OK, It's time for me to eat my words. Previously, after comparing the XBR75Z9D to the LG OLED77G6P, I said that the Sony had too much crosstalk and that the LG had none. I also said that the blacks were darker on the OLED than the Sony.
What a difference a better store makes. I took a drive to a store farther away from me that had a better reputation, and
got to see both TVs nearly side-by-side (along with the LG 86UH900).
All three TVs had been calibrated, and all three were connected to the new Panasonic 4K Blu-ray player. It was a revelation seeing all three in action.
First, the
Sony TV was every bit as good as the OLED, if not a tiny bit better. Can't put my finger on why, but
it just looked... better... by a nose. Could just be personal preference.
The blacks on both TVs were superbly dark and inky, and the colors on both were vibrant and accurate. But
LG's TruMotion "soap opera mode" is a disaster of jutter and artifacts *, whereas the Sony's image processing didn't seem to hurt at all - it actually seemed to help a little.
Second, the Sony's operating system is absolutely atrocious. It's gotta be one of the more unintuitive GUIs I've seen on a television. Horrible. Whereas the LG's was very intuitive and easy to navigate (except for figuring out how to find the advanced picture controls to turn off TruMotion, which were buried in an unexpected place).
Third, the 3D on the Sony was crosstalk-free. None whatsoever. I even played the X-Men Apocalypse 3D Blu-ray about which I've been complaining for a while, and if there was any crosstalk at all, I didn't see it. Absolutely gorgeous. And the Sony 3D active glasses were not uncomfortable (although trying to pair them with the TV nearly drove the salesperson mad). The LG, on the other hand, has a problem: when sitting in the perfect position at the perfect height, there's also zero crosstalk. But stand up or sit lower, and suddenly horrible crosstalk appears at either the top or bottom of the screen. This happened on both the 77-inch OLED and the 86-inch LED. It was actually worse on the 86-inch because since the screen is so large, there isn't any perfect place to sit! So there's always going to be a little crosstalk at the top or bottom, depending on how it's mounted.
The OLED did seem to have better depth of 3D - when things popped out of the screen on the OLED, they came right up to your face. Didn't get that on the Sony. For example, there are some scenes on the new Ghostbusters 3D Blu-ray where the proton pack beams jump out of the screen into the audience, and on the OLED it seemed like they were zapping past my head. Not quite so on the Sony. Who knows - maybe there's a setting in the Sony's awful O/S that increases/decreases depth (or maybe it's on the Panasonic player)?
I'm bummed about the Sony's navigation system, but that just means more time mastering it - it'll work in the end. I'm disappointed that the Sony maxes out at 75 inches (I don't count the 100-inch one since it's a $60,000 piece of vaporware at the moment); Sony should have an 85-inch version of this for $15-18k. Also annoyed that the 75-inch Sony costs $1,000 more than the 86-inch LG, but I'm more perplexed why the 77-inch OLED costs $12,000 more than the 75-inch Sony.
Regardless, everything else about the Sony is spectacular, so this is the one I've decided to buy. (Which means everyone else should wait because a month or two after I buy this, Sony will announce the 85-inch version and LG will announce an 86-inch OLED!)