Gaming Telly Discussion (and Diminishing Returns)

[ratsoalbion]

Also, many games, such as HZD, offer the choice of modes on Pro, so for instance the 4K mode will have a higher pixel density but a lower frame rate and will be missing certain visual effects.

In the case of HZD I preferred the overall look and performance at 1080p but with the extra frames and flourishes over the pure pixel count.

[Alex79]

I'd love a new telly, I've been entering compos left right and centre haha. Especially since the kids knackered ours and we havent managed to get it fixed yet!

[Stanshall]

Good luck with it fella and hope you're having a better week. I know all this is very much a first world problem.

[Stanshall]

I don't mean this to be tasteless but I decided under the circumstances to finally get that OLED telly I've wanted for a couple of years now. I've been putting money aside for a proper holiday for our 5th anniversary as we haven't been away in a few years but that's no longer happening obviously. We're also both 'key workers' so working more or less full time on-site and under a fair amount of pressure so I just thought fuck it. If I die before I see those trademarked 'inky blacks', I would be well pissed off. LG C9 coming via John Lewis on Friday.

Forget Red Dead, how good is Groove Coaster going to look on that bad boy?!

[Suits]

Uuunnnnnnrrreggggggghhhhh, LG C9 .

Mate, that’s the panel I’m getting for sure when the time comes.

Mind, by the time it does come around, it’ll be the E range .

Awesome mate, totally jealous and everything I hear about those panels is that they are jaw dropping.

Cracking investment that, you’ll be sat very pretty now a decade easy.


In 2008 I dropped an awful lot of money on the old Panasonic V Series Plasmas.

It’s still running super solid now and things like the Xbox 360 and Disney animation Blu-Ray’s look incredible on it at 1080p.

While it’s still running and looking great for general TV, it’s hard to find an excuse to upgrade.

The gaming angle doesn't wash, as I have an office for all that nonsense and the max size I want in there is 40”.

Come on LG, do a 40” OLED please .

[Stanshall]

Come on LG, do a 40” OLED please .

They're doing a 48" this year, I hear, so maybe that'll tick the boxes.

I've been reluctant to just start going on about this but it turned up this afternoon and after tweaking the settings as per rtings...the simplest thing I can say is that it's one of the only things I've bought in years where I have zero remorse. The only regret I have is not saving up a bit longer before buying my last TV. I should have just waited another few months for this.

In a word, my very high expectations have been easily surpassed and the praise is fully justified. I actually started crying playing Tetris Effect before because it was so bloody beautiful and overwhelming. Fuck me, I'm playing Ori and the Will of the Wisps here and it's insane.

Ehhh, that'll do. I've gone on enough.

[KSubzero1000]

That's great to hear. I have no doubt this type of top-of-the-line display would be absolutely stunning in conjunction with some modern high-res graphical powerhouse like Ori!

Perhaps this is a silly question, but I'm wondering how it would be to play some older game with a muted color palette or a DVD with a much lower native resolution on it? Would it enhance the material and provide the best possible viewing experience or would it underline the technological discrepancy in an unpleasant way?

[Stanshall]

Would it enhance the material and provide the best possible viewing experience or would it underline the technological discrepancy in an unpleasant way?

In short, this particular TV upscales incredibly well, but it's a little more complicated than that. I think the usual rule is to match output with source, i.e. A 1080p output will always look best on a 1080p screen. Pixel for pixel, zero scaling or processing. It's not quite as simple as that, though, I've found.

One of the major differences and improvements over my other TV is how responsively it handles motion. Individual elements move more smoothly and are therefore easier to track with your eyes and appear more detailed. Does that make sense? They don't look better because of resolution improvements, they look better because you can always keep your eyes on them. It's hard to describe because I don't really know that much about the technicalities of this stuff.

I got my other telly (Samsung NU8000) because it is well regarded for having extremely low input lag. It does VRR stuff with the One X and you can theoretically set it to 120Hz and stuff like that. It's very snappy and responsive, great for shmups and fighting games. However, I didn't realise until yesterday that it can be responsive in terms of inputs and refresh rates but still not process the image 'responsively'.

Playing Ketsui on the PS4 (in SDR) is now quite different. I feel like my eyes can track the ship and bullets much more clearly, everything appears in its own place. It's hard to describe. With RDR2 on the One X, I always found that the motion of the galloping horse made it hard to look at the background very clearly while moving, so I would often walk everywhere to take it in. On the LG, everything is visible separately, including the choice of motion blur. It's difficult to describe, really, but that's arguably the biggest impact.

Move over to the 360 to get closer to your question, and the same applies. I instantly felt like I had 'more time' to chain in DOJ. I don't understand why but everything felt smoother and more like I was moving the ship rather than inputting controls. Same with Groove Coaster on the Switch. Stuff like ARMS and Mario Odyssey feel exceptional. I did some online ARMS this morning and I almost felt like I had an advantage, I felt like I could read opponents' movements more quickly.

To take it a bit further and get to the lower resolution content you mentioned, I played both OutRun 2 C2C (360) and OutRun 2 (original Xbox) and while the resolution was very obviously lower, and the latter still had some (consistent) framerate issues at certain moments, because the motion was handled so well and they looked and felt so responsive, it was again a significant improvement on my old telly. There's no smoothing or anything so it's not 'improving' what you're looking at, but you feel like you're looking at the source in exceptional quality. It's a bit like when I was really into headphones and that stuff. At a certain level, the top gear can almost reveal too much of the inherent 'flaws' of the recording, but I also personally love a lot of lo-fi music, so I was happy to get closer to the original sound, if you know what I'm saying. It felt kind of like that with OutRun 2. Best of all would be CRT because it was designed to run on that hardware but in terms of modern televisions, this is the best representation I've seen.

