Home Theater Geeks 445 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

00:00 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
In this episode of Home Theater Geeks, I continue my discussion about the 2024 Value Electronics TV shootout with three people who were there, so stick around.

00:14 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
Podcasts you love.

00:16 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
From people you trust.

00:19 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
This is TWIT tweet.

00:31 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Hey there, scott Wilkinson. Here, the home theater geek. In this episode I continue my discussion about the 2024 Value Electronics TV shootout with three people who were instrumental in making it happen. First we have Robert Zone, owner of Value Electronics and the person who founded this event. Robert, how are you doing?

00:52 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Excellent. Thank you, Scott, for having me on tonight.

00:55 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
You bet Glad to have you here. Next we have Jason Dustle, who is a technical trainer at AVPro Edge and the person who set up the system that we are going to be talking about. Hey, Justin, welcome back.

01:08 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Hey Scott, hey Robert, hey David, my friends, long time no see.

01:12 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Thanks for having me, we're all friends here, and David McKenzie, ceo of Fidelity in Motion, which is a compressionist company, and he was a value electronic shootout judge. David, welcome back. Thanks for having me back on you bet. So in part one of this discussion we were talking about the value electronics 2024 TV shootout the OLEDs. There were several OLED TVs in competition and they were evaluated separately from a set of three mini LED backlit LCD TVs. Quite the mouthful, but that's what you get with LCD TVs, I'm afraid. So let's quickly go over what we talked about in the last part, just to make sure that everybody's on board. This was the 20th anniversary of the shootout as a public event, right, robert?

02:15 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
That is correct, thank you. We started publicizing it nationwide in 2004, 20 years ago.

02:23 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
So this is a milestone, yes, and the important point about it is that you bring together the flagship TVs from the various major manufacturers, put them next to each other and calibrate them Very important so that they're all showing their best. Feed them the same signal which is Jason's responsibility, yes and have judges with forms that they can fill out to evaluate all the different performance characteristics of these TVs. Now we last, in the part one, we talked about the OLEDs. Now we're going to talk about the mini LEDs. First, I want to make sure everybody knows that we had two calibrators who actually made sure these TVs were performing at their best, and we have a picture of them to show you Dwayne Davis, known as D-Nice, on AVS Forum, on the left. Jason is there in the middle with Robert, and then, at the other end, cecil Mead of Classy Tech Calibrations, and I think you'll agree with me, gentlemen, that they did a great job.

03:43 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Yep, great guys, good friends, very. You know this community is so tight and amongst the Calibrator community these guys are very helpful. You know they're my tech support when I run into something funny. So, yeah, they're instrumental to the event and we certainly thank them. And what some people might not realize is they don't show up the night before and calibrate the TVs and then the event happens. They're there days and days. I've calibrated before for the event and between travel and all the other things I have to carve out a week to get this done. So really important to give those guys a shout out for spending so many days ahead of time and away from their families and away from their actual jobs to make the event go. So thank you so much, guys for doing that this year.

04:39 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Yeah, absolutely. And then we have a panel of judges who actually take a look at the TVs and evaluate their performance, and we have a picture of most of them anyway. In graphic number two let's see Robert go over with me again who they are right to left quickly on the extreme sorry left.

05:01 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Around me on the extreme left is Michael. Do you remember his?

05:08 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Oh man, his name is hard.

05:11 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
I specifically asked him to spell it for me phonetically. Mike Asachu, do you want to?

05:16 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Asachu.

05:17 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
Asachu.

05:19 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Okay, good, he's a calibrator. He certainly is Professional and consumer video, so he knows what he's doing.

05:25 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
You bet. And then we have John Riffamato, another level three ISF calibrator certified. And then we have David McKenzie.

05:37 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
A tall fellow. Yes.

05:41 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
And then is that Kenneth.

05:44 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Kenneth yep Kenneth Almestica. Yes, he's the Senior Director of Technical Operations at Paramount. Yes, so he knows what he's looking at.

