[Kr0niic]

oops. forgot picture.

picture for reference

 

[robert-tech]

oops. forgot picture.

picture for reference

That looks really distracting and I would push for another replacement.

I'm also not thrilled with my 55" LG G3. This unit does not have banding, however, it has some line mura. Gray and dull colors have these thin horizontal and vertical lines that looks like DSE and not the typical vertical banding. Solid colors look dirty as a result of this and I'm not sure what to do as this is my second unit. I'm not providing an image because I couldn't capture the effect, sort of like a Scottish tartan.

Is this effect normal and I'm too picky?

 

[Foxradiomixer]

That looks really distracting and I would push for another replacement.

I'm also not thrilled with my 55" LG G3. This unit does not have banding, however, it has some line mura. Gray and dull colors have these thin horizontal and vertical lines that looks like DSE and not the typical vertical banding. Solid colors look dirty as a result of this and I'm not sure what to do as this is my second unit. I'm not providing an image because I couldn't capture the effect, sort of like a Scottish tartan.

Is this effect normal and I'm too picky?

Not normal & you aren’t being too picky.

 

[robert-tech]

Not normal & you aren’t being too picky.

Just wonderful, you got to love the panel lottery. When you have resolved one defect, another also noticeable one crops up.

I'm seriously considering going with the Hisense U8K and calling it a day. I realize that it's not an apples to apples comparison and the G3 should be a superior TV, however, one must be really blessed by the gods to get one that is enjoyable. I think that if I'm going to be dealing with shortcomings, I'd rather they happen on a tv that costs less than half the price and to be fair the U8K seems like an awesome value with only one strong weakness which would be the viewing angles.

 

[stama]

Good evening guys
So I made the decision to keep my S95C. It just makes the most sense for me to keep it since I made such a great deal and the picture is really awesome in the vast majority of scenes....

However, no the question is if I should try to get a replacement panel or not in the hopes to get one with cleaner unuformity.
[...]
What would you say? Is there a chance to get a cleaner panel with almost no banding or could I get an even worse one?
Also, I have a dead pixel on the left side, which is actually quite a bit more visible than the one I have on the 65", I have to get about 5 feet away until I cannot see it anymore - shoudl that be a reason for a replacement? Is this a sign that more dead pixels are likely to develop or doesn't that mean anything in that regard?

What do you guys think?

I went through three 77S95C so far (assembled in May, August and October) and all of them have exactly the same banding pattern, at the same luminosity values. The only question you have to ask is: can I live with this image, or not. If it's not at the point where it makes you say "I can't live with this" (maybe because some of the bands are really sharp and you can't not notice them on pans) then keep it.

There is absolutely no QD-OLED panel that is free of banding below 15% when calibrated for 100 nits SDR. (I suspect people you see saying they have no bands are using higher level of brightness; it's certainly the case for some of the S95C owners in that thread that had the TV since it was launched in the US)

The vertical bands visible at lower brightness levels are obviously the side-effect of the deposition process used on these panels, of either the OLED or the quantum dots. You can't "not have them".

And they don't go away following compensation cycles on the QD-OLED panel, no matter what people are saying. The WRGB OLED panels can show a very stark change in the banding or clouding after the initial panel compensation cycles, given what I saw on a C7, C8 and a A90J, the QD-OLED's don't seem to. I also got a change in banding over a long period of time on the C8, despite jk82's incredulity.

The difference I do notice between the QD-OLED and WRGB OLED, is how the color tinting of the panel (color non-uniformity) is: on the WRGB OLEDs they're "piss-stains" (large area blobs with the same tint sitting one next to each other), while on the QD-OLED the areas where color tinting can be noticed are very small, like thin stripes of a few centimeters length, that mix together and are not necessarily vertical. This looks much more uniform from a distance, vs WRGB large area piss-stains, and only really noticeable in darker grays. This is what's passing for "perfect gray uniformity" in reviews, btw.

Later edit: I would also advise to display aron's green-red pattern's from the QD-OLED desaturation thread on your TV.

