OLED or Projector

oaklandraiders

Prominent Member
Joined
Aug 2, 2002
Messages
3,060
Reaction score
1,083
Points
741
Location
Surrey
I’ve posted this in other forum, but putting link here so OLED people see it, please post in linked thread

 
83'' OLED.

The entire point of going projector is a big image. 83'' is tiny. go TV if you are projecting that small.
 
As @kenshingintoki has said at this size its not really a question the OLED wins in pretty much every single aspect - even if you went the full works and spent £15k on a projector and high end screen you wouldn't beat a good OLED for picture quality.
 
Simple -- If you only want a pretty unCinema size screen (83 in is NOT a cinema size screen), then OLED is going to give an image that is more intense than you are going to get with a projector, as most people here have noted. But brightness and color intensity are not the only elements that make up a true cinematic experience; IF that is what you are looking for, a large panel display is simply not going to give you that. And if you are relegated to the TV and the projector image being the same size, then hands down, go with the OLED.

Thing is, both SIZE and SOUND are key factors in creating what I assume we are looking for, i.e., that illusive cinematic experience -- the Home Theatre experience. If you are OK with an experience that shouts "non-cinema," and "No, we are still in the living room, not in a theatre," then all the short-comings of watching a movie on a TV will not matter.

And what are those short-comings of which you speak, you might ask. Well, of course size is a major factor....much more that most people realize. Much research has been done, particularly by Henry Kloss's team at Advent about the psychological effects of watching an imagine on a large screen as opposed to a TV set. They found that when watching a movie in a cinema with a screen that encompass a good 75% of one's field of vision, something profound happens in the brain in the way a person processes the visual information, because the eye needs to move around within the image just as we do in real life. The involuntary eye/brain movement engages the viewer in a more involved and connected way to the content -- a much stronger connection with what is happening on that large screen, than what happens when watching a much smaller image that does not encompass a large geography of the viewer's sight. With a smaller image, the eyes/brain take in the whole image at once. Taken to the extremes with processes like Cinerama and IMAX (the REAL, original IMAX on 70mm film), the audience actually can be made to feel phantom physical movement. When the image size drops below that threshold and a person is starring at a small image in the middle of their vision and surrounded by area that is not part of the image, there is no need for the eye to move around in that smaller image window -- there is almost no brain/eye interaction in that scenario and the psychological involvement is not nearly as intense; neither is the feeling of participation. The viewer remains a spectator looking AT the movie, rather than being drawn into it the way someone is when viewing a movie in a decent sized cinema.

Then there is the elephant in the room that hardly anyone ever talks seriously about when dealing with sound playback with a OLED (or any TV set) -- the all-important missing center channel. Until they can make an OLED display panel that can pass audio THRU it so the center channel speaker can be placed behind it, and that speaker array is identically matched to the Left and Right channel speaker arrays, the TV will ALWAYS have to rely on puny, UNMATCHED center channel speakers.

The Center channel in all movie multichannel mixes is as essential, maybe even more so, given that it carries most of the dialog and needs to be identical in all respects to the Left and Right channel speakers if you every expect to have a balanced sound stage. When you are forced to use an anemic sound bar," for your Center channel, you are starting off with 10 points against you. Imagine your astonishment and incredulity if a friend demonstrated their sound system to you and it had a high-end audiophile speaker for the Left channel, and for the Right channel, it had a Sound Bar. If that seems absurd, any cinema tech will tell you using anything but speaker system for the center channel, other that what you are using for the Left and Right is equally absurd.

So many audio/videophiles spend hefty amounts of money on a sound system, but they almost always think in terms of consumer audio, i.e., Left/Right stereo and rarely CINEMA audio which ALWAYS is Left, Center, Right. And not fa nuthn as we say here in Brooklyn, those three speaker systems are MATCHED in every movie theatre in the country. None of them ever uses some half-baked wannabe excuse for a Center channel but somehow Home Theatre gets a pass.

Next important point about speakers: in a cinema, you can't SEE any of the screen speaker arrays. And there is a very good reason for that; when speakers are visible, the brain tends to "think" the sound is coming from that speaker box because the viewer sees it quite obviously sitting there. When one has no visual cue as to the source of the audio, it is easier for the brain to lock the location of that sound to the position of the object representing it on the screen, which is why the movie industry spent a lot of R&D on how to make thick vinyl screen material able to pass sound thru it (you know how difficult and costly it is to punch thousands of tiny holes in a thick plastic sheet?). They wouldn't do that if it wasn't essential to preserve the illusion that the sound actually comes from the image on the screen and not from speaker boxes that are obviously creating the sound. And isn't that what Home Theatre is all about...creating that same illusion cinema illusion at home?

So to conclude, the ONLY way you can get the immersive, cinema experience (assuming that is what you want), is to 1) have a screen large enough to require your eyes to move around within the image and follow the action, as well as take in the entirety of the scene by jetting around within it and 2) having all three screen Channels' audio coming from BEHIND the screen and from three IDENTICALLY, matched speaker systems; so far with today's technology, that can only be done with a projected image -- btw, they are working on this, but so far, we are stuck with flat panel displays that won't pass sound.

