Hisense UR8 review: Two-minute review

The Hisense UR8 is the first ‘affordable’ RGB TV on the market, and while it has a strong feature set and mostly good picture quality, the UR8 doesn't demonstrate the ‘OLED-killer’ status the RGB tech has been given. While it’s a good TV, it can’t count itself among the best TVs I've tested this year.

The UR8 has a good number of smart and AI features, as well as features for gaming. It also has four HDMI 2.1 ports, an anti-glare screen akin to Samsung’s own Glare Free screens, and comes equipped with Hisense’s Hi-View AI RGB processor.

Picture quality on the UR8 is good, but delivers some disappointments. It demonstrates excellent backlight control for an LED, backlit TV, as well as strong contrast, decent black levels, and crisp textures. Its motion is also good, even with out-of-the-box picture modes, though I did note some blurring at times.

However, as this is an RGB TV, its big selling point should be its colors, and while they are natural, and can appear punchy, they’re not as bold as I hoped for, especially given its ostensibly impressive test measurements (more on that below). While RGB is a step forward in some aspects for mini-LED, TVs using the technology still can’t compete with the best OLED TVs.

Sound quality is solid. The UR8 delivers some weighty bass, good accuracy and precise sound mapping, and delivers clear speech in movies and TV shows. The soundstage can sound narrow, however, and Dolby Atmos effects aren’t always clear. While the built-in sound is good for the most part, home theater fans will likely want to supplement it with one of the best soundbars.

Gaming is one of the UR8’s strengths. With four HDMI 2.1 ports, all kitted out for gaming, it supports up to 4K 180Hz and VRR. When actually playing games, the UR8 feels responsive and delivers a smooth experience. Getting a low input lag time does require adjustment of settings and the picture isn’t always perfect; but while it doesn’t beat the best gaming TVs, the UR8 is still good for gaming.

Value is a mixed bag with the UR8. The 65-inch model I tested launched for $1,999 / £2,299 / AU$2,495, and while prices are already dropping in the US, and it's great value in Australia, its price in the UK puts it in direct competition with some of the best OLED TVs, like the LG C6. While it does deliver good performance and features for the price in the US and Australia, the same isn’t true for the UK.

Hisense UR8 review: Prices & release dates

• Release dates: June 2026 (US) / July 2026 (UK)
• 55-inch: $1,299 / £1,699 / AU$1,895
• 65-inch: $1,999 / £2,299 / AU$2,495
• 75-inch: $2,499 / £2,999 / AU$3,195
• 85-inch: $3,499 / £3,499 / AU$4,695
• 100-inch: $5,999 / £7,999 / AU$N/A

The UR8 is the Hisense's entry-level RGB mini-LED TV, sitting below the flagship Hisense UR9, but above TVs in the brand's standard mini-LED range such as the Hisense U7S. It’s available in sizes 55-85-inch in most regions, and available in 100-inch in the US and UK (there's no listing for an Australian model yet). The 65-inch model I tested launched for $1,999 / £2,299 / AU$2,495.

Since its release, the UR8’s prices have already dropped in the US, with the 65-inch now available for $1,499. The 55-inch has dropped as low as $999, putting it in the same price bracket as some standard mini-LED models. The same can’t be said in the UK, where its prices are not only higher than standard mini-LED competition, but even pricier than the LG C6 OLED.

Hisense UR8 review: Specs

Hisense UR8 review: Benchmark results

Previous

1 / 4

Next

Brightness measurements

Taken using a colorimeter and test pattern generator. Click the test name for measurements and select the chosen test from the dropdown menu.

HDR Filmmaker ModeHDR StandardSDR Filmmaker ModeSDR Standard

Hisense UR8

HDR Filmmaker Mode (10% window)

2097

HDR Filmmaker Mode (Fullscreen)

771

TCL QM8L

HDR Filmmaker Mode (10% window)

3719

HDR Filmmaker Mode (Fullscreen)

759

Samsung QN80H

HDR Filmmaker Mode (10% window)

1149

HDR Filmmaker Mode (Fullscreen)

603

01,0002,0003,0004,000

nits

HDR Filmmaker Mode Data

Product	HDR Filmmaker Mode (10% window) (nits)	HDR Filmmaker Mode (Fullscreen) (nits)
Hisense UR8	2097	771
TCL QM8L	3719	759
Samsung QN80H	1149	603

Hisense UR8

HDR Standard Mode (10% window)

2394

HDR Standard Mode (Fullscreen)

767

TCL QM8L

HDR Standard Mode (10% window)

3771

HDR Standard Mode (Fullscreen)

795

Samsung QN80H

HDR Standard Mode (10% window)

1204

HDR Standard Mode (Fullscreen)

672

01,0002,0003,0004,000

nits

HDR Standard Data

Product	HDR Standard Mode (10% window) (nits)	HDR Standard Mode (Fullscreen) (nits)
Hisense UR8	2394	767
TCL QM8L	3771	795
Samsung QN80H	1204	672

Hisense UR8

SDR Filmmaker Mode (10% window)

314

SDR Filmmaker Mode (Fullscreen)

372

TCL QM8L

SDR Filmmaker Mode (10% window)

229

SDR Filmmaker Mode (Fullscreen)

0

Samsung QN80H

SDR Filmmaker Mode (10% window)

199

SDR Filmmaker Mode (Fullscreen)

231

0100200300400

nits

SDR Filmmaker Mode Data

Product	SDR Filmmaker Mode (10% window) (nits)	SDR Filmmaker Mode (Fullscreen) (nits)
Hisense UR8	314	372
TCL QM8L	229	N/A
Samsung QN80H	199	231

Hisense UR8

SDR Standard Mode (10% window)

1514

SDR Standard Mode (Fullscreen)

778

TCL QM8L

SDR Standard Mode (10% window)

581

SDR Standard Mode (Fullscreen)

0

Samsung QN80H

SDR Standard Mode (10% window)

588

SDR Standard Mode (Fullscreen)

340

05001,0001,5002,000

nits

SDR Standard Data

Product	SDR Standard Mode (10% window) (nits)	SDR Standard Mode (Fullscreen) (nits)
Hisense UR8	1514	778
TCL QM8L	581	N/A
Samsung QN80H	588	340

HDR color gamut

Closer to 100% is better. Taken using a colorimeter and test pattern generator.

Hisense UR8

UHDA-P3

145.2

BT.2020

95.1

TCL QM8L

UHDA-P3

97.9

BT.2020

90.2

Samsung QN80H

UHDA-P3

95.2

BT.2020

75

037.575112.5150

HDR Filmmaker Mode Data

Product	UHDA-P3 ()	BT.2020 ()
Hisense UR8	145.2	95.1
TCL QM8L	97.9	90.2
Samsung QN80H	95.2	75

Picture accuracy

A lower score is better. Taken using a colorimeter and test pattern generator.

SDR Delta-E

Hisense UR8

7.9

TCL QM8L

3.7

Samsung QN80H

1.8

012345678

SDR Delta-E Data

Product	Value
Hisense UR8	7.9
TCL QM8L	3.7
Samsung QN80H	1.8

Input lag

Lower is better. Taken using a Leo Bodnar 4K HDMI Video Signal Lag Tester.

Hisense UR8

4K 60Hz

11.7

1080p 120Hz

11.7

TCL QM8L

4K 60Hz

9.5

1080p 120Hz

0

Samsung QN80H

4K 60Hz

12.3

1080p 120Hz

5.8

03.757.511.2515

ms

HDR Filmmaker Mode Data

Product	4K 60Hz (ms)	1080p 120Hz (ms)
Hisense UR8	11.7	11.7
TCL QM8L	9.5	N/A
Samsung QN80H	12.3	5.8

Hisense UR8 review: Features

• RGB mini-LED panel
• Four HDMI 2.1 ports, up to 180Hz refresh rate
• Anti-glare screen

The Hisense UR8 is the first affordable RGB mini-LED TV to come onto the market, with the Hisense UR9 taking the flagship spot. The UR8 and UR9 are the first RGB mini-LEDs available in smaller sizes, after the tech's introduction in the Hisense 116UX last year. While the UR9 and UR8 are both significantly cheaper than the 116UX, the UR8 is the more affordable option of the two, although it is still pricier than some standard mini-LED.

RGB mini-LED has a similar setup to standard mini-LED, but instead of purely white LEDs within the TV’s backlight, there are red, blue and green LEDs, which are designed to produce bolder colors and higher brightness than a standard mini-LED in the same bracket. Hisense claims that RGB mini-LED can hit 100% of the BT.2020 color space (more on that below).

The UR8 comes equipped with an anti-glare screen, similar to Samsung’s Glare Free screens. It’s a matte screen designed to reduce distracting, mirror-like reflections, to make viewing in brighter conditions easier.

The UR8 is equipped with Hisense’s Hi-View AI Engine RGB processor, which is designed to help boost color performance, as well as offer AI picture and sound features.The UR8 supports both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ HDR formats, as well as the new Dolby Vision 2 format, though no content is currently available for this format at the time of writing. IMAX Enhanced is also supported.

The UR8 comes with a great list of gaming features, including four HDMI 2.1 ports which all support up to 4K 180Hz (up to 4K 120Hz for consoles), VRR including AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, Dolby Vision and HDR10+ gaming, and ALLM. There’s also a game menu, where settings for brightness boosting can be adjusted.

For sound, there’s a Devialet-tuned, 2.1.2 channel speaker system, totaling 70W of power. Dolby Atmos and DTS: X are both supported, and there are a plethora of audio settings and preset modes to dig into.

