I am new to the curve and I've only been watching it for a few days now. I don't have a problem with it, but I'm not sure that it does anything to help my viewing experience since I sit across the room maybe 10 or so feet from it at a slight angle off axis and it's a 55 inch OLED. Also, I'm near sighted in one eye and far sighted in the other so my depth perception suffers and my ability to resolve detail is quite limited unless I'm wearing my glasses, which I hate to do because the progressive lenses suck. However, I did get the glasses out to watch Avatar in 3D and I must say that having never watched a 3D TV before, I was blown away. I don't know if the curve affected 3D viewing, but my son was at the worst angle to the TV and he thought it was great too, so the curve didn't appear to detract from his off axis 3D viewing experience.

That being said, my old TV was a 2007-2008 vintage 40" LCD hanging in the same spot and I liked it too until it crapped out and I had to buy a new TV. For me, the larger screen size and OLED picture quality are much bigger factors than the curve. Hell, I never even had a Blu-Ray player until I got the new TV, so I guess all the new toys are having a greater impact on me than the curve. Frankly, if I had a choice at the store for a flat OLED, I probably would've bought that since my other screen was flat and my eyesight sucks.

Watching video content in a bright room is like listening music in an empty room with bad acoustic properties (lots of sound reflections) - not serious.
Serious watching requires proper environment - weakly lit room (preferably the light source to be behind the plane of the display) or in the best case - totally dark room. That's why I don't think weird looking reflections of curved screens are issue for any user who knows how to use the potential of his display.

We finaly got rid of this years ago...just saying..

^^ Do you know the difference between concave and convex?

It's curved the wrong way , send it back

Gee, I didn't realize that one must be a so called "serious watcher" to have a valid opinion on curved screens in various viewing environments?

I'll tell you what. You convince my wife that my family room and kitchen should be painted black, we should board up our windows, or otherwise refrain from watching TV during daylight hours.

If you can do that, I'll agree with you that "weird looking reflections" should be of no concern to me. I mean, I must not be a "serious watcher"...what am I thinking putting a "quality" set in my family room in the first place?.

Like i was saying we got rid of that (convex) years ago, ''rid of'' indicates that FLAT is how a TV is suppost to be TV.

Geoff Morrison c|net
''I can imagine the curve is something you can get used to, just like any artifact..''

After experiencing curved for few weeks, going back to flat feels weird. Doesn't look right.

Curve is so minimal, you won't notice it. Especially in dark environment.

But it's all personal preference.

When you are sitting really close to monitors, if you set them up flat, the far corners are meaningfully far away vs. the centers. This does not apply to a 55" TV viewed from what the vast majority of people would consider a normal viewing distance.
That's pretty amusing from a science standpoint given the differences in sound and light.
Even if this is true -- and I'm not of the opinion it's especially so -- it only removes the error at some specific distance from the screen. At other distances it can change the error, but cannot magically remove it. The perfect distance would depend on the curve radius -- different from LG and Samsung -- and would be unlikely to be the viewing distance in your living room. Also, the content being displayed wasn't developed for the curved screen. It was developed for the flat screen. It has no idea you have a curved screen. Even cinema material is arguably at best mildly adapted to giant curve radii that are an order of magnitude larger than what the LG is offering -- never mind the Samsung.

Much bigger artifact is the unsatisfactory sense of depth to the picture. The ultimate goal of the whole video industry is to provide solutions which better mimic how real life looks. It is fact that curved screens were introduced because of pure marketing reasons, but that doesn't exclude the fact they greatly contribute to the sense of realism/depth.

Not true. It applies to a 55" TV watched from a normal distance. The error is much less in comparison to your monitor example, but its still there!


That's correct, the error can be zero only at a specific distance, depending on the radius of the curve and the size of the screen. At any other distances the error exists, but at distances which are shorter than the radius of the curve - the error is still smaller than an equally sized flat screen! If the viewer is at longer distance than the screen's radius, then the error goes up, because in that situation the center of the screen is at longer distance compared to its sides and the subjective feeling is as if the picture starts to close within itself, which is unnatural. That's why the curve should be of relatively big radius as the new Panasonic OLED, which is so gently curved that it almost seems flat compared for example to Samsung displays.

I keep hearing about this "normal" viewing distance. Especially with curved and 4K TV's, the days of sitting 10-15 feet away from a 55" TV because your furniture looks better that way are over. Complete waste of a curved and 4K resolution.

http://www.thx.com/consumer/home-ent...r/hdtv-set-up/

I sit about 8 feet away from my 78" curved 4K.

And yet virtually everyone who owns a 55-inch TV sits 10-15 feet away from it.

That's just reality.

People do all sorts of stupid things, what's your point?

I agree with this.

