Twenty years ago, Robert Zohn, owner of premium A/V retailer Value Electronics, hosted the first TV Shootout. The premise was simple: put the top TVs into a room, hit them with the most demanding video content and ask a panel of judges to decide which TV produces the best overall picture quality.
Since 2004, the event has been repeated every year but one. For its 20th Anniversary, the event returned to Value Electronics’ showroom in Scarsdale, NY after a multi-year stint in Manhattan. From CRT TVs to plasmas, to LCD TVs, to today’s Mini-LED, OLED and QD-OLED TVs, the technology has evolved but the goals are still the same: to produce the most realistic, most vibrant and true-to-life picture at home. Each year a new winner is crowned the “King of TVs.”
This year, only three manufacturers’ TVs were represented: Sony, LG and Samsung. According to Robert, Hisense and TCL were also invited but chose not to participate. Each brand had both an OLED TV and a miniLED/LCD TV in the mix. LG had their G4 WRGB OLED TV and their QNED90T MiniLED/LCD TV. Samsung had their S95D QD-OLED and QN95D MiniLED/LCD and Sony had their A95L QD-OLED and BRAVIA 9 MiniLED TV. Every TV model was introduced in 2024 except Sony’s A95L QD-OLED, which was last year’s winner and has been carried over into 2024. All models were sized at 65 inches diagonally.
For the first time, there was both a King of OLED TVs and a King of MiniLED/LCD TVs crowned. According to Robert, the use cases of each set are a bit different, with MiniLED/LCD TVs better suited for bright room viewing environments and OLED more optimized for a darkened home theater. Potential buyers can see the composite scorecards for all of the various picture categories to make an informed buying choice for their own specific tastes and preference.
The main TV Shootout event was held on Saturday, August 3, 2024 with a follow-up event planned for Sunday, August 4th to examine some of the larger versions of these sets in a more informal setting.
Competitors in the 2024 OLED TV Shootout with MSRP and Links to Purchse:
- LG OLED65G4PUA WRGB OLED TV ($3,399) – Amazon, Value Electronics
- Samsung QN65S95D QD-OLED TV ($3,399) – Amazon, Value Electronics
- Sony XR65A95L QD-OLED TV ($3,499) – Amazon, Value Electronics
Competitors in the 2024 MiniLED TV Shootout with MSRP and Links to Purchase:
- LG 65QNED90T MiniLED TV ($1,899) – Amazon, Value Electronics
- Samsung QN65QN95D MiniLED TV ($3,299) – Value Electronics
- Sony K65XR90 Bravia 9 MiniLED TV ($2,999) – Amazon, Value Electronics
All TVs in the competition offer native 4K resolution with different versions of HDR (High Dynamic Range) supported, including HDR10 and HLG (Hybrid Log Gamma). The LG and Sony TVs include Dolby Vision dynamic HDR, while the Samsung TVs support HDR10+ dynamic HDR instead. This did lead to some complications during the evaluation as the organizers had to juggle feeding 4K/HDR content to multiple displays with different capabilities and the HDMI/EDID process didn’t always work as expected when multiple displays were involved.
LG’s G4 OLED features a WRGB OLED panel produced by LG Display. The Sony A95L and Samsung S95D OLED TVs feature QD-OLED panels built by Samsung Display. All three MiniLED TVs include LCD panels with Quantum Dot color technology, backlit by an array of miniLED light modules with local dimming technology to enhance contrast and black level reproduction.
To ensure peak performance, each display in the event was professionally calibrated by experienced Level 3 ISF calibrators Cecil Meade and DeWayne Davis. AVProGlobal supplied the latest state-of-the-art switching, distribution, and test equipment. Sony’s latest professional broadcast monitor, the 31-inch BVM-HX3110, which sells for over $30,000, was used as the reference to compare all displays against. In fact, they had two of them at the event this year: one was placed next to the OLED TVs, and another next to the MiniLED TVs. Judges were asked to score each TV on its accuracy compared to one of the broadcast reference monitors.
At the 2024 TV Shootout, Zohn shared emcee duties with Jason Dustal, Field Trainer and ISF Instructor from AVPro Global. The panel of independent judges for this year’s event included professional Hollywood video colorists, film finishers, TV reviewers and calibrators, and video experts. Jason, DeWayne and Cecil led the judges through the test patterns and video clips, in some cases pointing out what to look for, but the judges were the ones who voted to determine the winners in each category. Judges were discouraged from discussing their impressions with other judges in order to promote objectivity in the scoring.
This year’s judges panel included:
- Richard Drutman, writer/producer/director at TriodePictures.com
- Charlie Anderson, award-winning cinematographer with ten feature-length films and countless music videos, commercials, and short films under his belt.
- David Mackenzie, CEO of Fidelity inMotion, a compression and mastering facility that specializes in maximizing the quality of video delivered on home formats such as 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray.
- David Medina, Director of Encoding Services at Warner Bros Discovery.
- Mike Osadciw, THX/ISF Professional Video Calibrator with over 25 years of experience
- Kenneth Almestica, Senior Director Technical lOperations at Paramount Brand Creative.
- John Reformato, professional ISF Level-3 certified video calibrator & consultant.
Evaluation material included a series of test patterns, video clips and stills, each selected to highlight specific areas of video performance including contrast, color accuracy, peak brightness, color saturation, image uniformity, upscaling and motion reproduction. Sources for the content included a professional test pattern generator, a Kaleidescape media player loaded with HD and 4K Ultra HD movie clips and an OPPO 4K universal media player. Spears and Munsil’s most recent UHD Benchmark discs were used for a number of clips and test patterns, but the organizers also included several clips of actual movies and TV shows both on physical media and streaming media sources. They even opened up the drapes to let the sun shine in and played some sports content (Football and Olympics events) to give a fair representation of actual real world content and living room viewing.
As always, the event was illuminating, as we got to see all of the top performing TVs at their peak, reproducing some pretty challenging content, all side by side with professional monitors for reference. Even more so than in previous years, the TVs all put in strong performances, with some better on shadow detail and black level reproduction and others better on bright content with high peak luminance. Any would make a fine choice for a living room or home theater. But, of course, there can be only one winner (or at least, one in each category).
Once the judges’ scorecards were transcribed and tabulated, the winners and new “Kings of TV” for 2024 were crowned. We’ll publish a copy of the judges’ composite scorecards once we get them, but for now, here are the results.
Winners of the 2024 Value Electronics TV Shootout
King of OLED TVs for 2024:
Sony XR65A95L QD-OLED TV ($3,499) — Amazon, Value Electronics
King of MiniLED TVs for 2024:
Sony K65XR90 Bravia 9 MiniLED TV ($2,999) – Amazon, Value Electronics
It was a tight competition between the Sony and Samsung in both the OLED and MiniLED competitions as can be viewed in the composite judges’ scorecard. Congratulations to Sony for sweeping the 2024 TV Shootout competition.
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