Which smart TV system the UR8 uses depends on your region. In the US, you get Google TV, while in the UK and Australia the UR8 uses Hisense’s own VIDAA smart TV. As I’m based in the UK, I’ll be discussing VIDAA. It supports an extensive number of apps, including big hitters like Netflix and Prime Video, as well as BBC iPlayer and ITVX in the UK. It also supports Freely in the UK, which can be used to watch live, broadcast TV over Wi-Fi, without the need for satellite or antenna connections.

• Features score: 4.5 / 5

Hisense UR8 review: Picture quality

• Great backlight control
• Effective anti-glare screen
• Colors don’t live up to measurements

In terms of brightness, the UR8 hits some interesting numbers. In Filmmaker Mode, it hit a measured peak HDR brightness of 2,097 nits and in Standard, it hit 2,394 nits. These are solid results, and while flagship OLEDs such as the Samsung S99H are now beating this (it hits 2,743 nits peak HDR), it does beat more standard mini-LEDs in its price bracket such as the Samsung QN80H, which I measured at 1,149 nits peak HDR (though this was on the 55-inch model).

Fullscreen HDR brightness is also solid, clocking in at 771 nits and 767 nits in Filmmaker and Standard modes respectively. Where the UR8 delivers more impressive brightness is in SDR Standard, where it hit a peak of 1,514 nits and fullscreen of 778.

The most surprising measurement, though, was the UR8’s HDR color gamut coverage. Not only did it hit 95.1% of the BT.2020 color space, the highest I’ve measured on a TV to date, but it registered a staggering 145.2% of the UHDA-P3 color space, which massively exceeds the high of 100% I registered on the Samsung S95F last year with the same color space.

Looking at these results, I expected colors to be spectacular — and this brings me to my main criticism of the UR8: the colors I saw did not reflect those measurements. When I watched Elemental, the UR8 still delivered punchy, vibrant colors such as Ember’s flame and the blue of Wade’s water, but they didn’t have the pop I was expecting. In La La Land, at the Spring party, Mia’s yellow dress is bright and natural looking, but I’d seen more engaging colors on other TVs.

I found when I compared the UR8 to the Samsung QN80H, a standard mini-LED in the same price range, the QN80H actually delivered bolder colors. Taking the same La La Land scene for comparison, Mia’s yellow dress, the green bushes, and the red outfits of some party-goers all looked much more vibrant on the QN80H. The UR8’s colors looked natural, but lacked that wow factor I expected from an RGB TV.

It was a shame the UR8’s colors weren’t as dazzling as I’d hoped, because in other areas, the UR8 shines, especially its backlight control. Standard mini-LED TVs can really suffer from blooming (where light from a bright object against a dark background can create a halo effect around said object), but this wasn’t the case with the UR8, which demonstrated little to no blooming through most tests. Watching the UR8 at more extreme angles did reveal some blooming, but it was better than what I’ve seen on some mini-LED TVs in the past.

Watching The Batman, the UR8 demonstrated solid contrast too, with mostly deep black tones and a good balance between light and dark tones, shown as Batman wanders around the crime scene at Mayor Mithcell’s home, or in the bright lights around the Batcave. I did notice blacks could take on a gray hue in some scenes, but for the most part, The Batman looked good.

I did find that the Dolby Vision Dark picture mode was too dim to watch in a bright room, despite the anti-reflection screen, but worked well in ambient and dimmer conditions. The brighter Dolby Vision IQ picture mode works best for brighter rooms. If you do use Dolby Vision IQ, I recommend dropping the brightness from 50 to 49 and turning off precision detail and super resolution for a more natural-looking image with better contrast.

It was a similar story with Alien: Romulus. The UR8 did a solid job displaying the scenes in space, with good contrast between the light from the moon and the black of space as the crew approached the Renaissance station. The black of space was occasionally gray, but still very good for a mini-LED, backlit TV. Again, backlight control proved to be the UR8’s strong suit.

In all HDR movies, the UR8 delivered crisp textures, with refined detail in people, clothing and objects. The UR8 did a good job showing the intricate textures of the various consoles onboard the mining ship in Alien: Romulus. Close-up shots showed sweat, hairs, and facial details like wrinkles with real clarity as well.

One thing I did find odd was that for non-Dolby Vision content, the Filmmaker, Movie, and IMAX Enhanced picture modes all looked identical. There seemed to be no real difference in brightness, color or contrast — something I would expect from a TV.

The UR8 did a good job with sports. Watching some World Cup highlights on BBC iPlayer, motion was smooth in the default Sports picture mode. While most of the motion styles worked, I found myself using either Clear or Standard. Color enhancer is on by default in this mode, and I personally found the colors too oversaturated, so I turned this off, and colors looked more natural. I did notice there was muddying of textures during very quick camera pans, but for the most part, the UR8 worked well for sports.

• Picture quality score: 4 / 5

Hisense UR8 review: Sound quality

• 2.1.2 channel speaker array
• Good bass and accuracy
• Soundstage can be narrow

The UR8 has a built-in 2.1.2 channel speaker array, tuned by Devialet, with a total power of 70W. There are a good number of preset sound modes and settings, but I mainly used Standard and Theater mode for my testing.

Watching the Penguin chase scene from The Batman, the UR8 delivered good bass levels, accurately conveying the loud rumble of the Batmobile’s engine. The UR8 demonstrated good accuracy too, mapping the sound of swerving tires, bullet sprays and the horns of passing traffic to the action on screen with solid precision.

While I typically use Theater mode on most TVs, I found that the UR8’s could get harsh at times, with a sudden brightness that I found distracting. Standard mode was a more than suitable alternative, and although it didn't have as wide a sound field as Theater mode, it was more controlled.

The UR8 delivers solid sound overall, but I did feel its soundstage was narrow, meaning not every element of The Batman scene was given room to breathe. It’s a decent sound system for a TV, but overall I’d still recommend a soundbar to go with it.

• Sound quality score: 4 / 5

Hisense UR8 review: Design

• Sturdy build
• Solid pedestal stand
• Slightly bulkier depth

The UR8 has a functional, safe design. The TV itself feels sturdy when installed on its central pedestal stand, which does feel solid even though it’s made of a plastic material. The TV is slighter deeper than some rivals, such as the Samsung QN80H, but again it feels well built.

As I mentioned above, the UR8 features an anti-glare screen, which does a good job of limiting reflections in brighter conditions. The 65-inch model I tested felt light for its size and it has a trim bezel, although the bottom bezel is thicker than those on the top and sides. Connections are easily accessible on the side of the rear of the TV.

The UR8 comes with Hisense’s own USB-C and solar rechargeable remote, which for me is one of the better controllers on the market. It does feel a bit light, but for me the button layout is logical, and it’s nice to see a rechargeable remote supplied with a cheaper TV.

• Design score: 4 / 5

Hisense UR8 review: Smart TV & menus

• Google TV US, VIDAA UK and Australia
• Good number of picture and audio settings
• Dated appearance

As I’m based in the UK, I’ll be discussing the VIDAA smart TV platform featured in the UR8 (also used in Australian models). If you’re based in the US, the UR8 uses Google TV as its smart TV platform instead.

VIDAA is a serviceable smart TV system. It supports a good number of major apps including Netflix, Disney Plus and Prime Video, as well apps from UK broadcasters, including BBC iPlayer and ITVX. The home screen offers a lot of content recommendations, but there's also a large banner space at the top of the screen for ads, which can be distracting.

The menus are neatly and logically laid out, with most settings easy to find. Response times when navigating these menus is good too. There are plenty of settings for adjusting both the picture and sound, although I didn’t use a lot of them.

VIDAA does, however, look a little dated, especially in the menus. It doesn’t have the sleekness of Samsung’s Tizen or Google TV, or the simplicity and color of Roku. Secondly, as someone who does change settings a lot, a pop-up eco warning appears every time and this can get frustrating; and there seems to be no way to turn it off.

• Smart TV score: 3.5 or 4

Hisense UR8 review: Gaming

• Near-full suite of features
• 11.7ms input lag (with the right settings)
• Up to 4K 180Hz refresh rate supported

The UR8 is actually very well equipped for gaming. It has four HDMI 2.1 ports that support 4K up to 180Hz (4K 120Hz for consoles is supported), VRR including FreeSync Premium Pro, both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ gaming, and ALLM.

To get the lowest input lag time, which I measured at 11.7ms in 4K 60Hz, you do have to mess around with some settings. Having put the UR8 into Game mode, I then had to turn on a refresh rate feature, which prioritized faster frame rates, and this is how I got the above result. Without adjusting those settings I measured the input lag time at 20ms, above the 15ms threshold we look for in testing.

Playing Battlefield V in 4K 120Hz, actual gameplay felt smooth, and the UR8 did a good job handling fast-moving action sequences like a shootout in a desert mission. The overall picture quality was good, with high brightness, bold color and solid contrast. I did notice that, during particularly quick camera pans, some textures could muddy, but this didn’t happen every time.

• Gaming score: 4.5 / 5

Hisense UR8 review: Value

• Great value in the US and Australia
• Overpriced in the UK
• Overall good performance for the price

Value is a tough attribute to grade for the Hisense UR8. As RGB mini-LED is still in its infancy (having only been introduced in 2025, and only come to smaller screens for the first time this year), I did anticipate that RGB TVs would be pricey, even more entry-level models like the UR8.

With the UR8, it all comes down to where you are. When it's on sale, you can pick the 65-inch model up for $1,499 in the US, and prices are only going to drop. This puts the UR8 in direct competition price-wise with standard mini-LED, giving people looking for a TV within that price range more choice. It's also good value in Australia, with the 65-inch launching for AU$2,495, which translates to $1,799 / £1,299. I expect prices in Australia to come down reasonably quickly too.

