[prepress]

Well, I attended the Shootout on Sunday. I had to leave before it was all over, so I don't know all the details or how some of the calibrators' tests went. But here is what I observed while there.

There were 3 1080p sets: the Samsung PN64F8500 plasma (last year's audience favorite); the Samsung KN55S9C OLED; and the LG 55EC9300 OLED. On the 4K side: Samsung's UN78HU9000, UN85HU8550, and UN10559W; and Sony's XBR79X900B and XBR85X950B. Sets from Toshiba and Vizio weren't ready in time for consideration, as it turned out.

From my perspective, if I had to replace my Kuro, it would be with the Samsung plasma or one of the OLEDs. The LG in particular had black levels so low they were unmeasurable, literally a "0" for that reason. Next was the Samsung OLED with .0007. The F8500 plasma, with a black level of .0041 was next. The best black for the 4K sets was Sony's 950B with .0044. Sequential contrast ratio, as you might expect, had the LG OLED, Samsung OLED, then the Samsung plasma as the top three.

The sets all looked mostly good with normal program material, but when the calibrators begain putting them through their paces, that's when stuff started to show up. Anyone with an Oppo blu-ray player is aware of the screen saver with the white Oppo logo moving around a black background; of all the sets, the F8500 had the best image; the others had a halo around the letters, even the OLED sets. With the grayscale tracking, most of the sets weren't pure gray; the KN55S9C, in fact, turned very red when viewed off-axis. The LG and F8500 did best, to my eyes.

But the killer was when a night scene from a Harry Potter movie was played. The 4K sets, which for all their fanciness are still LCDs after all, couldn't match the OLEDs or the plasma. The Sony 950B was pretty good, but it had a backlighting issue, as there were halos around the "A/B" in the top black bar as scenes were transitioned. And anything white on a black background had the zone around it partially lit up. Not good for a set costing as much as the 950.

One of the persistent concerns with OLED is longevity. The LG method (adding white to RGB) has the potential for shorter life span than the Samsung's more regular RGB model. I guess we'll see. Anyway, the audience voted the LG OLED best, while the calibrators voted the Samsung OLED best. The F8500 had the most accurate color and best motion resolution as voted by the audience.