All three sets had slightly different results on those patterns. One (the first one) was the worst not only at how soon the patches were losing color and turning into gray or green, but it even displayed some patches much brighter than every other neighboring patch, as if there was some very sudden (only one of the RGB values incremented by 1 vs the neighboring patches) brightness inversion going on.

So I'd say check using some patterns too, maybe you spot some fault you're not willing to live with.

 

[jk82]

I went through three 77S95C so far (assembled in May, August and October) and all of them have exactly the same banding pattern, at the same luminosity values.

So I assume you returned the third one too or did you keep it? I wonder if the smaller QD-Oleds are better. I would trade my 77 S95C for a clean 55 any day....

 

[stama]

I kept it, banding and warts and all, because I need a TV.

I forced my way through Samsung support, and the bs explanations I got that had nothing to do with the power transformers (there's at least four, from what I saw when the OCB was opened in front of me) buzzing so badly you couldn't sit in the living room at night, until I managed to have them replace the power source of the OCB. Imagine that on the repair notice it had to say "The noise is normal for the operation of the TV, but the power source will be replaced as an extraordinary exception". Me having had three TVs, each with a different defect, might have had something to do with them finally conceding to do something besides scripted replies that have nothing to do with the issues reported.

 

[ThePope3290]

I have the usual grey banding on my S90C and it's such an eye sore with games that have a lot of grey or raised black levels. Pretty much any dark environment in CP2077 for example is a banding nightmare. I've heard stories of people getting multiple sets all with banding and I really would like to avoid the trouble of returning this TV. I'm so torn.

 

[robert-tech]

I have the usual grey banding on my S90C and it's such an eye sore with games that have a lot of grey or raised black levels. Pretty much any dark environment in CP2077 for example is a banding nightmare. I've heard stories of people getting multiple sets all with banding and I really would like to avoid the trouble of returning this TV. I'm so torn.

Try to exchange, at least once.

I will be returning my second 55" LG G3 as the banding has worsened and this panel has atrocious DSE grid and looks so dirty. I would never settle for something substandard. I estimate that half of these panels are garbage and my next attempt will be the 2024 LG G4 in March as I have given up on the G3.

 

[Toto84]

Finally lucky,

the best panel and tv i ever had, my a95l 77 inch calibrated, there is hope.

 

[GhostRider17]

I have the usual grey banding on my S90C and it's such an eye sore with games that have a lot of grey or raised black levels. Pretty much any dark environment in CP2077 for example is a banding nightmare. I've heard stories of people getting multiple sets all with banding and I really would like to avoid the trouble of returning this TV. I'm so torn.

I'm on my 5th 55" S90C and they've all had banding to some degree, this one was perfect on first use but the first compensation cycle revealed the banding. Are you playing in HDR?

 

[Swordfish1786]

Try to exchange, at least once.

I will be returning my second 55" LG G3 as the banding has worsened and this panel has atrocious DSE grid and looks so dirty. I would never settle for something substandard. I estimate that half of these panels are garbage and my next attempt will be the 2024 LG G4 in March as I have given up on the G3.

I’m going to try the G4 too mate, just not happy with mine at all.

gonna keep the G3 until march and then just sell it on. Any pics of your G3 now it’s worse?

Here’s mine now after almost 2 months and a few hundred hrs…

 

[ohnder]

Try to exchange, at least once.

I will be returning my second 55" LG G3 as the banding has worsened and this panel has atrocious DSE grid and looks so dirty. I would never settle for something substandard. I estimate that half of these panels are garbage and my next attempt will be the 2024 LG G4 in March as I have given up on the G3.

I tried 2 G1 panels and both were garbage. They haven't fixed anything yet and I don't see how the G4 would suddenly be a miracle panel.

 

[daparky]

A95L owner here. I've just tried Alan Wake 2 which I believe most people said is a torture test for banding etc and I can confirm I saw no banding which I'm pleased with

 

[Tigerriot]

Try to exchange, at least once.

I will be returning my second 55" LG G3 as the banding has worsened and this panel has atrocious DSE grid and looks so dirty. I would never settle for something substandard. I estimate that half of these panels are garbage and my next attempt will be the 2024 LG G4 in March as I have given up on the G3.

