Author Topic: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them  (Read 21858 times)

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Offline BrianHG

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #150 on: February 09, 2022, 12:01:01 am »
Sharp demonstrated a small mobile MEMS display that operated on a similar principle, but instead of an LCD panel, a MEMS array of shutters blocks the backlight. 
I've heard about this back in 2008 at a trade show.  Infinity : 1 contrast ratio.  It was for Cinema grade projectors.  However, at the time, the light sources were still too hot (no super-bright led/laser white) and there was no way to cool the center of the device.
 

Online tszaboo

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #151 on: February 09, 2022, 11:40:36 am »
My criticism of LG's design shouldn't be considered an attack. The competition between LG's OLEDs and Samsung's LCDs is excellent for consumers as they've raised picture quality and lowered prices at the same time. Still, we have to acknowledge both the advantages and disadvantages of any new technology.
Yeah, it is insane how good TVs picture quality became in the last few years. I would argue that a 4K LG OLED is plenty good for watching movies. Of course the new QD-OLED will be somewhat better, brighter. I think the most advancement in the next years is actually not going to come from the panels themseves, rather the upscaling methods, motion smoothing, and when streaming services will improve their quality.
And about burn-in: I've never heard of anyone who has OLED who would be worried about burn-in. Just use the damn thing.
Same about the SSD that I bough 7 years ago. Flash on it got used up and became extremely slow. So I went out and bought an equivalent size SSD for 30 EUR. After 7 years.
 

Offline Neper

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #152 on: February 09, 2022, 03:16:12 pm »
I still prefer radio. The picture is much better.
If I knew everything I'd be starving because no-one could afford me.
 
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Online TimFox

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #153 on: February 09, 2022, 04:49:34 pm »
50 years ago, the American comedian Stan Freberg did a series of radio commercials in favor of radio advertising showing the power of imagination in the radio listener vs. the limited vision on a TV screen.
My favorite involved converting Lake Michigan into the world's largest ice-cream soda, completed by the Royal Canadian Air Force carefully dropping the world's largest cherry on top, accompanied by 10,000 cheering extras.
 

Offline Zero999

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #154 on: February 09, 2022, 09:27:40 pm »
I’d be curious to know why RGB LED backlighting hasn’t become widespread in LCDs, instead we create broad-spectrum white light and filter it. Sony does it in some models (“Triluminos”), but I’m not aware of others.

A few years ago there was hype over blue-phase displays that would work kind of similar to this display Mike tore apart:


... but for full-colour active matrix.  The advantage is obvious: you eliminate the three subpixels, so you can simplify the manufacturing of the panel and drive electronics.  The RGB transition rate however would need to be quite fast to get over the rainbow effect, probably above 100Hz (I'm not sure how fast DLP colour wheels go in the real world) which would put the necessary switching speed around a couple milliseconds.  Allegedly blue-phase could achieve 1ms, but we've still not seen it appear commercially.
My parents used to have one of those. It was given to them by British Gas. I didn't take it apart but the rainbow effect was visible, when an object is moved across it very quickly. I suppose it's cheap and uses less battery power, than a TFT. The new one uses a TFT though.

I wonder if there are any scopemeters which use these sorts of displays? The longer battery life might outweigh being limited to only 8 colours.
 

Online MK14

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #155 on: February 09, 2022, 09:32:04 pm »
I still prefer radio. The picture is much better.

But you get an even clearer picture (in your minds eye), and longer battery life   :-DD  with paper books.
 