The same can’t be said for the UK, unfortunately. The 65-inch launched recently at £2,299, which is actually pricier than the LG C6 OLED — and while RGB is meant to be a direct rival to OLED, as I've mentioned, it’s not there yet. I have seen the UR8 drop to £1,999 at some retailers, but this is still OLED-level pricing.

Overall, the UR8 does deliver pretty good value for money. It’s got a good feature set, delivers decent built-in sound, and is good for gaming, and while the picture doesn’t quite deliver what I’d hoped for, it’s still solid compared to most mini-LED. It’s just a shame that the value proposition is region-dependent.

• Value score: 4 / 5

Should you buy the Hisense UR8?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also consider

How I tested the Hisense UR8

• Tested over two weeks
• Tested in different lighting conditions in lab
• Measurements taken using Portrait Displays' Calman color calibration software

My first step in testing the Hisense UR8 was to establish the best picture modes for critical testing, and I landed on Filmmaker Mode and Cinema mode (which admittedly looked very similar).

I then used reference scenes to test the UR8's picture quality, focusing on brightness, color, detail, upscaling, contrast and backlight control. I used a couple of these same scenes to test the TV's built-in speakers.

I also used an Xbox Series X to test the TV's gaming features and performance, playing Battlefield V.

Apart from objective testing, I took measurements of the UR8 using specialized equipment. This included a Jeti Spctral 15VA Spectroradiometer and Klein K-10A colorimeter (with both meters profiled together), with a Murideo Six G 8K Metal test-pattern generator. I took measurements using Portrait Displays' Calman color calibration software.

The first measurements I took were the UR8's brightness, in both SDR and HDR. I used white window patterns in sizes ranging from 1-100%, with peak (10%) and fullscreen (100%) windows serving as the primary focus. I took measurements in the UR8's Standard and Filmmaker Mode pictures modes.

After this, I measured the color and grayscale accuracy (in SDR), focusing on the Delta-E values (the margin for error between the test signal sent and what's displayed on screen).

Next, I measured the UR8's HDR color gamut coverage, focusing on the BT.2020 and UHDA-P3 color spaces.

I also measured the UR8's HDR EOTF in 1,000, 4,000 and 10,000 nits. This shows the UR8 accuracy at both light and dark levels. I also tested the UR8's spectral power distribution, which demonstrates color performance.

Finally, I tested the UR8's input lag time using a Leo Bodnar 4K HDMi Input Lag Tester.

Read our in-depth overview of how we test TVs at TechRadar.

• First reviewed: July 2026
• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

Another month, another stacked list of 4K Blu-rays. August 2026 looks to have some big releases coming, but I’ve decided to narrow it down to my top four picks, all of which I’ll be hoping to get in to test as part of our monthly Blu-ray Bounty feature. This is where we test the best 4K releases from each month, looking at each disc’s picture and audio quality to see how it can give your home theater a chance to flex its muscles.

4K Blu-ray is my most used source for testing the best TVs and best soundbars. It offers uncompressed audio and a higher bitrate over 4K streaming, resulting in better picture quality. Not only that, but I’m a collector myself and I’m always adding new discs to my personal collection.

Last month, in my July 2026 most anticipated list, I picked Hard Boiled, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Hairspray (1988) as my most anticipated discs. I got to test three of these in the July 2026 Blu-ray Bounty, and they all proved to be excellent, with special mention for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie which is in my opinion reference-level quality. Unfortunately, Hard Boiled was delayed in arriving, but I’ll be sure to give it a try and let you know what it’s like!

As I’m based in the UK, the following picks are based on 4K Blu-rays set for release in August 2026 here. Just in case the disc is already out in your region, or yet to be released!

Project Hail Mary (Amazon MGM Studios)

An adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel of the same name, Project Hail Mary follows the story of middle school science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), who wakes up on an interstellar spacecraft with no memory of how he got there. The movie is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who also directed The Lego Movie and Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, and were both involved in the production of the Into the Spider-Verse movies.

I’m expecting Project Hail Mary to look superb in 4K. There are plenty of high-contrast shots both in and outside of the Hail Mary that should demonstrate deep blacks balancing with bright highlights. There’s also scope for some seriously bold colors, as well as crisp textures, with 3D-like textures in both people and environments, such as the intricate textures of the various parts and consoles of the Hail Mary ship.

With a Dolby Atmos soundtrack included, I’m anticipating plenty of height effects in action. With the wide scope of the ship and space setting, there should be opportunities for the Dolby Atmos mix to showcase plenty of detail and texture, as well as a chance to hear some accurately mapped sound as well, as Grace moves around the Hail Mary.

Release date

• US - August 11
• UK - 10th August

Troy (2004) (Arrow Video)

Loosely based on Homer’s Iliad, Troy tells the story of the decade-long Trojan War. When Paris (Orlando Bloom) runs away with married Queen Helen (Diane Kruger), the latter’s husband and king Menelaus of Sparta (Brendan Gleeson) declares war on Troy, which is led by Hector (Eric Bana). Meneluas sends a unified Greek army, led by Achilles (Brad Pitt).

Where I think Troy will really shine is with its audio. While there’s no Dolby Atmos soundtrack on this disc, there is a DTS-HD 5.1 MA mix and I’ve been finding more fantastic-sounding 5.1 MA mixes every month. With large scale battles that should deliver plenty of detail and power, along similar lines to discs I’ve previously reviewed such as Kingdom of Heaven and Gladiator II, Troy could end up as another brilliant-sounding disc that could really push a surround sound system.

This 4K restoration is not only presented by Arrow Video, whose 4K Blu-rays are always superb, but is restored from the original 35mm and presented in Dolby Vision. There’s a lot of bold visuals in Troy, including the beautiful environments, vibrant colors and detailed costumes that should look stunning when restored in 4K.

Release date

• US - August 18
• UK - 17th August

West Side Story (1961)

Based on the 1957 stage musical of the same name, West Side Story is inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and tells the story of young lovers Tony (Richard Beymer) and Maria (Natalie Wood), who are embroiled in the gang war for the Upper West Side between the Jets (Tony’s former gang) and the Sharks (of whom Maria’s brother Bernardo is the current leader).

With Dolby Vision HDR support, this 4K disc of West Side Story should look fantastic. Not only is there the vivid colors of the 1950s aesthetic, but there’s plenty of high contrast scenes at night, where dark and bright tones create a nice dynamic range. This 4K disc is presented by Altitude, who released the Some Like It Hot 4K I tested earlier this year and if that disc is anything to go by, this 4K disc should be fantastic.

The musicals I’ve tested, such as Wicked and The Sound of Music, have often sounded excellent, especially when Dolby Atmos is supported. West Side Story also supports an Atmos soundtrack, so I’m expecting iconic songs such as ‘Maria’ and ‘Somewhere’ to sound their very best. With an Atmos soundtrack, there’s also scope for detail, such as the shuffling and movement of dancers during choreography to add that extra layer of immersion.

Release date

• US - N/A - no release date yet
• UK - 17th August

Mars Attacks! (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment)

Directed by Tim Burton, Mars Attacks! follows the arrival of aliens to Earth, where they meet the President of the United States James Dale (Jack Nicholson). After a first-contact meeting goes awry, the Martians begin to attack Earth. The movie features an all-star cast including Glenn Close, Annette Benning, Pierce Brosnan, Michael J. Fox and more.

As with all of Burton’s movies, I’m expecting very vibrant colors, such as those I saw in Edward Scissorhands. Mars Attacks! has a very gaudy, almost 1960s aesthetic in places that is sure to generate some lovely pop on screen, especially as Dolby Vision is also supported. I’ll be curious to see how the CGI of the aliens holds up, but after seeing 1982’s Tron on 4K, which made the dated graphics look decent, I have high hopes.

A Dolby Atmos soundtrack is featured on the 4K disc and other than the iconic ‘Ack’ sounds the Martians make, there’s plenty of great audio throughout this movie that could sound great in Dolby Atmos. The sounds of the Martian’s ray guns should draw some nice detail, explosions should generate some hefty impact and bass and there should be nice height effects in action too.

Release date

• US - August 11
• UK - 31st August

August 2026 highlight 4K releases

Below is a select list of 4K Blu-rays set for release in August 2026. Both UK and US releases are featured, with release dates noted. Release dates may vary by region, with some titles yet to be announced for some regions, or they may already be available in others. 4K Blu-ray is region-free however, so you should be able to order from anywhere.

August 3/4

• Talladega Nights
• The People vs Larry Flint
• School on Fire
• The Devil Wears Prada (UK)
• Once Upon A Thief (UK)

August 10/11

• Project Hail Mary
• Mars Attacks! (US - UK: 31st August)
• Barbarian
• Clear and Present Danger
• Michael
• JFK
• Sing Street

August 17/18

• Troy
• West Side Story (1961) (UK - US: TBC)
• Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (UK)
• Popeye (1980)
• Flight
• Nightcrawler
• Last Tango in Paris (UK)
• Hunt for the Wilderpeople (UK)

August 25/26

• The Pink Panther (1963) (UK)
• Disclosure Day
• Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu (US)
• Practical Magic

August 31

• The Abominable Snowman

Recently, I had the chance to attend High End Vienna, where I bore witness to an incredible array of audio gear. Whether it was new flagship loudspeakers from Bowers & Wilkins, futuristic looking headphones, or innovative portable DACs, there was a lot to get excited about. But one product really caught my attention.

