Getting into 4K video
- Thread starter ack
- Start date
So my problem with the Sony X800, which I have not discussed in detail yet, is that it has a bad reputation of locking up, even with the latest firmware updates. So I have been looking at the Panasonics...
Ive been using the Sony X800 for over a year now. It feeds it's signal into a Sony XBR 940D. Such a beautiful picture with both.
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Larry, that's a very good deal for that TCL 4K TV.
I never watch TV, for over twenty years now. Everything mainly on discs and to a much lesser extent from apps. Two Blu-ray discs I highly recommend and that I think you are going to really like are Baraka and Samsara. They are just regular 1080p Blu-ray discs, but were scanned @ 8K.
If you upscale those to 4K it's the very best moving experience you can get right now.
Regular Blu-rays upscale gorgeously well in 4K.
1. Nothing is best than real 4K material played on a 4K HDR TV.
2. Second best is 1080p material upscaled on a 4K HDR TV (you can upscale 480p DVD to 4K too).
3. Last is 1080p material played on a 1080p HDTV.
That's the one to get I think; thanks Ian. Apparently there is a new -K version coming by end of February 2019, will wait for it, and it has "HDR10, HDR10+, Dolby Vision, Hybrid Log Gamma" support, which is what we want. It looks like the "-K" adds HLG, which I think will be a great market success.
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I had mine for a year and only once I had to unplug the AC cord (few seconds), that's all.
Knock on wood, solid as the Rock of Gibraltar.
The Sony X800 has no worst reputation than the best of the best from any other brands, including Oppo and Panasonic. But you don't get Dolby Vision.
If you don't need Dolby Vision I cannot recommend any other 4K Universal player more.
When on sale ($150) it amazes me. Even for $200-250 it is still a high recommendation.
For $500, the Panasonic 820, but don't expect Bugatti build quality; for that go for the 9000 @ $999, the 820's higher end brother.
* @ one point last fall the Sony X800 was on clearance sale for $90 (brand new)!
I kid you not...Best Buy store.
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Larry loves concert music videos from DVDs and Blu-rays; those look their very best when upscaled to 4K from a UHD 4K HDR TV.
So I am pretty sure 'upscaling' is really pixel interpolation in the video realm; audio is different, and it means different things. With video, it has been proven for some years now that it actually works up to a point, meaning, you won't get 4K-realism; you get better than 1080p, so it's somewhere between 2K and 4K. Halfway? Perhaps.
More than just 4K, HDR is really what makes 4K shine, and I think the HLG format more than any other, at least at the moment.
One of my concerns was potentially throwing money away, should HD picture quality actually drop. This is just not the case. I have been swapping between my Kuro and the new Sony and there is just no comparison. Moreover, I will clone a couple of blu-rays, then play them simultaneously on the two TVs: one blu-ray player will feed the 4K Sony, the other (yes I have two) the 2K plasma - for an easy A/B test.
Sony Sony XBR65A8F calibration settings
So I had the A8F ISF-calibrated, and although the resulting graphs look very close to ideal, the picture is nowhere near as good and natural as my own calibration using the naked eye and some basic video knowledge. So I inherited some of the final pro color calibrations into mine, and here are the settings, for anyone who cares, and most apply to all inputs but there are variations:
Picture mode: Custom
Auto picture mode: Off
Brightness: 32
Contrast: 80 (cable), 85 (all others)
Gamma: 0 or -1
Color: 43 (cable), 48 (all others)
Black level: 50
Black adjust: Low
Adv. contrast enhancer: Off
Peak luminance: Medium
Hue: 0
Color temp: Warm
R-Gain: -3
G-Gain: -3
B-Gain: -8
R-bias: 1
G-bias: -4 (human eyes are most sensitive to green)
B-bias: 0
Color gamma adjustment points 10 thru 1 [R,G,B offsets]: 10[0,-3,0], 9[0,0,0], 8[0,0,0], 7[0,0,0], 6[4,1,0], 5[0,-1,0], 4[0,-2,0], 3[0,-1,0], 2[-4,0,0], 1[-20,0,0]
Live color: Off
Sharpness: 45 (cable), 50 (all others)
Reality Creation: Manual, Resolution 30
Random noise reduction: Low
Digital noise reduction: low
Smooth gradation: Low
MotionFlow: Smooth, Smoothness: 3, Clearness: Low
CineMotion: Low (higher settings can produce visible interpolation pixelation with fast-moving scenes; the A9F with the faster processor should be able to do better here)
Light sensor: Off
All other defaults
Good calibration content is Casino Royale and 4K youtube walk-around videos, like those by GlobeTrotterAlpha and Nature Relaxation Films - it's really great to see the world through the eyes of these great videographers.
