Are OLEDs all they're cracked up to be?

Throwing in my 2p worth re screen burn. I'm deaf with a deaf family. We put subtitles on everything we watch, no exemptions. This thread has made me realise that cos subtitles are always in roughly the same part of the screen, there's a high chance we could experience screen burn / image retention on the part of the screen where the subtitles go - ie bottom front and centre. Not very happy about that - enabling a disability access feature shouldn't damage your TV.

At least it's a reason to avoid buying OLEDS until this is addressed.

I just did a search & found a post suggesting that yellow subtitles are the worst:
Ah, I am glad I read your post. I also use subtitles as I am hard of hearing. I don’t use them all the time but maybe 50% of the time.
This weekend I was going to view the Loewe 4.55 Oled with a view to buying one.
I am now wondering if I should go with the much cheaper Loewe 3.55 4K UHD LCD instead.
Any advice/help would be much appreciated.
 
Sure, OLED’s offer the best picture so far. That said, the difference between an OLED and my Vizio P-Series (P65-F1) wasn’t drastic enough for me to spend an extra $1,500-2,000. I just can’t justify that type of money for “blacks that are even more black”. The blacks on my P-Series are extremely dark and the HDR is awesome.

That said, if money isn’t an issue and you want 10/10 picture quality rather than a 9/10 picture quality. Get the OLED.
 
Yes.
Burn-in summary (I'll keep it brief)
OLED is made from 4 identical organic emitters per pixel. These shine through filters to colour them (white, red, green, blue).
These emitters decay at a known rate depending upon their active time. This is how burn-in happens. The compensation cycle increases the output of the emitters as they decay more to compensate and balance the light output across the screen.
This is a compromise of having each sub-pixel individually back-lit, but that's what gets the perfect blacks.
Just to correct one point the organic emitters per sub pixel are not the same. There is a different organic emitter for each colour and no filters. Each of these colours has its own decay rate. To try to deal with this difference in decay rates LG make the sub pixels different sizes.

Basically the red and blue pixels are larger than green as they fade/wear out faster. The sizes of these sub-pixels have been changed by LG with each new panel version 2016 till now.

For example, here is a picture that I took mof the sub Pixels on a Philips 903 OLED using a 2018 panel.

philips-903-pixels-jpg.1087997


Apparently blue is the most problematic as it is the most inefficient. Red and Green emitters have moved onto Generation 2 apparently ("Doped" with heavy metals to make them more efficient) but apparently Blue is still a less efficient Generation 1. Hence the race to replace the blue emitter with a TADF (Thermally Activated Delayed Flourescent) type of emitter that should (theoretically) be more efficient and longer lasting. If you look at a Samsung OLED screen on their phone - all the sub-pixels are the same size but half of them are blue and only a quarter red or green. This is to try and deal with blue being less efficient and shorter lasting.

Also does anyone really know what the compensation cycles actually do?
 
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Just to correct one point the organic emitters per sub pixel are not the same. There is a different organic emitter for each colour and no filters. Each of these colours has its own decay rate. To try to deal with this difference in decay rates LG make the sub pixels different sizes.

Basically the red and blue pixels are larger than green as they fade/wear out faster. The sizes of these sub-pixels have been changed by LG with each new panel version 2016 till now.

For example, here is a picture that I took mof the sub Pixels on a Philips 903 OLED using a 2018 panel.

philips-903-pixels-jpg.1087997


Apparently blue is the most problematic as it is the most inefficient. Red and Green emitters have moved onto Generation 2 apparently ("Doped" with heavy metals to make them more efficient) but apparently Blue is still a less efficient Generation 1. Hence the race to replace the blue emitter with a TADF (Thermally Activated Delayed Flourescent) type of emitter that should (theoretically) be more efficient and longer lasting. If you look at a Samsung OLED screen on their phone - all the sub-pixels are the same size but half of them are blue and only a quarter red or green. This is to try and deal with blue being less efficient and shorter lasting.

Also does anyone really know what the compensation cycles actually do?

 love it, I really tried to keep it super not-technical, but hey, I'm even happier to get into the details!