As I walked through the Austria Center Vienna, I could hear the sounds of birds singing and crickets chirping. I followed the sound through and discovered a tropical-rainforest-themed room, and within it, sat the Dynaudio Opus One — a large, premium soundbar with mechanized wooden fins. It really was unlike anything I’d seen before.

I got the chance to check out the soundbar for myself, I attended a listening demo, and I even got to speak with Dynaudio Chief Commercial Officer, Julien Bergere, about the one-of-a-kind product ahead of its launch.

Opus One: an introduction

So what is the Dynaudio Opus One? Bergere describes it as “a new, immersive sound product for the home” for both movies and music. It's the first product in the company’s Symphony line of products that are expected to connect together to create a home ecosystem — in a similar vein to Sonos’ multi-speaker array systems, for example.

Something that’s instantly striking about the Opus One is its grand width — it measures 73.4 inches / 1864mm across. Larger TVs have become a lot more popular in recent years, and I asked Bergere if this had influenced the decision to make the Opus One so large. “Absolutely,” he said. “More premium soundbars are usually the size of a 55-inch TV, but there is no solution if you have a bigger TV or a bigger room, and this one is bringing a new dimension in terms of, you know, bass and immersive rendering”.

On the topic of immersion, I was curious as to whether the Opus One would support formats such as Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. Bergere responded: “It will support all the major audio formats including immersive audio, but we're not done yet with the certification.” In addition, the soundbar makes use of spatial sound algorithms designed in Denmark, where Dynaudio is based.

But it’s not all about immersive movie watching. “It can also be used as a stereo device,” said Bergere. “If you have stereo in, you can also play in pure stereo with only the left section and the right section activated to play in a really pure stereo rendering.” You’re able to take the center channel out of the equation entirely, he said, and I’ve personally seen quite a few premium soundbars skip on such a feature, resulting in weaker left and right channel separation. The soundbar can also upmix some stereo content into a more immersive format, but the option for a more purist stereo experience is certainly captivating.

There are a number of ways to experience the Opus One. You can connect to your TV via HDMI ARC, stream music over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, or make use of an AUX port. There’s also an Ethernet port on the soundbar, enabling you to access more stable connectivity. The Opus one also features a massive array of drivers — 24 to be exact — with six soft-dome tweeters, 14 mid/bass drivers, and four dual-diaphragm force-cancelling subwoofers. They come with 1500W of digital amplification, enabling the Opus One to deliver roaring power.

Wooden fins made in Japan bring serious style

As well as its impressive connectivity, power, and size, the Opus One is a joy to look at. It only seems natural to begin with the mechanized wooden fins, which move as you watch a movie or listen to music. “We call them kinetic fins,” said Bergere.

There are 72 mechanized fins on each unit of the Opus One, all of which are handmade, and personify Dynaudio’s ambition to forge a premium audio and visual product.

“[The fins] are actually made in a white oak from Hokkaido by Karimoku,” he said, noting that Karimoku is one of the largest furniture makers in Japan. “We are trying to mix technology and lifestyle… trying to hide the technology [in] beautiful objects but also bring a touch of magic, in this case, with the fact that the fins are moving and can be used to create surprise.”

Bergere confirmed that the wooden fins have no sonic benefit, but did note one functional benefit. “When the product is off, they’re [the fins] actually sealed, so they’re hiding the speaker drivers and protecting them at the same time," he said. He also pointed to acoustically transparent fabric, used on the top and side of the Opus One, which is just as stylish as it is practical.

As you’d expect, the fusion of designer-grade materials with such a premium, 24-driver model, means that the Opus One is pretty pricey. Specifically, the Opus One comes in at €13,000 (about $15,000 / £11,000) — a lot more than premium bars you’d see from the likes of Samsung, JBL, and Sonos. In addition, Bergere told me that accessories, such as stands and mounting gear, will cost between €500 and €5,000. “So together with a good quality screen, it’s around €20,000 for a complete setup with the floor stand,” he said.

Sound check: raw power and impressive imaging combine

With a price like this, you’re going to expect stellar sound from this soundbar to match its undoubtedly gorgeous look. And luckily, I got the chance to hear the Opus One for myself in a demo room. And yeah, it’s fair to say I was pretty impressed.

In 2025’s F1, I was astonished by the thunderous bass output that the Opus One conjured up — the roar of cars whizzing by was palpable, showing off the model’s 1,500W amplification to full effect.

Something else that struck me was the effectiveness of spatial audio effects. Whether it was vehicles zooming across the screen or fireworks blasting into the sky, the Opus One tracked each movement with precision and care.

We listened to some music too, including a stereo mix of Eric Clapton’s Tears In Heaven, where vocals were beautifully defined, subtle strings came through with great clarity, and warm bass came through cleanly.

With Atmos music, I felt similar — vocal-led tracks were beautifully detailed, instruments were well separated, and percussion in the treble range was articulate and expressive. Individual sounds also dispersed across the listening space to create an expansive, immersive experience.

The Opus One officially launched in June, but availability is still relatively limited. To begin with, Dynaudio has opted to release the soundbar in its home market, Denmark, as well as China — though Bergere said Dynaudio plans to launch the product across “more markets in 2027”. It’s available in two different finishes: one with White Oak fins, and another with Appalachian Walnut.

Welcome to the Blu-ray Bounty July 2026. This is where we test the latest 4K releases of each month that we think will be perfect for showing off your home theater. If you’re new to the Blu-ray Bounty, you can check out previous editions here, where we’ve reviewed over 100 discs since starting in November 2024.

4K Blu-ray is easily one of the best ways to enjoy a movie at home, especially when it’s on the best TVs and best soundbars. I personally use it as my main source for testing AV equipment, thanks to its uncompressed picture and audio quality.

In last month’s June 2026 Blu-ray Bounty, I tested seven discs, including Speed Racer (which is one of the best discs I’ve ever tested, and you can expect to see it as reference source in future reviews), EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert, Bullet In The Head (1991), Body Heat, Avatar: Fire & Ash, Five Easy Pieces and 36 Hours.

In this month’s list, I’ll be testing 4 discs, and I’ll be using our usual setup. This consists of the LG G6, one of 2026’s best OLED TVs, the Panasonic DP-UB820, the best 4K Blu-ray player for most users on the market, and the Samsung HW-Q990C, the brand’s flagship 11.1.4 channel Dolby Atmos system from 2023.

As always, I’ll only be discussing the video and audio quality of each disc, not the movie itself.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (Universal Pictures)

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, sequel to 2023's The Super Mario Bros. Movie, follows Mario, Luigi, Peach Yoshi and Toad's adventure to rescue Princess Rosalina, who's been kidnapped by Bowser Jr. The film stars Chris Pratt, Anya-Taylor Joy, Charlie Day and Jack Black, who reprises his role as Bowser.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie looks gorgeous on 4K Blu-ray. This disc is so impressive, that I've even started using it for reference testing, and you can read my full thoughts on it here. Below is a summary about the disc's picture and audio.

It's all about color reproduction here, which is bold and vibrant, generating some amazing pop on screen. As the Lumas listen to Rosalina's bedtime story, the color of each Luma is punchy with some amazing highlights, especially with Dolby Vision HDR. The animation throughout is crisp, delivering 3D-like textures and depth that is seriously impressive.

If you have a bright display at home, you'll be rewarded with some beautiful brightness too. The star that one of the Lumas turns into dazzles on screen, and anytime Rosalina uses magic, there are stunning, glittery colors that illuminate the screen. The movie delivers excellent contrast too, particularly in space scenes where the dark blue sky of space balances nicely with the bright stars and vivid characters.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has an impressive Dolby Atmos soundtrack included too. There's excellent detail and precision here, as Peach and Toad first fly through the space on the star, the twinkling trail behind the star follows its path accurately, and is well defined in the mix, clearly audible even in the uplifting score. As characters fly towards Bowser Jr's ship, height effects are fully utilized, with the character's flight mapped overhead to create a fully immersive sound. There's even great demonstrations of bass throughout, as character's fire up ship engines or crash through things, generating plenty of impact.

To Live and Die in L.A (Arrow Video)

To Live and Die in L.A. follows the story of two Secret Service agents, Richard Chance (William Petersen) and John Vukovich (John Pankow), who are in pursuit of counterfeiter-turned-killer Eric Masters (Willem Defoe) after Masters kills Chance’s former partner.

To Live and Die in L.A. looks excellent in 4K in this restoration, presented by Arrow Video. Textures have been cleaned up well, with skin looking realistic, and more intricate details such as scars and marks on people’s faces delivered with real clarity in close-up shots. Colors have seen beautiful pop, with the Dolby Vision grade really adding some serious punch. Reds, such as those on the US flags throughout, in particular jump off the screen.

There’s some strong contrast throughout, as well as some refined shadow detail. In dimly-lit areas, overhead lights create strong shadows across people’s faces, with a stakeout scene with Chance and Vukovich acting as one of the best demonstrations of this. Black tones are deep throughout as well, in both environments and people’s clothing.

There are two soundtracks included here: the original stereo audio and a DTS-HD 5.1 MA mix. Using the 5.1 MA mix, there’s some seriously good detail here. As Masters makes counterfeit notes, the whirring of the printing press balances nicely with Wang Chung’s score. Even intricate effects in the scene, such as Masters cutting out the notes and washing the surface, are clearly audible. During a night-time stakeout, the pouring rain is accurately mapped to the rear channels, even creating a sense of height. Speech is clear throughout, and the soundstage is wide enough to give all elements room to breathe.

