OLED has been the big promise of the perfect display but it seems they are having problems getting them cost effective. Samsung put the kabosh on their OLED's this year in favor or more development.

They will come eventually but by the time they do it's possible that local dimming backlit LED sets will be really cheap, making it even harder for OLED to break into the market.

Either way it's all good news for consumers. In order for OLED to compete with LED it has to be priced realistically. And for LED to compete with OLED it has to have "almost" as good quality.

Seems to me that there is a following based on historical factors no longer applicable, with a voracity similar to that of rabid Apple Mac adherents.

But I could be wrong ;-)

geoff

I've always had an issue with the "LED" description for LED-backlit LCDs. I know it's now a real established misnomer (and that's that !), but by that logic surely non-LED LCDs should have been called 'Flourescents" !

Now there is huge confusion in the public mind to differentiate between LED-LCD and 'real' LED (direct-radiating LEDs ,which currently are based on 'organic' LEDs, aka OLED)

geoff

Well, at least "real" LED screens will be called OLED, which helps a little.

Honest marketers (yes, there are actually one or two in the known universe) have labeled LED-backlit TVs exactly as that, including "backlit" in the name. I imagine the salesmen hate that as it's just one more technical term that confuses customers, and upsets them when they understand the explanation means it's not actually an LED display.

I've had a few strong discussions with friends while gazing at the TVs in big electronics stores as they "oooh" and "ahhh" over the amazing LED technology and talk about how wonderful all those little colored LEDs are. I try educating them about the fact it's still LCD display technology with the LED merely being the light source behind the LCDs, and i get either a blank stare, a condescending "no, you don't understand, these are LED displays", or a hostile "what? how do the manufacturers get away with this lie?"

Hulk, OLEDs have the potential to be far cheaper than LED displays. We're talking cereal box cheap. But the problem is the stubborn low, low yield from current manufacturing. The old wafer process works for two-inch displays for your phone, but there has to be a new process for higher yield, larger screens. Currently in the lab is the potential of 3-D printing.

Well, i have to retract my claim that i don't even own an HD TV. I stopped at WalMart tonight to pick up the cheapest monitor i could find for a new file server i'm building, but they only had a couple models i wasn't interested in. Meanwhile, next aisle over they had a 24" Vizio LED-backlit LCD on sale for an almost give-away price, only about $35 more than i had planned on paying for the monitor. I was impressed that for something that cheep it's a full 1080 instead of 720, has HDMI, PC, component, composit, USB, cable, ethernet, and wifi. It also has Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, Vudu, and a bunch of internet apps built in too.

At the moment though, the only HD source i have to feed it is my camcorder, and i don't have the mini HDMI cable to connect it. I imagine TimeWarner would want to raise my monthly fee way above the current $10.09 to include HD, so i'm hesitant to go that route. Stuff on Netflix that was rescanned from film looks very good!

Well, I made my decision and bought a Sony KDL-55W900A, one of the top performers in Choice Magazine. I checked in the store that the motion blur was almost absent in a test clip that bothered me on my old TV.

I got it home and set it up next to my old LG plasma, and was never more underwhelmed! The colours were pale, lacked contrast, had a cold bluish hue and the image was a bit blurred (watching local SD TV transmissions).

I then tweaked the picture controls, wondering what the difference between "backlight" and "brightness" would be and what "picture" meant ("contrast" apparently"). Eventually I got it looking something like the old one before I called my wife to have a close look. (I feared, "You didn't just spend $2000 on that thing, did you?")

LCD/LED hasn't overtaken plasma yet in my opinion!

Except for power usage: 68W instead of nearly 500W!

I now have to find a suitable platform to sit it on so that the front surround speakers don't block the screen.

I understand your problem but I believe the problem is not the new TV it's the SD signal.
Just about any old TV will look better with a SD signal. My 32" Samsung 720 HDTV looks much better with SD programming over my Sony 46" 1080 HDTV. Once I switch to HD programming it's a different story.

A friend last year bought a new LED/LCD Samsung HDTV, 80% of what he views is in SD.
The picture was so bad he had to return it and stay with his old Panasonic Plasma which looks very good with SD programming.

You saw the TV in the store, it must of looked really good or you won't have bought it. With a good HD signal I think you will be very happy. Any new 1080X1920 HDTV will never make a 720X480 picture look good. The picture will always look soft burry and milky.

I found it takes days and sometimes weeks to get a new TV tweaked to your liking.
My HDTV Sony has menus in side menus that can be tweaked for gamma, black levels, and much more.

Give it time.

Jerry K

It is probably just because of the SD signal, but to be sure I'd check it with some HD content, maybe a blu-ray movie or a show you know is supposed to look good.
You never know it could be a faulty TV.

