Seeking clarification re automatic dimming on OLED

[vyvafc]

Looking to do significant TV upgrade

Have been researching, and interested in OLED TV - specifically, either the Sony A80J or LG CS

My TV use is: films/TV series/football ('soccer')

My taste in films is largely 'arthouse' - so lots of subtitles; lots of slow, lingering half-lit shots lol. (But in seriousness - I really do love 'slow' films)

 

My understanding is that the two potential problems with OLED screens are burn-in and, as a protection against burn-in, automatic dimming.

 

I've read the thread on burn-in on this forum and various other sources, and I don't think I'm too concerned about it in itself at this point - both subtitles and, I guess, the Optus Sport logo/scorebox could be a problem, but I really don't watch that much. 

 

But I've read various posts on Reddit complaining of automatic dimming on both the Sony and LG models, and the issue is described clearly in this HDTV test video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5qXj-vpX5Q

I that video he specifically identifies dark-lit, slow movings scenes as potential triggers to automatic dimming.

 

A number of posts on Reddit actually described it as an issue when watching sports (which would be very frustrating).

 

There are instructions as to how to 'hack' this function in the HDTV video, but it notes the risks in doing so. On the other hand, if it's straight forward and low risk I'd be happy to give it a go.

 

I'm curious as to people's thoughts on this (from this forum, which I trust far more than Reddit!). One poster on the 'burn-in' thread asks why bother with an OLED TV, and that's fair enough I guess. And maybe it doesn't suit my needs/usage. But I am attracted to the idea of a really good dark-room film experience (which I'm lead to believe OLED offers?).

 

Any thoughts on this would be welcome, thanks

[GregWormald]

I've had a 65" Sony A80J for a while now, and have never encountered this issue, even while watching one of his trigger shows (Dune).

[Tweaky]

Unless you have found a store with OLD stock of A80J's, I think you must mean the Sony A80K, which is the current Sony A80 model.

There is not much difference between the A80J and the newer A80K, the older A80J is reported to actually be a touch brighter than the A80K, but apart from that I'm not sure if the difference TBH.

 

Screen burn-in with current OLED's is not a problem for the most part, the people that do report it are usually found out to be using their OLED's as PC monitors if not all of the time, a good part of it, which is just asking for problems what with static task bars and the like.

 

The same thing goes for hard core gamers who play the same game for many hours at a time in 4K HDR, for weeks on end.

The part of the screen showing game scores etc can do the same thing as a PC's task bar especially if playing in the higher brightness of 4K HDR.

 

If you are constantly watching pretty much ONLY sports on a OLED, then then the chance of burn-in is higher only because of the static images showing the scores etc, is much the same as the task bars on a PC, again, especially if watch in the higher brightness of 4K HDR.

 

These are not opaque, like the static channel logo's you get from TV broadcasters like the ABC/SBS etc, which will have little chance of causing burn-in unless the TV is always playing back the same channel.

 

Most modern OLED TV's have a pixel shifting function working in the background, this moves the individual pixels to help stop burn-in in areas such as this.

 

Basically, as long as you mix up what you are watching/playing, be it movies, TV, games, in either SDR or HDR, you have little chance of burn-in with modern OLED TV's.

It's only when you have the exact same thing up on the screen for many many hours that screen burn-in happens.

 

Some of the best OLED's have heatsinks, this stops image retention with bright scenes [like really bright/white or close to white ]

Image retention can be noticeable on OLED without heatsinks when watching things, it's not harmful as such, more of a slight annoyance, it will just seem like the shadow of the bright part of any scene in a movie for example, will still be partially seen when the scene in the movie changes to a dark scene in the same area of the screen the previous bright scene was in.

 

Neither the A80J or the A80K have heatsinks.

 

For what it's worth, I have/had [currently broken due to a accident ] top of the line 65" SONY A95K QD-OLED, that did have a heatsink, and the picture is considered the best currently available of any brand/model.

 

Because the price of replacing the panel on the A95K was almost the same price as buying a new one, I went out last Monday TV shopping again for a replacement, as the Black Friday sales had started.