Alice In Wonderland (1951) (Disney)

Alice In Wonderland, based on both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, tells the story of Alice, a young girl who ends up in a magical world where she meets a weird and wonderful cast of characters, including the evil Queen of Hearts who rules over Wonderland.

Alice in Wonderland looks great in 4K. Colors are bold and accurate in equal measure, faithfully rendering that classic Disney look. While most colors are beautifully vivid, it’s reds and pinks that really stand out on screen, looking particularly dazzling. The animation style here looks refined and has been nicely upscaled, giving characters more depth.

On the LG G6 I used, bright colors such as the white of Alice’s clothes and the gold of the doorknob have striking brightness and vibrancy to them, aided by the Dolby Vision HDR featured on this disc. While I usually use Filmmaker Mode on the G6, I found this movie did benefit from the brighter Cinema Home mode for some added punch.

While there is still some film grain present for cinephiles, the movie has been refined quite a lot and this does give the animation a very clean look, making it look much more contemporary than its original 1951 animation style would suggest.

There are two soundtrack options available: DTS-HD MA 5.1 and 2.0 mono. The 2.0 mono is more faithful to the original, but the 5.1 MA mix has a nice balance to it, giving every element depth and warmth, while letting them all breathe. The score is mapped to the rear speakers, allowing the front channels to deliver speech and other effects. Outside of the score and vocals, there aren’t many other elements to show off your home theater, but this 5.1 mix does sound brilliant.

Hairspray (1988) (Criterion)

Set in 1962, Hairspray follows Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake), a teenager who achieves stardom on a local dance show, and attempts to use her newfound fame to advocate for more racial integration on the dance show. Directed by John Waters, the movie also stars Divine, Sony Bono, Jerry Stiller and Debbie Harry.

As you’d expect from a movie set in the 1960s, there’s some seriously bold visuals here. From the bright pinks of the Turnblad home to the striking red of Link’s car, colors have some really nice pop on screen. Textures have been upscaled effectively, giving them a more 3D-like look, though not quite to the extent from other Criterion restorations such as 3:10 To Yuma. Finer details have also been refined, with individual strands of hair given some nice depth and volume.

There’s a lot of grain still present here, so cinephiles will be happy. Black tones are deep as well, shown predominantly in people’s hair. There’s some nice contrast too, as shaded areas contrast with the bright lights of the studios for the dance shows themselves.

For audio, there are two soundtracks available: DTS-HD MA 2.0 surround and DTS-HD MA 5.1. The 5.1 soundtrack does a great job of giving the soundtrack room to breathe, with a good balance between the speech and stacked tracklist of songs used for the dance scenes. More intricate effects such as the sound of shuffling feet and clapping hands during dance scenes have a nice clarity, clearly audible over the much louder songs.

I couldn't believe it. Had Roku really just casually inserted global viral raccoon sensation Jimothy into Roku City? I'd seen a post claiming so, but knowing how easy it is to fake things with AI, I had to see it for myself.

I powered up one of my home's half-dozen Roku streaming boxes and spent 10 minutes trying to force the platform into screen-saver mode, which then opens up Roku City. Ever since the most recent Roku platform update, I see this interface far less often than I used to.

Roku City is Roku's fictional, purple cityscape populated by thinly disguised iconic characters and objects from film, TV, and life.

After a few minutes of hunting, I figured out how to set my screen saver timeout to one minute. A moment later, the side-scrolling Roku City appeared, and in it, caught mid-waddle atop a chain-link fence, was Jimothy's unmistakable silhouette.

For those who've thrown out their phones, computers, and TVs, Jimothy is a Seattle-based raccoon with a rare disorder called "short spine syndrome." Don't worry, it doesn't appear to impact his mobility or lifestyle, but once you see Jimothy, you never forget him.

Jimothy is so popular that he's been featured as the unofficial mascot at Seattle Mariners games, launched what's widely considered "Hot Jimothy Summer," and is now immortalized in Roku City.

Jimothy made it to Roku City in a matter of hours

"You share the same problem we all share, which is when we really want to get to Roku City, like right now, we wonder, 'How do we get there?" Damon Van Deusen, Roku's Vice President, Global Brand and Creative, told me this week, but added that a solution is already in the works: Roku is adding a Roku City tile to the home screen for instant access.

Van Deusen agreed to sit down and explain how Jimothy made his way — virtually — from the alleys of a Seattle suburb to Roku's iconic services.

Jimothy's appearance, while surprising, is not out of character for the screen saver enjoyed by Roku's roughly 100 million customers.

"The Jimothy journey starts six or seven years ago when we actually started realizing that social was paying attention to the screen saver," explained Van Deusen. Back in 2021, they noticed likely pandemic-quarantined consumers posting about how they'd like to visit the city, share a kiss there, or even get married in the purple space.

"We've been putting Easter eggs in the screen saver as a way to engage some fans and social ever since," he added.

Over the years, the city's been populated by, among other things, characters from popular films (like the rock monster from Galaxy Quest and Star Trek's Enterprise). Still, there was something about Jimothy's timeliness that struck me.

Seattle resident Kiana Hall posted an Instagram video about the unusual raccoon on July 16, 2026. I spotted Jimothy in Roku City on July 31, and the post I saw about the raccoon's integration in the platform was a few days older than that.

"In the last two years, we created what's called the Rapid Response Easter Egg Team," explained Van Deusen.

This cross-functional group cuts through typical product development, and "we figured out a system where we could publish these things really fast. So now everything we do is quicker and quicker and quicker."

Tracking and choosing from the Zeitgeist

The team, which often communicates on Slack, is constantly kicking around watercooler moments like Punch the Money and Goat on Car. They choose "anything that tickles us, anything that feels really fun. I mean, again, that's the bar; it's gotta be delightful, playful, fun, lift spirits, and create conversation," Van Deusen told me, who later added that delight, or something that triggers an "unexpected smile," is "really the heart of the whole brand."

Van Deusen loved that I more or less stumbled on Jimothy's existence in the city. "An unexpected smile, if you think about it, it's like it comes out of nowhere. It's not like you're looking for it; it's just like you spotting Jimothy. It's like, 'Wait a minute, are you, wait, is that Jimothy?'"

Not every viral moment can make it in. The Rapid Response Easter Egg Team avoids bummers and negative news. However, they did do a retrospective of Moira Rose's wigs as a way to memorialize the great Catherine O'Hara, who played Moira in Schitt's Creek and died on January 30 of this year.

When the right idea comes along, the team knows it. "Then we'll be like, 'Oh my God, that's so cool,' and then we'll make it happen right away...and that's how Jimothy came about."

Looking at the Roku City Jimothy, I was struck by the silhouette's uncanny accuracy — it could be no other raccoon.

Van Deusen told me Roku has, over the last five years, built a world-class illustration team, which includes comic book illustrators and former Disney artists.

The company shared the Roku Designer, Illustrator, and Director Tim Cook's early Jimothy sketch and how he might appear in Roku City (above). Even in pencil, you can see how he captured the shape and signature gait of the lovable critter.

The making of an icon

To create Jimothy, the team focused on that "iconic sort of hunch." Van Deusen said that there was a feedback session to ensure they got the look just right.

Silhouettes also happen to be part of Roku City's DNA, giving you the clear impression of a character or viral figure without a lot of detail.

"We had tried doing less silhouetted versions of the city when we tried to localize for different markets once, and the more you see, the further you get away from the City," he said.

The suggestion of these shapes and recognizable figures forces you to lean in and engage even more with what is arguably just a screen saver.

"It's kind of a little bit of a wink, obviously, you know, and we do that on purpose; we never want to say too much. And we never reveal what the Easter eggs are; we always just sort of suggest and like elude, and again, it's so much more fun," said Van Deusen, smiling, I think, at the thought of Jimothy's unmistakable shape.

As for how Jimothy made it to millions of screen saves so quickly, Roku's Rapid Response team can add new elements to Roku City in a matter of hours.

"We developed a tool," Van Deusen said, "where we can basically come up with an idea, something we want to do, the illustration team quickly mocks something up, and we can put it in the screen saver, all within a couple of hours."

That kind of speed puts Roku City firmly inside the zeitgeist. But that, too, is fast changing, and I wondered how long Jimothy would be waddling across Roku City screens.

Roku does rotate out the Easter eggs, though a backlog of four years or more can rotate in and out of the side-scrolling interface. Roku, by the way, recently added a user-controllable version where you can slide back and forth for a better look at all these hidden gems, including Jimothy.

The lovable raccoons should appear in Roku City "as long as Jimothy is in the zeitgeist," said Van Deusen, adding, "[he] will eventually, probably be replaced. I don't know if we'll always have a rotational raccoon, but we will find the next, you know, popping character."

Until then, enjoy Jimothy in real and virtual life.

• Marantz launches a new Cinema Cinema Series 2 range of AV receivers, with three different models
• The have a brand new 32-bit DAC across all three models, plus optional Dirac room correction available on all
• There's also improved HDMI 2.1 gaming support, including 1440p passthrough and AMD FreeSync

Marantz has updated its acclaimed Cinema Series range of AV receivers. The first generation launched in 2002 and delivered a winning combination of good looks, great audio and excellent connectivity, and the latest Cinema 50 Series 2 , Cinema 60/DAB Series 2 and Cinema 70s Series 2 continue in that vein.

The big change in these new 2026 models is their brand-new 32-bit 8-channel DAC, which Marantz says delivers "greater precision, improved imaging, enhanced dynamic expression and more coherent surround performance throughout the listening environment."

Each model has been tuned by Marantz's Sound Master to deliver what Marantz promises is "an immersive and emotionally engaging entertainment experience."

