Podcast #781: LG 65UH6150 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV

LG 65UH6150 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV   We have been talking about 4K TVs for about three years. We were pretty early to the 4K scene and as being early adopters we missed out on TVs with HDR and support for the wider color gamut. Such is the problem with being an early adopter. But we knew it was only a matter of time before one of us would buy another TV and this time it would support HDR and Wide Color. As it turns out Ara was the one who recently purchased an LG 65UH6150 (Buy Now $1079) and is quite pleased with what LG has sold him. Features: 4K UHD IPS Panel - in-plane switching maintains consistent color regardless of viewing angle HDR Wide Color Gamut 4K Upconverter TruMotion 120Hz - reduces motion blur on fast moving objects WebOS 3.0 Smart TV - The latest generation of LG's exclusive Smart TV platform Installation and Setup The TV is relatively easy to get off the truck and into the house. You will definitely need a pickup truck to get this home. While it will fit in a lot of SUVs laying flat it is not recommended to move such a large TV like this. The glass is heavier in a large TV and going over a bump could break the screen. Shipping weight is 72 lbs (32.7Kgs), it's only 60 lbs when you get it out of the box. You lift the box off of the TV and then carefully attach two legs with a philips screwdriver. Once on the TV stand we connected power and an HDMI cable from the AppleTV. We didn't bother connecting a FireTV since the TV comes with an Amazon app that is capable of 4K HDR and Wide Color Gamut. We also opted to use the built in Netflix app since it too supported HDR and 4K. The first thing we did was connected to our 5Ghz wifi network and once connected the TV notified us of a firmware update. The update took about 20 minutes. Once that was completed we logged into our Amazon and Netflix accounts and we were good to go! There are more apps than Netflix and Amazon but that was all we were interested in. Other apps include: Hulu Channel Plus Youtube Vudu Pandora Crackle Spotify And more We did not do any formal calibration or did we tweak the settings. We simply set the TV to Cinema mode for the majority of our viewing and HDR Effect when we were watching UHD Discs or streamed content that supported HDR. There are ISF calibration setting levels for those who want to have the TV calibrated. Note - to turn on 10bit color go to the General/HDMI ULTRA HD Deep Color setting and turn this on per HDMI input. If the device does not support 10 bit color it may not work in this mode. Performance We recently did a review of the Oppo Digital UDP-203 (Podcast #777) where much of the viewing was done on this TV. For the performance portion pertaining to UHD discs we'll just repeat that here. We'll also add watching 1080p television content and streamed 4K HDR content from Netflix and Amazon. Overall the TV has great color and good blacks. In content that was encoded with HDR the Blacks looked almost plasma like. Other times they looked like they had a tinge of gray. We found that much of the picture performance depended on what you are feeding the TV. The other pleasant surprise was the speakers. Typically it's hard to hear dialog on modern TVs. This one did not have that problem. UHD Disc First up was "Keeping up with the Joneses" Other than the noticeable improvement in detail there wasn't much of an improvement. There were scenes where I could notice more realistic color and shadow details. This is a limitation of the disc not the player or the TV. Which brought us to a revelation. You really need to pay attention to your entire chain to get the most out of HDR. That includes the content. While I felt the Oppo and TV did a great job with the movie, I  was let down by the movie itself. Next up was Independence day Resurgence. This was another disc that didn't meet my expectations. There are a lot of dark scenes and HDR should have made a bigger difference. The shadow detail really didn't look better than the Blu-ray. Again this is a limitation of the content. I had high expectations for Magnificent 7 and the LG did not disappoint! The detail and color were so lifelike it felt as though I was transported to the wild west. I found myself watching the detail at times and not the movie. It felt like I was being introduced to HDTV for the first time. Skin tones were the most natural I have ever seen. The beard/stubble on Chris Pratt's face was so detailed I felt that he looked too groomed for the wild west. The detail in the dark scenes were really pronounced. In fact the blacks seemed almost plasma like. The war paint on Red Harvest's face looked so good, again, it was almost too good! There were no visible artifacts that I could see even when I got up very close to the screen.  This is why you want to upgrade your HDTV and Blu-ray player. Streaming Content For this I watched content on Amazon Prime and Netflix. On Amazon Prime I viewed Bosch and Man in the High Castle. The Man in the High Castle is already a dark film so HDR should have helped quite a bit. I noticed that is seemed a bit soft. It's not really the best use of HDR. Since I have seen some great HDR on UHD discs I only concluded that it is shot/produced this way. Then I watched Bosch. Again, it did not look that good. I don't know if it's a bandwidth thing (I get 50Mbps down consistently) or an encoding thing. Regardless, Amazon was not the best example of HDR. Moving over to netflix the only thing I tested was Do Over. It an Adam Sandler show that looks like it has some potential. Netflix HDR looked better than Amazon's but again not as good as the The Magnificent 7. Television There wasn't much to say about watching TV signal. The LG upscaler did a good job with taking 1080p content and turning it into 4K. I did not notice any artifacts or any other defects that would have resulted in the upconversion. Colors looked good, especially on the network channels. In general, 1080p television content looked fine. Conclusion If you are in the market for a new TV it makes sense to buy a 4K HDR set now. The content still has a way to go as far as consistency of application of the HDR and wide color gamut technology. But costs are low enough where it's OK to buy the TV now and wait for the content to catch up. Do not buy a 4K TV that does not support HDR and the wide color gamut. It will be very difficult to see any difference. The LG 65UH6150 is a great TV in this regard. With the right content it will make watching TV and movies more lifelike than anything you've seen to date. Sure there may be better TVs on the market. But none at $1000!