05:55 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
He calls himself. He tells me I'm the film finisher.

05:59 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
That's what he tells me the finisher yeah.

06:01 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Yeah, and then we have David Medina me the finisher, yeah, yeah.

06:09 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
And then we have david medina, who is the director of encoding services at warner brothers.

06:11 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
That's right. And next to him is another famous calibrator. Tell me his name again oh, neelay patel yes, a very, he's a tech journalist actually a member of my tribe, he's a journalist, yeah yeah, but although I'm sure a fine calibrator as well. Well, I think he's level three ISF certified also. Yeah.

06:31 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
And he's the founder and editor in chief of the Verge yes, he is which is a really well-known, well-respected tech site. I cite it all the time myself.

06:42 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Thank you.

06:43 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
And then the two people that weren't there Charlie Anderson, a cinematographer, yes, and Richard Drutman, who is a writer, producer and director for Triode Pictures yes. So these guys know what they're looking at, no question about it. Okay, so let's take a look at the competition of the mini LEDs.

07:11
There were three of them the LG 65 QNED90TUA oh, qned, okay QNED. Right, which is QNED technology. It's LG's version of quantum dot LED backlit LCD. The N stands for nano cell. It's that's right, their particular brand or technology, that they use. The Samsung QN65, qn95d yes, quantum dot LED backlit LCD. And the new Sony K65XR90, otherwise known as the Bravia 9, their flagship QLED TV. And take a look at those prices. Interestingly enough, the Samsung and Sony are very close to each other $3,300 for the Samsung, $3,000 for the Sony. The LG is quite a bit cheaper, almost half as much, which I find kind of interesting.

08:15 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
One interesting thing, if you don't mind me interjecting here. Sure, of course. I believe it's the first time the LG has used PBA LCD panel yes, that's correct Instead of IPS, that's correct, which means that the characteristics of those panels is the IPS's strength was always that the off-axis viewing angle quality for color was superior to VA, but the contrast ratio suffered. So with LCD it's like you kind of have to pick the one that's best for your needs. That can't ever get all those things.

08:48
Um ideal right, exactly it's very, quite surreal actually to see a VA based LCD, a VA based LG LCD TV yes yes um, that's a very good point and you're exactly right.

09:02 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
You can have good contrast or you can have good off-axis performance. You cannot have both with an LCD generally speaking and then also in that list. There we want to say again that these TVs were being compared with a reference monitor, the Sony BVM HX 3110, a 31 inch professional coloring monitor which uses dual cell, dual layer I should say LCD and it costs 10 times as much $34,000. But it's what professionals use to color grade and evaluate the content as it's being created, so that's what they see when they're creating the content.

09:54 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
the tv that you have at home should reflect that or be as close to that as possible, which is why it's sitting there in this evaluation and uh, unless that I I hasten to add to that unless you've picked the correct modes on your tv or, ideally, had it calibrated, it will not be coming anywhere close to what the colorist sees in the suite. Um, the preset modes, the cinema mode or filmmaker mode, or different brands call it different things, um, uh, they're. They're a lot better than they used to be, but it's really important to stress that, that you cannot just plug the TV in and let it run, because you'll be seeing a very distorted picture of you. Do that.

10:34 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Yeah, exactly, and we're going to talk about that a little bit later in this episode, because that's one thing that you did at the shootout was evaluate out-of-box performance. That's right, but not in this case. In the case of the three LED TVs we saw there, they were all fully calibrated, correct. So quickly let's take a look at the system configuration. We looked at this in part one. Jason, you were responsible for putting all of this together with an 8x8 matrix switcher to be able to send any of the source devices to any or all of the TVs, and we were very careful with the cabling to make sure that that didn't introduce any differences one device to the other. I think it's a beautiful job.