There's Bluetooth LE Audio (in a future firmware update), improved gaming support and optional Dirac room correction across all three models.

One thing that hasn't changed is the products' good looks: these are home theater components you'll want to show off.

Marantz Cinema Series 2: models, features and pricing

Each of the new Series 2 models comes with the new DAC, support for 1440p video passthrough with AMD FreeSync for gamers, a new Web Control 2.0 configuration app for your phone or computer, and HDMI Diagnostics 2.0 to deliver advanced troubleshooting and faster installation, which is intended for custom-installations, but sounds like a potential godsend generally.

The data options include the ability to see how each channel is being pushed by what's playing, which is definitely a fun game to play if you're wondering how different movies make use of the power of your system. Engineers from Denon and Marantz have previously told my colleague Matt Bolton that Gravity is the 'torture test' movie they use to see how AVRs handle stress during development, so it'd be fun to take a look at what that movie does to the numbers.

The flagship Cinema 50 Series 2 gets a few important upgrades that the others don't: the new Dolby Atmos Channel Expander, which uses all the available speakers when you're playing Dolby Atmos content regardless of how it was originally encoded, which seems to be especially useful for if you have additional height channels. There's also a new Center Bi-Amp Mode to improve dialog quality.

The flagship Cinema 50 Series 2 has nine channels putting out 110W apiece, 11.4 channels of processing and optional Dirac support. The Cinema 60/DAB Series 2 is a 7-channel, 100W per channel model, while the Cinema 70s Series 2 delivers 7 x 50W.

The prices for the new models are:

• Marantz Cinema 50 Series 2: $3,000 / £1,850 (about AU$3,533)
• Marantz Cinema 60 Series 2: (APAC and USA only) $2,000 (about AU$2,839)
• Marantz Cinema 60 DAB Series 2: (Europe only): £1,250
• Marantz Cinema 70s: $1,500 / £950 (about AU$1,815)

Thinking of buying a new TV?

Try our TV size and model finder! You tell it how far you sit from your TV, we'll tell you what size to buy based on viewing angle advice from image quality experts, and we'll recommend our three top TVs at that size for different prices.

• HDR10+ Advanced will be available on 2026 Samsung TVs models from August 2026, with Prime Video as the launch streaming partner
• Designed to make the most of today's best TVs, offering improved HDR reproduction and 'Intelligent Motion Smoothing' that only applies when it's needed
• HDR10+ is a direct rival to Dolby Vision 2, which includes some of the same features and is also scheduled to launch in 2026, but won't work on Samsung TVs

Samsung has announced the launch of HDR10+ Advanced on Prime Video beginning this month, August 2026 — but it hasn't told us exactly which TVs it's coming to, or what you'll be able to watch in the format. We've asked Samsung for details and we'll update this when we hear back.

HDR10+ Advanced is the next generation of HDR10+, and it's designed to take advantage of the huge processing power of today's best TVs to improve HDR recreation and motion handling, among other elements. It's a direct rival to Dolby Vision 2, and it was announced in November 2025.

Samsung says that "HDR10+ Advanced will be integrated into Samsung’s product lineup starting with 2026 TV models, with support planned for future products as the HDR10+ ecosystem continues to grow."

In summary, then: HDR10+ Adaptive is coming at some point this month to some unspecified Prime Video content to watch on some unspecified new Samsung TVs. But while we'd like some more details, the launch is still very interesting.

1, 2, 3, 4, we declare a format war

As predicted, HDR10+ Advanced has reached the market first: Dolby Vision 2 was announced earlier, in September 2025, but while Peacock has promised to be the first streaming service with Dolby Vision 2 in 2026, there's no launch date as yet.

There were six key upgrades announced for HDR10+ Advanced: HDR10+ Bright, HDR10+ Genre, HDR10+ Intelligent FRC, HDR10+ Intelligent Gaming, HDR10+ Local Tone-Mapping and Advanced Color Control.

Bright, which Samsung now calls Enhanced Overall Brightness, is designed to make HDR look richer on today's brighter TVs, as movies tend to be mastered for 1,000 nit TVs for home release — way below what most of today's TVs can deliver. Enhanced Overall Brightness enables creators to deliver a more consistent experience across TVs capable of much higher brightness levels.

Genre offers genre-specific optimization, while Intelligent FRC, now labelled Intelligent Motion Smoothing, is the equivalent to Dolby Vision 2's Authentic Motion. It enables creators to adjust motion smoothing on a shot-by-shot basis, so judder is avoided, but so is any sign of the hated 'soap opera effect'.

Intelligent Gaming is optimized for — yes! — games, with a particular emphasis on cloud-based gaming; we expect GeForce Now to adopt HDR10+ Adaptive at some point.

Last but not least, Local Tone Mapping promises more precise backlight dimming on mini-LED TVs and Advanced Color Control promises more accurate color reproduction — these could be interesting with Samsung's new RGB TVs.

While HDR10+ Advanced and Dolby Vision 2 have some similarities they are two different formats, and initially there could be a lot of division in terms of which manufacturers and streamers support which format.

For example, Philips (in Europe), TCL and Hisense are going with Dolby Vision 2, while Samsung's sticking with HDR10+ Advanced (though TCL told my colleague Matt Bolton that it would support HDR10+ Advanced when it's able to). LG hasn't sided with either, and instead announced its own Creator Original system, in partnership with Samsung's friends at Prime Video.

Thinking of buying a new TV?

Try our TV size and model finder! You tell it how far you sit from your TV, we'll tell you what size to buy based on viewing angle advice from image quality experts, and we'll recommend our three top TVs at that size for different prices.

• It's a full Dolby Atmos mixing studio... in a shed
• Designed to deliver accurate Atmos audio with pin-sharp precision
• Artists are delighted with the mixes, which required no tweaks

If like me you used to have, or still have, a backyard office or shed for working in, you're going to be green with envy at the sight of mixing maestro Kurt Martinez's personal Dolby Atmos studio.

The award-nominated Atmos expert designed and built his own backyard office and filled it with enviable gear, and if he doesn't call it his Spatial shed I'm going to be very disappointed.

Martinez has been nominated for the prestigious Music Producers Guild award as Atmos Engineer of the Year, and he spent three years as the Head Dolby Atmos Mix Engineer at the world-famous Dean Street studios. He's worked on live and recorded music by a host of stars including Kylie Minogue, Def Leppard, Soft Play, Billy Idol and Duran Duran.

Like many freelancers, Martinez figured that having a home office was a much better idea than a long commute into the city, and in Martinez's case that decision was compounded by being a new dad. So he built an entire Atmos mixing studio in his back garden, doing everything himself apart from the electrics and internet connectivity.

How to make a spatial shed

As Mixonline reports, Martinez built the 2.5m x 3.5m garden office with a combination of porous timber walls to absorb the low frequencies, acoustic panelling in the ceiling and sides, a large rear bookshelf for dispersion, and acoustic slat panels at the front. There's thick acoustic underlay below the laminate floor and even the furniture has a function: the armchairs and rug are there to absorb audio reflections.

With the building ready, the next step was to add the tech. Martinez uses a Pro Tools system based around an Audient ORIA, which sends audio to a Ginger Audio Ground Control Sphere that's controlled by an Elgato Stream Deck+.

The speakers are striking. They're PMC6-2 left and right monitors, a PMC6 center speaker, an 8 Sub LFE, and Ci30 height and surround monitors. Final mixes are tested on AirPods Max and a Sonos home theater setup to check that still sounds good on consumer Atmos hardware as well a studio-level setup.

I used to have a very similar-looking setup for my own home studio, but sadly I didn't have Martinez's high-end gear or even more importantly, Martinez's ears, which is why nobody's nominating me for anything.

But I do love to see a good audio project, and it's clearly been very successful: according to ETNow.com Martinez's last five full-length records, which he mixed in that studio, required no tweaking at all when he tested them in large commercial studios.

All five of those records have been signed off by their delighted artists. I'd like to think that one of them was Shed Seven.

Blu-ray turned 20 this year, and although streaming is now the way most people watch films, physical media is dead is far from dead. Collectors are still buying Blu-rays for their new restorations, special features or limited-edition packages — and younger audiences are discovering the value of owning their films rather than dealing with your favorites disappearing on your all the time.

So if people still want to watch movies on discs at home, is there a Blu-ray successor on the horizon to offer something new?

Every major home video format before it has eventually been replaced. VHS gave way to DVD, then DVD gave way to Blu-ray. As someone who appreciates the quality of Blu-ray films but isn't an expert in the technology behind them, I assumed there would be a straightforward plan for something to come supplant them. Maybe an 8K Blu-ray? Maybe another physical format I've never heard of because home cinema is an interest of mine rather than my specialism?

But after speaking to analysts, hardware manufacturers and the organization behind Blu-ray itself, I discovered that most of them don't think another disc is coming. In fact, there’s no obvious "next format" about to be unveiled, and I wanted to find out why.

Why Blu-ray still has loyal fans

To understand why the future of Blu-ray is such an interesting topic, it's worth first getting to grips with why people still buy it. And the top reason came up in every conversation I had: ownership.

"Ownership matters more now than it did in 2005. When you buy a disc, you own that film. It’s yours, permanently, in its best possible form, sitting on your shelf whenever you want it,” says Victor Matsuda, Chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association, the group behind the development of Blu-ray.

He tells me that people are switching on to the fact that most of what we “buy” digitally today is really a license that can change or disappear. His comments come shortly after Sony removed over 500 purchased movies from people's accounts without compensation, and right at the same time as Disney+ was forced to remove 4K and HDR support in many countries.

