4K TV Reviews

Among the enhancements since last year, a Magic Link feature provides an onscreen icon you can click to search for recommendations similar to what you’re viewing (if you’re watching The Sopranos, will it recommend Madame Butterfly?). Along with a new pair of dedicated Netflix and Amazon buttons on the remote, a new Quick Access function allows each of its numeric keys to similarly provide one-touch access to other apps. Although we didn’t test that function, LG confirmed for us later that any tile appearing on the Web OS launcher bar can be programmed for quick-key access, including not just apps for content providers but also the various source input selections that typically show up. There’s also a revision to LG’s Magic Zoom function introduced last year, which allows you to not only zoom in on any portion of the picture but now also record it to a USB drive—helpful if you’ve got video of your kid playing in the school orchestra and want to see only him or her. Album art and onscreen lyrics from a third-party provider have been added to the Music Player, and there’s a new Gallery function that places your family photos or other images inside a static, faux frame design—an especially effective simulation on the ultra-thin W7 wallpaper model.

Like LCD TVs, OLED sets in general have more motion blur than the now long-departed plasma displays. That’s simply the name of the game on all of today’s sets. But this never bothered us either on any of the material we sampled (including some fast-action snowboarding in Dolby Vision). Also, I’m not a gamer, but LG has significantly reduced input lag in this year’s models via the Game mode, down to 20.3 milliseconds from 34.5 last year. We weren’t equipped to test this, but LG demo’d it during their briefing.

OLED TVs, including this one, are prone to temporary image retention. Leave a bright highlight on the screen for a few minutes, and when the picture fades to black, a faint outline of the highlight will remain— particularly if the image was from a bright HDR source. Retention was never a problem for us, and LG argues that permanent burn-in is not an issue with OLED.

SDR Setup and Performance
We ran all of our usual video tests on the OLED65W7P. It passed each one, except for Motion Adaptive 480i standard definition (failed for jaggies). We didn’t spend a lot of time viewing this set with 1080p standard dynamic range (SDR) material before attempting a full SDR calibration. But as it turned out, measurements proved there was no serious adjustment required on our review sample in the ISF Dark mode, so we left the White Balance controls (both 2-point and 20-point) and the CMS controls on zero—their out-of-box, default position.

One of my favorite discs for checking black levels is the Blu-ray of Prometheus. In the opening scene on Earth (following the prologue where the Schwarzenegger-ish alien disintegrates after drinking some nasty goo), we’re apparently inside a fully darkened cave as the character Elizabeth Shaw is heard chopping away on the outside, trying to break in. At first, the LG’s screen was totally black. Then, with the breach in the cave, the scene showed bright daylight coming through the gap, while the black around it remained totally black, even as that opening grew ever larger. This is excellent performance.

In a later scene, against a rich starfield, the ship Prometheus traverses across the screen from left to right, appearing as a small dot. Both the ship and the stars stand out brilliantly from the inky, infinite blackness of space. The LG handled this scene, as well as subsequent ones in the caves of an alien planet, better than any other display we’ve tested. Some of the best local-dimming LCD sets can come very close, but they’re never quite this jaw-dropping. On this and other 2.35:1 widescreen films, the black bars on the LG were totally black, and they remained so on both bright and dark scenes. Bright scenes, by compressing the pupils of your eyes, can sometimes make the black bars look fully black on many sets, while dark scenes reveal them to actually be very dark gray. That’s also why black bars often look fully black with room lighting; light-absorptive coating on the screen’s glass eliminates reflections that would lighten the bars, while your contracted pupils do the rest. The LG doesn’t care: Those black bars are always black, on bright or dark scenes and in a bright or totally darkened room.

One change in LG’s OLED sets this year helps to get those blacks absolutely right. Video veterans (though perhaps not newbies) know that the Brightness control sets the black level, not the “brightness.” The default setting of this TV’s Brightness control is 50, but as mentioned earlier, the steps just above and below this level have been changed to offer finer adjustments. Now you won’t have to settle for a setting that’s either slightly too dark or slightly too bright.

Prometheus isn’t necessarily the ideal source to judge resolution and color, though we had no complaints with that disc on either score. But for a more critical look, I had brought along Samsara, a documentary (by the director of Baraka) originally shot on 70mm film. It’s about as detailed as a 1080p Blu-ray gets. The LG was beautifully resolved on the scenes we watched, and its color (even restricted to the standard Rec. 709 1080p color gamut) was stunning.

