Margatroid wrote:Hey guys, I'm thinking about picking up a 65" LG C9 and I wanted to ask for some opinions!
I'm replacing a 50" Panasonic plasma from 2010 that I like quite a bit, but I feel like it's starting to show some signs of degradation. I've moved it around a lot and I live at 5000 ft. altitude, which makes it work pretty hard.
I have a Framemeister and a bunch of old consoles that I'll be using with the C9, and I also want to use it to do some PC gaming--particularly playing older 3D games at 4k 120hz, which should be awesome--and to watch 1080p video files. I figure for the latter two uses this TV will be great, but I saw a lot of people here saying that the motion on plasma is preferable for retro gaming, and even that the pixel spacing seems better for games with pixel art. I guess the beautiful colors and blacks of OLED would be the tradeoff for losing these things, but it makes me wonder if I should set up my plasma in another room specifically for the Framemeister.
A few specific questions about the C9:
Do you guys use the black frame insertion mode for PC gaming or retro gaming, or do you like it better without?
Do you think the image processing improvements make it worthwhile compared to a B9, which is $300 less? I'm not sure what the input lag difference is.
How much of an issue is OLED banding in retro gaming? I figured if you're playing simple stuff like SNES or NES games the banding might be pretty visible. I guess this also depends on the quality of the particular panel you get.
And lastly, do you think 65" would be too large for retro gaming when sitting 7-9 feet away? I'm tempted to get a larger TV for movies and PC games, but I wonder if pixel art games would just look too big on it. (Kinda hard not to go for 65 anyway though, just for the immersion of it.)
I'm pretty excited about getting one of these! Especially when I get a new video card later so I can do actual 120hz at 4k. I've been watching the news about the "large format gaming displays" for over a year, so I was rather amazed when I realized these OLEDs do all the same things now for less than half the price!
I just bought a 55" B9 and have really enjoyed running PC games at 1440p 120Hz (which it natively supports) and 60FPS-locked games at 4K. I've even been able to do 1440p 120Hz HDR which is supposed to exceed HDMI 2.0b bandwidth a bit??
I have not heard of any tangible differences between the B9 and the C9 yet- reviews offer a nebulous statement of "the C9 has a newer processor so it looks better" which sounds like tech journalism just pushing for the latest stuff. The B9 has the same HDMI 2.1 support, and I didn't find any information about any features the C9 offers other than some automatic color calibration for people with colorimeters and other tools I don't think I'll ever own.
I don't use black frame insertion because the flicker bothers my head a bit and the brightness loss hurts to see. With a new, sensitive panel I don't really want to crank the brightness to compensate either. Also BFI doesn't work with variable refresh rate tech, which I'd say is necessary for PC gaming at high resolution and frame rates since you won't really be able to hit a locked 4K 120Hz for quite a number of years yet. As far as motion resolution goes I can't fairly compare to plasma since I had a 2005 Panasonic EDTV plasma beforehand. OLED motion resolution doesn't seem good enough for scanlines I'd say in the brief testing I did with the OSSC- Link to the Past looked great when I wasn't moving, then the scanlines all blurred together when the screen scrolled vertically.
55" looks great at 5.5-6 feet, I don't think 65" will be too big.