For those who aren't, you can ignore everything except: the organic bits decay so need boosting as they age, which the compensation cycle tries to do.

TADF was the target for this year but they couldn't make it. Its fascinating stuff but not relevant enough to go into here.

How OLED technology (the WRGB matrix) was made viable for large screen production (and the development and patents of LG.Display) involves using yellow/blue emitters and colour filters. No other manufacturer makes oled tv because none of the methods used for phone sized screen yield anything like a viable production run at television sizes, and the methods used by LG are proprietary.
This link shows how the light is produced as white light (by blue and yellow emitters) before it is filtered to be wrgb.
LG to introduce 3-stack structure for its 2017 OLED lighting and TV panels | OLED-Info
You can see the brightness increase was achieved by an additional yellow emitter within the stack.
There were rumours lg.display had made a breakthrough in large-panel production of a cost-effective OLED rgb matrix, but nothing has yet appeared to show the technology is market ready.
I'd love it because aside from decay of organic emitters the wrgb stack structure is responsible for most of the foibles of the current generation of oled tvs.

OLED also automatically limits brightness to combat decay of the emitters. It's really quite clever, and getting better every year. The underlying issue still remains.

To the best of my knowledge the compensation works by using the age of each sub-pixel to level out the brightness across the screen.
It knows how long each was on for, and the resistance (which changes with age), and probably some other stuff, to be able to evaluate what additional headroom to use.
We know it has specific look-up tables (how could they cause that weird square issue? Write-back under false test conditions I'm not sure) but overall its the TV holding brightness in reserve to use later, as the materials decay the compensation runs them 'brighter' which is now just normal brightness. (or dimmer if a pixel has far less use than the others)
 
 love it, I really tried to keep it super not-technical, but hey, I'm even happier to get into the details!

For those who aren't, you can ignore everything except: the organic bits decay so need boosting as they age, which the compensation cycle tries to do.

TADF was the target for this year but they couldn't make it. Its fascinating stuff but not relevant enough to go into here.

How OLED technology (the WRGB matrix) was made viable for large screen production (and the development and patents of LG.Display) involves using yellow/blue emitters and colour filters. No other manufacturer makes oled tv because none of the methods used for phone sized screen yield anything like a viable production run at television sizes, and the methods used by LG are proprietary.
This link shows how the light is produced as white light (by blue and yellow emitters) before it is filtered to be wrgb.
LG to introduce 3-stack structure for its 2017 OLED lighting and TV panels | OLED-Info
You can see the brightness increase was achieved by an additional yellow emitter within the stack.
There were rumours lg.display had made a breakthrough in large-panel production of a cost-effective OLED rgb matrix, but nothing has yet appeared to show the technology is market ready.
I'd love it because aside from decay of organic emitters the wrgb stack structure is responsible for most of the foibles of the current generation of oled tvs.

OLED also automatically limits brightness to combat decay of the emitters. It's really quite clever, and getting better every year. The underlying issue still remains.

To the best of my knowledge the compensation works by using the age of each sub-pixel to level out the brightness across the screen.
It knows how long each was on for, and the resistance (which changes with age), and probably some other stuff, to be able to evaluate what additional headroom to use.
We know it has specific look-up tables (how could they cause that weird square issue? Write-back under false test conditions I'm not sure) but overall its the TV holding brightness in reserve to use later, as the materials decay the compensation runs them 'brighter' which is now just normal brightness. (or dimmer if a pixel has far less use than the others)

Very interesting stuff.

Burn in/out aside, do we have any ideas how long an OLED panel (2018) is likely to last before the decay is so far gone that a quality picture is no longer viable?
 
Glad you like it, and great question!

Figures vary. I seem to remember LG quoted 30 years of normal usage for 2016 sets but that was based on 10 hours per day and a 50% reduction in overall brightness at the end of the 30 years - which may not be an acceptable brightness reduction to some.
The newer ones are better in that regard, they have significant brightness to spare, but regardless, other components are more likely to fail before the panel life is an issue.