“We frequently hear complaints about people losing access to content they thought they’d purchased, and there have even been lawsuits brought on exactly this issue,” Matsuda says. “A disc doesn’t have that problem. Nobody can reach into your home and take it back.”

I've spoken to many physical media collectors over the years, and ownership is almost always the first thing they mention. But the second reason is quality. Ultra HD Blu-ray is still widely considered to be the best technology for watching films at home.

"20 years ago, Blu-ray set the standard for what a movie should look and sound like in the home, and it’s a standard both consumers and the industry recognized,” Matsuda tells me. “Ultra HD Blu-ray remains unsurpassed as the best overall experience for consumers.”

He explains that this has been the case even as streaming services have rolled out 4K and HDR. “The respective Blu-ray formats became the benchmark they chased, and in my opinion they still haven’t caught it. Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray remain the reference,” Matsuda says. “A stream can approximate it, but the disc carries the full, uncompressed picture and sound with nothing thrown away to fit a data cap.”

Olivier Semenoux, Europe head of GTM and Product Management at TCL Electronics, explains that much of that comes down to bitrate. "Blu-ray can be coded up to 128Mbps because that's the disc's technical limit,” he explains. “Streaming is a different story, most popular platforms cap out natively around 25Mbps, with some going up to 40 or 80Mbps.”

Unfortunately, the latter is very rare — when it comes to the big streamers, 16 to 18Mbps is the maximum you can expect.

This means that Ultra HD Blu-rays carry significantly more data per frame than a typical stream, meaning less compression and what you see at home is more of the original picture and sound being preserved. It's one of the reasons discs continue to set the standard for anyone who really loves home theater.

Variations of the same argument came up repeatedly in conversations with manufacturers too. I spoke with Rob Jones, President of Magnetar, a manufacturer of high-end 4K UHD Blu-ray and universal disc players. “When consumers invest in physical media, they get ownership, content preservation, and quality control,” he says. “While streaming is incredibly convenient, it cannot match physical media when it comes to that combination.” Jones says that’s what continues to drive Magnetar’s investment and development in this space.

But that doesn't necessarily mean streaming and Blu-ray are in competition. One of the more surprising things I heard was that several companies see them as complementary rather than competing technologies.

"We see many customers choosing both formats," Kenichi Ikenoue, Head of Strategic Planning at Panasonic Consumer Europe, tells me. "They enjoy the convenience of streaming for everyday viewing while turning to physical media when they want the highest picture and sound quality or want to own their favorite films."

Why 8K isn’t the answer

If Blu-ray still has loyal fans, isn’t the next step an 8K successor? That's what I expected to find, as someone who isn't deep on movie production. Instead, almost every expert I spoke to questioned whether there was any need for a successor at all.

"Honestly, I don't think so, at least not right now," says Victor Matsuda. "From a BDA [Blu-ray Disc Association] perspective, we don't see anything from content creators or consumers to indicate a need for a new format. They’re both extremely satisfied.”

There are signs elsewhere that the industry isn't preparing for another optical disc format either. In 2025, Sony announced that it was ending the production of recordable Blu-ray discs, MiniDiscs and MiniDV cassettes, saying that there would be "no successor models". Now, while that decision applies to blank recording discs rather than pre-recorded movie discs, it seems to reflect a broader shift away from consumer physical media formats.

One obvious reason for a new format would be 8K support, which is a format that would theoretically offer four times the resolution of today's 4K discs. But that wasn't what the experts I spoke to had in mind.

"The resolution race is interesting, but I don't see 8K finding a place with consumers anytime soon," Matsuda says. "The content community, meaning the Hollywood studios, produces its content in 4K and has stated their intent to continue doing so. Additionally, a number of manufacturers have dropped 8K from their lineups."

Jones agreed that 8K isn't ready for the mainstream, but says the challenge goes beyond content. It's also about the wider home theater ecosystem. "8K is a distraction until it's mainstream and the ecosystem simply does not justify it," he says.

He points out that an 8K player wouldn't just require 8K discs, but would also depend on compatible TVs, projectors, AV receivers and processors. "In order to sit down and experience 8K content, a viewer's entire home entertainment chain needs to support 8K," he says. "A consumer would need to replace every single link in their entertainment chain with a component capable of supporting 8K, which is impractical at best."

And it seems as if lack of demand isn't the only reason experts are sceptical. Some argue we've reached the point where higher resolutions matter much less than other improvements we can make to picture quality. "HDR and wide colour gamut make a far bigger difference to perceived picture quality than resolution does," Semenoux tells me.

Which means the challenge facing an 8K Blu-ray isn't just about a lack of content or compatible hardware; it's that the improvement itself may not feel significant enough to justify an entirely new format.

That's exactly how Mark Vena, CEO and Principal Analyst at SmartTech Research, sees it. "Frankly, an 8K Blu-ray would be a technical feat in search of a commercial problem to solve,” he says. “There's still little native 8K content, 8K TV adoption is modest and streaming platforms will almost certainly meet mainstream demand before another optical format ever reaches critical mass."

In other words, it’s not as if we’re all sitting around waiting for a new format to happen, it’s more that it doesn’t really have a reason to exist.

What creates a new format?

Vena’s point made me realize I'd been thinking about this the wrong way. Every major home video format solved an obvious problem. DVD improved on VHS by offering non-degrading video and the capacity for extra features. Blu-ray improved on DVD with the space for higher-quality video. And now we have Ultra HD Blu-ray, which improved on Blu-ray's quality further.

Crucially, each of those steps solved a real technical problem. But right now, there isn’t a real problem that a successor to Ultra HD Blu-ray could actually solve.

Matsuda explained this to me using a framework from his time as a product planner that he calls "needs" and "seeds". A "need" is a problem consumers or the industry want solving. A "seed" is a new technology that has the potential to create that demand in the future.

"I don't see a compelling driver for a new format at the moment," Matsuda says. "I think it's unlikely that a new format would arise out of consumer demand as there doesn't appear to be an expressed need. Similarly, Ultra HD Blu-ray continues to deliver content that takes full advantage of display technologies so I don't see a need arising from the industry side."

Matsuda says that could change. "From a seed standpoint, companies may have some technologies in development that could plant those seeds,” he explains. “But in my view, if a driving factor ever prompts a new physical format, it will most likely be the emergence of content the internet infrastructure simply can't deliver at scale without compromising quality. As long as streaming can handle what people want to watch, I don't see any real pressure for a new disc."

So a technological breakthrough on its own wouldn't be enough, a new format would also need the entire industry to then build around it.

Panasonic’s Ikenoue makes the same point from a more commercial perspective. "A successor format would also depend on significant investment from film studios and content providers. New hardware alone would not be enough. The content ecosystem would also need to support a new format. For the moment it is difficult to see the requirement for a successor."

A successor wouldn't just need a better disc, there’d have to be a need to even build that better disc in the first place. Only then would studios create the content, manufacturers would build the players, TV makers would support it and consumers would decide if it was worth upgrading. But right now none of the experts could identify a good enough reason.

What if the successor isn’t a disc at all?

That doesn't necessarily mean Blu-ray is the end of the story. Optical storage technology is still evolving. Companies are developing discs capable of storing far more data than today's Blu-rays, but the key thing is that they're aimed at archiving data on an enterprise scale rather than at home entertainment. Which means they aren’t about to become the next movie format that you’ll buy.

Instead, several people I spoke with pointed towards a future where the successor to Blu-ray isn't about discs. "If Blu-ray has a successor, it may not be something you can hold in your hand," says Mark Vena. Rather than another physical format, he believes the future lies in premium digital delivery through high-quality, studio-certified, lossless downloads stored locally on home servers or network-attached storage.

"This is why the real successor to Blu-ray, for most consumers, is not another disc at all," he says. "It's the combination of ultra high bitrate streaming, cloud libraries and AI-powered video optimization that's closing the quality gap."

So maybe the future isn't about replacing Blu-ray with another physical format but instead preserving the quality of audio and visuals that enthusiasts value about Blu-ray without even needing a disc in the first place.

One possible future is already beginning to emerge. Kaleidescape, a company specializing in premium digital movie delivery, offers downloads with bitrates to match what Blu-ray is capable of, preserving much more picture and audio quality than traditional streaming services while still providing the convenience of instant access.

Kaleidescape even recently launched a new 'Cinematic 4K' format for movies, which it says will offer even higher-quality bitrates for video, promising over 100Mbps of average bitrate (not maximum), which it compared to 60Mbps of average bitrate for 4K Blu-ray in its own marketing materials.

"In 10 years, the highest-quality movies at home will be delivered digitally, not on disc," Tayloe Stansbury, chairman and CEO of Kaleidescape, tells me. "Consumers will expect instant access, reference-quality presentation, and technology that evolves with each generation of content. That's the future Kaleidescape is building today."

However, for many fans of Blu-ray, the biggest hurdle here is still ownership and Kaleidescape's technical proficiency doesn't address that. It's a digital storefront, and the same concerns of losing access to things you've bought still applies.

Kaleidescape told me that its priority is delivering the best possible digital collecting experience rather than addressing licensing, and it declined to comment on people's increasing concerns about this side of buying movies.

Digital purchases may be able to close the gap on quality, but until they can offer the same promise of permanence as a disc, then physical media will continue to offer something digital can't.

Blu-ray remains resilient

When I first started researching this story, I thought I'd be talking to experts about the technology that’s waiting to replace Blu-ray. But instead, I learned the future is a little more complicated than that.

