HDTV Test 2019 Blind Shootout

Ekko Star

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Results from todays shootout

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As I said in the other thread I was hoping for a landslide victory for any one of the sets... but I wasn’t expecting one! This has now made it all the more difficult for those of us, including me who are struggling to decide which oled to go for!

I think when the points are released this will be immensely tight. For me anyway I would say that I have definitely ruled out the Sony now, it seems like too much compromise for more cost, will be interesting to see if either LG or Panasonic are more on the ball than the other for software updates and bug fixes between now and Black Friday!
 
I think the US testing was more based on facts, rather than just peoples basic opinion. The US shootout was testing which of the televisions performs to REFERENCE standards. Whereby the Sony's were much more in line with reference performance.

I'm much more inclined to side with the professionals and their opinions.

Besides, I know one or two people who attended the event and they are super Panasonic Biased. Who's to say others in the audience weren't in a similar boat? They kept telling me it was easy to tell which is which.
 
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I think the US testing was more based on facts, rather than just peoples basic opinion. The US shootout was testing which of the televisions performs to REFERENCE standards. Whereby the Sony's were much more in line with reference performance.
It is interesting how the scores differ however no Panasonic in the running makes it difficult to be relevant for any uk based enthusiast.
 
I tend not to take much notice of these shootouts , living with a set at home is the only way you can really judge them ,look no further than @deon444 , he recently had a GZ2000 alongside his AF9 , now on paper the GZ2000 should have blown the AF9 away (especially with HDR content).
The GZ2000 has been returned !!
 
I think the US testing was more based on facts, rather than just peoples basic opinion. The US shootout was testing which of the televisions performs to REFERENCE standards.

I think you've touched on one of the most pertinent points I took away from today.

In order to be able to have a validated result you need to have a properly vetted and qualified audience that is able to judge. To put it politely that was not the case today at all.

It was clear by lunch time that it was more of a fun day in the general sense. The set up was also questionable.

That's not to take away from all the effort and expense the organisers and staff went to. That remains appreciated but I would suggest to take these results with a considerably large grain of salt.

The Panasonic representatives looked shell shocked at the result. Visibly upset.
 
I tend not to take much notice of these shootouts , living with a set at home is the only way you can really judge them ,look no further than @deon444 , he recently had a GZ2000 alongside his AF9 , now on paper the GZ2000 should have blown the AF9 away (especially with HDR content).
The GZ2000 has been returned !!
Did just right a final long winded reply in the Gz2000 with my vs. Its a great set but just hasn't lived up to the hype for me
 
Did just right a final long winded reply in the Gz2000 with my vs. Its a great set but just hasn't lived up to the hype for me
Yes just read that mate , sorry for jumping the gun on saying the GZ had already been returned:)
 
I think you've touched on one of the most pertinent points I took away from today.

In order to be able to have a validated result you need to have a properly vetted and qualified audience that is able to judge. To put it politely that was not the case today at all.

It was clear by lunch time that it was more of a fun day in the general sense. The set up was also questionable.

That's not to take away from all the effort and expense the organisers and staff went to. That remains appreciated but I would suggest to take these results with a considerably large grain of salt.

The Panasonic representatives looked shell shocked at the result. Visibly upset.
Was there anybody from LG there?

Agree with what you’ve said, though I suppose it’s representative of the fact that there does not exist a perfect TV or the perfect picture, or a perfect way of demonstrating and testing the limits of each set. ‘Experts’ can tell you what statistically gives the brightest, most colourful, sharpest picture, but can’t really choose a ‘best’ one because that’s subjective.

Armchair experts (like us I suppose) will likely give a different view, based on what we like, mostly nothing to do with facts and figures, and then joe public would probably give a totally different view of things yet again, based on what looks best to the e
everyman.
 
Yes just read that mate , sorry for jumping the gun on saying the GZ had already been returned:)
Well basically it has,as it's been packed up the last few days,John Lewis collecting it tuesday. Do love the set and first time I feel guilty about sending a tv back:confused:

@Ekko Star so what were the negatives about the set up of it?

And was it like last years one where you was just watching short looped content.
 
There is far too much to list other than it could and should not be considered a serious test or set up per se.

The audience was an eclectic and odd mix of people, from what I gathered and forgive me for saying this but some did not have any/much experience of OLED and limited videophile knowledge at best etc

There was a few embarassing questions along the way.