Due to aging they can have a slight drift over time not taken up by compensation.
This is quite an interesting long-term oled test LG OLED TV analysis after 5000 hours of use – still great picture? – HD Televizija – HDTV eZine

Additionally, because of the absolute blacks, even a slightly aged and dimmer oled is going to have great contrast and still look very good.
 
 love it, I really tried to keep it super not-technical, but hey, I'm even happier to get into the details!

For those who aren't, you can ignore everything except: the organic bits decay so need boosting as they age, which the compensation cycle tries to do.

TADF was the target for this year but they couldn't make it. Its fascinating stuff but not relevant enough to go into here.

How OLED technology (the WRGB matrix) was made viable for large screen production (and the development and patents of LG.Display) involves using yellow/blue emitters and colour filters. No other manufacturer makes oled tv because none of the methods used for phone sized screen yield anything like a viable production run at television sizes, and the methods used by LG are proprietary.
This link shows how the light is produced as white light (by blue and yellow emitters) before it is filtered to be wrgb.
LG to introduce 3-stack structure for its 2017 OLED lighting and TV panels | OLED-Info
You can see the brightness increase was achieved by an additional yellow emitter within the stack.
There were rumours lg.display had made a breakthrough in large-panel production of a cost-effective OLED rgb matrix, but nothing has yet appeared to show the technology is market ready.
I'd love it because aside from decay of organic emitters the wrgb stack structure is responsible for most of the foibles of the current generation of oled tvs.

OLED also automatically limits brightness to combat decay of the emitters. It's really quite clever, and getting better every year. The underlying issue still remains.

To the best of my knowledge the compensation works by using the age of each sub-pixel to level out the brightness across the screen.
It knows how long each was on for, and the resistance (which changes with age), and probably some other stuff, to be able to evaluate what additional headroom to use.
We know it has specific look-up tables (how could they cause that weird square issue? Write-back under false test conditions I'm not sure) but overall its the TV holding brightness in reserve to use later, as the materials decay the compensation runs them 'brighter' which is now just normal brightness. (or dimmer if a pixel has far less use than the others)
Do you know if a plasma screen burn/ image retention is very much the same as an OLED screen burn/ image retention and which out of them 2 screen technology's can get screen burn the easiest ?
 
As previously mentioned. It depends on your viewing habits.

I was torn between a ZD9 and an A1. The sales guy said "I'll set the demo away for you and I'll come back in ten minutes". When he came back I bought the ZD9.

The A1 was good, very good. But I watched a clip of Passengers and there was a scene in a dark room with a guy (Chris Pratt?) in a dark grey pin-striped suit. The A1 displayed a floating head on an almost completely black screen. On the ZD9 I saw the suit, the pin-stripes, and I even saw the fabric the suit was made from.

I'm still shocked at how black the ZD9 can go. At times it feels like I'm staring into the abyss :)

Anyway, for UHD keep an eye on those NITS.

I know you can only judge with what's in front of you, but deciding on a shop floor with shitty settings, and not at home, is not giving you an informed opinion of how good they really are, and what their strengths and weaknesses are.

I mean floating heads in the dark isn't something I've ever seen on a calibrated OLED; granted top end LCD's are pretty good these days, but this is why expert reviewers are so important I'd say, as you're getting a much better sense of a TV's quality, as opposed to deciding in Currys.
 
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It is very much the same effect in that each sub-pixel is self illuminating, so they can get out of synchronisation as each one can wear out at a different rate. In terms of underlying technology they are actually quite different, and phosphor persistence is (was) something CRT sets would also suffer from, but in over-explaining again:D

Which can suffer the easiest is a very difficult question, there is a recent 'oled screens in an airport' story showing how quickly an OLED can get noticeable burn under certain conditions - pretty darn quickly!
However, that was really specific circumstances,and no compensation cycles.