11:25 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Thank you. Thank you, yeah, it's just insanely important for a live event like this for the signal to stay stable and for the correct signal to get to the correct displays and, um, you know, having multiple sources, multiple displays of different brands. Sometimes there's some Edith stuff you have to worry about, uh, but that's why I brought our uh, our flagship switch, the Axiom eight, because it has all the bells and whistles to uh, to to scale and to manage Edith and uh, all kinds of other cool toys too. But this was the Switch that we chose specifically for this event.

12:02 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
So, on the inputs, you had an Apple TV 4K, you had a Meridio test pattern generator, you had an Oppo Blu-ray player and a Magnitar Blu-ray player Ultra HD Blu-ray player, both of those, the Magnitar, trying to fill the void that Oppo left when they exited that business Everybody still regrets that and an OTA tuner, an over-the-air tuner, which I thought was brilliant to be able to see what's called Next Gen TV ATSC 3.0. And Robert, you were saying and I think Jason mentioned as well in the last episode how great that looks.

12:44 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
It's exceptionally great. They have a new algorithm for compression that is much more efficient, so it doesn't create artifacts compression artifacts as much they also. The minimum resolution is 1080p and all of the content is HDR. White color gamut.

13:05 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Even at 1080p.

13:06 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Yes, even at 1080p HDR white color.

13:10 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Wow, that's so great. And it's in what 70% of the US markets now?

13:15 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Yes, it is Something like that. It's across America yeah% of the US markets now. Yes, it is Something like that, it's across.

13:18 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
America, yeah, yeah. So get an antenna, over-the-air antenna, which doesn't have to be that expensive, and if your TV doesn't have a tuner, you can get one. Jason, you were mentioning, you found one for $30, or something.

13:32 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Yeah, they're everywhere now.

13:41 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
And for those who have been around long enough, you know, remember we had our old tvs that could not do hd, so we were all running out and buying external tuner boxes.

13:45 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
I remember that, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh weren't. Some of them were free from the government, I think at some point at some beginning in the beginning they were yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's. Uh, you know it's very, very, very affordable Run out, grab yourself a tuner. The one particular one we were using I apologize for escaping the brand escapes my mind, but it also was a DVR, so for somebody who is watching over the air broadcast, they could record their favorite shows and watch them later.

14:10 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
It actually has storage local storage.

14:13 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Yeah, yes, and I don't know the exact antenna that Robert was using there for the event, but just a basic ATSC 3.0 capable antenna plus the little tuner box and your off-air stuff. Looks awesome, it does.

14:29 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
This was a brand called Zapperbox and it's a dual tuner DVR over the air. Wow, so it has two tuners built in so you can watch one show and record another show at the same time.

14:44 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Fantastic. Okay, let's quickly recap the judging criteria that were the same for the OLEDs and the mini LED backlit LCD TVs. Yes, OLEDs and the mini-LED backlit LCD TVs. We have Graphic 5 that shows the scoring sheet, the ultimate scoring sheet. Oh no, that's the more detailed one.

15:05 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
That's one of many.

15:06 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
One of many. David was telling us in the last episode that there were many pages like this because you were evaluating HDR in a bright room and HDR in a dark room. Here are the overall categories SDR, reference, bright room, hdr general dark scenes, bright scenes and streaming. That's right. And all of those scores derived out of these many, many pages of more specific criteria like black level, shadow detail, color accuracy, all these different parameters that these judges, these golden eyed judges, looked at these TVs and evaluated, and I guess in both cases, the OLEDs and the mini LEDs among the things you were looking at was off-axis performance, right.

16:01 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Yes, that's correct.

16:04 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
And I'm sure that the OLEDs did better in that, generally speaking, than the.

16:09 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
LCDs.

16:10 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Just a little, just a little More than a little, no fault to anybody, it's just the characteristics of those technologies. So it's not like one brand was way better.

16:21 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
It's technology-based, it is.