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Offline tooki

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #156 on: February 09, 2022, 09:44:36 pm »
My criticism of LG's design shouldn't be considered an attack. The competition between LG's OLEDs and Samsung's LCDs is excellent for consumers as they've raised picture quality and lowered prices at the same time. Still, we have to acknowledge both the advantages and disadvantages of any new technology.
Yeah, it is insane how good TVs picture quality became in the last few years. I would argue that a 4K LG OLED is plenty good for watching movies. Of course the new QD-OLED will be somewhat better, brighter. I think the most advancement in the next years is actually not going to come from the panels themseves, rather the upscaling methods, motion smoothing, and when streaming services will improve their quality.
And about burn-in: I've never heard of anyone who has OLED who would be worried about burn-in. Just use the damn thing.
Same about the SSD that I bough 7 years ago. Flash on it got used up and became extremely slow. So I went out and bought an equivalent size SSD for 30 EUR. After 7 years.
”Plenty good” is a wild understatement. I recently discovered that one local cinema has (for a few years already) one of the first direct-view LED screens in the world; a high quality 4K video wall, basically. And in one of the articles I read about it, it mentioned that home TVs have been better than cinema projectors for a long time. I think people forget just how much projectors suck, and underestimate just how good typical modern LCD panels are. And OLED (and direct-view LED) are better still.

The one thing where LCDs (and certain OLEDs, like the ones in phones) still disappoint is viewing angle. While todays models are light years ahead of early LCDs, there are still subtle color shifts that I find distracting. CRTs and plasmas were excellent in this regard, and OLED TVs seem to be. Projection varies wildly, depending on the type of screen. High-gain screens have distracting reflection patterns. :/
 

Online coppice

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #157 on: February 09, 2022, 09:50:05 pm »
And in one of the articles I read about it, it mentioned that home TVs have been better than cinema projectors for a long time. I think people forget just how much projectors suck, and underestimate just how good typical modern LCD panels are.
For a long time most good cinemas have used 3 channel DLP projectors, which are capable of very high quality results on a large screen.
 

Offline tooki

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #158 on: February 09, 2022, 09:53:04 pm »
And in one of the articles I read about it, it mentioned that home TVs have been better than cinema projectors for a long time. I think people forget just how much projectors suck, and underestimate just how good typical modern LCD panels are.
For a long time most good cinemas have used 3 channel DLP projectors, which are capable of very high quality results on a large screen.
I’m well aware. They’re not even close.

(LCD projection is essentially dead. With Sony having exited the cinema projector market, all cinema projectors are now DLP. Most non-cinema ones are too, although rarely as 3-chip types.)

For example, do you know that cinemas do not support HDR in any way? Home theater overtook cinemas in terms of picture quality years ago. (Sound is an altogether different matter.)
« Last Edit: February 09, 2022, 09:55:18 pm by tooki »
 

Online coppice

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #159 on: February 09, 2022, 09:54:50 pm »
And in one of the articles I read about it, it mentioned that home TVs have been better than cinema projectors for a long time. I think people forget just how much projectors suck, and underestimate just how good typical modern LCD panels are.
For a long time most good cinemas have used 3 channel DLP projectors, which are capable of very high quality results on a large screen.
I’m well aware. They’re not even close.

For example, do you know that cinemas do not support HDR in any way? Home theater overtook cinemas in terms of picture quality years ago. (Sound is an altogether different matter.)
Maybe the cinemas gave up bothering. The DLP projectors themselves are capable of an extreme dynamic range.
 

Offline tooki

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #160 on: February 09, 2022, 09:56:06 pm »
There aren’t any distribution standards for HDR cinema.

But with the comparatively low contrast of projection screens it barely matters.
 

Online tom66

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #161 on: February 09, 2022, 10:12:47 pm »
”Plenty good” is a wild understatement. I recently discovered that one local cinema has (for a few years already) one of the first direct-view LED screens in the world; a high quality 4K video wall, basically. And in one of the articles I read about it, it mentioned that home TVs have been better than cinema projectors for a long time. I think people forget just how much projectors suck, and underestimate just how good typical modern LCD panels are. And OLED (and direct-view LED) are better still.

Would love to see one of these in person.  Some older direct-view LED displays look pretty awful, but I've noticed a marked improvement in their performance now.  Cinema will be a true challenge.
 

Offline tooki

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #162 on: February 10, 2022, 12:00:33 am »
Yeah, I’ve been meaning to go see a movie there so I can form an opinion on the screen. Given how good modern video walls are (at least high-quality ones), I expect it to look great.
 