A 65" SONY A95K is usually $5500, everyone had it discounted to $4995

I was going to buy another A95K, but they had a demo of the A95K and  the cheaper A80K side by side, they were both showing the same video loop, and I stood watching it for a good 20 minutes comparing the two TV's.

Having lived with the A95K, I knew what to look for when comparing the much more expensive A95K to the cheaper A80K', sure the A95K was certainly better, but the difference was far less than I thought it was going to be.

I had gone to Hardly Normal / Bing Lee / The Good Guys and saw they all had the 77" A80K at $1000 off [Usually $6995 ]

Then I went to JB [which was also where I saw the demo] and saw they had the same TV for $1507 off, and for one day only, were also throwing in a $500 voucher, and free delivery and installation....No contest, JB got the sale.

 

The great thing about the SONY A95K OQ-OLED TV's is they are incredibly consistent, very few people have reported anything wrong with their TV's once they got delivery of them.

The problem that a lot of TV's can suffer, and this goes for all TV's brands and models, is getting one that shows Banding, or Dirty screen, colour casts etc, all which can effect the PQ, obliviously the cheaper TV's suffer this more than more expensive ones.

No owner of a A95K has ever posted about suffering this problem, which is a first in the TV world, which in part explains the hefty price asked for them  

This panel problem is commonly called the "Panel Lottery", as you never know if you are go to get a great/good/mediocre or bad one.

 

I hit the jackpot, as my A80K is almost as pristine a panel as my A95K...super happy about that

SONY does seem to have better QC as a rule, much better than Samsung or LG IMHO......I'm currently trying to help out a guy in Belgium that has bought a LG C2 that has the most horrible magenta colour cast I have ever seen on a TV, it covers nearly 75% of the screen!...I told him to send it back immediately as it's obviously faulty.

 

IMHO the SONY A80K, in any of the screen sizes, has to be the biggest TV bargain available ATM, especially at Black Friday discount prices.

It is a fantastic TV for the money, and I've had the best TV you can get, so I know what I'm comparing it to.

 

As for the Auto dimming problem, that is definitely a problem with the LG TV's, but I'm happy to report is NOT a problem with the SONY A80K, you can see in the video below the proof.

If it was a problem with the older A80J I'm not sure, I'm sure the maker of the video mentions both TV's as a comparison, so you should know by watching it.

 

EDIT: As an aside, I've been watching the World Cup on SBS HD on my A80K and there has been absolutely no dimming of the picture at all, and it's been on  for hours at a time !

I can confirm, dimming is definitely NOT a problem on a A80K

BUT, I should mention, Auto dimming kicks in relative to the brightness of the content you are watching.

If you were watching the Winter Olympics for example, where the vast majority of the screen is showing White, then all bets are off, even the best OLED's will start to auto dim, even those with heatsinks.

It would depend on how long the All White content was on the screen, if it chopped and changed between all white and something else, then it wouldn't kick in.........Something like figure skating or watching Ice Hockey might trigger it, not something I watch TBH so unknown to me.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 26, 2022 by Tweaky

[vyvafc]

thanks for the helpful replies

[IceZeroZero9]

Sony are still selling the A80J 55" as a part of their regular lineup from the looks of it. You can get the 55" version of the A80J on a great BF deal of $1785 (much better price than the A80K) compared to the 55" LG CS for $1888 (I think the LG is). I've been looking at the Sony myself for my parents, but not sure about burn in due to 70%+ of viewing would be sport and a little bit of news. Not sure if it can hold up to that.

[Tweaky]

6 hours ago, IceZeroZero9 said:

Sony are still selling the A80J 55" as a part of their regular lineup from the looks of it. You can get the 55" version of the A80J on a great BF deal of $1785 (much better price than the A80K) compared to the 55" LG CS for $1888 (I think the LG is). I've been looking at the Sony myself for my parents, but not sure about burn in due to 70%+ of viewing would be sport and a little bit of news. Not sure if it can hold up to that.

 

You should look into getting your parents a X90K, it's a great 4K FALD LCD that actually has better contrast than SONY's top 4K micro led the X95K

I bought a 65"one for my sister a few months ago.

