A chance to talk to FlatpanelsHD's reviewers.
By Tepii
#13827
Hi!

I heard you talk about the nonexistant banding on the AF8, it seems that is a trend in 2018 panels, modernwize tested his LG 65C8 saying it has zero banding even in demanding tests. Interested hearing what you find in yours C8. The model i have looking for to upgrade finally from my 10 year old Pioneer KRP-500M. its too small :roll:

We will never learn the truth that the 2018 panels are new or not, what is certain is that something has been done to them during 2017 to 2018.
#13828
The C8 we have is a 55" model, so the results might not apply for a 65" version. The panels are new. The subpixels have a different shape, so they are physically different.
By Tepii
#13829
Okey good to hear :) differences with sizes are not going to be huge, of course some variation is expected. In my mind this year it is between Sony AF8, LG C8 and Panasonic FZ800, which one will have the best overall picture quality, That one is for me to take, sound, remotes and operating systems (smart functions) are nonsense, those can be but aside or replaced. Image you have to live with :D
#13830
Last year the yellow tint problem seemed to be more prominent on the 65" model than the 55" so these kind of things could be panel dependent.

We will get our hands on the FZ800 later.

I like to think of Ron White's "You can't fix stupid. Stupid is forever" and translating it to "You can't fix bad picture quality. Bad picture quality is forever" :)
By Tepii
#13831
So True :D But have to say not lot of "bad" picture is in this price range nowadays, diffrences are small but sometimes annoying :) depending what you use your tv for. Someone familiar with plasma, expects good black levels, motion, and flawless color degredation, basically smooth overall picture :)
By GregFish
#13834
So, if you are wall mounting then the A8F is the choice over A1?

Also - has anyone been able to confirm that the A1E builds are now using the 2018 LG panel? If not, I would then the A8F is the only way to go for Sony, as the little banding reports seem much improved from last year.
By fegam
#13835
I am very interested to know if the A8F has the HDR game mode dim problem that currently has the LG C7 and B7 or not. Also, I never knew if the A1 had that problem at all
#13836
Could you elaborate on the HDR problem?
#13839
That is not a B/C7 problem, but a B/C6 problem. Fluctuating blacks in HDR Game mode is described as a LG 2016 issue, not a 2017 issue. I haven't seen any such issues on the AF8, but why would this even be panel related? The problems relate to LG firmware and should be fixed via LG firmware rollout to the affected LG TV's. The Dolby Vision error relates to the way DV material is coded, which turned out to be less well defined than people thought, and a solid fix also turned out to be a little more cumbersome.

The elevated blacks on HDR10 material played from iTunes via an Apple TV 4K could be reproduced on the AF8 for certain movies, though. I found it on "Arrival", but not in many of the other movies I bought and not in Netflix played through the ATV.

Perhaps we should keep a list of movies that are known to cause problems and use these as follow-up. So far I know that "Arrival" and "Secret life of pets" give problems, and that "Bright" on Netflix is particularly bad. Feel free to create a new thread here in our forum to share your experiences - they don't really belong in this thread.
#13943
Remaining profile readings for SDR.

Biograf Pro = Movie Pro
Biograf Hjem = Movie Home
Spil = Game
Attachments
Sony_AF8_all_SDR.jpg
Sony_AF8_all_SDR.jpg (379.98 KiB) Viewed 68607 times
#13959
Sony AF8 comes pre-installed with Android 7.0 and Sony has promised to roll out Android 8.0 later. Sony is one of the few manufacturers who upgrade older models and the 2015-series has just recently been bumped to version 7.0 as well. Sadly this is far from the norm and other manufacturers might want to pick up the pace and follow Sony's lead.
I would like to re-iterate my catch as I don't agree with that...

New Sony models released right after CES typically come equipped with the previous generation Android TV. So you are already outdated at the time of your purchase. You might at one point get an update to the follow-up iteration which at the time of the release will already be outdated again though. Early 2016 models (like the popular XD85 or XD93) for example came with Lollipop even though they should have been released with Marshmallow which then arrived with substantial delay. So what those TVs in fact did receive was the Nougat update. And due to their very ATV1 nature, those TVs already look to be EOL now. How is that any better compared to the likes of Samsung or LG? Sony typically deploys outdated MediaTek processors. People familiar with the matter probably know what this implies for the life cycle of a product. So what you really get update-wise depends on different factors and is not that great considering that you are already outdated from the very beginning and basically always are. So I am not quite sure whether your latest assessment (the thing with the 10-point-hit) is fair.

Taking into account what I just wrote, it is in fact not much more than what LG and Samsung offer. Just more eyewash. We will see which models will actually receive the Oreo update.
#13960
Also concerning updates... Sony just released FW 6.5603 for ATV2 (which BTW brings DV to XF90 and A8F) and they are AGAIN bricking lots of TVs, see here. And since Sony is so update friendly... who will cover such cases after the typical 2-year-warrenty?
#13961
We are getting reports of bricked TV's here in DK as well. Maybe they should hold back the update a while longer...