I'd say overall the current oled is the best at not being afflicted, the structure is designed to combat it (as it doesn't have the different rates of decay of colours a usual oled would have as gadget told us about earlier) and it has pretty clever tricks to deal with stuff, like pixel shifting static icons, the compensation cycle (which I would like to know more about how it works if anyone has anything), and clever cross sub-pixel remapping to even things out as it goes, and of course the automatic dimming.

I would be as wary about burn-in with an OLED as a plasma simply because it can happen, it probably won't affect me but there are precautions I can take and they do not take a lot of effort. So, wary - but it's still a screen I'd recommend to most normal people

As a main gaming screen though? I'd play it safe and go with qled. Likewise for the constant subtitles. Just doesn't seem worth the risk.
 
Recently upgraded from a Panasonic VT 50" plasma to the LG B7. It is amazing. I was put off by the cost a bit but now I have had it a while there is no way I would go back. I actually had them side by side showing the same movie when it arrived in order to get my wife's opinion on whether we should keep it. She was convinced I had fiddled with the plasma in order to make it look much worse (I hadn't) Normally she can barely tell the difference between SD and HD and even she said immediately - "we are keeping that, get rid of the other one"
My wife sees no difference between 720p and 4K.

Needless ro say we do not discuss TVs.:rotfl:
 
 love it, I really tried to keep it super not-technical, but hey, I'm even happier to get into the details!

For those who aren't, you can ignore everything except: the organic bits decay so need boosting as they age, which the compensation cycle tries to do.

TADF was the target for this year but they couldn't make it. Its fascinating stuff but not relevant enough to go into here.

How OLED technology (the WRGB matrix) was made viable for large screen production (and the development and patents of LG.Display) involves using yellow/blue emitters and colour filters. No other manufacturer makes oled tv because none of the methods used for phone sized screen yield anything like a viable production run at television sizes, and the methods used by LG are proprietary.
This link shows how the light is produced as white light (by blue and yellow emitters) before it is filtered to be wrgb.
LG to introduce 3-stack structure for its 2017 OLED lighting and TV panels | OLED-Info
You can see the brightness increase was achieved by an additional yellow emitter within the stack.
There were rumours lg.display had made a breakthrough in large-panel production of a cost-effective OLED rgb matrix, but nothing has yet appeared to show the technology is market ready.
I'd love it because aside from decay of organic emitters the wrgb stack structure is responsible for most of the foibles of the current generation of oled tvs.

OLED also automatically limits brightness to combat decay of the emitters. It's really quite clever, and getting better every year. The underlying issue still remains.

To the best of my knowledge the compensation works by using the age of each sub-pixel to level out the brightness across the screen.
It knows how long each was on for, and the resistance (which changes with age), and probably some other stuff, to be able to evaluate what additional headroom to use.
We know it has specific look-up tables (how could they cause that weird square issue? Write-back under false test conditions I'm not sure) but overall its the TV holding brightness in reserve to use later, as the materials decay the compensation runs them 'brighter' which is now just normal brightness. (or dimmer if a pixel has far less use than the others)
You know your stuff.

Am I right in saying everything Organic inevitably decays, no matter what cycle one runs regularly on the TV to try and prevent this from happening. ?

Obviously if it takes 25 years for a Panel to decay then it is good value. If it takes 2 years for the panel to start decaying then not so good value.

Interested to know what your take on this, By the sounds of what you are saying certain colours will be affected.
 
Hey Mad Steve just to be fair also let people know this is your second Q9 LCD so they aren’t perfect either and DSE is a problem on football so it’s still a panel lottery.
As an E7 owner I acknowledge burn in issues but thankfully mines ok 12 months in.Me personally it OLED every time the picture is amazing.I say live for today it’s all we have as no one knows what tomorrow brings.
If my panel every has burn in then I’d most probably very reluctantly go LCD unless burn in was in the warranty.Truth be told then all tvs have there issues there’s no such thing as a perfect tv.I believe they could make one but then no one would upgrade so they’d lose money.
 
