alt Hacker NewsI have a 2024 Bravia (K-77XR80) because I wanted an OLED TV with Android TV, to avoid yet another vendor spying on me (Google already does). I also hoped that a "premium" brand like Sony would offer a better UX than other brands.
Well, I was wrong. Watching movies on OLED (or at least on this particular OLED) looks crap, because if you turn motion interpolation OFF, the image looks stuttery, apparently due to OLEDs ultra-low response time, which produces zero fading between adjacent frames. (By the way, why didn't this happen with 35mm movie projectors? They couldn't blend adjacent frames either, because they are just shining light through individual pictures on a sheet of celluloid, yet I don't remember seeing this kind of stutter in movie theatres back in the day!) And turning motion interpolation up a notch already produces the well-known soap opera effect. No, thanks.
The UI is laggy. It's as if Sony used a chipset that couldn't handle Android TV driving a 4k display or something. And to make things worse, the UI had to be filled with all kinds of animated transitions, which of course make lagging even more noticeable. If there was one thing to learn from Apple in the past 20 years, it's that a consistent UI framerate must be prioritized over everything (except maybe realtime audio). Dropped frames = cheap, trash UX.
Also, apparently all OLED TVs must periodically do these "pixel refresh" cycles, to lengthen the lifespan of the panel. Fair. But in Sony TVs this is scheduled a few hours after the TV was turned off, and the schedule cannot be configured. The operation itself is invisible, but when the TV comes alive to do this panel maintenance it produces AN AUDIBLE RELAY CLICK like a fucking CRT TV from the 90s. You watch some TV before going to bed, then in a few hours wake up to the sound of a solenoid switch. Then after about 5-10 minutes, the relay clicks again to power off the device, so if you didn't wake up to the first click, now there's a second chance! Yay! And I can confirm this relay sound isn't unique to this particular Bravia model, because I have a smaller one in the bedroom, and it's the same. (See also on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/bravia/comments/vx2efk/sony_a80j_i_...)
Premium brand, my ass.
TL;DR: don't buy Sony TVs.
Replies
Well when I got my first job at uni I bought a bravia tv just before Android TVs came out (around 2014 here), so it had whatever it was the OS before it and it was cheaper than the regular price.
Since Android TV and Google TV became the de facto OS for most of "premium brands", they stopped updating my TV around 2019 or so, and apps a bit after that. The youtube app became even more sluggish and slow, all other third party apps were gone. A couple years ago my sister messed with my TV so I did a factory reset and with that the youtube app went away too. Now it has only screen mirroring.
Which turned out to be absolutely great - I got to have a "premium brand" TV that I can keep it connected to the internet and use screen mirroring and send commands to it via its IP but it won't show any ad whatsoever because its OS is long outdated. And after 12 years everything but the "smart" part of it is working great as new. Of course it's not OLED whatsoever but I can't really care less - viewing experience is still great.
> If there was one thing to learn from Apple in the past 20 years, it's that a consistent UI framerate must be prioritized over everything (except maybe realtime audio).
Not upgraded to macOS 26 Tahoe yet?
> apparently due to OLEDs ultra-low response time, which produces zero fading between adjacent frames. (By the way, why didn't this happen with 35mm movie projectors? They couldn't blend adjacent frames either, because they are just shining light through individual pictures on a sheet of celluloid, yet I don't remember seeing this kind of stutter in movie theatres back in the day!
35 mm film projectors usually interrupt the light 3 times per frame, and switch frames while the light is interrupted. Some projectors only interrupt the light twice per frame, but I think those were earlier projectors. By your description, on an OLED the pixels just change to the new frame, with no transition. You might prefer an OLED with black frame insertion? (Although, I have an LCD with that and it gives me headaches)
> Watching movies on OLED (or at least on this particular OLED) looks crap, because if you turn motion interpolation OFF, the image looks stuttery, apparently due to OLEDs ultra-low response time, which produces zero fading between adjacent frames. (By the way, why didn't this happen with 35mm movie projectors? They couldn't blend adjacent frames either, because they are just shining light through individual pictures on a sheet of celluloid, yet I don't remember seeing this kind of stutter in movie theatres back in the day!) And turning motion interpolation up a notch already produces the well-known soap opera effect. No, thanks.
My guess would be that it's not so much a difference between projectors and OLEDs as it is a difference between old movies and new movies.
Personally I think that slow pixels is the wrong way to "fix" poor motion blur in movies.
It still blows my mind that no OLED TV has yet added simple temporal blending between frames, the kind of which MPV has had for decades. They could even take it a step further and emulate the colour-dependent blending of LCD screens. But no instead it's the same terrible motion interpolation algorithms of 15+ years ago, or nothing.
Interesting issue on the UI lag. My 2022 4K Sony has no lag whatsoever.
Vision persistence with high intensity light is an interesting phenomenon. This is why people still love CRTs, too. OLEDs do not create that much of a light by themselves, so no persistence of vision is present.
Also, why an audible click is so bothering? I can't fathom that part, sorry. Nitpicking much? BTW, I'd rather have a proper relay in my devices rather than a high-power MOSFET which can short and has a shorter lifespan.
Your comment reminds me a couple of blog posts. One person wrote a 2500 word essay on something they hated so much. Then the thing got tuned or serviced or something, then they wrote 3000 word essay on how they love it. The kicker? The feature they hated most in the first was the feature they loved the most in the second one.
> By the way, why didn't this happen with 35mm movie projectors? They couldn't blend adjacent frames either, because they are just shining light through individual pictures on a sheet of celluloid, yet I don't remember seeing this kind of stutter in movie theatres back in the day!
Normally you’d shoot at 180 degree shutter angle (exposure time is half the frame time). This produces a “cinematic” blur that doesn’t look choppy, especially when projected at the same rate. So if you’re shooting 24 fps video, try shooting at 1/48. This is slow compared to most handheld still photography, which is why you start to need ND filters on cine cameras, especially if you also want to shoot wide open.
Stutter is particularly noticeable for fast panning landscapes where there’s uniform motion across the entire frame. Very obvious if there are “gaps” in the blur because your brain will want to interpolate. If there are static/foreground objects, you probably won’t notice.