The G4 will almost certainly be using the exact same panel from the G3 with the exact same manufacturing process. You’ll almost certainly be wasting your time.

The best advice I can give anyone buying a new TV is not view a single test pattern video from YouTube. Watch a handful of movies and whatever you do with your tvs, and if you don’t see glaring issues stop looking for them and enjoy the tv.

I used to obsess over this stuff years ago and it‘s such a waste of time. TVs at these price points are simply not made to absolute perfection standards. They are made good enough that the vast majority of people will never notice these issues. If you don’t notice them watching regular content, and even if you do but only in very specific rare instances, such as a panning scene over a desert, just try and remind yourself there is no holy grail tv without any of these issues, and move on with enjoying your tv.

 

[robert-tech]

The G4 will almost certainly be using the exact same panel from the G3 with the exact same manufacturing process. You’ll almost certainly be wasting your time.

The best advice I can give anyone buying a new TV is not view a single test pattern video from YouTube. Watch a handful of movies and whatever you do with your tvs, and if you don’t see glaring issues stop looking for them and enjoy the tv.

I used to obsess over this stuff years ago and it‘s such a waste of time. TVs at these price points are simply not made to absolute perfection standards. They are made good enough that the vast majority of people will never notice these issues. If you don’t notice them watching regular content, and even if you do but only in very specific rare instances, such as a panning scene over a desert, just try and remind yourself there is no holy grail tv without any of these issues, and move on with enjoying your tv.

You may be right, I try not to look for issues, however, on both of these panels I noticed the problem in actual content. I can accept some soft banding that is not noticeable, however, the first panel had a hard line that made dark scenes almost unwatchable. The second panel is so dirty that even well lit scenes almost flicker and bands appear including horizontal ones during panning shots. I have seen lcds with local dimming perform better that were good on the first purchase, therefore, I don't think I am really being unreasonable as a tv that prides itself on black levels and shadow details should be able to deliver these scenes in a convincing fashion in a dark room.

An OLED tv with which I have to use excessive ambient light to mask issues is not a great tv and quite frankly defeats the purpose of these OLED panels.

 

[GhostRider17]

An OLED tv with which I have to use excessive ambient light to mask issues is not a great tv and quite frankly defeats the purpose of these OLED panels.

When I sent a photo to the seller of my S90C showing the banding they requested one with a higher brightness level in a normally lit room. I replied, like you said, that the whole point of an OLED TV is to watch in a dimly lit/dark room.

 

[GhostRider17]

I went through three 77S95C so far (assembled in May, August and October) and all of them have exactly the same banding pattern, at the same luminosity values. The only question you have to ask is: can I live with this image, or not. If it's not at the point where it makes you say "I can't live with this" (maybe because some of the bands are really sharp and you can't not notice them on pans) then keep it.

There is absolutely no QD-OLED panel that is free of banding below 15% when calibrated for 100 nits SDR. (I suspect people you see saying they have no bands are using higher level of brightness; it's certainly the case for some of the S95C owners in that thread that had the TV since it was launched in the US)

The vertical bands visible at lower brightness levels are obviously the side-effect of the deposition process used on these panels, of either the OLED or the quantum dots. You can't "not have them".

And they don't go away following compensation cycles on the QD-OLED panel, no matter what people are saying. The WRGB OLED panels can show a very stark change in the banding or clouding after the initial panel compensation cycles, given what I saw on a C7, C8 and a A90J, the QD-OLED's don't seem to. I also got a change in banding over a long period of time on the C8, despite jk82's incredulity.

The difference I do notice between the QD-OLED and WRGB OLED, is how the color tinting of the panel (color non-uniformity) is: on the WRGB OLEDs they're "piss-stains" (large area blobs with the same tint sitting one next to each other), while on the QD-OLED the areas where color tinting can be noticed are very small, like thin stripes of a few centimeters length, that mix together and are not necessarily vertical. This looks much more uniform from a distance, vs WRGB large area piss-stains, and only really noticeable in darker grays. This is what's passing for "perfect gray uniformity" in reviews, btw.