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 To the best of my knowledge the compensation works by using the age of each sub-pixel to level out the brightness across the screen.
It knows how long each was on for, and the resistance (which changes with age), and probably some other stuff, to be able to evaluate what additional headroom to use.
We know it has specific look-up tables (how could they cause that weird square issue? Write-back under false test conditions I'm not sure) but overall its the TV holding brightness in reserve to use later, as the materials decay the compensation runs them 'brighter' which is now just normal brightness. (or dimmer if a pixel has far less use than the others)


Appreciate the detailed response!
If I've read it right, your explanation would suggest that black bars for 2.35:1 and 1.37:1 movies should not pose problems in the long run, since the corresponding pixels would be aged by the compensation cycles to even out the whole panel.
Would be very nice if that's indeed the case... just wondering how these cycles actually work. We're talking 5mins (or thereabouts, on Panasonics) for every 4h of normal operation. Must be some heavy duty burning being done during a cycle :)
 
I know you can only judge with what's in front of you, but deciding on a shop floor with sh*tty settings, and not at home, is not giving you an informed opinion of how good they really are, and what their strengths and weaknesses are.

I mean floating heads in the dark isn't something I've ever seen on a calibrated OLED; granted top end LCD's are pretty good these days, but this is why expert reviewers are so important I'd say, as you're getting a much better sense of a TV's quality, as opposed to deciding in Currys.

It wasn't in Currys. I never buy anything from them over 100 quid.

I agree, you can't really tell on the shop floor. Especially if they aren't set up correctly. But these were pretty good. Good enough for me to make a decision I stand by.
 
I know you can only judge with what's in front of you, but deciding on a shop floor with sh*tty settings, and not at home, is not giving you an informed opinion of how good they really are, and what their strengths and weaknesses are.

I mean floating heads in the dark isn't something I've ever seen on a calibrated OLED; granted top end LCD's are pretty good these days, but this is why expert reviewers are so important I'd say, as you're getting a much better sense of a TV's quality, as opposed to deciding in Currys.

I'm with you on the floating heads comment.

I would be wondering whether the sales guy had an agenda? Had he been instructed to push one item over another?
 
Appreciate the detailed response!
If I've read it right, your explanation would suggest that black bars for 2.35:1 and 1.37:1 movies should not pose problems in the long run, since the corresponding pixels would be aged by the compensation cycles to even out the whole panel.
Would be very nice if that's indeed the case... just wondering how these cycles actually work. We're talking 5mins (or thereabouts, on Panasonics) for every 4h of normal operation. Must be some heavy duty burning being done during a cycle :)
I have been following this thread with great interest. I am contemplating an OLED panel too and was wondering about black bars in movies?
Thanks
 
I have been following this thread with great interest. I am contemplating an OLED panel too and was wondering about black bars in movies?
Thanks

Ahh i just posted on another thread about my Plasma now shows a faint line at the top in full screen because i watched many movies which are widescreen. OLED could do the same maybe?
 
I'm with you on the floating heads comment.

I would be wondering whether the sales guy had an agenda? Had he been instructed to push one item over another?

Err... push one over the other. So he walked off and gave us free reign for over ten minutes with ZERO pressure at all. Nonsense!
 
Err... push one over the other. So he walked off and gave us free reign for over ten minutes with ZERO pressure at all. Nonsense!

So did you take the chance to adjust the brightness, contrast and OLED light settings, or did you just take his word for it and leave them as they were?
 
So did you take the chance to adjust the brightness, contrast and OLED light settings, or did you just take his word for it and leave them as they were?

His word for what?

We had the remotes and anything else we needed. He just went off and left us alone to get on with it.
 
His word for what?

We had the remotes and anything else we needed. He just went off and left us alone to get on with it.

So did you adjust the settings? Or just accept things as the sales guy left them?
 
So did you adjust the settings? Or just accept things as the sales guy left them?

Of course I played with the settings. I wasn't too impressed with the A1.

Not sure what you are trying to say though. Are you saying that the A1 is better than the ZD9?
 
Ahh i just posted on another thread about my Plasma now shows a faint line at the top in full screen because i watched many movies which are widescreen. OLED could do the same maybe?
lol just saw it. Apparently less serious cause of a burn in.
 

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