Sky Glass is Not a Good Television (Not my words)

[TimmyBGood]

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@Sarakale wrote:

 like all things there will be a drop in quality when making such a mass product,that's to be expected  

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Not really: that's down to how the components are specified.  Personally I think it's a shame Sky weren't brave enough to commission the production of a trio of OLEDs subsidised by the subscription: that's how they made the breakthrough with Sky+ back in the day.

[Godfrey]

Unfortunately when the UHD HLG HDR format was being developed they would appear to have been expecting the average mass market TV displays to be capable of achieving around at least 1000 nits by the time it was adopted.

This would allow the nominal 200 nits luminous intensity of a calibrated UHD HLG SD image to be set up to approximately match the luminous intensity of an 'accurate' UHD HLG HDR image.

Alas, with Sky now using the UHD HLG HDR format for their live Premiership football coverage a display that cannot achieve a Peak Luminance level greater than around just 600 nits will always be unable to achieve an 'accurate' relatively bright image.

Godfrey.

[Sarakale]

@TimmyBGood  An OLED would have been better yes,I'm not sure why they ended up with a QLED,I'm sure I read they wanted to source their own components,as with most I'm waiting to see what the next update does,I'm sure HDR is linked to the hardware not the software so will be interesting to see what it does 

[TimmyBGood]

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@Sarakale wrote:

I'm not sure why they ended up with a QLED

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Could have been something like this from the same manufacturing partner : OLED, 1200 nit and quad ambilight really would be 'something magical' ; )

[Sarakale]

@TimmyBGood  Yeah it would of but I'd imagine the price would of been more,the last tv I had was a Phillips ambilight and the picture was really good,maybe the second tv Sky bring out will be an OLED?who knows 

[paulfscott]

Hi all, I've ordered Sky Glass, coming tomorrow. This may be an 'oranges and apples' comparison, but would anyone agree (or disagree) that the TV itself is an upgrade on a 2016 Samsung UE49KU6470? I've a similarly aged LG soundbar connected to it, with Sky Q currently. 

I can't see an HDR nits rating for the Samsung, only  1500PQI rating, if that's even a measurement of a similar variable,. How I can compare specs, other than running them both in tandem? 

Thanks in advance.

[Laing1]

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@paulfscott wrote:

Hi all, I've ordered Sky Glass, coming tomorrow. This may be an 'oranges and apples' comparison, but would anyone agree (or disagree) that the TV itself is an upgrade on a 2016 Samsung UE49KU6470? I've a similarly aged LG soundbar connected to it, with Sky Q currently. 

I can't see an HDR nits rating for the Samsung, only  1500PQI rating, if that's even a measurement of a similar variable,. How I can compare specs, other than running them both in tandem? 

Thanks in advance.

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@paulfscott have a look at this site from googling 1 candela is equal to 1 nit apparantly

[paulfscott]

@Laing1 Thanks for that. Was wondering what the cd/m2 was,. So my current TV is at 350 nits according to that website, and from what I've read on various posts on this site, the Glass is somewhere between 500-600 nits. Is that the only thing of importance when viewing in HDR, and will there be a tangible difference between the two figures above? 

Again, thanks in advance for any replies 👍🏻

[Laing1]

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@paulfscott wrote:

@Laing1 Thanks for that. Was wondering what the cd/m2 was,. So my current TV is at 350 nits according to that website, and from what I've read on various posts on this site, the Glass is somewhere between 500-600 nits. Is that the only thing of importance when viewing in HDR, and will there be a tangible difference between the two figures above? 

Again, thanks in advance for any replies 👍🏻

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@paulfscott I know Sky Glass is supposed to be 630 nits I am by no means an expert in HDR but would think that you would get a better results than with you current TV but probably @Godfrey or @tarbat would be able to answer your questions on HDR sorry i'm not much help 😀

[tarbat]

@paulfscott , yes, in theory, the 630 nits claimed for Glass TV should deliver a better HDR experience than your current TV. However at least one review has contradicted that 630 nits claim, putting it much lower.

Of course there are many other factors that affect picture quality.

[paulfscott]

@tarbat 

Thanks for the quick reply. I guess we'll see tomorrow! As I'm paying £1p/m more for Glass than I do for my current package, then I suppose it's worth checking out. That said, I'm pleased there's also a cooling off period. 

[SimonW]

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@TimmyBGood wrote:

https://www.t3.com/reviews/sky-glass-review 

"You can buy the Sky Glass now in the UK, and it's expected to arrive in Australia at a later date."

Well, that's going to be a big surprise for quite a few people...

It's a pretty poorly constructed 'review' all round.

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Well if they launch it in Australia then it's going to be an even worse launch than here. Australian Internet is notoriously poor even with internet traffic just going internally (Even worse when it needs to jump country as the internet backbones connecting Australia to the rest of the world seem to spend more time being down than up) so its going to struggle to handle the service

[SimonW]

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@Godfrey wrote:

When I read this comment from T3 about the viewing angle of the Sky Glass screen I have to admit that they lost my confidence in their reviewing ability.

"Wherever you’re sitting in the room, the Sky Glass will give you pretty much the same experience, the picture doesn’t change when you look at it from different angles. Because of that, it’ll be a great choice for larger households and families. "  

And I would suggest that their 'Crystal Ball' may not turn out to be as good as they predict, if viewers expect this update to miraculously provide an 'Accurate' relatively bright HLG HDR UHD image;

" the update being rolled out in November 2021 which will improve Sky’s HDR picture quality, increasing brightness, enhancing contrast and boosting colours."

Godfrey.

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The viewing angle thing made me laugh as well. As I've said elsewhere mine started to washout when sitting less than 10 degrees off centre (off centre to the right the left hand side washes out and vice versa) and you also start to get colour shift as well (which might be part of the reason why getting a good looking picture is so hard, if you are viewing it in a test lab situation maybe it's fine but most people's living room doesn't allow for it to be placed exactly centre to everyone watching)

And I've seen it on other peoples Glass TV's as well and you see it on any photo people take from off centre. 

[SimonW]

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@TimmyBGood wrote:

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@Sarakale wrote:

can't see how some think it's got a bad picture 🤨clearly must be seeing something I'm not 

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Always possible there's variation between sizes, different manufacturing batches in the same size, damage in storage or transit etc.  The point about letting a set acclimatise when first brought inside rather than powering it on immediately is an interesting one, particularly as we get later into the year and they spend considerable time in unheated warehouse and van space prior to delivery.

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There will be some variation but seeing as most of the issues come down to the type of panel and implementation choices so its no way it goes from him almost making out like it's the best image he has ever seen to what people like me are experiencing. And TBH with the panel type being used and the poor images it produces even in test labs let alone real-world use. Viewing angles on VA panels are not great as it is, LG and Samsungs do a better job as they have a wide-viewing angle layer on top of the panel itself that help a fair bit but the kind of level of panels you will see the likes of TCL use which is probably the kind of level we are looking at from TP Vision in the best case are really poor. So unless he has his room set up so his viewing position is perfect I just don't see him not getting washout and colour shift on his panel. The difference in the panels is more when it comes to uniformity where it is hit and miss where one set might see hardly any DSE but others loads of it (something we have seen demonstrated on this forum)

[SimonW]

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@paulfscott wrote:

@Laing1 Thanks for that. Was wondering what the cd/m2 was,. So my current TV is at 350 nits according to that website, and from what I've read on various posts on this site, the Glass is somewhere between 500-600 nits. Is that the only thing of importance when viewing in HDR, and will there be a tangible difference between the two figures above? 

Again, thanks in advance for any replies 👍🏻

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nits are only part of the equation really. One of the reasons for the Glass HDR to be so bad is actually the implementation of how the controller board handles the image. TV's even the expensive ones don't really have enough nits for how the content was intended to be viewed so there are two ways they can handle it.

The first which is what most cheaper, lower nit sets do and that's you clip it, when the required brightness exceeds the capabilities of the set it just stops getting brighter, this means you don't get the full range and it can cause blowout at the top end but you get an image that is bright and vibrant and what most people expect (especially as most people opt for an oversaturated image anyway)

The second is you adjust everything down so the contents peak brightness is the sets peak brightness. You get the full gradient and you don't get the blowout but it makes the image across the board darker.

Sky have gone with the second which is why HDR, especially HLG is dark on it. It might have more nits than your Samsung but it just doesn't have enough nits to really make going this route viable especially on a QLED screen. if it had been closer to 1000nits than it is they may have got away with it. It kind of seems with Sky they have gone to TP-Vision with the requirements that they need certain buzz features that will look good on the marketing but which is as cheap as possible and what we have ended up with is a weird mix where the things it should be strong in are handicapped by the corner-cutting. I would imagine most people will find your Samsung much more pleasing to watch than Glass due to this

The strangest thing is knowing they were going to start HDR broadcasts and were going to use HLG (as for broadcast its really the only choice otherwise they have to send out two different streams, one SDR and one HDR. HLG lets them include both in a single stream) you would have thought they would have wanted the TV to really sell it yet which it stands no chance of doing with its setup