Make sure it's a movie that is actually supposed to look good. Picture can vary greatly depending on the source. Some blu-rays are just poorly done and they will not look good. One great looking movie I remember is A dangerous Method. One of the best looking movies I have ever seen.

I have a Sony a generation older than that one and the picture is fantastic. Every Sony TV in that price range and size that I've seen looked pretty good.

And yes, it will take some tweaking to get the best picture out of it, but when it's all set it can look amazing as long as you feed it good content. These tvs are less forgiving and badly shot and/or authored movies and shows will be exposed as such.

Just looked up reviews on the Sony KDL-55W900A here at Clutch Field:

http://www.crutchfield.com/p_15855W900/Sony-KDL-55W900A.html?showAll=N&search=40_lcd_bravia&skipvs=T#customer-reviews-tab

Out of 21 reviews 19 give it a 5 the highest mark available. We know its a great tv.
____________________________________________________
Best Buy reviews are also very high.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/sony-55-class-54-5-8-diag--led-1080p-240hz-smart-3d-hdtv/8653079.p?id=1218882642697&skuId=8653079#tab=reviews

Jerry K

I have discovered that my cable company is feeding me a few HD channels, probably as a teaser to get me to upgrade, i'm sure.

The HD is good indeed, but it's sharp, almost too sharp, with rough edges. Also gentle gradation like face tones often lose detail and look like a flat pancake. Yes, i know this is probably due to too much compression of the HD signal, but still, it is what it is, and that's what comes up on the screen for people to see.

The better network SD signals are still more pleasing to view than HD.

Chein, you can't trust the advertised specs. If you look at the technical specs, you probably have a 720P TV with a down scaler from 1080,so that marketing can claim it is a 1080 TV.

I did. Tech specs say 1080p.

You can also check if the TV has a setting for "Edge Enhancement". If that is set too high you get what you are describing.

Yes, I saw the TV in the store before I bought it, and it looked OK to me, surrounded by similar LCD/LED TVs. I did see one or two plasmas, and they didn’t look much different. It was difficult, however, to ignore the 84 inch 4K sets playing razor sharp scenes. Now that is when you can say “WOW". Unfortunately I won’t be around when local TV broadcasts that!

Yes, good DVDs look better and Blu-rays even better, but unfortunately, 90% of our viewing is free to air broadcast TV, and most of that is 3-4 mbps MPEG2 crap.

Edit

Sorry, I said kbps when I meant mbps.

90% of our viewing is free to air broadcast TV, and most of that is 3-4 kbps MPEG2 crap.

Would this be a (free to air satellite receiver) with a composite or S-VHS out to your TV?

Jerry K

@Jerry K

No, normal digital TV reception. I often record TV programmes and always in so-called Direct Recording mode, meaning that no recoding is done in the recorder. MediaInfo tells me the video bitrate.

Sorry, I just realized that I originally said 3-4 kbps when I meant 3-4 mbps, i.e. about half DVD quality.

However, it is more than just the bitrate used, it is the lousy studio lighting and processing as well. In many cases I see a presenter or panel where the moles, warts and wrinkles twinkle on and off, the faces are flat, looking like they have been partially trowel smoothed or made of plastic, and there is a general lack of contrast. Then they switch to a videoed outside scene and everything looks fine. Or they may do a picture in picture or side-by-side and one of them looks awful.

Unfortunately, when I adjust the sharpness on my new TV to get about the same sharpness as my old TV, these artefacts look somewhat worse, although not dramatically so.

Well, you've upgraded you TV, now you need to upgrade your programming. Buying a highly capable TV to watch 3-4mbps programming doesn't make the most sense, that's like buying a killer stereo system to play a collection of old wax cylinders. "My wax cylinders sound worse, I can clearly here every tick and pop!!"

Yes, and I need new eyes and ears too! :(

Peter Duke, I assume you are on a cable box? I assume the cable box is HD and hooked up with an HDMI cable or component cable.
If not an HD cable box does your cable provider offer one. I have two HD cable boxes hood up through HDMI and my HD programming is extremely sharp and Clear. If I switch to my out door antenna I receive all my local over the air channels in HD and they all look extremely sharp and Clear using the digital tuners that came with my TVs. I have a 3rd 19" HDTV in the kitchen, no cable box, hooked up to the cable company's coax and receive all my local channels in HD using the TV tuner.

Peter, what options do you have for sharp, clear HD programming?

Jerry K

One of my peeves is the mislabeling of controls. Contrast should be labeled "White intensity" and Brightness should be labeled "Black level."

That would better describe what the controls actually do, in my opinion.

And I turn off all "automatic" helper-outers. I set up my elderly father's new set a few weeks ago and was surprised to find "Automatic noise reduction," "Automatic skin tone," and Automatic color enhancement" among the settings. No thanks.