The votes are in from Sunday's event, and the audience favorite was the LG OLED set. The calibrators, however, chose the Samsung OLED. If I had to buy something now, it would be the F8500 plasma.
Why? Well it was best with color accuracy and motion resolution, its black levels are more than respectable, and off-axis was very good. Even the OLEDs had off-axis issues. And the slightly higher than last year's black level (.0017) is due to a firmware fix for floating blacks. However, the 64" F8500 is too wide for my space. I think there's a 55" one. Mike Wood from Samsung was there and says the 8500 will be manufactured up until around year's end (probably November, which is when Samsung exits the plasma buisiness officially).
My take is that for all its improvements, LCD is still LCD. Maybe Samsung will be motivated to get back into OLED, as they had stopped work from what I heard. The OLED at the Shootout is from last year.
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SOTA, Grado, SME, Van den Hul, Gingko turntable setup; Pioneer Elite LD, BDP; Sony OLED TV; Magnum Dynalab tuner, antenna; MIT S-video cable; Pangea HDMI cables; DVDO video processor; McIntosh SACD, preamp, power amps; Telefunken Black Diamond preamp tubes; Kimber IC; Transparent IC, PC, SC; Mirage speakers; PS Audio, Shunyata PC; Audio Additives RCA caps; Furman power conditioning; Sanus: racks
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