Good price as well, which always helps.

[IceZeroZero9]

3 hours ago, Tweaky said:

You should look into getting your parents a X90K, it's a great 4K FALD LCD that actually has better contrast than SONY's top 4K micro led the X95K

I bought a 65"one for my sister a few months ago.

Good price as well, which always helps.

Yeah, a few other people recommended the X90K, but would you choose it over the A80J when the price is almost the same? If the X90K was cheaper, I'd get it, but maybe my personal preference for an OLED is clouding my judgement on TVs. I'd rather get the A80J or LG CS at current pricing. Did you buy the X90K for your sister due to burn in risk/issues with an OLED, or did she want a bigger size (65")? The other reason I didn't look at the X90K is because the TCL 655 (close to the Australian C835), seems to have gotten a better review on rtings.com (not sure if I should take what these guys say that seriously?). TCL 6 Series/R655 2022 QLED vs Sony X90K Side-by-Side TV Comparison - RTINGS.com

[Tweaky]

1 hour ago, IceZeroZero9 said:

Yeah, a few other people recommended the X90K, but would you choose it over the A80J when the price is almost the same? If the X90K was cheaper, I'd get it, but maybe my personal preference for an OLED is clouding my judgement on TVs. I'd rather get the A80J or LG CS at current pricing. Did you buy the X90K for your sister due to burn in risk/issues with an OLED, or did she want a bigger size (65")? The other reason I didn't look at the X90K is because the TCL 655 (close to the Australian C835), seems to have gotten a better review on rtings.com (not sure if I should take what these guys say that seriously?). TCL 6 Series/R655 2022 QLED vs Sony X90K Side-by-Side TV Comparison - RTINGS.com

 

Well I originally bought a 65" A95K for myself.

I have a terminal illness, and my sister was going to inherit it, she has two grand kids come around and play video games, so I bought her the 65" X90K in the mean time, and so the kids could use it solely for gaming once she got the A95K.

Unfortunately the A95K took a hit to the panel and got killed after only 9 weeks of use .

I saw the Black Friday sales were on and was going to get another one, but after seeing a side by side demo of the A95K V's A80K running the exact same video demo loop, saw that although the A95K was definitely the better TV, there wasn't that huge a difference, and the huge discount I could get on a 77" A80K made it the same price [ $5500] as pre Black Friday price of the A95K.

So I bought the bigger A80K instead, as it was too good a bargain to pass up IMHO.

 

I mix up  what is played on my A80K, with standard FTA TV, Streamed content, sports and gaming, so my chance of screen burn in is pretty low.

If I mainly watched Sports, as you said your parents tended to do, or did a LOT of gaming, then I would have got either a X90K or A95K for myself, just so I had no possible problem with screen burn in.

This is more of a possible problem with OLED's that don't have heat sinks, the A80K doesn't have a heat sink, but the A95K did.

 

The PQ  on the TCL's, well at least the ones higher up in their range, is supposed to be pretty good, and apparently even Hisense has improved.

But where these brands fall down is with their UI and OS, they can be very problematic....so can Samsung's for that matter.

 

My thoughts regarding this are I'd rather pay more and NOT have a TV that drove me to frustration, if not down right driving me into fits of rage because it starts refusing to do what I'm asking it to, or start sporadically turning itself off, or to a different function whilst in the middle of watching something, both things I've had reports of happening from owners of these brands.

 

Actually if you go to JB HiFi's website and look at the reviews of particular models of TV, you will see they are gathered from all over the worlds, not just Australia.

And you will see this UI/OS reported on TCL and Hisense TV's quite a lot

 

No saving of $$ is worth that hassle IMHO, well it certainly isn't to me.

 

I don't know if this is still the case, but some Hisense models couldn't even be calibrated [I do my own TV calibration], because just going into the menus changed the look of the TV.

No thanks.

 

The other problem is, and the 2022 Samsung S95B QD-OLED is a classic case of this, and caused many many people to send their TV's back and exchange them for another brand, and that is software updates.