Later edit: I would also advise to display aron's green-red pattern's from the QD-OLED desaturation thread on your TV.

All three sets had slightly different results on those patterns. One (the first one) was the worst not only at how soon the patches were losing color and turning into gray or green, but it even displayed some patches much brighter than every other neighboring patch, as if there was some very sudden (only one of the RGB values incremented by 1 vs the neighboring patches) brightness inversion going on.

So I'd say check using some patterns too, maybe you spot some fault you're not willing to live with.

You're right in regards to the compensation cycles. In my experience of going through 5 S90Cs is that after the first compensation cycle on a QD OLED is what you'll be stuck with. The set I have now had no banding on first use until after the first cycle. Afterwards it's showed lots of banding but it's not as sharp as the bands on the set before it. The 3 before had 4 wide and thick bands across the screen.

I think the problem is with production and with increased yields since the 2nd gen panels came out, the first gen ones were really clean in comparison. While I know the perfect set doesn't exist, I feel the majority of issues will be reduced if they manufacture them with a bit more care. I'll be sticking with my 55S90C for now until either I decide to chance another one after the huge price drop when the new models arrive or I'll buy a new model and hope that they've kept some good panels for the full RRP priced launch sets next year.

 

[Wizziwig]

The vertical bands visible at lower brightness levels are obviously the side-effect of the deposition process used on these panels, of either the OLED or the quantum dots. You can't "not have them".

Unfortunately, the vertical banding you witnessed on your 3 x S95C samples is not from the front-plane elements you mentioned. It's all from the TFT backplane. Because it's a backplane issue, it was even present on the inkjet printed JOLED monitors like the EP950 that don't use vapor deposition.

I've never worked on anything fabricated on substrates as large as these 8.5G TVs but if I had to make some educated guesses on how the vertical bands are produced, it would likely be one of these steps during TFT fabrication:

1) Smaller substrates are spin coated with the resist material, etc. being applied in the center of the wafer which is then spun to evenly distribute it over the surface. There is no way to produce distinct bands with such a method. It's not really feasible to apply this approach to a 2+ sq. meter sheet of glass. What they do instead is use a nozzle to spray the material onto the surface as the nozzle sweeps across the glass surface. If the speed of the nozzle movement and flow of material is not perfectly timed, you will end up with some parts of the surface receiving too much or too little material. Because the nozzle has a thin vertical slit that spans the entire dimensions of the panel, you end up with vertical bands.

2) You can also introduce bands during lithography when you are exposing the masks to pattern the backplane components. For any given layer, a single mask can't cover the entire surface so you have to reposition the stage on which the huge motherglass is resting so you can project the mask again next to the previous location. If the alignment isn't perfect, you end up with components with slightly different dimensions along the mask boundaries. Due to the weight/inertia of such a huge piece of glass, there is also likely going to be some vibration of the stage when it is moved which further adds to inconsistent lithography results. Think of a blurry photo.

Multiply above two issues times the number of different masks/layers needed to fabricate the backplane, and it's easy to see why perfect band-free results are almost impossible on a consistent basis. Or as you put it: 'You can't "not have them"'. Best you can do is try to hide them via various compensation methods after you've built them - with varying degrees of success as demonstrated by this thread.

 

[thirdkind]

There is absolutely no QD-OLED panel that is free of banding below 15% when calibrated for 100 nits SDR. (I suspect people you see saying they have no bands are using higher level of brightness; it's certainly the case for some of the S95C owners in that thread that had the TV since it was launched in the US)

I suspect the same and have said as much. When watching SDR at 100 nits in a dark room with no bias lighting on my A95L, I can see banding in darker content. I also see it in torture test scenes in DV Dark, but those scenes are not fun to watch on any display and represent poor creative choices imo.

I'm sure there are random clean panels out there (just like my perfect G2, which is a unicorn in terms of uniformity), but most of those in the A95L owner's thread claiming not to see any banding are also known to watch SDR with peak luminance on High or DV Bright.