Will there be uncurved 1080p OLED televisions?

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athenian200

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I've been seriously considering an OLED television, but there is one major factor that's been keeping me from getting one. I was waiting for the price to fall under $3000, and now it seems to have done so.

All of the ones I've been able to find are either curved, or 4K displays. I don't like the curve, and all my stuff still runs at 720p or 1080p at most. Fixed pixel displays tend to look awful when you try to scale up lower resolutions, so you almost have to run them at their native resolutions or at least something with the same horizontal resolution.

Do you think the delay in releasing 1080p panels is because they're trying to appeal to early adopters only right now, and we'll start seeing the 1080p panels when prices start to fall, or are they planning on pushing 4K to everyone whether they need/want it or not by the time OLED is mainstream? If they ever start making smaller OLED panels in quantity, I would think the benefits of 4K would be lost on a 32" or even 40" display.
 
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Unlikely to ever happen. 4K is becoming mainstream and 1080p is now reserved for low-end displays.
However, 4K should actually be ideal for displaying 720p or 1080p content if it's processed correctly.
4K native resolution minimizes screen-door-effect on what you see, and both 720p & 1080p will scale perfectly to 4K.
The problem is that few 4K displays currently offer unfiltered integer scaling for lower resolution inputs. But 4K should still handle 720p better than a 1080p native panel.
 
Yeah I doubt 1080p OLED will really come back. Maybe if there were a couple manufacturers other than LG and a war on prices we would see a number of those, but no...
There were rumors of Chinese subcontractors getting ready to produce their own panels, but I haven't read any recent news about them.

The only brand featuring correct scaling on it's sets for sure is Sony, but I don't imagine them joining the OLED ring anytime soon.
 
Yeah, that's exactly what I was afraid of, honestly. I think I might just have to buy an 1080p IPS panel while I still can. I've quite literally just gotten my stuff to the point that I can do 1080p with no trouble. 4K is going to incur a lot of hidden costs. I mean, think about it... once you get a 4K panel, you'll want to run it at the native resolution. That means getting equipment powerful enough to output that resolution, and that gets really, really expensive fast. Not to mention finding stuff that's 4K to play back on it.

I was waiting on OLED to replace my Plasma all this time, and by the time it comes out, they're trying to push something else down my throat that I'm trying to resist. The market always seems to choose the solutions and improvements that I don't like. I preferred DisplayPort over HDMI, and now even businesses use HDMI on their monitors. I liked Plasma better than LCD, but they pushed LCD to the point that there's literally no other option for computer monitors.

Sometimes I really hate the market and other people's buying decisions, and then being forced to live with the consequences of other people's decisions because they ultimately limit what gets produced and what I can buy whether I like what they've picked for me or not.

I'm picturing tens of thousands of gullible people being told that more pixels is better and then being shown a display while they're standing a foot away, and then it selling really well because people fell for it, and then the factories churning them out until even people who don't want them have little choice but to deal with the additional scaling and processing overhead for such a tiny improvement. I always see things like this in my head whenever I feel backed into a corner by the market like this, because it's so easy to see how it happened. Sigh.
 
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1080p -> 4k is an exact 1:4 upscale and 720p -> is 1:9, you should never have any scaling artifacts.

Since you're already considering the high-end market (OLED) you might as well set a price point you want to spend and sit back and wait for a good flat 4k to hit it.
 
^ people should be getting by now that it's not because it should that it does. most 4K displays screw up the simplest scaling job in case you didn't know. a number of samsung sets do okay, most sonys sets do it right, almost every monitor faild hard.
 
Is the curve really that big of a problem for you? I have one of the 1080p OLEDs (EC9300) and the curve is barely noticeable unless I'm looking at the TV from an extreme angle.

LG did make a flat 1080p OLED but stopped producing it last year, maybe you could find a used one.
 
Richard Jones said:
The only brand featuring correct scaling on it's sets for sure is Sony, but I don't imagine them joining the OLED ring anytime soon.
Click to expand...

Ironic, isn't it? Seeing as they make some of the best (and most expensive) OLED monitors in the business. :D
 
Aluminum said:
1080p -> 4k is an exact 1:4 upscale and 720p -> is 1:9, you should never have any scaling artifacts.

Since you're already considering the high-end market (OLED) you might as well set a price point you want to spend and sit back and wait for a good flat 4k to hit it.
Click to expand...

Well, if it uses simple integer scaling like it should, then you're absolutely right. I guess that's another thing I would need to test with the monitors... whether they do simple, fast scaling that just uses four pixels for every one pixel, or the awkward kind that blurs the image with excessive processing. I've never had good luck with hardware scalers in monitors and TVs. If possible, I always have software or a good video card on my computer scale the image to the monitor's native resolution when necessary. But I won't be able to do that with anything other than a PC. No set-top box, game console, or Blu-Ray player will output an upscaled 4K image to circumvent the internal scaler.

x3sphere said:
Is the curve really that big of a problem for you? I have one of the 1080p OLEDs (EC9300) and the curve is barely noticeable unless I'm looking at the TV from an extreme angle.
Click to expand...