Samsung released the S95B early to get the jump on the SONY A95K, as that is the only other QD-OLED on the market, the problem was the software hadn't been sorted, and had a lot of problems, and successive software updates actually made things worse and some thing to no longer work.

People had got to the stage of turning auto software updates off, but Samsung released yet another software update that over ruled that, and updated the TV anyway, and that update actually changed the way the panel performed, and they way the TV looked.

 

RTINGS isn't the greatest place to get reviews from, at least anymore.

Their scoring system is all out of whack now days, and the scores they give a model of TV one month, can and do change in subsequent months after further time with the TV.

Edited November 29, 2022 by Tweaky

[IceZeroZero9]

Thanks for that awesomely details response. A lot of things to consider with what you've said. Some very good points I never even thought of.

4 hours ago, Tweaky said:

I saw the Black Friday sales were on and was going to get another one, but after seeing a side by side demo of the A95K V's A80K running the exact same video demo loop, saw that although the A95K was definitely the better TV, there wasn't that huge a difference, and the huge discount I could get on a 77" A80K made it the same price [ $5500] as pre Black Friday price of the A95K.

So I bought the bigger A80K instead, as it was too good a bargain to pass up IMHO.

I think you made a great choice here as I've read the differences aren't that big. Yes, the A95K is an amazing TV, but the price premium is a bit hard to take (unless it's easily affordable to said person buying it) for most people. The A80K still sounds like a great TV. Do you think there would be much real world difference between the A80J that I am looking at compared to the A80K in the 55" sizes? I am guessing not without doing extensive research on it. I'll have to look in to the automatic dimming thing the OP (vyvafc) mentioned. Burn in, well I already know that is a big risk with the content it'd be used for. In your gut opinion, should I get an LCD TV for my parents? How do you find the X90K compared to your OLEDs?

 

Edit : One other thing I was curious about, parents don't have aircon, do you think that would be an issue with an OLED during the summer watching at a higher ambient temperature? Do you think that would affect the OLED panel at all? As far as I can see, LCDs and the Plasma seem to have done OK at those temps, but not sure about how sensitive OLED panels are to higher ambient temps during summer. I was told elsewhere that you shouldn't have to worry about the panel, most likely something else would fail before then.

 

4 hours ago, Tweaky said:

I mix up  what is played on my A80K, with standard FTA TV, Streamed content, sports and gaming, so my chance of screen burn in is pretty low.

If I mainly watched Sports, as you said your parents tended to do, or did a LOT of gaming, then I would have got either a X90K or A95K for myself, just so I had no possible problem with screen burn in.

This is more of a possible problem with OLED's that don't have heat sinks, the A80K doesn't have a heat sink, but the A95K did.

I forgot about the heatsinks. Why don't more brands use them? I wouldn't assume they're that expensive to add, are they? What TVs have them? I think I read the top Sonys (A95K, A90J?), LG G2s and Panasonic models (not sure which ones as they're not sold here). Do any other brands have them? I wonder why Samsung didn't include them for the S95B?

 

4 hours ago, Tweaky said:

The PQ  on the TCL's, well at least the ones higher up in their range, is supposed to be pretty good, and apparently even Hisense has improved.

But where these brands fall down is with their UI and OS, they can be very problematic....so can Samsung's for that matter.

From what I've read these past few weeks (it's actually pretty cool learning all this stuff, I'm going to try and keep up with TVs going forward even if I do buy one in the next day or so), is that TCL and Hisense have made really big gains the past 2 years. They now have some very price competitive top end models compared to the tier one brands (Sony, LG, Samsung). I'd still call TCL and Hisense tier 2 (the rest of the brands being in tier 3), but they've now good some super competitive price to performance TVs in the higher end. Having said that, it seems that their models prior to the past 2-3 years, they've been pretty much rubbish TVs that don't compete with the tier 1 brand's TVs. Would you say I am correct in saying all that?

 

Pretty good point about the possible issues with TCL and Hisense. I'd probably pick LG and Sony if you don't want to deal with that stuff, and that is definitely one reason I'm looking at Sony.