I don't want a curved set but if people want and like the curve then cool beans for them. To further Ken's point though, just as people shouldn't tell someone who likes a curve they are wrong or crazy, curved fans shouldn't tell those who don't like/want the curve they are wrong and try and sell people into the supposed greatness of it.

For me, even if I got used to it I still wouldn't become a curved fan because of the geometric distortions that I have seen since I am sensitive to that stuff and yes, I realize some don't see the distortions or that they got used to them and quit noticing them but that doesn't mean they are me so don't tell me I don't see something that I do.

I am sure I could get used to eating cockroaches but that wouldn't mean to me they are better than cheeseburgers.

You like 3D and a curved screen. There's clearly something wrong with you.

Can you explain how content created for a curved screen would be different than for a flat screen?

I would literally bring "edge content" closer to you so that when presenting that edge content it would be accurate.

Today, while everything thinks there is something magic about curving because "it makes the edges closer" which is somehow good, the reality is that it's taking imagery that is, in fact, as far away as the flat corners and unnaturally moving it closer to you. That's not replicating the thing being shut, it's creating an odd compensation -- which is actually very different than why movie theaters do it, which has a lot to do with optics and the limitations of projection -- that some people apparently find appealing for whatever reason.

But it's not in any way accurate.

I like the curve, though it took me several weeks to get used to it. It does seem to add depth to the picture, which I think may be due to the apparent slight upward and downward bend of the top and bottom edges of the picture. It's not so much like a painting hung on the wall and a little more like a car's front window (or a spaceship's front console).

In the day, there are reflections from windows immediately behind where I sit to watch. The reflections are less bothersome because of the way the coherence of images is broken up by the curve -- the reflections don't draw my attention, and I don't even notice them anymore, unless I deliberately focus on them.

Can you tell us more about your spaceship?

Is that Twilight Zone music I hear in the background?

Dude...I still can't stop laughing...brilliant

I can't tell you how many times I've re-experienced the birth of the universe on the Science Channel's How the Universe Works. Love those videos.

Opinions vary, but most people agree that there's something wrong with me other than my bad eyesight.

Funny thing, when the old TV crapped out with the big blue line in the middle of the picture, the wife was playing it cool and trying not to care. I was going to live with the big blue line in the old TV while I weighed my replacement options. Apparently, I was taking too long doing my research, so she started dropping hints about the Labor Day weekend sale at Best Buy and asking me when I was going to go get a new TV. When finally I got the TV, the story to her friends was about MY new toy with the thin curved screen. When her friend suggested that Avatar in 3D would look amazing on MY new TV, and we didn't have a Blu-Ray player, the wife's not caring kicked in and suggested that we get a Blu-Ray player and buy Avatar in 3D - you know, because it wasn't available from Netflix and stuff, so what choice did we have? When I had the unmitigated gall to suggest that I would start doing research into Blu-Ray players, the wife asked why we couldn't just go get a cheap Blu-Ray player at Walmart and buy Avatar right that minute (10:00 PM at night mind you), so we did, you know, because it didn't matter all that much to her. Of course, when she told her friend the story of the amazing 3D viewing experience on the curved screen, I was the one getting all the new toys. Not that I'm objecting, of course, but it sure was amazing how much she didn't care about any of MY new toys, you know, she just wants me to be happy.

I have no problem whatsoever with the curve. The curve is indeed minimal and like I've said before no one who has seen my set (65JS9500) has even noticed it. I don't always sit dead center either. I have two rows of (three seats each row) of theater seats and those sitting on the ends get the same picture quality. For that, I've found that the key is sitting within the screen's left and right boundaries. Also the bigger the screen, the more seats that can be added. I tested this with flat screens sets of the same size also.

I sit only 3 feet from my 46 inch TV. I imagine if it was curved it would be a huge problem even if I move to 4 feet? What do you think? Have anyone tried sitting that close to LGs curved TV? I am planning on buying 55 inch LG OLED but am worried about the curve - I will do some tests in a store before the purchase of course, but initial tests on Samsung made me doubt it will look good (Samsung has greater curve though, right?).

You will see terrible SDE at that distance.

Perhaps the difference in depth is due to the panel rather than the curve itself. OLED of course, or the colour gamut/bit depth of the JS9500 even it is LCD

I didn't like the curve but bought an ec9300 because i wanted OLED. Now I don't really notice it most of the time. Overall I'm pretty indifferent to it. Though I think all things equal I would pick a flat screen simply because I don't like how it skews reflections across the screen in a bright room.

I would invest in getting a bigger space to live than buying a tv. But that's just me.

By distorting the source image so the distortion of the display "corrects" it.

Think of anamorphic film prints that are "unsqueezed" by the lens.

You can read about rectified film prints here, but basically here's what they did to project Ultra Panavision 70 on a curved screen (look at the spacing of the grids):

Attached Thumbnails