Well, to be fair, I've never seen it in person. It looks really bad in pictures, like it would distort the image's dimensions. And no one else online who had one of the monitors expressed a positive opinion about the curve. They usually said it was the only flaw that bothered them.
LG did make a flat 1080p OLED but stopped producing it last year, maybe you could find a used one.
Click to expand...

They did? I thought they had yet to make such a panel. I had no idea that they'd started and then stopped making them. I'll definitely keep my eyes peeled for a used one, then.
 
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athenian200 said:
Well, to be fair, I've never seen it in person. It looks really bad in pictures, like it would distort the image's dimensions. And no one else online who had one of the monitors expressed a positive opinion about the curve. They usually said it was the only flaw that bothered them.


They did? I thought they had yet to make such a panel. I had no idea that they'd started and then stopped making them. I'll definitely keep my eyes peeled for a used one, then.
Click to expand...

You should check it out in person, I thought I would hate the curve but it ended up not bothering me at all.

And yes, the flat 1080p OLED goes under the model number EA8800, here is a link: LG 55EA8800: 55 Class (54.6 Diagonal) 1080p Smart 3D OLED TV | LG USA

Apparently Newegg has a refurbished one for just under $1400: Refurbished: LG 55" 1080p LED-LCD HDTV - 55EA8800 - Newegg.com
 
Aluminum said:
1080p -> 4k is an exact 1:4 upscale and 720p -> is 1:9, you should never have any scaling artifacts.
Click to expand...
It's possible to scale that perfectly.
Only a couple of Panasonic LCDs do 1:4 for 1080p inputs, and nothing does 1:9 for 720p inputs as far as I'm aware.
Most displays use filtered scaling (blurry) even when it could be done perfectly.

I've been trying to get NVIDIA to implement this in their drivers for a while now, but no luck so far.
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/844905/integer-scaling-mode/

It would be better if it was handled in the display, but doing it in the driver would be better than nothing.
 
zone74 said:
It's possible to scale that perfectly.
Only a couple of Panasonic LCDs do 1:4 for 1080p inputs, and nothing does 1:9 for 720p inputs as far as I'm aware.
Most displays use filtered scaling (blurry) even when it could be done perfectly.

I've been trying to get NVIDIA to implement this in their drivers for a while now, but no luck so far.
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/844905/integer-scaling-mode/

It would be better if it was handled in the display, but doing it in the driver would be better than nothing.
Click to expand...

That's essentially why I've been holding off on 4K. I'm glad that at least one other person out there understands my reasoning. Because I don't like the look of scaled output, and too many things would have to be scaled up from 1080p or worse. There's a reason I keep all my old displays around the house... just in case I want to run at a lower native resolution, I pull it out of the closet. But I would use 1080p a lot more often than 4K.

By the way, I bet they won't do what you're asking. It's trivially simple compared to bilinear filtering, and they aren't implementing it for a reason. nVidia wants people to buy new cards to run games at 4K. They don't want people gaming at 1080p on their brand new monitor via a decent scaling algorithm. If a 4K monitor looked good at 1080p, no one would spend the dough needed to game at 4K.

I'm probably going to get a 4K computer monitor long before I get a 4K television, simply because computers that you sit in front of are better positioned to take advantage of such high resolutions. For television and movies, you really don't need it because you'll be several feet from the display.
 
Maybe you guys are demonizing scaling bit too much. Yes when we are dealing with nothing but sharp edges like text on single color background scaling screws things up but when we are watching a movie or playing a game that is nothing but a mess of different shades of colors from pixel to pixel and already has soft edges scaling can have good results. Current higher range 4K TV's use very good scaling algorithms (spelling?) to upscale 1080p to 4K. Not just bilinear blurring with no discrimination but actual jaggie smoothing, rounding pixels on edges and so on. It actually does improve the picture quality. Similar to scalers MadVR uses where the image doubling looks fantastic. Good example would be here, Panasonic CX700 serie 4K TV.

1080 4x4 pixels on.
http://saitti.kuvat.fi/kuvat/2015/PanaCX725/1080-4x4-ON.jpg?img=smaller

Off, using the built-in scaling.
http://saitti.kuvat.fi/kuvat/2015/PanaCX725/1080-4x4-OFF.jpg?img=smaller

The pilots cheek for example in 4x4 shows the normal 1080p jaggies we are used to seeing where in scaling its actually a smooth straight line, anti-aliased basically.
 