16:23 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
It is. That's exactly right. So then we have a couple pictures of the actual process as it was happening, the TVs lined up and people looking at them, and here you can clearly see the one on the right is very washed out, so that must have been an LCD TV.

16:45 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
Well, I should that actually brings up a point, like sometimes in years past, where the event's been streamed online.

16:55 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Yeah.

16:55 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
People will watch and look in the comments and they'll make comparisons and they'll say that one looks pink or that one looks like it doesn't mean it's it's, it's the way the camera picks things up. Um, I can assure you, in real life, none of that's the case. They all look pretty similar. Right, it's worth? It's worth stating every time.

17:11 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
But thank you, good point. Good point, by the way, speaking of which you didn't live stream it this year, right? Good point, yes, good point, by the way, speaking of which you didn't live stream it this year, right?

17:18 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Just the opening remarks. Ah, but they shot video all day long and they're making about eight different videos.

17:25 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Oh good, and they'll be on your YouTube channel.

17:27 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Yes, they will be.

17:29 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Okay, by the way, we didn't mention it in part one, but we're putting the URL for Value Electronics website in the show notes and you can go see a lot of coverage of this and you'll have links to your YouTube channel there, I'm sure. Thank you, yes, okay. So going on to the next graphic, number eight, we can see people pointing out things, and I've been involved in this for a number of years. I wasn't there this year, but it's. It's a long day of looking at stuff and deciding how am I going to judge that, and it's really quite a thing. So let's take a look at the results. That's graphic nine, and we can see the cumulative result of all this judging, and we can see here Robert tell us what we're looking at.

18:38 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
So this is the summary of all the judges' ballots added together. The bold type represents the individual category for each TV that won that category. So what I always tell people is we pick the winner of the best on all categories, but that may not be the best TV for your use case. So use the same ballot and say well, I have a budget, so just pick the TVs that match your budget and cross off the other one. Or you may say I have a very bright room, I need high peak lumens. So you look at that category, pick the one that's best for your use case. You might say I like color fidelity. I'm a freak about color fidelity. So again, use the ballot to find out which is the best for each element and then match that to your use case and your liking.

19:30 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Mm-hmm. So yeah, exactly, your mileage may vary or your preference may vary, more to the point, but this is the accumulated result of all the judging and averaged into all these different categories. That's right. Javia 9, as it's colloquially known, is one tenth of a point more, got one tenth of a point more overall than the Samsung QN95D. So, as we said in part one, one of the results, one of the trends that we see in this shootout year after year after year, is that TVs get better and better and better and the difference between their performance get better and better and better and the difference between their performance gets narrower and narrower and narrower. Yes, yes, yes. So interestingly here though, the LG that that came out significantly less I mean not horribly, but still it. You can see that it did not take any of the categories.

20:40 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
It still did very well and, considering its price point, very respectable score.

20:44 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Yeah, exactly, it's half as much as the other two. Yeah, very good. So if budget is really a concern, you're not going to go wrong with the LG. Yeah, it's not going to suck, that's correct, that is correct, very true.

20:56 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Not going to go wrong with the lg. Yeah, it's not going to strike. Yeah, that's correct.

20:57 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
That is correct, very, very true so interestingly though, uh, sunny sony is had a sunny day, as it happens. They swept the shootout with both the oled and the mini led lcd, which congratulations Sony, and it's not terribly surprising to me. Sony makes a fine product, no question about it.

21:32 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
They're unique because they make the cameras, they make the reference monitor, they make the consumer TV and they really understand the pipeline, which I think gives them a little bit of an edge. But to see these other brands, to see the other brands like this close, is really special.

21:50 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
I mean that's fair to add to that. Yes, Sony has its fingers in many pies, but they're still playing to the same standards as everyone else. Thank you, Excellent point. The point is, of course, to go to D65 white point, at least for the terms of accuracy and high-quality viewing. The goal to go to D65 white point, at least for the purpose of accuracy and high quality viewing. The goal is to match D65 white point and to hit the right color targets and everything like that. So it's not that certain Experience in various different industry sectors, I'm sure is beneficial to them. There's no question about that. But the goal, the shared goal, is the same. Good point.