Offline bw2341

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #163 on: February 10, 2022, 01:14:39 am »
There's a high end LED video wall at my local Apple Store and I was able to walk right up to it. Very impressive. The light modifiers blend the LEDs together very well so I was not able to discern individual LEDs. Even though the display faces the outside glass curtain wall, there was plenty of contrast in the image. They were using it for the in-store teaching sessions. This was in The Before Times, of course.

Linus of Linus Tech Tips considered acquiring Samsung's The Wall MicroLED display as the ultimate YouTuber showoff piece. He was dissuaded from moving forward for multiple reasons. Experienced installers informed him of the extreme power, cooling and building structural requirements. Also, frequent replacement of modules due to failure is to be expected. In fact, the sell sheet for LG's competitive product mentions the inclusion of on-site spares in the package.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2022, 01:17:32 am by bw2341 »
 

Offline bw2341

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #164 on: February 10, 2022, 01:31:14 am »
Projection varies wildly, depending on the type of screen. High-gain screens have distracting reflection patterns. :/

This is probably an artifact of 3D capable theatre screens. Most theatres use circular polarization optics to project the separate left and right eye images. The screen material has to retain the polarization of the incident light when reflecting it back to the viewer. Otherwise, there will be crosstalk between the left and right eye images. The screen has to be high gain so that the image is acceptably bright through the 3D glasses.
 

Offline tooki

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #165 on: February 10, 2022, 07:58:00 am »
There's a high end LED video wall at my local Apple Store and I was able to walk right up to it. Very impressive. The light modifiers blend the LEDs together very well so I was not able to discern individual LEDs. Even though the display faces the outside glass curtain wall, there was plenty of contrast in the image. They were using it for the in-store teaching sessions. This was in The Before Times, of course.
The one at an Apple Store is also the only top-quality one I’ve seen up close, and I agree that they look fantastic!


Projection varies wildly, depending on the type of screen. High-gain screens have distracting reflection patterns. :/

This is probably an artifact of 3D capable theatre screens. Most theatres use circular polarization optics to project the separate left and right eye images. The screen material has to retain the polarization of the incident light when reflecting it back to the viewer. Otherwise, there will be crosstalk between the left and right eye images. The screen has to be high gain so that the image is acceptably bright through the 3D glasses.
Nope. High-gain screens have been used for decades, they have nothing to do with 3D. They use surface structures that prevent light from scattering off-angle as waste light. But the disadvantage is that it reduces viewing angle. (Fun fact 1: top-quality cinema screens use surfaces so delicate that touching it ruins it. Fun fact 2: cinema screens are acoustically transparent because they have the front speakers behind them.)

You’re probably correct about an incompatible screen interfering with polarization 3D, but I don’t know for a fact.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2022, 07:59:42 am by tooki »
 

Offline BrianHG

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #166 on: February 10, 2022, 08:30:30 am »
This is probably an artifact of 3D capable theatre screens.
Aww, they are still pushing that crap.
 

Online tom66

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #167 on: February 10, 2022, 09:22:04 am »
This is probably an artifact of 3D capable theatre screens.
Aww, they are still pushing that crap.

Films are still made and shown in 3D, though it is becoming less common.   3D TV/home cinema is basically dead.

The last time I saw a 3D film in the cinema was 2014 and it made me quite unwell.   
 

Online Siwastaja

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #168 on: February 10, 2022, 09:40:45 am »
But with the comparatively low contrast of projection screens it barely matters.

Yes, what limits dynamic range in projection setting is the white (or silvery) screen reflect the light on the walls, ceiling, floor, even the people, and this light ends up back on the screen; this can't be avoided even if the projector optics are perfect!

The whole theater and all its materials could be painted matte black, but somehow consumers don't want that either.

A screen of a "large TV" can be made nearly black, meaning it reflects very little light coming in from the front, solving this problem.
 

Online tom66

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #169 on: February 10, 2022, 09:54:54 am »
Not to mention despite the power of a projection bulb (3-10 kW in current cinemas) it's still a relatively small amount of light dispersed over a large screen.

