Question How bad is my vertical banding? (return?)

Descretion

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Hey,

I've been looking at tv's for a while. I had no issue watching 4k on my 40inch samsung LED tv.
But i recently bought a LG C8 tv, brand new, last week.

I've been doing some extensive research on OLED tv's. And because of that i got fimilar with 'vertical banding'. So the first thing i did when i got my tv, was doing a gray scale test.
I noticed some vertical banding. No dead pixels. (first 10% gray scale)
Watch some movies like Gatsby/King Arthur and was amazed by the colour/contrast of the screen. Did not notice any vertical banding while watching.

HOWEVER, i did knew about my tv having vertical banding.
So than i just fired up netflix and went to see marco polo, episode 2 at the 14:10 mark.
And yes, you can see it. If you pay attention. And you sit very very close to your screen.
I did not even noticed it when playing RDR2 on PS4 pro, 2 meters away from my screen.

Plz watch the photo's. (iso 2000)
I own it now for 9 days. I paid €1100 for it. I have 30day limit on returning the tv and asking for a replacement. But their is no real garantuee i will have a 'better oled panel'. It could be even worse. Can it even get worser?

(FYI, i wish i never looked up 'vertical banding' in the first place o-o)
 

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For me that's a keeper. You are really playing the panel lottery with a chance you could get worse. Also with a few compensations cycles it should become less noticeable and only really seen in limited scenes.
 
Thats not a correct image of a 10% slide so is completely useless as a panel assessment. The image should be much darker.

Photograph a 20% slide filling as much as possible the whole camera viewfinder with the image of the TV screen (no dark surroundings) so it doesn’t effect the camera exposure. This will get a better representation of screen uniformity than wrongly photographing 5% or 10% slides on an auto only camera or phone.
 
As a side note, and this is something I’ve never experimented with as I’ve never done any tests like this with my own TV’s is to consider the screen refresh rate effecting the uniformity of the image.

Do OLED/LCD refresh top to bottom or side to side. If side to side and your camera captures a long exposure part way through a refresh cycle the image will come out slightly lighter on one side than the other.

Camera shutter speed could then effect the picture so locking a shutter speed slightly longer than the refresh rate of your TV in to the camera could improve the result by roughly only capturing one complete refresh cycle rather than one and three quarters for example if you use a long exposure as probably in the example above. So for example 1/50th second for a 60Hz panel or 1/100th second for a 120Hz panel.

I’m a geeky photographer sorry. :blush:
 
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Sorry to drone on some more but checked the image data on the OP's 10% slide and it was taken at ISO 6400 which in itself at such high setting would introduce camera sensor banding. The camera shutter speed was 1/5th second meaning the screen probably refreshed between 4 and 5 times in that single capture making an ever such a tiny minor, near invisible issue to the human eye, look horrendously terrible on camera.

And as we know on these forums, once you think you've identified an issue, it's all we see (possibly, even if it's not there? :blush:).
 
Okay, thanks for the feedback. i'll get new photo's uploaded in some time. With better picture.
 
Going OLED for the first time it's easy to get riled up. For me at the time, a lack of understanding of what to expect combined with the cost did let some paranoia set in. Although my first OLED was the C8 and I bought in at a time where the flashing / chrominance overshoot issue was not addressed or even acknowledged. So I took advantage of the return window for that reason.

As you say, you have a return window. I'd personally recommend forgetting about the vertical banding - you obviously can't unsee it now, but just give it a week of normal use and see how it fairs. The main thing to know is every OLED has vertical banding. If nothing major surfaces during that time - then it's likely a keeper.

I've moved onto a Panasonic FZ802 since. There's vertical banding as with all OLED's and I do occassionally spot it in content - but that is very rare. I'm assuming it's normal, and just something all OLED owners have to accept for sake of an otherwise perfect picture. Naturally it's a huge step-up from my edge-lit LCD's.

I've put 700 hours viewing in on my FZ802 now and I've spotted vertical banding no more than 4 times.

I find it fascinating how vertical banding varies as the 4K disc of Blade Runner 2049 and Netflix's 4K HDR Marco Polo and Haunting of Hill House scenes that were troubling for my LG C8 -- the Panasonic FZ802 plays through without incident. I've seen it elsewhere though, worst was a sandstorm scene near the end of American Sniper Blu-ray.

Most recently I just watched Alien 4K Blu-ray in HDR10+ last night and not a hint of vertical banding throughout the film.

The worst one is probably Hold the Dark on Netflix due to its raised black level. You can see vertical banding right at the opening title sequence. My assumption is everyone probably sees that.
 

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