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Ok ... my turn ... A8h 65” should it stay or should it go? (Apologies to The Clash.) 4x what I’ve ever spend for a TV, so I want to make sure it lasts for 5+ years.

Look at my 5% pic take w/iPhone 12 pro max camera ... what I see is darker than the pic, and is grey ... no colors as in pic. Wonder if the slight rectangles I see are a problem as well as the 3-4 1” marks on the top of the panel. Sometimes they appear on 5% slide, sometimes not.

Need to decide tomorrow if I’m swapping out my panel. Had it since Prime day and it has 1,000 hours on it. The only times I notice the “sheer curtain” are rare dark grey scenes like the famed queens gambit intro scene. But never other times.

My first A8H was similar to this as well. Best Buy handled the exchange really well and in my case didn't even require me to repackage the TV. Unfortunately my second A8H is even worse with some horizontal banding and some faint tinting as well. So I will be exchanging again soon.
 
Ok ... my turn ... A8h 65” should it stay or should it go? (Apologies to The Clash.) 4x what I’ve ever spend for a TV, so I want to make sure it lasts for 5+ years.

Look at my 5% pic take w/iPhone 12 pro max camera ... what I see is darker than the pic, and is grey ... no colors as in pic. Wonder if the slight rectangles I see are a problem as well as the 3-4 1” marks on the top of the panel. Sometimes they appear on 5% slide, sometimes not.

Need to decide tomorrow if I’m swapping out my panel. Had it since Prime day and it has 1,000 hours on it. The only times I notice the “sheer curtain” are rare dark grey scenes like the famed queens gambit intro scene. But never other times.

Looks like most of the A8H’s. They all have some degree of this issue with dark grey. The chance of you getting a better one with a panel swap is probably slim. Up to you.
 
That's good to know that there is a noticeable uptick in performance that comes with the price. Can you also force HDR instead of Dolby Vision on the 820 if you want? Also, does the Sony TV remote have some basic control over the 820? I do really like how I can control my X700 with the TV remote.
Yes you can turn off DV and just force HDR10. It’s so nice having it auto switch though. As for the remote I don’t know. I believe you could do play/pause/rewind by hitting display which brings up the transport. Not sure about navigating menus though. Right now I use the 820 remote but am gonna get a Harmony Elite soon so I can go to 1 remote. The 820 remote also has some unique buttons to make HDR10 adjustments on the fly and the playback status which shows you what it’s outputting and if you hit that button again it even shows you the average and peak nit level for most movies. The only feature you want to probably turn off is the feature that try’s to upgrade SDR to HDR. Other than that you can mostly leave the settings how they are out the box. You can also save different picture adjustments for each disc type like DVD, Blu Ray, and UHD. It’s really flexible. There is some good videos on YouTube on all the features of the 820 by spare change and some other guys. It’s pretty much taken over the Oppo’s spot as the ultimate 4k player.
 
I am torn between the LG CX and the Sony AH8! No gaming just mivies, sports, and satellite tv
A8h has the best upscaling ... I’ve been amazed actually. I notice in sports, I watch soccer mostly. And older tv shows just look better than the tv I returned for it. I had an lg B9 with an Apple TV 4K and nvidia shield. I returned all three ... the streaming devices weren’t needed as the Sony upscale much better.

You can’t fix bad sports content ... but the a8h smooths it out better than anything I’ve used.
 
So looking through the setup menus it seems like the A8H remote is Bluetooth. Do I understand that correctly?

Never knew such a thing existed. Are lots of remotes Bluetooth nowadays or is that a quirky Sony thing?
Unless Sony made a big change, only the microphone feature uses bluetooth on the remote. But they might have changed it. Certainly on the A1E/A8F/A8G it was entirely IR except the microphone which was BT.
 
Unless Sony made a big change, only the microphone feature uses bluetooth on the remote. But they might have changed it. Certainly on the A1E/A8F/A8G it was entirely IR except the microphone which was BT.
A lot are now wireless in some way, Bluetooth or WiFi. The sony requires IR to turn it on ... the rest once it’s on is wireless via Bluetooth, from what I’ve read.
 
Gotta echo this.
Been running scenes from 1080p blu rays and 4k blu ray back to back. Setting aside HDR, it's sometimes hard to see a huge difference. Blu rays look fabulous on this tv.


A8h has the best upscaling ... I’ve been amazed actually. I notice in sports, I watch soccer mostly. And older tv shows just look better than the tv I returned for it. I had an lg B9 with an Apple TV 4K and nvidia shield. I returned all three ... the streaming devices weren’t needed as the Sony upscale much better.

You can’t fix bad sports content ... but the a8h smooths it out better than anything I’ve used.
 
Gotta echo this.
Been running scenes from 1080p blu rays and 4k blu ray back to back. Setting aside HDR, it's sometimes hard to see a huge difference. Blu rays look fabulous on this tv.
Agree w/your 1080p or better observation .. the upscaling of 1080p is quite awesome and unexpected ... seeing this with streaming content! Even older quality too.

But loving true Blu-ray 4k UHD series of Game of Thrones ... never watched it till the pandemic!
 
My original 65A8H that I bought from Best Buy in October (August build) looked a lot like that. Although, I didn't have the swaths at the top of the screen. I did exchange mine a week ago and the replacement (December build) does not have the rectangle patterns and has a lot better uniformity in general. Personally, I am happier with the replacement.
Thanks for the advice, returned it today to Best Buy online ... hope I get same build month & quality you’ve have. Initially they’d replace it under my geek squad warranty (Good to know if I see problems again) - reminded them still under holiday return policy ... They credited the one I’m returning and will pick it up and deliver new one Saturday.

So got same pricing as prime day tv & geek squad 5yr ... 1,000 hours on the one I’m returning. New one on Saturday starting @ 0 ... !

Thanks for all the great advice here, knew what to expect ... much easier than I feared!

[emoji28]
 
I’ve been wanting to get the S&M disc too but it’s been at $40 for a while. I also found this and was thinking of getting this instead. It’s $35
I downloaded the HDR10/Dolby Vision test patterns from that site because I liked the thought of being able to put them on a flash drive and test them directly on the A8H and then through my X700 to see if the HDR is treated any differently over HDMI. What I found was interesting;

There is a slide for testing Black Clipping of for each HDR format independently. HDR10 functioned exactly the same way over HDMI as when plugged into the USB1 port of the A8H. Bar 68, which is 0.3% above REFERENCE BLACK (64) was just barely flashing. According to the instruction, that is text book.

Testing the Dolby Vision Black Clipping slide over HDMI showed bar 4 barely flashing, which is 0.4% above REFERENCE BLACK (0). Again this is text book but the overall black level was slightly elevated compared to the HDR10 Black Clipping test slide. However, when checking it in the A8H USB1 port, the screen was perfectly black like but everything below Bar 32, which is 3.2% above REFERENCE BLACK was basically hard clipped.

Since I am not a calibration expert and lack the equipment to do any further testing, I don't know what to make of this but found it weird that the results over the two inputs were completely different. It might explain why I never noticed the elevated Dolby Vision black levels watching content through the built in Disney+ app or Netflix.
 
I am torn between the LG CX and the Sony AH8! No gaming just mivies, sports, and satellite tv
If you do not game, the Sony is for you. Better video processing and better motion.
 
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