After Hisense and TCL bailed out of the most watched TV shootout that every year determines who has the best TV got under way, only this year there were two categories OLED and Mini LED with three of the biggest heavyweights Samsung, Sony and LG lining up to try and take the crown.

Value Electronics is a New York based retailers who’s for 20 years has been running one of the most watched shootouts that because of its intensity takes nine hours to determine a winner.

The formula for the shootout that is watched by the entire TV industry and widely reported on started twenty years ago, when Robert Zohn, owner of premium A/V retailer Value Electronics, hosted the first TV Shootout.

The premise was simple: put the top TVs into a room, hit them with the most demanding video content and ask a panel of judges to decide which TV produces the best overall picture quality.

Hisense and TCL were invited but chose not to participate with no explanation given.

Each brand had both an OLED TV and a miniLED/LCD TV in the mix.

The big question was whether LG had an advantage in the OLED category as they manufacture the bulk of the OLED display panels appearing in TV’s today.

The other big OLED manufacturer is Samsung who supply the panels for both their own and Sony TV’s.

But as one observer said, “Manufacturing an OLED display panel does not mean that you have the best OLED TV as a lot more has to go into delivering a premium OLED TV than the panel”.

In the OLED Category LG had their G4 WRGB OLED TV and in the LCD category their QNED90T MiniLED/LCD TV.

Samsung had their S95D QD-OLED and QN95D MiniLED/LCD

While Sony had their A95L QD-OLED and Bravia 9 MiniLED TV.

All of the models being put up for the shootout were introduced in 2024 except Sony’s A95L QD-OLED, which was last year’s winner and has been carried over into 2024.

All of the entered models were 65-inch TV’s diagonally offer native 4K resolution with different versions of HDR (High Dynamic Range) including HDR10 and HLG (Hybrid Log Gamma).

The LG and Sony TVs include Dolby Vision dynamic HDR, while the Samsung TVs support HDR10+ dynamic HDR.

LG’s G4 OLED featured their latest premium WRGB OLED panel produced by LG Display.

The Sony A95L and Samsung S95D OLED TVs feature QD-OLED panels manufactured by Samsung Display.

All three MiniLED TVs include LCD panels with Quantum Dot colour technology, backlit by an array of miniLED light modules with local dimming technology to enhance contrast and black level reproduction.

In an effort to be impartial and to ensure peak performance, each display in the event was professionally calibrated by experienced Level 3 ISF calibrators Cecil Meade and DeWayne Davis.

AVProGlobal supplied the latest state-of-the-art switching, distribution, and test equipment. Sony’s latest professional broadcast monitor, the 31-inch BVM-HX3110, which sells for over $30,000, was used as the reference to compare all displays against.

All of the judges were experienced TV professionals Jason Dustal, Field Trainer and ISF Instructor from AVPro Global.

MiniLED TVs battle it out at the 2024 TV Shootout, from left to right: LG 65QNED90T, Samsung QN65QN95D (top row), Sony BRAVIA 9 (K65XR90) and Sony BVM-HX3110 broadcast reference monitor (bottom row).

The panel of independent judges for this year’s also included professional Hollywood video colourists, film finishers, TV reviewers and calibrators, and video experts.

This year’s judges panel included:

  • Richard Drutman, writer/producer/director at TriodePictures.com
  • Charlie Anderson, award-winning cinematographer with ten feature-length films and countless music videos, commercials, and short films under his belt.
  • David Mackenzie, CEO of Fidelity inMotion, a compression and mastering facility that specializes in maximizing the quality of video delivered on home formats such as 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray.
  • David Medina, Director of Encoding Services at Warner Bros Discovery
    .
    Mike Osadciw, THX/ISF Professional Video Calibrator with over 25 years of experience
  • Kenneth Almestica, Senior Director Technical lOperations at Paramount Brand Creative.
  • John Reformato, professional ISF Level-3 certified video calibrator & consultant.

Jason, DeWayne and Cecil led the judges through the test patterns and video clips, in some cases pointing out what to look for, but the judges were the ones who voted to determine the winners in each category.

Judges were discouraged from discussing their impressions with other judges in order to promote objectivity in the scoring.

Then came the results with LG the biggest manufacturer of OLED TV’s coming in dead set last.

The winner in the OLED category was Sony who scored 8.9 overall in the competition, edging out Samsung with 8.8 and LG with 8.4.

In the Mini-LED category LG also fared poorly with Sony scoring 8.1,Samsung had 8.0, and LG only managing 7.3.

The result saw Sony voted King of the TVs with wins in both the OLED and LCD Categories.