Yeh still dont know man. What if they were paid off to use content which favoured oled or the oled screens were calibrated better. Any of these things could very easily tip results one way or the other. There could also be biases by the judges and the events crew who favour one tech over the other so they push their agenda of progressing oled development by ensuring all the right conditions are in place to make oled shine and ensuring the strengths of lcd advancement isnt being displayed to its fullest. Say you rigged it for qled by having an organiser use content that displays hdr content with very bright scenes, picks a video where it minimises bloom from the edge lit panel and ensures theres a fair amount of lighting in the room. Wouldn't people then say the qled looks better than the oled? Trust no one but what you see with your own eyes i say.
You can just go into an electronics store and look at the samsung and see it's flaws. Are best buy employees messing with the settings to make them look worse playing samsungs demo content? If anyone is employing shady tactics it's samsung's own marketing department.
As far as the judges they were back and forth over the E7 and A1E, then they stated one night the Sony looked better, the next, the E7. Regardless, when they viewed they were comparing to a super expensive mastering monitor and comparing directly to that.
By "fair amount of lighting" you would have to say a store showroom, with huge storefront windows during the brightest time of the day, and a massive amount of in store florescent lighting. But many people overestimate how bright their rooms really are.
Finally, I tested all these sets with my own content. You'd have to look really hard, find something super specific to find content to even consider the Q9 competitive, maybe. Play the most common content on it, it will lose to the OLEDs by many of people's eyes. That blooming/halo/flashlighting is present, especially when you view it in a magnolia where the lights are dimmed to more typical rooms. It's super bright edge lighting. What do you expect? It's a physical limitation. Even Sony's 930E will show this off compared to their lesser 900E because it's edge lit vs FALD.
Samsung really, really screwed up this year. I'm sure their QLED sales are tracking way lower than expected. The prices are dropping rapidly for a reason, their TV's are massively overpriced. When a 65" Q7 is $2800 and getting beat out by a $2000 X900E, there's problems. Their Q9 can't compete with the Sony, Panny, and LG OLEDs. And Sony has a better LED at every price point, many times cheaper at the same time.
They're going to have to take the L for 2017, or F in many people's eyes. My wondering is how they're going to come back for 2018? Will they have something that can compete with the OLEDs? Or are they stuck for the next few years now?
Anyways. Your money. You buy what you like. After all, you got to live with it, and you're paying for it.