22:29 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
And they hit it very well. So those were the results of the TV shootout. Now that all happened on August 3rd, one day. Two of these evaluations, each with three TVs, took a very long time. I'm sure that was a long day for you.

22:51 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
I think it was about a nine-hour day man.

22:56 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
In the dark, In the dark yes. And it was. Unfortunately it was a rainy, you know, so it's not like you could go outside and, you know, reset your eyes and catch your breath. It was really rainy and really humid, and so it was nice to be inside in the dark with the air conditioner.

23:14
But yeah, you're right it's, uh, it's, it's, it's quite the day and you know, robert so kind to provide snacks and drinks and lunch and yes, and, and we were all so busy, uh. So, yeah, it's a long day, uh, you know, but you know how the old saying about, you know, having fun and time passing by, it's a, it's a great time yeah, but then there was a second day.

23:36 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
You did spend some time on that the next day, sunday, august 4th. That's right, where you took all. You took other examples of the six TVs in competition the three OLEDs and the three mini LEDs in larger sizes, right, and you stuck those next to each other. Robert, tell us a little bit about that exercise.

23:59 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
So we took the largest screen size for all of the same six TVs that were in day one, for all of the same six TVs that were in day one, and we put them butt up against each other on the same center line in their best picture mode out of the box, with no calibration, so that we can calculate and evaluate them how they can perform out of the box. It was a very successful day.

24:25 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
It's a very good exercise because I would wager that most consumers, when they buy a TV, are not going to get it calibrated.

24:36 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
You would win that bet, yeah, and you know, just to point out too, they're not just plugged in and turned on. Um, you know, people say these days, and they're 100, true, the tvs are pretty good out of the box, and they're 100, true, but not plug and play. You still have to do some things to them, right? We have to pick the most accurate picture mode. We have to turn off energy savings. We have to turn off all the motion shenanigans. So, yeah, after some, uh, very basic adjustments, taking it about energy savings, turning off motion, picking a good picture mode, uh, that was it. And um, surprisingly, some of them were, you could tell, even if your eyes weren't super trained. Uh, you could, you could tell that they were off compared to the reference monitor yes, but for being out of the box, best picture mode they were pretty darn good.

25:30 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
Yes, I think the point of the hardest thing is being able to tell the consumer which picture mode to pick and what's turn off, and that doesn't get any easier. It's frustrating in the sense that, like you say, some of them, provided you're in the right picture mode, are really accurate out of the. This phrase, out of the box, is dangerous because not as you said, it's not totally.

25:54 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
It's not exactly out of the box the whole.

25:56 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
The whole point is basically for this um day was to to look at them in the mode that could be chosen, that wouldn't involve spending money in calibration or putting a probe against the screen.

26:09
Um, and, yeah, it's, it's. I mean, we have things like filmmaker mode and that makes things easier, but it's it's. There's a lot of wasted potential and there are a lot of tvs across the world. They'll be sitting there in um, the deceptively named standard picture mode, which is absolutely does not, does not follow a standard at all. No, it's tinted blue, it's got all the clip, the white black clipping, the sharpening, the noise reduction, the motion on. Yeah, so I mean, a lot of the battle is just getting the consumer to to put the TV into the hands off mode, and I think it's fair to say that once you've done that these days, you're certainly in the right ballpark. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to convey this to the consumer, and the only way to know for sure what the display is doing is either to compare it to a reference, like we did today, or put a probe on it.