Thus, the answer to the original query is: (insert the 20th Century Fox logo drum roll here) a projector and an acoustically transparent large enough screen to cause you to follow action and wander thru the image with your eyes, and behind which are three MATCHED speakers arrays -- that is what you need for a real cinematic experience; the OLED display panel will give you a superb image, if that is all that matters to you...but if you go with the OLED, you need to stop calling it a "Home Theatre." Until you have the elements noted above AND you watch your movie in a darkened room -- as close to darkness as is safe for movement in it -- AND you FORBID people from talking during the movie, it will forever remain just a TV in the living room or the den and not a real Home Cinema.

PS -- Black surround masking and a curtain wouldn't hurt either.
 
Last edited:
83” screen and 2.4m viewing distance, eyes have to dart around the screen - tick.

Centre speaker directly below screen angled up towards ears, same product range as full range L&R floor standers - tick.

Good enough for the living room!
 
Welp, I might give you a pass on tick #1, but not for tick #2. Unless all three speaker systems are identical and their drivers are arranged in the same temporal plane as each other, ESPECIALLY the high frequency drivers, you are not fulfilling one of the primary requirements for any multichannel motion picture soundtrack playback -- three identical speaker systems for each of the three screen channels.

What would you think if you saw a friend's system set up configured with, say, the Left speaker system in the normal upright position along side the TV, but then for the Right channel, they had, not an identical model, but one smaller (they claimed "not to worry...it's 'the same product range'") and it was placed on the floor on its side but tilted upward to aim at the audience's ears. Would you or any audio enthusiast think that would be an acceptable configuration? But doing that for the Center channel is somehow OK? And then again, none of these speaker systems are BEHIND the screen -- also another prerequisite for a true cinema experience.

I would also add that I've almost never seen anyone using black masking appropriately around their TV, and while it is not guaranteed that folks using a projection system will properly mask their screen either, the chances are much greater that the latter will.
 
Welp, I might give you a pass on tick #1, but not for tick #2. Unless all three speaker systems are identical and their drivers are arranged in the same temporal plane as each other, ESPECIALLY the high frequency drivers, you are not fulfilling one of the primary requirements for any multichannel motion picture soundtrack playback -- three identical speaker systems for each of the three screen channels.

What would you think if you saw a friend's system set up configured with, say, the Left speaker system in the normal upright position along side the TV, but then for the Right channel, they had, not an identical model, but one smaller (they claimed "not to worry...it's 'the same product range'") and it was placed on the floor on its side but tilted upward to aim at the audience's ears. Would you or any audio enthusiast think that would be an acceptable configuration? But doing that for the Center channel is somehow OK? And then again, none of these speaker systems are BEHIND the screen -- also another prerequisite for a true cinema experience.

I would also add that I've almost never seen anyone using black masking appropriately around their TV, and while it is not guaranteed that folks using a projection system will properly mask their screen either, the chances are much greater that the latter will.

I 100% agree with everything your stating BUT...

83” screen and 2.4m viewing distance, eyes have to dart around the screen - tick.

Centre speaker directly below screen angled up towards ears, same product range as full range L&R floor standers - tick.

Good enough for the living room!


I think:

Good enough for the living room!


is the key phrase here.

 
Understood -- and absolutely nothing wrong at all with that. Everyone takes this obsession we all have as far as they want it and land where they are comfortable with it.

BV (Before Video) the only way you could watch movies at home was if you could get 35mm or 16mm prints -- no VHS, no DVDs no streaming (kinda hard to imagine a world like, eh, you youngins?!). I was a projectionist, so I had access to 35mm prints and one day I was able to buy a full-sized 35mm projector and moved it into our single bedroom apartment -- I am talking THIS behemoth:
E7_Front_Shutter.jpg

Worked on it for months to refurbish; I was determined that I was going to be able to run movies at home. To use it, it had to be rolled into the bathroom and projected from that bathroom on to the screen in the living room. To keep the projector noise down, I had to cut a hole in the bathroom door and glue a piecxr of optical glass in it for the projector image beam. My girlf at the time was not at all happy with a glass window in the bathroom door. When not in use, this beauty could only fit in the small foyer adjacent to the front door. and you had to squeeze by it any time you came in or out. As everyone knows who has ever run a Simplex E7 -- tell the truth, ANY early Simplex -- they leak lots of oil. She wasn't to happy about this arrangement either. She came to hate this thing with a passion. My counter always was, "But we can watch MOVIES in our home." For some reason which to this day I never understood, even the sparkle in my eye and my obvious joy did not move her.

One day we were going out to a party and as we left, she rub up against the projector and go oil on her dress. Then and there she gave me an ultimatum: "Either that thing goes or I do!"

I didn't miss her as much as I thought I would.
 
Last edited:
Understood -- and absolutely nothing wrong at all with that. Everyone takes this obsession we all have as far as they want it and land where they are comfortable with it.

BV (Before Video) they only way you could watch movies was if you could get 35mm or 16mm prints -- no VHS, no DVDs no streaming (kinda hard to imagine a world like, eh, you youngins?!). I was a projectionist so I had access to 35mm prints and one day I came home with this full-sized 35mm projection and moved it into our single bedroom apartment -- I am talking THIS behemoth:
View attachment 1715578
This beauty could only fit in the small foyer adjacent to the front door. and you had to squeeze by it any time you came in or out. As everyone knows who has ever run a Simplex E7 -- tell the truth, ANY early Simplex -- they leak lots of oil. My girlfriend at the time hated this thing with a passion. One day we were going out to a party and as we left, she rub up against the projector and go oil on her dress. Then and there she gave me an ultimatum: "Either that thing goes or I do!"

I didn't miss her as much as I thought I would.
Fair play, that’s dedication to a craft.
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom