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Why does my 13 year old HD TV look better to me than my new 4K HDR TV?

Renton577
By Renton577
in Displays
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Maybe I'm just crazy but today I went out and got a LG 4K NanoCell TV, their 75 series which is a 43" and using it today I just can't stand how it looks, I use it with my PC and everything is really dark, HD content looks pretty good but it just seems weird and off to me with brightness and color, this thing cost $500 though. The 13 year old TV however looks amazing, of course it doesn't have HDR but it just looks clearer and actually gets brighter than the new one but this 13 year old TV cost around $3000 back in the day. Am I just crazy or does this just come down to display quality because they are two drastically different price ranges even though they are much different age wise.

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Hard to say with what's here, but it might be a function of the HDR. Do you have HDR enabled in Windows? Not every app supports HDR, and even Windows itself isn't fully optimized for it, so SDR content will often be dark. There's a slider in the HD Color Settings control panel that lets you adjust SDR brightness.

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30 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

Hard to say with what's here, but it might be a function of the HDR. Do you have HDR enabled in Windows? Not every app supports HDR, and even Windows itself isn't fully optimized for it, so SDR content will often be dark. There's a slider in the HD Color Settings control panel that lets you adjust SDR brightness.

I've tried both enabled and disabled in windows, I think its the TV honestly, there was a point where it was bright at first and then it was just dark and stayed dark, in HDR content the bright stuff would get really bright but it was odd because most of the scene was still dark. Also the 4K display almost seems like its heavily sharpened, like if you play a game that has a sharpening filter set really high where as the HD TV looks sharp but in a natural way. I've tried changing everything on the 4K TV and it just doesn't seem to change anything substantial.

ROG Strix AMD

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CPU: Ryzen 9 5900HX GPU: AMD RX 6800M RAM: 16GB DDR4 Storage: 512GB + 1TB Intel SSD

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You bought a very entry-level TV by today's standards. I can't find any specifics about this model, but the brightness caps at around 300-400 nits for most LG Nanocell's, which is just way too low for any decent HDR. Plus it's an IPS-type panel, which has a comparatively low contrast and can look washed out to someone that is used to different panel technologies.

 

I'm sorry to say that but to me it looks like you just expected too much from an entry-level offering.

 

And the TV is not automatically better because it's new. For example there are also still some old plasmas around that can look way better than modern budget TV's.

If someone did not use reason to reach their conclusion in the first place, you cannot use reason to convince them otherwise.

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On 8/17/2021 at 2:10 AM, Stahlmann said:

You bought a very entry-level TV by today's standards. I can't find any specifics about this model, but the brightness caps at around 300-400 nits for most LG Nanocell's, which is just way too low for any decent HDR. Plus it's an IPS-type panel, which has a comparatively low contrast and can look washed out to someone that is used to different panel technologies.

 

I'm sorry to say that but to me it looks like you just expected too much from an entry-level offering.

 

And the TV is not automatically better because it's new. For example there are also still some old plasmas around that can look way better than modern budget TV's.

Thanks for the input this is kinda what I was thinking. I took the TV back and am sticking with my 1080P TV for now. It may be 13 years old but it was expensive when I first bought it and from my viewing distance it still looks amazing especially if I use supersampling. I’ll just wait and get a high end OLED in a month or two probably if I really feel like I need the upgrade.

ROG Strix AMD

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CPU: Ryzen 9 5900HX GPU: AMD RX 6800M RAM: 16GB DDR4 Storage: 512GB + 1TB Intel SSD

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Your TV is expecting a Limited RGB Signal. When connected to a PC you need to set your Black Level to High/Full in picture settings otherwise you'll get black crush. Regular tv content is Limited RGB (16-235) and the default range of PCs is Full RGB (0-255). So set your TV to Full/High range or set your computer range to limited in Nvidia Control Panel / Change Resolution / Use Nvidia color Settings / Output Dynamic Range / Limited

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