vision support (which didn't bother me as much). The other main differences come down to the user interface.

accurate colour modes (Panasonic) saving you the cost of a calibration

They auto-calibrate? Can you tell me a bit more about that please?

Can I finally retire my Video Essentials laserdisc? (-:

The Panasonic one isn't auto-calibrated as such. It just comes with calibration settings that have been setup by leading industry experts. There's an awful lot more to this (it's part of my job) but in short, your getting the screen setup to the best of it's abilities.

I don't work for Panasonic by the way.

Definitely buying from Richer or similar place with great customer service if anything goes wrong. I know their long guarantees are solid and they’ve given great service to me and lots of friends over the years.
Not Costco thanks!

Just one point QLED is not OLED it's still a backlit LCD based tech (where as each OLED pixel emits light on its own QLED doesn't) a clever one but it's still an LCD, one benefit is it's not susceptible to screen burn.

I bought a super whangy Sony OLED earlier this year. Compared to other post plasma sets I've seen, it is amazing. I've seen the dreaded motion blur watching sport on those other sets but it just doesn't happen on mine. The picture is as good as my old last generation Panasonic plasma just a bigger picture and a lighter TV.

If you've got the cash, go for it.

What about viewing when not directly in front of the screen? We have a 43" Samsung which has awful colour washout unless viewing directly in front. What sort of screen and by whom would be better?

We have Sky Q and am wondering whether to upgrade to get 4K or just upgrade Netflix only in 4K.

I guess it depends how much extra you'd be paying Sky (you have 1TB Q now?). I've had Sky Q (with UHD) for well over a year now and it's still a bit of a disappointment. Firstly there's no HDR - once you've seen an HDR UHD picture on Netflix or Prime you'll curse Sky's UHD-lite offering. Secondly there's not a whole lot of content, sure to someone new to Sky there's a fair few films available and some TV series but a lot of the films are crap and once you've watched them all it's only once a week at best a new UHD film is available and even then sometimes it's a polish film with subtitles that doesn't benefit really from being UHD (or some similar example). It really annoys me when a big budget effects movie comes around that Sky don't offer in UHD, this happens often.

Right now I'd say 80% of UHD content I watch comes from Netflix, 10% from Sky Q, 5% from Amazon Prime and 5% from iPlayer

The main thing Sky Q has going for it is convenience, although I keep asking myself why I'm paying £60+ a month for that, I may end up ditching it if the new sub services (Disney, HBO, Apple etc.) offer enough good content for me to sub to them.

The Panasonic one isn’t auto-calibrated as such. It just comes with calibration settings that have been setup by leading industry experts.

These settings are widely available for other makes & models as well (I used them to set up my LG OLED), can't remember the name of the site I used though

the picture is as good as my old last generation Panasonic plasma just a bigger picture and a lighter TV

Picture on my non-OLED Samsung is as good, if not better, than my Panasonic Plasma. Standard def stuff is a huge improvement on the LED.

@cougar

Can I finally retire my Video Essentials laserdisc? (-:

Yep! I've had several projectors before this (including CRT back in the day), so I've spent a fair few hours with Video Essentials/Avia/etc and I honestly haven't felt the need to touch this beyond setting brightness and turning off all the processing. Absolutely superb picture.

I spent an hour with an LG trying to get it to look as natural and failed - I would have needed a coloureye or similar. FWIW I preferred the LG menus and it had Dolby Vision, but those weren't as important to me. In fact I haven't really used the menus as I just use an NVidia Shield TV for iPlayer/Kodi/Youtube/etc instead.

@swedishmetal
Re: Costco - I felt the same until I researched it. On avforums Costco have a great reputation for customer service and long warranties on TVs - often swapping out when Richer will only repair. Worth an investigation anyway.

What about viewing when not directly in front of the screen? We have a 43″ Samsung which has awful colour washout unless viewing directly in front. What sort of screen and by whom would be better?

Viewing angles are one of the many benefits of OLED. To my eyes it looks exactly the same head on or so I can only see a sliver of the screen from the side.

These settings are widely available for other makes & models as well (I used them to set up my LG OLED), can’t remember the name of the site I used though

AV Forums is usually pretty good for that kind of thing. Or at least to show you where to find info on whatever set you have.