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Black and white movies and OLED banding (1 Viewer)

Stonesfan

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Matt Stieg
I watch a lot of older black and white movies and just wanted to ask about people's experiences with b&w films and OLED's issues with near black uniformity and banding.

I'm coming from a 2012 Samsung E550 51" plasma, by no means the end-all-be-all of plasma picture quality, but it's a TV I've been happy with for the last eight years and I watch in a near pitch black room at night with no ambient light.

Anyway, with everything I read about OLED near black banding I would think lowlight level b&w movies like the Criterion BDs of SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS or THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER would be absolute torture tests for an OLED. Also thinking dark noir type lighting, ie TOUCH OF EVIL or OUT OF THE PAST or even CITIZEN KANE as well.

I was also thinking about Woody Allen's MANHATTAN, with its dark nighttime scenes of Allen and Michael Murphy, and later Allen and Diane Keaton walking around town. Not to mention also the scene with Allen and Keaton in the planetarium.

While I'm certain my plasma's black levels are nowhere near OLED or the best late generation plasmas, its near black is perfectly and beautifully uniform. Anyway, thanks in advance for anyone's time and input.
 

Matt Hough

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I haven't really seen any black and white banding on my 2016 OLED. And all of those black and white classics play beautifully, even stunningly on my OLED. As long as you have the set calibrated, I don't think there should be any problem. Yes, near blacks are notoriously difficult to achieve on OLEDs, but for me, that hasn't proven much of a problem at all.

I think those problems crop up on test slides but in real world viewing aren't that much of a problem, especially with superbly mastered films.
 

Stonesfan

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Matt Stieg
Thanks Matt! I appreciate your feedback. It can be a little difficult sometimes trying to research issues like this at places like AVS and bluray.com and dealing with all the noise and hyperbole. I appreciate the more straight forward levelheadedness here at HTF!
 

Robert Crawford

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I haven't really seen any black and white banding on my 2016 OLED. And all of those black and white classics play beautifully, even stunningly on my OLED. As long as you have the set calibrated, I don't think there should be any problem. Yes, near blacks are notoriously difficult to achieve on OLEDs, but for me, that hasn't proven much of a problem at all.

I think those problems crop up on test slides but in real world viewing aren't that much of a problem, especially with superbly mastered films.
I have the same display as Matt and I don't have any of those issues either.
 

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