^ this looks horrible. *grin*
I'm essentially playing retro games using external support devices in the signal chain (like stuff simulating scanlines and phosphors specilized linedoublers etc) and those require at least 'right' scaling (setting for integer), also deinterlaced stuff (movies and games) and watching 1080p & 720p movies which I can't stand seeing losing too much details and clarity, I don't play much 3D games from a PC and my best unit wouldn't be able to handle any decent quality @4K anyway, I don't even play much3D games from HD consoles as well.
There are other resons but good built-in scaling is an absolute must for me, it's very rare unfortunately, on big screens only the Sony sets do a good job, but not a single 4K monitor does afaik.
This is completely stupid when you think about it as some 1440p monitors did a great job for what is actually sometimes more difficult on that resolution.

Since upscaling on 4Kdisplays was supposed to be easier and benefitting more from the high resolution, manufacturers actually paid much less attention to it and in most available displays only include the cheapest, lousiest upscaling and filtering chips/algorithms in the history of fixed matrix displays.
Really again only a select number of high-end displays do proper scaling, but those are too big or too laggy or not responsive enough for my needs.
I wish there were decent external 4K scalers but no...that market is non-existant for the same reasons manufacturers didn't make any efforts: because it wasn't supposed to be needed. *facepalm*

Again people should forget it's easy math in theory, because it doesn't happen in practice.
The reason most don't realize the situation is they don't do much else than using a PC with a GPU handling the scaling anyway, and they don't do much sharp and critical 2D stuff from external sources with their displays anyway.

It's easy to use forms of image processing that will make polygonal contents and movies look 'nice', but looking 'right' is not the same thing.
For instance I absolutely don't need anti-aliasing, quite the opposite, and the least smoothing the better.
So what seems excellent to you, is a plague for me. ;)

EDIT: so you will say I could buy an X810C, but it's too big, has too much lag and I want a snappy-enough IPS panel (or oled at best), not a VA.
That expensive 32" Acer looked nice but the scaling being crappy I will definitely not spend the money.
 
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x3sphere said:
You should check it out in person, I thought I would hate the curve but it ended up not bothering me at all.

And yes, the flat 1080p OLED goes under the model number EA8800, here is a link: LG 55EA8800: 55 Class (54.6 Diagonal) 1080p Smart 3D OLED TV | LG USA

Apparently Newegg has a refurbished one for just under $1400: Refurbished: LG 55" 1080p LED-LCD HDTV - 55EA8800 - Newegg.com
Click to expand...
Keep in mind that the "frame" you see around that flat OLED is actually part of the TV. That was the only flat 1080p LG made, and it was gimmicky in that it tried to look like a framed piece of art.
 
Hurin said:
Keep in mind that the "frame" you see around that flat OLED is actually part of the TV. That was the only flat 1080p LG made, and it was gimmicky in that it tried to look like a framed piece of art.
Click to expand...

You don't have to use the frame actually, you can put it on a standard VESA mount (which I think is included).
 
MaZa said:
Maybe you guys are demonizing scaling bit too much. Yes when we are dealing with nothing but sharp edges like text on single color background scaling screws things up but when we are watching a movie or playing a game that is nothing but a mess of different shades of colors from pixel to pixel and already has soft edges scaling can have good results. Current higher range 4K TV's use very good scaling algorithms (spelling?) to upscale 1080p to 4K. Not just bilinear blurring with no discrimination but actual jaggie smoothing, rounding pixels on edges and so on. It actually does improve the picture quality. Similar to scalers MadVR uses where the image doubling looks fantastic. Good example would be here, Panasonic CX700 serie 4K TV.

1080 4x4 pixels on.
http://saitti.kuvat.fi/kuvat/2015/PanaCX725/1080-4x4-ON.jpg?img=smaller

Off, using the built-in scaling.
http://saitti.kuvat.fi/kuvat/2015/PanaCX725/1080-4x4-OFF.jpg?img=smaller

The pilots cheek for example in 4x4 shows the normal 1080p jaggies we are used to seeing where in scaling its actually a smooth straight line, anti-aliased basically.
Click to expand...
Video should be using filtered scaling.
PC/Games should not.
I have more examples here.

Video looks great with madVR doing the upscaling - even on a CRT it looks better upscaled via madVR than displayed at its native resolution. (e.g. 720x480 for NTSC DVD)
But madVR's scaling is also considerably better than what most TVs are capable of.

And good scaling tends to add latency.
For gaming I want the lowest latency possible, so not only does nearest-neighbor look better, it should also play better too.
I wish that in their PC/Game mode, all displays would just use integer nearest-neighbor scaling instead of scaling everything full-screen.

If I send it a 640x480 input I want to see a pixel-perfect (4x) 2560x1920, not a blurry (4.5x) 2880x2160 image that fills the screen.
 
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