LG C8 was my first choice as well. But then I found out that the SDR calibration (greyscale and CMS) doesn't get mapped to the HDR modes. Both HDR10 and Dolby Vision modes have to be calibrated separately and for that, the
HDR Pattern Generator and HDR Colorimeter together cost a whopping $2200.
Including customs, this will come up to 2.35 lakhs.
I figured instead of buying an LG C8 for 2 lakhs and then HDR calibration equipment for another 2.35 lakhs, it would be better to buy a Sony OLED as it can map the SDR calibration to the HDR modes.
A few months ago, I had jumped on
this deal from SpectraCal which offered both the Calman Home Enthusiast software license as well as an SDR colorimeter for $500. After customs, I ended up paying around 47k total for it.
Now with the Sony OLED, I can simply run AutoCal in SDR mode with the above equipment and it'll also get mapped to the HDR modes.
I thought of getting an A8F and doing a manual calibration with Calman but the I found the ABL too aggressive in anything more than a 10% window. It was way too dim compared to the bright C8.
Fortunately, the Sony A9f matches the LG C8's ABL algorithm, so they should both have the same luminance even with an 80% window.
I also prefer the gamma curve of the Sony A9f compared to the LG C8. I prefer clipping a little bit of the highlight detail to maintain brightness as opposed to LG's gamma curve, which tries to retain as much detail as possible in the specular highlights at the expense of brightness. Of course, no right or wrong here as it comes down to the viewer's personal taste.
The Sony A9f also has increased color saturation in areas of high luminance such as emissive sources in the frame. This is something I've seen other OLEDs struggle with. This is of utmost importance to me as I've grown quite used to the highly saturated highlights in HDR on my LCD-based JVC projector. Color is where I feel LCDs excel.
The dynamic tone mapping of the A9f is quite extraordinary, and perhaps slightly better than the C8, which can be prone to luminance fluctuations. Granted, there are currently issues with Dolby Vision on the A9f, but I plan to use HDR10 with dynamic tone mapping to make up for it. The C8 seems to do Dolby Vision better than the A9f, especially since it's a hardware-based solution.
The A9f also has better near-black handling. The LG C8 can sometimes have macroblocking in areas just above black.
The A9f has slightly smoother color gradation, especially in scenes like the sky in The Martian or in lower bitrate sources like Netflix. While the C8 also has a smooth gradation feature, I don't like how it's tied to the Noise Reduction feature.
Finally, I also look forward to the acoustic surface. While I do have dedicated speakers, I'm hoping the Acoustic Surface will work well for late-night viewing or for more mellow dialogue-based content where a full onslaught of sound isn't required.
But mainly, it's the calibration that pivoted me to the A9f. If the LG C8 had SDR-to-HDR mapping, I would've bought the C8 a few days ago as it's literally half the price of the A9f. (Even if the calibration equipment were cheaper, I would've gone for the C8. But as it stands right now, I'd rather put the money towards an A9f rather than HDR calibration equipment.)