I'll check out some HD video at some point and report back.

[KSubzero1000]

Cool, thanks for the detailed response! That improved tracking you mention sounds fantastic.

I was thinking about the type of older game that was made to be played on a CRT and usually has a color palette designed around it - i.e, a lot of dark browns instead of true blacks, that sort of thing. Stuff like God Hand for example. I was wondering if the picture quality of this type of high-end display might not reveal a bit too much for its own good in that case, like with the audio stuff you mention. Same with DVDs.

I only ask out of curiosity, I don't really need or want (or would have the space for) a new telly. Yours definitely sounds like a keeper, though!

[Suits]

B9’s are the lowest price they’ve been .

https://www.amazon.co.uk/LG-Electronics ... uage=en_GB

[KSubzero1000]

I'm hearing some pretty unpleasant things about their durability and LG's customer support in general, though...

[Suits]

I'm hearing some pretty unpleasant things about their durability and LG's customer support in general, though...

Yes, there is always that.

Mind, from I’ve heard, (specifically about the B9’s) is that they are pretty solid, very little issues have come to light.

Because of their cost they’ve come under rather a lot of scrutiny, rightfully so.

[KSubzero1000]

very little issues have come to light.

Because of their cost they’ve come under rather a lot of scrutiny, rightfully so.

The top two user reviews on the amazon page you linked are:

1. One guy complaining about screen burn-in and getting scammed by customer support for a TV that is less than 2 years old.

2. A direct advice transcript from said customer support explaining how many hours of the same news channel you should watch per day before burn-in appears around the logo and the TV gets wasted.

[Suits]

Oh right, ok, I tend not to pay too much attention to those Amazon reviews.

I follow a few of the guys on CNET who talk very highly of the B9 and they often get quizzed about the reliability of the panel.

Don’t take my word for it though.

[KSubzero1000]

Hey, I hope you're right! But OLED and other high-end display types have been around for a long time and stuff like burn-in has always been a problem with them, as far as I can remember.

The thing that always sticks out to me is that the more elaborate, complex and sophisticated a system is, the more fragile and prone to various failures it becomes. That almost seems like an inevitability as far as I can tell.

Reliability > Sophistication, if you ask me. But then again, that doesn't sell!

[Suits]

The thing that always sticks out to me is that the more elaborate, complex and sophisticated a system is, the more fragile and prone to various failures it becomes. That almost seems like an inevitability as far as I can tell.

I think a key factor here is personal experience.

I took a big risk on my 50” Panasonic V series Plasma over ten years ago, that was £2000 at the time and it’s still solid, no burn, nothing - vivid as ever.

I suppose I’m more willing to take the risk on things like this, day one consoles, etc... as otherwise I’d never buy anything !

[KSubzero1000]

Sounds like you struck gold with that one then, nice!

I'll have to replace my ancient TV sooner or later, and I'm not looking forward to the headache! I might have to rely on your expertise at that point or something.

But even beyond the personal experience element you're describing, the sheer amount of new stuff I've heard being praised to high heavens and described (by the folks selling it) as the absolute pinnacle of purchasing power by way of a list of sophisticated features only to then end up broken, unreliable, discontinued, etc... has made me a tad skeptical.

I wish we (as a *cough* society) spent more time appreciating and making the best out of what we already have instead of constantly getting hoodwinked into fantasizing about disposable luxuries. Landfill sites filled with automatic cars, barely worn clothes and consumer electronics leave me perplexed. So do all the folks who rush out to buy the latest and shiniest telly every few years but then just plug in their old scart adapter without a second thought. Something tells me that, by and large, this is more about status bullshit than anything else.

Although this is probably not the thread for being all grumpy so I'll leave it at that!

[Suits]

Re: Buying TV’s, just work out a budget you want to spend, then search around there.

There’s so much choice and people always end up pleased with their purchase.

There’s a few things you have to consider along the way but agreeing with yourself on a budget first is always the best way to start I find.

[Stanshall]

The burn-in stuff seems far less of an issue these days, but I appreciate that it was a concern - and it was for me, too. From everything I've read about intensive testing and user experience, we're talking thousands of hours with the same HUD elements. They have so many features now to prevent burn-in, as well, both during use and when the screen is off. The 2019 panels are supposed to be a significant upgrade in that regard, as well.

Having read the reviews above that KSub is referencing, I do find it odd that anyone would be worried about leaving their telly on rolling Sky news for nine hours a day. 'Change the channel religiously' is rather dramatic. Who's watching rolling news all day every day?! If you are, fair enough, don't buy an OLED.

The other one star review is actually just dishonest. The burn-in prevention tech in the B9 is markedly different to the B7 but this reviewer concludes that it must also apply to a different model which has features built in to prevent the very thing he's complaining about. I've done extensive research for about two years and while I used to have valid concerns about the older models, I've heard virtually nothing but positives about the 9 range in the face of rigorous testing and reports of gaming-heavy user experience.

Games look and play better on the C9 than anything I've seen in my life, quite frankly. The colours and contrasts and responsiveness and sense of motion still amaze me a month in. I look forward to turning it on. Without being facetious and purely to illustrate the point about performance, if it only lasted me two years, it would still be worth buying another one in two years time.

[KSubzero1000]

Cool! Point taken. It's difficult to know for certain without first-hand experience so I'll take your word for it. I'm sure you've done some extensive research before buying it, after all.

Without being facetious and purely to illustrate the point about performance, if it only lasted me two years, it would still be worth buying another one in two years time.

Well, I can't really argue with that!