Ultra HD/HDR Setup and Performance
We sampled three very different Ultra HD Blu-rays on the 65W7P. We also performed a limited UHD/HDR10 calibration, which went much more quickly and smoothly than anticipated (see Test Bench).

Independence Day: Resurgence didn’t receive its keenly anticipated Oscar for Best Picture of 2016, but it certainly deserves an eye-candy award for its UHD/HDR Blu-ray. From the opening scenes onward, the LG ate it up and asked for more, which the disc was happy to provide. The film is loaded with dark scenes punctuated by bright highlights, including scenes on the moon (CGI, of course—not actually shot there!); these set the inky darkness of space against the bright glare of the sun, unencumbered by an atmosphere, glinting brilliantly off the metal structures of the moon base. Later scenes were similarly challenging, but the LG continued to impress on all of them, with superb detail, punchy highlights, and deep but well-resolved shadow details.

Colors are somewhat muted on Resurgence, however, with only occasional exceptions (such as a large, bright red Chinese flag in an early scene). As we did in the SDR testing, we jumped to another disc to check the TV’s color and detail. The animated Trolls may not have a lot of HDR to recommend it, but its color is almost blindingly rich and varied. The LG was no slouch here, either; we had no complaints at all about the set’s color or resolution.

The UHD Blu-ray of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk was mastered at 60 frames per second, more than twice the normal 24-hertz frame rate of film and most digital video for cinema. I wish I could have confirmed, at least, the displayed resolution, bit depth, color subsampling, and frame rate. But as with most other flat-screen sets we know of, the LG doesn’t offer a menu that shows any of this information. Still, this may be of interest only to us video geeks.

The HDR bug did confirm that the displayed image was HDR—and on Billy Lynn, the evidence that the image had a high frame rate was impossible to miss. It had all the earmarks of the video-like soap-opera effect, though in this case (unlike LG’s TruMotion interpolation on 24-fps sources—and similar features on all modern sets), the smooth motion was on the disc and not produced in the set. I didn’t like it much better than the faux high frame rate of the set’s own motion interpolation, but that’s not the point here. The picture was too dark in a way that only a change in gamma might improve—but with HDR material, the LG’s gamma is fixed and unchangeable. That’s as it should be; there’s a standard HDR gamma for HDR10 and Dolby Vision called Perceptual Quantization (PQ). This left me wondering if the disc had been mastered incorrectly, but we have no way of knowing for certain. I will say, however, that I was able to usefully brighten the picture on other displays that allow you to change the HDR gamma (though perhaps at the cost of deviating from the PQ standard).

We then turned to Dolby’s provided flash drive of Dolby Vision selections. While there was no time for a Dolby Vision calibration, the content of this memory stick—scenes from Pan, Oblivion, and the animated movie The Secret Life of Pets—looked as impressive as the HDR10 discs we watched. Here, though, we had to turn down the OLED Light control by a few steps because the images were actually uncomfortably bright (particularly on Pets, which is an inherently bright film to begin with).

There was, however, no way to draw any conclusions on HDR10 versus Dolby Vision, as we didn’t have the same material in both formats. At present, there’s more high-quality material available in HDR10 (all current Ultra HD Blu-rays). But Dolby Vision material on UHD Blu-ray has been promised real soon now, and when it comes, we’ll definitely have something to say about this.

The LG also offers an HDR Effect mode for SDR sources, processing ordinary material to resemble HDR as closely as possible. It was eye opening, clearly generating more “pop” to the picture than the source alone could manage. In addition, as noted earlier for HDR10 and HLG, the set uses dynamic HDR metadata insertion for this HDR Effect mode. Editor Rob Sabin was seriously impressed by HDR Effect. I remain a skeptic when it comes to altering source material to look different from what the filmmaker intended, but I admit that I’d be tempted to use this mode—though more often on sports and documentaries than on Citizen Kane, or even Transformers VIII: Heavy Metal. It’s certainly an improvement on the same feature, as I recall, from last year’s LG OLED sets.

Conclusions
How do I put this? If you have the coin, and you don’t need the larger picture that a comparably priced projector can give you, don’t buy anything else until you at least see the LG Signature OLED65W7P. The only risk here is that you might lust for the 77-inch version—in which case, bring your Super Platinum credit card!