A huge LED matrix could achieve, say, 500W/m^2 without breaking too much of a sweat, especially if it had thermal ABL (brightness limited by temperature or average power, rather than just peak power.)   This would massively improve the apparent contrast ratio.  I could see some of these screens pulling 10-20kW for certain scenes.

(Maybe cinemas will start to prefer darker films, saving them money on the electricity bill and the maintenance of the panel.)

I do worry we'll see films with lots of dead pixels/modules though.  I've seen a few large outdoor matrices with entire blocks of ~32x32 pixels showing garbage.
 

Online themadhippy

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #170 on: February 10, 2022, 11:18:42 am »
Quote
cinema screens are acoustically transparent
And is why  early adopters of digital projectors often found the image wasn't as good as expected when projecting onto an existing screen,pixels would disappear through the little holes in the screen that made it acoustically transparent.
Quote
3-10 kW in current cinemas
so much for modern technology being more efficient ,the old vicy 5 had a 2-2.5kw lamp that was more than bright enough for the average uk cinema
 

Offline rsjsouza

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #171 on: February 10, 2022, 11:54:44 pm »
And in one of the articles I read about it, it mentioned that home TVs have been better than cinema projectors for a long time. I think people forget just how much projectors suck, and underestimate just how good typical modern LCD panels are.
For a long time most good cinemas have used 3 channel DLP projectors, which are capable of very high quality results on a large screen.
I’m well aware. They’re not even close.

(LCD projection is essentially dead. With Sony having exited the cinema projector market, all cinema projectors are now DLP. Most non-cinema ones are too, although rarely as 3-chip types.)

For example, do you know that cinemas do not support HDR in any way? Home theater overtook cinemas in terms of picture quality years ago. (Sound is an altogether different matter.)
HDR still exists, but in very limited projection rooms around the globe. I am fortunate enough to live in the same metroplex as Cinemark HQ and they have the latest releases in the technology there. My wife worked in cinema HDR projection some ten years ago and she touched (and fixed bugs!) on a number of features of cinema projection for what was back then the only movie still in production in HDR/HFR: The Hobbit trilogy.

A Christie or Barco projector blows a home TV out of the water.
« Last Edit: February 11, 2022, 02:58:57 am by rsjsouza »
Vbe - vídeo blog eletrônico http://videos.vbeletronico.com

Oh, the "whys" of the datasheets... The information is there not to be an axiomatic truth, but instead each speck of data must be slowly inhaled while carefully performing a deep search inside oneself to find the true metaphysical sense...
 

Offline BrianHG

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #172 on: February 11, 2022, 01:15:56 am »
A Christie or Barco projector blows a home TV out of the water.
OMG, Duh......

125k$ to 750k$ and even higher $ projectors will obviously roast any consumer shit.
 

Offline rsjsouza

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #173 on: February 11, 2022, 02:58:20 am »
A Christie or Barco projector blows a home TV out of the water.
OMG, Duh......

125k$ to 750k$ and even higher $ projectors will obviously roast any consumer shit.

Pay attention, dude. The quote I was referring on my post is:

(...)Home theater overtook cinemas in terms of picture quality years ago. (Sound is an altogether different matter.)
Vbe - vídeo blog eletrônico http://videos.vbeletronico.com

Oh, the "whys" of the datasheets... The information is there not to be an axiomatic truth, but instead each speck of data must be slowly inhaled while carefully performing a deep search inside oneself to find the true metaphysical sense...
 

Offline tooki

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #174 on: February 11, 2022, 08:01:33 am »
But with the comparatively low contrast of projection screens it barely matters.

Yes, what limits dynamic range in projection setting is the white (or silvery) screen reflect the light on the walls, ceiling, floor, even the people, and this light ends up back on the screen; this can't be avoided even if the projector optics are perfect!

The whole theater and all its materials could be painted matte black, but somehow consumers don't want that either.

A screen of a "large TV" can be made nearly black, meaning it reflects very little light coming in from the front, solving this problem.
Precisely.
 


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