UK reviewers favor LCD over OLED TVs for HDR content

We are quite used to the fact that all reviews and tests to show that OLED TVs outperform the best LCD and Plasma TVs, but in a recent HDR shootout in the UK, LCD TVs actually were favored by the audience.

The UK HDTVTestweb site pitched several LCD TVs against LG'd 65" OLED65E6 TV. The TV that got the most votes was Samsung's UE65KS9500 (UN6KS9800 in the US), and the runner up was Panasonic's TX-65DX902 (65DX900 in the US). The shootout used several HDR clips.

The main explanation for the poor performance of LG's OLED TV was the relatively lower peak brightness - the LCDs were much brighter, which hurts the performance in an HDR image. Many of the viewers still praised the OLED TV for its vibrant colors, strong Dolby Vision HDR performance and the total absence of the sort of light haloing/backlight bleed issues that all LCD screens suffered from.

HDTVTest also ran a similar test for standard (SDR) content - and then the OLED TV was chosen as the best TV by far (18 votes our of 22).

Source: 
Posted: Jul 26,2016 by Ron Mertens

Comments

Well of course OLED is going to lose when there is ambient light (the huge projection screen in the rear).

But also of course that begs the question - do enough people use their TVs in fully darkened rooms that OLED will succeed? I'm starting to suspect that it'll go the way of the plasma. Only appreciated by cinephiles.

OLEDs> LCDs  Why:  the elegance of OLED vs lcd production processes - BOM manifests- Thinness- refresh rates- Coolness factor.... soon we could add the price point to that list.

Another reason that OLED display technology is better.

Not relying on a  LED backlight for their product like it's 2005.Like I opined, LCD is the rotting corpse of the display field. It needs to be buried not praised

I think it might depends on what type of HDR content they chose to play. OLED does not have advantage in terms of absolute max brightness at the moment. If the demo video focus on showing blindly bright content, OLED TV wont be impressive enough. But in terms of displaying fine details in very dark content, LCD, no matter LED, or QD-LED, they are no where near OLED TV.

Personally, I think there is little merit in this particular shootout.

I brought this up elsewhere that on reading the Forbes article, there is a passage in the section on the LG OLED model that states that black levels had to be brought up from the default value of "50" to equal the LCD. To me, this suggests that NONE of the displays in the "shootout" were calibrated, and makes the shootout either entirely bogus or possibly orchestrated by an "interested" party.

As I see it, it is impossible to conduct a true display "shootout" without properly calibrating the displays. Unfortunately, IMHO, Forbes demonstrated that they were less than technically astute when it came to publishing this article. In my opinion, this was likely more of a crap shoot rather than a properly conducted shootout.

Last, FWIW, the latest issue of "Consumer Reports" in the US rates one of the current generation LG OLEDs (if I am not mistaken the 55" E6) as the best over all models of TVs rated in the article.