27:01 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
So it's a bit of a question. It's no different in any other hobby where performance is so critical. But squeezing out that last 20% is the most expensive part. So basic test patterns, shameless plug. Meridiocom, you can download some free test patterns. That's right. We have some amazing tools out there, like the Spears and Munsell disc. Yes, so somebody could do some very good damage to the TV once they plug it in and turn it on. But yeah, david is exactly right, picking the right mode can be confusing because everyone calls it something different.

27:39 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Yes, I normally say to people if there's a mode called cinema or movie, choose that.

27:50 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
Yes, and another good rule of thumb is if the control is called enhancer or dynamic, it's probably up to me Turn it off.

27:58 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Turn it off. Turn it off.

28:00 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
I call those bonus features. Turn off all the bonus features.

28:03 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Yep.

28:03 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
All the quote unquote enhancement features Excuse my personal plug, but we work very closely with our clients to make sure they're using the right picture mode and things like light sensors are shut off. Yep, good, good.

28:21 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Any good retailer or installer will do that.

28:25 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
That's right, that's right.

28:27 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
And you guys are certainly good at what you do and I appreciate it very much, thank you. So what was the end result? We took a look at these six TVs in larger picture sizes and here we are taking a look. I love this next picture particularly. It was a really beautiful one by Mark Jessamy of Ken Werner, who's a journalist. He wasn't a judge, he's a journalist, a colleague of mine, that's right and he just looks very intent.

29:03
I just love this picture, thank you, and there were some journalists there who were reporting on the event, not not participating as judges, although he certainly could have yes um. So what were the results? Uh, the sony a95l oled, the LG G4 OLED and the Samsung S95D OLED. Yes, what do you know? The top three choices were OLED.

29:35 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
As it should be.

29:36 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
As it should be, as what I always say. You know, if I'm going to choose between an OLED and an LCD, I'm going to choose an OLED, yes, and an lcd. I'm going to choose an oled yes, except in the rare case where you need to be competing against tremendous ambient brightness, like the sun, like the sun, outdoor tvs. I would not put an oled in an outdoor tv no no, the uh here.

30:02 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Uh, david and I um, we live walking distance to each other in downtown St Petersburg and I've been to many condos here. You know floor-to-ceiling windows and just beautiful. You know 34, 40th floor type places. And you're right, scott, to kind of piggyback off your point. I'm not going to put an OLED in a room like that.

30:26 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
I'm going to go for a super high performance lcd although, on that note, um qd oled has started to chip away at that. Yeah, that's a good point. It rips, so it's, it's, it's not, as it's not as far back as it used to be and I was going to plasma versus lcd thing I was going to bring up the same point in addition to to that.

30:46 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
So QD OLEDs are much brighter, with better color saturation as well and color volume. But in addition to that, mini LEDs have jumped up tremendously.

30:56 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
And again, just to make sure everybody understands mini LED refers to the fact that the LEDs behind the LCD panel are smaller. There are more of them in a greater number of dimming zones, so that improves the performance of an LCD quite a bit.

31:16 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
Yes, the thing that was interesting about Sunday was, yes, the first three winning displays were all the OLEDs and, as you said, that's not surprising. It is a superior performing display technology. That's right. The reason for at least from my perspective, the reason for them being better was actually not the contrast performance Like, don't get me wrong, oleds have superior contrast performance but because we were looking in a non-pitch black room, like there was some sun outside and the windows were, it was a dim room but not a pitch black room.

31:51
That's the sort of environment where the LCD based TVs, the limitations, really become apparent. But what struck me so much was that the color accuracy in the best preset modes out of the box on the three OLEDs were much better than the LCDs and I can't think of any reason why that should be the case. Like I said, I would expect the contrast performance to be poorer in the LCD TVs, but mean what we kept seeing in those tests was that the um, uh let me just consult my note here the the LCDs had more of a in their most accurate out of the box uh preset mode had a kind of blue tint to them all and I imagine you know, obviously you can calibrate the grayscale and all of those and mitigate that. But um the else, why would they all?