Finally, OLED outperforms the already excellent Kuro plasma by a considerable margin in everything.
-ack
So I had the A8F ISF-calibrated, and although the resulting graphs look very close to ideal, the picture is nowhere near as good and natural as my own calibration using the naked eye and some basic video knowledge. So I inherited some of the final pro color calibrations into mine, and here are the settings, for anyone who cares, and most apply to all inputs but there are variations:
Picture mode: Custom
Auto picture mode: Off
Brightness: 32
Contrast: 80 (cable), 85 (all others)
Gamma: 0 or -1
Color: 43 (cable), 48 (all others)
Black level: 50
Black adjust: Low
Adv. contrast enhancer: Off
Peak luminance: Medium
Hue: 0
Color temp: Warm
R-Gain: -3
G-Gain: -3
B-Gain: -8
R-bias: 1
G-bias: -4 (human eyes are most sensitive to green)
B-bias: 0
Color gamma adjustment points 10 thru 1 [R,G,B offsets]: 10[0,-3,0], 9[0,0,0], 8[0,0,0], 7[0,0,0], 6[4,1,0], 5[0,-1,0], 4[0,-2,0], 3[0,-1,0], 2[-4,0,0], 1[-20,0,0]
Live color: Off
Sharpness: 45 (cable), 50 (all others)
Reality Creation: Manual, Resolution 30
Random noise reduction: Low
Digital noise reduction: low
Smooth gradation: Low
MotionFlow: Smooth, Smoothness: 3, Clearness: Low
CineMotion: Low (higher settings can produce visible interpolation pixelation with fast-moving scenes; the A9F with the faster processor should be able to do better here)
Light sensor: Off
All other defaults
Good calibration content is Casino Royale and 4K youtube walk-around videos, like those by GlobeTrotterAlpha and Nature Relaxation Films - it's really great to see the world through the eyes of these great videographers.
Finally, OLED outperforms the already excellent Kuro plasma by a considerable margin in everything.
-ack
Indeed, the TV needs quite a few hours to break in; the first 20 or so were really challenging to watch. I can tell you, for me the ISF calibration continues to be tough to watch - too bright and the colors are over-saturated.
I am noticing the same thing, too bright and over-saturated colors. I have already turned the brightness down, mine was set to max at the factory! Nonetheless, on the 4K picture, it does look really good. Hopefully once burned in, I will have the ability to adjust out the saturation.BTW, I am using an ARC HDMI return to my Onkyo receiver, for some reason this fails to give me an audio signal, so the installer set up an optical return for the audio. He tells me the Sony ARC return is not compatible with the Onkyo ARC input,anyone else having an issue like this?
This weekend I talked with an installer of large TV's - he told me that the OLED burn-in issues are real and they are having many problems with them. Locally manufacturers are replacing screens during the warranty period, but no one knows what will happen after these two years.
Burn in issues were also a concern with my Pioneer plasma. The main thing is to not let a single image stay on the screen for too long. This can be a real pain with channel logos that are sitting in a corner for extended periods.Simple fix...just change channels occasionally.
With the OLED, I think with some common sense and care, the burn in issue should be minimized.
With the OLED, I think with some common sense and care, the burn in issue should be minimized.
Burn-in issues have existed with any technology. This Sony has a pixel-shift feature, which must not be turned off. I would tend to think the lower-end OLED models on the market would eschew things like that, and you get what you pay for.
Yes, the problem existed and was solved with other technologies . Unfortunately the problem with current OLEDs is now much more serious than before and no solution exists now. I would not buy a TV where I must avoid displaying static content or images with static parts displayed over 20 minutes in order to prevent permanent damage. Surely YMMV.
Surely the mileage varies here - the pixel-shifting works, once the CPU senses static images over a few minutes.
ack, not sure if this applies to your TV and you might already know this, but in order to use HDR I had to assign it to the HDMI input. I forget where it is, but there is a setting that will require you to restart your TV.
I learned this by downloading an HDR sample on the XBox One X and noticing that I could never enable HDR. Once I changed the setting, the player recognized it and all was good.
I learned this by downloading an HDR sample on the XBox One X and noticing that I could never enable HDR. Once I changed the setting, the player recognized it and all was good.
