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TCL 8 Series Roku TV (2019 Model - 65" & 75") *Owner's Thread*(No Price Talk)

376K views 3K replies 250 participants last post by  rhale64L7 
#1 ·
TCL 8 Series Roku TV (2019 Model - 65" & 75") *Owner's Thread*(No Price Talk)

Hey guys,

Thought I'd go ahead and start an "owner's thread" for the new TCL 8 Series because owners are finally starting to receive their new TV's.

Discuss! And please remember, per forum rules, no "street price" discussion here.

Cheers
 
#3 ·
I already shared my thoughts on this TV in another thread, just want to repeat it here.

Huge box and TV is heavy. TV itself does not have a cheap feel except for remote.
Out of the box there is black crush in all modes. Calibrating grayscale is a must in my opinion. 11pt calibration using phone app fixes black crush for all modes at once.
Gamma setting 2.0 is closer to 2.2 and setting 2.2 is closer to 2.4. Leaving it 2.2 and calibrating 2.4 gave me the best picture.
I did not find any issues with SDR and HDR10. Those are not OLED black levels for sure, but still good. SDR can be set very bright which is good for bright rooms.
DV is the only mode where I could see issues. For example, there was patch of zones completely off in several dark scenes. Same movie same scene in HDR10 did not have such problem.
Just curious. Have you checked those calibration results with an external meter and 3rd-party software?
 
#13 ·
Fomo Tech's preliminary review on the 8 ....seems like shadow algorithms are a problem.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsOty0woKTY
That's funny, I thought things were patched up in an update.

https://twitter.com/chrisheinonen/status/1190336722950709249

https://twitter.com/Vincent_Teoh/status/1190334602545680384

Vincent was the one throwing the biggest stink about it, and this was at a TCL event were one would think the TV would look it's best. Now well you can see the praise he was heaping on to it.
 
#14 ·
I would never pay $3k for a TV . I don't care if its mini-led, micro-led, aero-led. It's just crazy. Especially if it's from a company like TCL who makes great TV's mind you but they are an early adopter of mini-led even still would never pay 3k for a TV unless I was a billionaire.
 
#20 ·
Congrats!
 
#25 ·
I just got my amp today. I will connect the preamp and amp and let you know if I have any ARC audio delay issues
 
#29 ·
I got my 75" Series eight last weekend and I had a firmware update immediately and a new firmware update today. I wish I knew what they fixed
 
#39 ·
Tested new roku update today. I did not notice any big changes.

TCL calibration app became available today on samsung phones. Tested it as well. Useless. It did nothing to fix black crush. It only made a few adjustments in grayscale 60%+.

One more find, all this time I used builtin roku apps to do testing. Turns out it was a big mistake. There is something seriously wrong with roku os on this TV. All apps show worse picture than any other external device connected to this TV. Avoid using any roku apps at the moment!
 
#43 ·
All in all this TV left me disappointed. I was not expecting much to start with in PQ department for color grading and accuracy, but was def-finitely expecting perfect control of low light scenes which it failed badly. I do agree that it is producing perfect blacks near to OLED level but to achieve that it is crushing shadow detail which I thought would not be the case with that many local dimming zones specially on 75" version. In addition to that it has many other shortcomings which I don't even care of.


Is this a rushed launch for TCL? Could they have delivered a better product if they waited another 6months or a year?
At this point I am not sure they could have done better if they were to be given that extra period of time.
 
#45 ·
... but was def-finitely expecting perfect control of low light scenes which it failed badly. I do agree that it is producing perfect blacks near to OLED level but to achieve that it is crushing shadow detail which I thought would not be the case with that many local dimming zones specially on 75" version. In addition to that it has many other shortcomings which I don't even care of.
3840*2160/900 zones is 9216 pixels per dimming zone. Way too many pixels to "perfect" much less "fix" LCD light control shortcomings. The advantage of the 25k LEDs is more bright screen uniformity which several reviewers have mentioned that it is the best that TCL has done. Light control with 25k zones will be a lot better with only around 330 pixels per zone. Still not as good as OLED, but probably would work great at a normal viewing distance. Just have to wait another couple of generations for the back light processing calculation processor to get powerful enough to do it...

I suspect that they will release fixes for black crush. But, it will come at the expense of brightening up the rest of the zone and people will then complain more about halos and cloudiness.

Perhaps Samsung or Sony will release one next year that can handle a few thousand zones, which would make the side effects less visible. But, they will probably charge 2x as much.
 
#48 ·
Re electronics industry, I don't see a problem whatsoever in rushing to judgment. Saves some folk from early waste spending. And, might even encourage (heaven willing) the manufacturer to improve. Don't bet on pie-in-the-sky firmware updates, sooner or later. :)
 
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#63 ·





I think it's safe to say this television was not ready for prime time. I tried to give it as much chance as possible but they simply missed the mark. Hopefully their next offering is better and hopefully they resolve the issues for the early adopters.
 
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