4 hours ago, Tweaky said:

My thoughts regarding this are I'd rather pay more and NOT have a TV that drove me to frustration, if not down right driving me into fits of rage because it starts refusing to do what I'm asking it to, or start sporadically turning itself off, or to a different function whilst in the middle of watching something, both things I've had reports of happening from owners of these brands.

I agree 100% with what you've said here, but unfortunately budgetary restrictions are holding me and probably a lot of other people back from following this guideline :(.

 

4 hours ago, Tweaky said:

Actually if you go to JB HiFi's website and look at the reviews of particular models of TV, you will see they are gathered from all over the worlds, not just Australia.

And you will see this UI/OS reported on TCL and Hisense TV's quite a lot

Haven't really read any of these reviews due to not having a ton of time.

 

4 hours ago, Tweaky said:

No saving of $$ is worth that hassle IMHO, well it certainly isn't to me.

Very fair reasoning.

 

4 hours ago, Tweaky said:

I don't know if this is still the case, but some Hisense models couldn't even be calibrated [I do my own TV calibration], because just going into the menus changed the look of the TV.

No thanks.

How do you calibrate your TVs? Do you use some sort of colour meter? I have an i1 Display Pro, but have only ever used it on a computer Monitor with a graphics card installed. I've heard you can use this to calibrate a TV, but I have no idea if you can do it without a computer plugged into the TV. I assume you'd need the computer plugged in for the initial calibration, but not sure if it also has to stay plugged in after calibration as on the PC if creates a colour profile for the OS.

 

Also, with the Hisense, did you mean that their models don't have the capability/options there to be able to change certain settings to be able to calibrate them properly?

 

And if not using a calibrator and just changing settings on the TV itself, which of the Australian sold TVs/brands are best for out of the box accurate picture settings with minimal calibrating for watching movies? Would Sony be the best of the TVs sold here, then LG, then Samsung last (I hear Samsung like having oversaturated colours that pop, but I prefer more accurate colours as I am used to that with my Panasonic Plasma, and I just think it looks a lot better than the oversaturated Samsung look). Not sure where TCL fits in. I am guessing they might be a little more colour accurate than Samsung as well, but behind Sony and LG?

 

4 hours ago, Tweaky said:

The other problem is, and the 2022 Samsung S95B QD-OLED is a classic case of this, and caused many many people to send their TV's back and exchange them for another brand, and that is software updates.

Samsung released the S95B early to get the jump on the SONY A95K, as that is the only other QD-OLED on the market, the problem was the software hadn't been sorted, and had a lot of problems, and successive software updates actually made things worse and some thing to no longer work.

Darn, that sounds terrible. I was mostly looking at the build quality issues rather than software issues. Seems it was rushed to market, but they also didn't put any marketing behind it. I actually did go to look at it in-store a couple of weeks ago, but they told me they didn't even have one in either size. The other reason I was seriously looking at it is because I thought this might be the cheapest I could get an affordable QD-OLED as I'm guessing Samsung are selling the S95B at big discounts as there is no marketing around it. Do you think the prices of their next year's model are going to be higher like Sonys if they put and advertising campaign around it and have better build quality?

 

4 hours ago, Tweaky said:

People had got to the stage of turning auto software updates off, but Samsung released yet another software update that over ruled that, and updated the TV anyway, and that update actually changed the way the panel performed, and they way the TV looked.

Gee whiz, I'd be furious if this happened to me, especially if you turn updates off. Lowering the brightness of a panel that is supposed to be brighter and a selling point is kind of like false advertising if you ask me.

Edited November 29, 2022 by IceZeroZero9

[Tweaky]

The A80J is just a minor update to the A80J, the older A80J is reportedly slightly brighter, neither of them suffer dimming from what I have seen in YouTube video tests when gaming.

