The picture quality is actually top notch, which is why I have been mentioning ruined potential so often. I haven't seen any stuttering in faces. Sound is good. The TV has potential to match C9 with cost savings of 30k plus. My main concern was OLED pixel refresher and had that been missing, I would have fought tooth and nail and sent it back.
Since that is there, and as I have been saying from the start, the picture looks great, I'll keep it. Saw Better Call Saul last night in 4k. Lovely! The sound is more than enough for a bedroom. The sound was at 15 actually. So it can get fairly loud without distortion. Then saw second episode of Our Planet in 4k HDR. Again, lovely! So the set has potential.
I actually just got off the call with a senior member of the team. They have promised that their team is taking everything into consideration and changes will be made with the new update, which will bring Amazon prime and Android 9 too. That shows willingness to improve their product. I'll take a chance on that. Because well, tbh they need that to be with them in order to carve a slice of the market.
Sony hasn't done that. If you're a customer of Sony's 2018 models, you're stuck with Dolby Vision that's too dark, some Netflix shows even being unwatchable, and even though 2019 sets have new modes of Bright and Vivid, 2018 ones are still waiting for any hope of an improvement. LG's 2018 sets had a delayed luminance adjustment happening in 2018 too which took a few months to resolve. Vincent also pointed it out. Of course, flashing problems of near black also happened in 2018 and have continued in 2019 for Sony at least.
So I'll take the positive intent of the team, which was lacking in the first time I had talked to them, and bet on it. Apart from 24fps judder removal via custom motion interpolation settings, the picture quality is flawless. Even tonal gradations were fantastic, close to perfect with DNR and MPEG NR set to low, in Our Planet underwater scenes. LG B9 scored surprisingly low in gradient test on Rtings, which was a bummer. Infact, I even asked Rtings whether it can be panel variance or seems intentional. Tough to know, but business wise, it makes sense to make the B9 seem inferior to C9, even though the difference was really hard to notice earlier.
If they come true on their promise of improving the user experience and offering a few essential tweaks, it'll be a highly recommended set for casual and regular viewers. I'll actually do a video review when the new upgrade comes. Time to show Indian reviewers how it should be done, even if it's going to be a one-off thing.