32:48 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
have that, have have a tendency, a bias toward that it makes them look brighter true, if they have a blue emphasis, that does make them appear brighter even. But but the fact that the, the best preset picture mode had that as well, I would expect right out of standard or vivid or one of those modes, but cinema mode.

33:12 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
Right, exactly, they should all be trying to hit D65. So I don't know what the reason for that is.

33:17 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Maybe a coding or a filter, perhaps.

33:20 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
Or maybe yeah, who knows. I'd love to know the answer to that. It made me revisit some views of mine for a while and this is probably the result of. I mean, any display I'm looking at is accurate. I've calibrated it.

33:41
But I've long been of the view that you know, the biggest, like I said, the biggest challenge is just getting the. The average person's not going to pay to have their tv calibrated right. The enthusiasts are. The biggest battle that we can hope to win is to get the more and more average users to improve the performance, the color accuracy of the tv they have at home for free, to pick the best preset mode. That's right, and I was of the view that once you've done that, pretty much any display these days it's going to be putting out reasonably accurate color of white, reasonably accurate gray scale and everything else, to the extent that it's not going to seriously change the feel, the mood, the emotions of the content, of the content. But I take that back because some of the clips we looked at one of them, I believe, was Dr Sleep, which is correct me if I'm wrong here I've not seen it it's a prequel or a sequel to the shining.

34:34 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
It's the sequel to the shining Right.

34:37 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
And there was a scene where the they're sitting at this, this bar, and the you know big old house and on the accurate display, so that's the Sony BVM monitors and the OLEDs. The feel of that scene was it had a kind of you know, greeny, saturated green feel to it, Like it really did feel like you could feel the oldness of the set, the surroundings. But on the LCDs that were, uh, had the more blue tint it was, it was a very different, uh different feeling I got from it.

35:15
So I what I'm saying is that I've been too uh lenient on uncalibrated displays and you have to get your tv calibrated, sorry, or, like I said, like, like, also, the only way to know what it's doing is to put a probe on it, at which point you might as well calibrate the thing anyway. Right, sure, but yeah. So there's still work to do in the LCD space, or at least in these models, for improving the best preset mode. On the other hand, the OLEDs some had issues that you wouldn't need calibrated out, but some of these are really close.

35:55 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Well, this leads directly to a point that we made in part. One which is one of the important parts of this shootout is not only that, it helps consumers pick a good TV to buy. It also encourages manufacturers to improve their product, and here is an example of LCD manufacturers an opportunity for LCD manufacturers to improve their product in their preset picture modes.

36:29 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
That's right.

36:32 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
So well, gentlemen, this has been a tremendously interesting conversation. I want to thank you both very much all three of you in fact for two episodes of really interesting discussion. Yes, so what got me final thoughts, jason, let's start with you.

37:03 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Yeah, I think, as bandwidth requirements get to be more and more, we're going to start using some HDMI 2.1 switches and infrastructure I think in the near future, maybe even next year which is an infrastructure, I think in the near future, maybe even next year. 4k120 is becoming more and more popular every month, I feel like. So bandwidth requirements from my end are going to be more capable switches, more capable cables and just making sure those systems stay up and running. But I'm excited for the future. There's some really cool technologies on the horizon that we're going to see in some bigger sizes here pretty soon and we're going to see some really cool technologies in smaller sizes, I think, here in the next couple of years. And you know we have many, many, many years to come of doing these types of events and having a lot of fun with it.

37:47 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Thank you.

37:48 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Sounds great, david.

37:52 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
Did you ask for two thoughts?

37:53 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
You can give me two thoughts, sure.

37:55 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
The number one thought I have from these events is we are so lucky to have LG Display, because if it wasn't for them producing TV-sized OLED panels, I don't know what this industry would look like. Maybe someone else would have done it, but for the longest time it was LG Display alone making the panels that went into these emissive displays. Now we have Samsung Display as well doing QD, which is excellent competition, and we are really lucky to have them both, because when Panasonic left the plasma space, there was a while where it was the choice was between lcd tvs. Um and polo tvs were not performing very well in all categories of that point and they weren't very big and crazy expensive.