 

IMHO if you want good TV reviews other than those on YouTube, use the ones at FlatPanelshd.....the one for the A80K in link below....also has recommended setting for Night time viewing, which I always use anyway, as they are bright enough, and since they run the brightness a lot lower than MAX as the TV will automatically always switch to when a HDR signal is detected, will save your panel from premature aging/fading, and drastically reduce the chance of screen burn-in.

https://www.flatpanelshd.com/review.php?subaction=showfull&id=1668748143

 

As for a TV for your parents, if they watch predominantly Sports, like you mentioned previously, then yes, get a LED, for one it will be brighter and secondly no fear of burn in.

It's the sections on the screen showing scores you have to worry about when watching sports on a OLED, it's OK if you are only watching for a couple of hours, but you would want to change the viewing content to something other than sports after that on a OLED, just to lessen the burn in risk.

The main differences between the X90K and A80J or K is, one it's cheaper than they OLED models, it doesn't have Jet Black Black's like the OLED's, it will always have a brighter picture than the OLED's, but it will suffer Blooming

[ Blooming is when White seems to have a Halo around it when on a Black Background- This problem is not as bad as people can make out for the most part, it only really shows itself with subtitles]

 

The TV manufacturers only fit heatsinks on their top models, this is because they tend to run the panels brighter than the ones without heatsinks.

It costs $$ to do, plus fitting them means they have to make the TV's chassis thicker to accommodate them.

When a OLED TV is reproducing White, or any bright near white colour, it heats up the panel the most in those areas.

When the White has stopped being shown, some residual heat is still in the panel in those areas, which causes that area to take a while to cool down, the longer it takes to cool down the longer some of that White will remain on the screen.......so this trait will be less noticeable with panels fitted with heat sinks, and obviously more noticeable on OLED's without heatsinks.

The brighter the manufacturer runs their panel the worse this can be, and it also can dictate if auto dimming kicks in.

 

Samsung didn't fit heatsinks to their S95B because it is built to a price point [The build quality shows this, it's very thin and flimsy, and a huge amount of them have been returned due to bent panels/chassis, plus they also run it's panel brighter than SONY do it's A95K, which uses the exact same panel, but has heatsinks as well.

Samsung is ALL about market share, not quality products, unless you buy one of their very top QDLED TV's.

 

The third tier TV's would currently be TCL , Hisense, but TBH I'd put Samsung down there as well for the most of their TV's, even the RTINGS website says the same thing of Samsung generally.

But TCL and Hisense are catching up fast, as I said, it's their software where they fall down.

Panasonic is actually using panels sourced from TCL on their top of the line OLED, and I wouldn't be surprised if SONY might end up using them as well some time in the future.

Both Panasonic and SONY excel at having great software on their TV's.....plus better processing, it's not all about the panel used.

 

As for calibrating a TV, well you can use the same i1Display type meter you  use to calibrate your PC monitor to calibrate WOLED and LED/LCD TV's, but not with QD-OLED TV's, the meters are not up to the task to calibrate them, as the QD-OLED's have a spiky output and extended colour gamut......you'd make the TV look worse than the OOTB performance if you tried.

It's not hard to do, but it does take a LOT of patience, and practice to be able to do properly, as the controls are iterative, where you calibrate one thing then go calibrate another, then go back to the first to do it again, as the second lot of changes would have effected the first.....quite a bit of going back and forth changing things, which takes time.....although the more often you do it the quick you get at it.

I've written many a post at the forum about DIY calibration......a short version is in this post with links to the freeware and Calibration For Dummies walk through Tutorial on how to do it......see 3rd post on this page.

 

AS for Samsung QD-OLED's becoming more expensive next year, I really doubt it, probably the other way around.

Most TV pundits are saying QD-OLED will be the major panel/TV type soon, as Samsung has got manufacturing cost down so low, a lot of Chinese companies want to be able to license the manufacturing off Samsung, and it's expected they will flood the market with cheap QD-OLED TV's in a few years time if Samsung agrees.

How good they will be is a totally other matter.

 

Samsung announced they were bring out a 77" QD-OLED earlier in the year [With what they are calling Quataum Blue technology -makes it brighter basically], if they do so for 2023 is unknown, as the global economic climate might not make it worth thier while ATM, so they might put it off until 2024/5

Edited November 29, 2022 by Tweaky