After all the results and tests had been cast one chap asked Vince to explain what banding and gradation actually was as he didn't know what he was meant to have been looking out for.

Other times Vince played short loops and misguided people as to what they were meant to be voting for. The motion loops for example had little to no motion to demonstrate to speak of.

The set up and placement of 4 TV's was such that

A. Samsung
B. GZ
Ref Monitor
C. C9
D. AG9

The Sony reference monitor was set up between the GZ and LG which meant it was nigh on impossible to reference the outer 2 sets namely the Samsung and Sony. As you can imagine people were hogging each others views.

On a football loop where we were asked to judge motion (there was not much action to speak of anyway) a few people observed the Sony had a distorted image and brought it to Vince's attention. He vehemently denied anything was wrong with it. Then after closing the curtains he came back out and muttered some sets don't allow him to adjust the overscan.

There was also an unhealthy obsession for people to try guess the brands. So much so it detracted from trying to observe and judge the best picture.

At the end of it a couple of guys picked up on a good point. The main focus and question at the end of the day had become 'guess the brands'

There was no final question of what do you think overall was the best set and which would you buy?

Finally, the most embarassing thing was that the Panasonic Product chaps (who were both unaware of what set was what) informed me prior to the reveal that they thought Set C was their Panasonic GZ. The look on their face was priceless.

The star of this particular show was undoubtedly the LG C9.

It was an enjoyable day nonetheless.
 
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From my avs feedback:

Thanks to the all the people involved in making it another great event. That was fantastic and the blind format went off without a hitch. Credit to the whole team for being creative and taking feedback into making each event better than the previous years'.

What was the biggest advantage of the blind test? The virtual elimination of confirmation bias is what I'd say. People were actually discussing differences and inquisitive on what they see certain things on display vs another. This was a contrast to previous years where the audience was mainly justifying their purchase or trying to imprint their brand preference onto others. Not in some aggressive manner mind you, just a subconscious baggage we all carry.

I've been paying very little attention to the new batch of sets so it was very much a blind test to me thus I was mainly concerned with what I was seeing on screen. If wish I could see how my score related to the overall findings but I think it'd be close.

My personal take is as follows so feel free to get offended at your own discretion:

A. Samsung Q90R. It's *only* use case is bright viewing in a reflective room. If that's your main use case, go for it! As soon as lights go dim or it's asked to handle dark content, it's game over. I have no idea what it costs but unless it's 50% lower than the cheapest OLED on stage, absolutely no would be my take on this.

B. Panasonic GZ200. Very solid all around. The two things that I would have a hard time getting over; it's over dimming of static logo's and it's banding issue due to Panasonic over driving the panel to hit high nits. Both pieces are clearly visible and would start grating after a while. Price difference is virtually impossible to justify.

C. LG C9. Easily the star of the show. Either on par or ahead in most areas. The set I'd take except for one big issue. Vertical lines on black content. Vincent mentioned that was the 2nd panel and the 1st one had even worse lines. If this is a LG processing issue, I'd be concerned. Lower on the list is the low apl handling of highly compressed dark content such as S8 Ep3 of Game of Thrones.

D. Sony AG9. It's failure on HDR tone mapping is unacceptable and the fact that Sony doubles down on it's being the right way tells me it's not for me. It's smooth gradation advantage of years past has been more or less matched by LG now. Hard to say what they're left with at this stage unless you have a preference for their method of HDR.

As standard definition content becomes a thing of the past, upscaling of standard definition has little to no relevance and all the sets did a great job of scaling up 1080i/p content to 4k so no real magic to be had there.
 
I tend not to take much notice of these shootouts , living with a set at home is the only way you can really judge them ,look no further than @deon444 , he recently had a GZ2000 alongside his AF9 , now on paper the GZ2000 should have blown the AF9 away (especially with HDR content).
The GZ2000 has been returned !!

He didn't return it because of the Sony was 'better', he returned it to save a ton of money on improvements that were rather small overall. He stated the GZ2000 would be the OLED he would buy in 2019.
 
I think the US testing was more based on facts, rather than just peoples basic opinion. The US shootout was testing which of the televisions performs to REFERENCE standards. Whereby the Sony's were much more in line with reference performance.

I'm much more inclined to side with the professionals and their opinions.