38:47
Yeah right, right and um, I mean it, it. I shudder to think what the industry could have looked like if hadn't been for those two good point. So, um, and yeah, the other thought the we're lucky to have the manufacturers we have, um, they're, they're, they're doing a really good job, and compared to even 10 years ago, uh, this stuff's better. So the winner is the consumer.

39:15 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
There you go.

39:16 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
I like it.

39:16 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
I like it. There you go, and Robert, final word.

39:20 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Thank you. So one thing that I found kind of interesting is that most of the Hollywood studios and post-production houses have already bought or are buying this 4 000 nits dual cell mastering monitor and they're going to be making movies graded at 4 000 nets. You're going to see them come out, so that's when you'll probably have more of an interest in a brighter oled, which we will see. Every year they get brighter, and possibly even one of the QN 95 D, samsung or the Bravia 9 we probably a 9 advertises 4,000 nits now it almost goes to 4,000.

40:00
Okay, quite, which means also, if you have it.

40:03 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
If you have a movie mastered at 4,000 nits, you don't need to apply tone mapping or not. That's right.

40:09 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
So you're gonna want to have a Bravia 9 or a QN95D when these new movies come out, and the Bravia 9 in particular, with its new second generation of the very famous backlight master drive, which is the same exact technology that's in that monitor.

40:27 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
No, no, the BVM, it's quite a bit different in this sense.

40:30 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
No, it's not yeah.

40:32 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
Well, the Bvm is a dual cell lcd so it can control the the contrast on every pixel.

40:36 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
But I think what you're saying is that there are some engineering similarities between what what's no they're controlling every mini led on the bravia 9 and they're controlling the luminance level as well on every single mini led. When I thanked the engineers for adding more local dimming zones, they answered me we don't care about the local dimming zones, we're controlling each mini LED, it doesn't matter how many. We don't use the local dimming zones.

41:02 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Interesting, interesting OK.

41:06 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
If I could leave us with this. Sorry, robert, I didn't mean to interrupt you, did you still, please? I just want to give a nice if I could leave us with this. And sorry, robert, I didn't mean to interrupt you, did you still?

41:16 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
um, I just want to give a nice round of applause and a congratulations to robert for for 20 years.

41:23 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
You know, none of us would be here talking about these things with without his efforts and without his enthusiasm and his warm heart and his kindness. Thank you, wendy and leanne, and you know, everybody that helps with this event. It's a ton of work and, uh, the zon family. We really want to just want to put them in the spotlight and thank them for everything that they do thank you so very much thank you, that's it.

41:43 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
Couldn't agree more and it's such an important event thank you.

41:46 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Yeah, really is, which is why I like featuring it really on my show every year, because it's so important. There's a shot of the shootout page on Value Electronics' website which we will certainly put into the show notes so that you can go check it out.

42:05 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Thank you so much, thank you much, thank you.

42:15 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Well, thank you all for being here today and uh being with us. Uh, to go into some deep, deep details here on the uh 2024 value electronics tv shootout, my guests have been robert zone, owner of value electronics, jason dustell, technical trainer at AVPro Edge and the System Designer for the Shootout, and David McKenzie, ceo of Fidelity in Motion, a compressionist and one of the judges for the TV Shootout. Gentlemen, thank you so much.

42:44 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Thank you so much, thank you.

42:47 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
So thus endeth our coverage of this year's shootout. Now, if you have a question for me, you can send it along to htg at twittv and I will answer as many as I can right here on the show. And, as always, we thank you for your support of the TWIT Network with your membership in Club TWIT, which lets you access all the shows that Twit produces in their video form and lets you come into the Discord channel and hang out with like-minded Twits. Beautiful. So until next time, geek out, Thank you.