Besides, I know one or two people who attended the event and they are super Panasonic Biased. Who's to say others in the audience weren't in a similar boat? They kept telling me it was easy to tell which is which.

All of the shootouts have some issues but I agree Value Electronics's overall has done a better job on this. Value Electronics's main issue is that they don't have Panasonic in their shootout(not exactly their fault).

HDTV's tests has 2 big flaws. First flaw is I really do not see why gaming would be a category when it wasn't one a few years ago. Streaming at least makes sense because that is becoming a sole way of watching content and it's where things are moving.
Second flaw is not having an expert judging panel which should be self explanatory. Public voting should be a separate results.
 
All of the shootouts have some issues but I agree Value Electronics's overall has done a better job on this. Value Electronics's main issue is that they don't have Panasonic in their shootout(not exactly their fault).

HDTV's tests has 2 big flaws. First flaw is I really do not see why gaming would be a category when it wasn't one a few years ago. Streaming at least makes sense because that is becoming a sole way of watching content and it's where things are moving.
Second flaw is not having an expert judging panel which should be self explanatory. Public voting should be a separate results.

So up until the gaming category the GZ was ahead on points today. It got stumped by the LG to best overall set.

Today very much showed 'Joe Public' at it's finest. Panasonic guys looked miffed as did Vincent to be fair. The whole thing was stacked for the Panasonic to win and it didn't.
 
I was there today and I would have to disagree with a few sentiments on here. We the general public are the ones buying the tvs so in some respect our opinion is more important then experts. You can read reviews from experts anywhere. While the shootout wasnt perfect it showed the strengths and weaknesses of the sets in different situations. I went in a Panasonic fan and came out thinking I should give the LG serious consideration and i will make my decision on what I use the tv for and not the brand name on the front.

As far as gaming is concerned of course it should be included, its bigger than the movie industry and therefore has a bearing on what people look for in a tv. Panasonic won best home theatre so if you are not into gaming then there is your answer.

The oled sets in general were very close but for me the Panasonic and LG were the better tvs.

Side note - out of everyone that attended only 9 people got right which TVs were which.
 
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He didn't return it because of the Sony was 'better', he returned it to save a ton of money on improvements that were rather small overall. He stated the GZ2000 would be the OLED he would buy in 2019.
He previously stated the AF9 was slightly better in certain areas too .
 
Someone said it wasn't exactly scientific and for me that makes it even better as it was judged by what your eyes see and not a graph.
 
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For me what would be interesting is to have a mixture of joe public and experts casting their votes in the same shootout. These could be compared and also grouped together overall. Then we would have the best of HDTV and Ve shootout. I’m interested in both opinions.
 
I think there have been some really good suggestions here, I guess it would be impossible to test everything though. Such as comparing all the sets out of the box, more reference monitors to make the test fairer. A wider variety on content including hdr 10+ and Dolby vision from different sources.
And then for me although I see the benefits of doing the test blind there are then certain areas which are important that cannot be judged. Such as aesthetics, menu/os lag and quality and design of the remote control.
 
Can anyone shine light on the hdr category, what was tested? The result there is quite surprising because 2 friends of mine are considering switching from their current LG to Panasonic since they like hdr much more on my gz2000.
 
He didn't return it because of the Sony was 'better', he returned it to save a ton of money on improvements that were rather small overall. He stated the GZ2000 would be the OLED he would buy in 2019.
No I sent the Gz2000 back as it wasn't as good as it was hyped, and didn't beat the Af9 in any major area other than being a bit more uniform.

I did buy the Gz2000 as I thought the HDR and Dolby Vision would be a step up,it wasn't. Even if it was slightly better I would have kept the Gz2000 and sold the Af9. :thumbsup:

Yes I still think the Gz2000 is a great set and would buy it over any 2019 set if my Af9 died. But it's not dead,so I'm not buying:)
 
Can anyone shine light on the hdr category, what was tested? The result there is quite surprising because 2 friends of mine are considering switching from their current LG to Panasonic since they like hdr much more on my gz2000.

IIRC it was scenes from "The Meg" and "Darkest Hour". The GZ2000 resolved more detail within the highlights, which were overblown on the C9.

I preferred the GZ2000, but the C9 had more "impact" and was brighter, but at the cost of detail. I felt the tone mapping on the GZ2000 to be superior.
 
Were there any women in the room ? Just a thought - as fewer women have colour blindness issues than men.
 

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