Every home video format in the past has reached a point where its limitations became too impossible to ignore. But Ultra HD Blu-ray appears to be in a different position. According to the people building and supporting the format, there isn't an obvious problem left for another new type of disc to solve. It still delivers the highest quality experience available to most consumers and continues to attract collectors who are willing to invest in physical media.

Looking at recent sales numbers, the Blu-ray market is much healthier than I expected. Mark Frampton, Senior Commercial Marketing Manager at Elevation Sales, a film sales and distribution company, says the format has remained remarkably resilient.

"We’re forecasting 2026 to be another year where the market stabilizes. Catalogue [older releases] has been very strong and only 2% down year-on-year. This is driven by collector’s editions and steelbooks, particularly on 4K Ultra HD which remains a format in growth."

In other words, older film releases are continuing to sell well, with premium collector editions helping to keep the market strong — and it's not just older enthusiasts buying discs today.

“Although the core buying audience is still people over 35, we’re increasingly seeing younger audiences entering the market,” Frampton tells me. “People aged between 25 and 34 are the second biggest buyers of Blu-ray. But Gen Z and Younger Millennials (aged between 14 and 30) who are experiencing ‘digital fatigue’ are becoming highly engaged in the format as well."

The wider industry paints a similar picture. Kath Summersgill, Group Joint Head of Sales at Key Production Group, a music manufacturer that specializes in producing physical media, points to figures from the Entertainment Retailers Association showing continued growth. "The current state of the physical movie market is incredibly encouraging, with ERA’s 2025 figures showing Blu-ray sales increased by 19.5%,” she says.

Now, these surprisingly healthy numbers don’t mean Blu-ray discs will be around forever. Streaming will continue to improve, premium digital libraries will become more sophisticated and companies like Kaleidescape are already demonstrating that top-quality movies don't necessarily need to be on a disc.

All of this means another physical format may never arrive. Instead, the next chapter for home theater could be digital — but there's a long way before collectors would be ready to trust digital libraries.

For now, at least you know you won't have to worry about buying your favorite movies yet again on another new disc format in the future.

Thinking of buying a new TV?

Try our TV size and model finder! You tell it how far you sit from your TV, we'll tell you what size to buy based on viewing angle advice from image quality experts, and we'll recommend our three top TVs at that size for different prices.

• Disney+ subscribers in some European countries have lost 4K and HDR support, including basic HDR10 as well as Dolby Vision
• This appears to be the result of a court ruling, with the same kind of patent dispute being the cause of Disney+ losing Dolby Vision previously
• Premium customers are paying more for very little advantage now, but there's no word on a refund or compensation as yet

A few months ago Disney+ removed Dolby Vision in parts of Europe after a patent court ruled against the entertainment company, although it brought Dolby back the following month. But now there's a much more serious removal: 4K and HDR10 are gone for many European customers as well as Dolby Vision, and these are pretty core things you pay for if you have Disney+ Premium.

It appears to be another patent issue. In a statement to FlatpanelsHD, The Walt Disney Company Nordic & Baltic said: "Following a recent court ruling affecting the technology we use to deliver 4K UHD and HDR, we have temporarily removed support for 4K UHD and HDR on Disney+. We are disappointed and share our customers' frustration. We are working hard to restore support as quickly as possible."

We're not sure exactly which countries are affected yet, but it doesn't include the UK (or US) — we'll update with a full list when we can, but it's likely to be the same countries affected by the Dolby Vision removal. The reported list of countries in that case was: Austria; Belgium; Germany; Denmark; Finland; France; Italy; Netherlands; Portugal; Romania; Sweden.

That isn't just frustrating. It's taken away a key reason for subscribing to the most expensive Premium plan (though you will still get Dolby Atmos and the ability to stream to four devices at the same time, and downloads on up to 10 devices).

But still, if you're paying the extra price specifically to upgrade from 1080p to 4K HDR, right now you're paying extra for nothing, there's no sign of any compensation for customers so far.

Maybe we should all go back to Blu-ray

It's no wonder that many movie fans are moving back to Blu-ray. Between price rises, digital deletion of paid-for titles and external issues such as patent disputes taking away picture quality you had access to until two days ago, it's not a great time to be solely reliant on streaming.

This current issue isn't Disney's fault. The major streaming services have all been targeted by patent owners claiming breach of their intellectual property, and this appears to be another one of those cases; if so, it'll probably be resolved relatively quickly.

But it does make me wonder about the bigger picture here, because I think streaming is in danger of losing what made it so popular as we pay ever increasing prices for what we used to get as standard.

In this particular case the loss of 4K and HDR has been imposed by an external issue. But the highest quality options have been moving upwards into the most expensive tiers for a couple of years now, so unless you pay for the premium subscriptions you don't get the best quality.

That means what used to be a one-size-fits-all offer is now much more complicated and more expensive every year. For example, I'm in the UK, where Disney+ has three plans, only one of which gives you Atmos and 4K. Netflix has three plans too, once again limiting 4K to the most expensive tier.

My previously ad-free Prime Video subscription is so stuffed with ads now it's a hilariously miserable experience with me and the kids swearing at the screen, and Dolby Vision and Atmos became paid-for upgrades two years ago.

I'd bet that if you're reading this you probably subscribe to, or use the ad-funded version of, a music streaming service; they're so convenient that looking for pirated songs is more trouble than it's worth. But can you say the same for the movie streamers?

I don't condone piracy at all. But as someone who's been reporting on digital piracy since the days when Metallica didn't know what a Napster was, I've seen piracy ebb and flow in music and in movies, and it's very clear that no matter how hard you try, no matter how much money and how many lawyers you throw at it, you cannot stop digital piracy. What you can do — what Netflix, the OG streamer, did — is offer a better alternative that makes it unappealing.

In a world where perfect digital copies of movies and TV shows are only a few clicks away, the only way to prevent people pirating is to make your product better in ways that persuade people to pay for it, or to accept the advertising that pays for it.

And to me it looks like only one of the major streamers is doing that: Apple TV+. What I'd love to see is the other streamers doing what it does. What I fear, and which is more likely, is that Apple TV is going to end up doing what they do.

In 2025, Hisense introduced RGB mini-LED to the market and since then, most TV brands have thrown their hat into the RGB TV ring. TCL, Samsung, LG and Sony are major names who have adopted the new technology, which was dubbed as being a potential ‘OLED killer’, thanks to boasting higher brightness and bolder colors, and claiming to deliver black tones to rival the best OLED TVs.

One of those new TVs has just entered our lab: the Sony Bravia 7 II. The more affordable model of Sony’s RGB TVs, sitting below the flagship Sony Bravia 9 II, the Bravia 7 II is priced fairly similarly to rival mid-range OLEDs. So, I decided to see how the Bravia 7 II would fare against the five-star LG C6, one of the best TVs I’ve tested in 2026 so far.

For these tests, both TVs were set to their respective, out-of-the-box Filmmaker Modes. For the Bravia 7 II, this was called Professional in SDR/HDR, and Dolby Vision Dark when displaying Dolby Vision content. On the LG C6, it's just the Filmmaker Mode.

Colors

Starting with The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, both the Bravia 7 II and C6 demonstrated excellent color reproduction. In the opening scenes, the Lumas’ colors are richer and deeper on the C6, whereas they were brighter on the Bravia 7 II, which worked well for highlights on screen such as when Rosalina uses her wand.

While most colors were a bit punchier on the C6, I did find that yellows and golds actually appeared more vibrant and eye-catching on the Bravia 7 II, shown by the light from the fire reflecting in Rosalina’s hair and face.

Later scenes showed that the C6 had much bolder reds, shown in Mario’s hat and overalls. The C6’s colors also looked more accurate for the most part to me, though during an early scene where Mario and Luigi ride through the desert, I was drawn to the Bravia 7 II’s warmer color tone, with the desert sand looking more true-to-life on the Bravia 7 II, whereas it looked too red on the C6.

There was no denying though the C6’s color handling allowed for more texture and saturation within them, which worked well for this animation.

Moving to a movie with some real-life elements, Speed Racer, both TVs did a great job reproducing the movie’s over-saturated, cartoonish color profile. The ’60s-inspired, often-garish color of people’s outfits and the decor of the Racer family home really popped on both screens. S

imilar to Mario Galaxy, the C6 demonstrated deeper, bolder colors, while the Bravia 7 II showed brighter colors. In the scene in the park where Speed first meets Trixie when they’re both children, the red of Trixie’s dress is punchier on the C6, but the green grass is more vivid on the Bravia 7 II.

In some instances, the Bravia 7 II’s colors did look a little washed out, bordering on too-pale, which was exaggerated by comparing it directly to the C6’s color depth. Reds appeared slightly orange on the Bravia 7 II compared to the C6, a similar story to what happened when I compared the Samsung S95/S99H with the G6, with the former showing orange-tinted reds.

Still, color reproduction is one of the selling points for RGB TVs, and while I felt that the Hisense UR8 (that company's own more affordable RGB mini-LED TV) didn’t stack up that well for color against the Samsung QN80H standard mini-LED when I tested the UR8 and QN80H side-by-side, the Bravia 7 II is putting up a solid fight against the LG C6 OLED (which is a superior TV to the QN80H).

Contrast/dark room viewing

The Batman is something of a torture test for TVs due to its low brightness, which means dark tones can look inaccurate. While OLEDs do a better job displaying it generally, recent models such as the LG G6 have over-brightened the dark tones at times — but the C6 has always handled it well, so it's a great test against the Bravia 7 II.

Watching scenes from the Batcave early in the movie, both TVs demonstrated strong contrast with a great balance between light and dark tones. The C6 had a higher perceived contrast as its black tones were much deeper, thanks to OLED’s pixel-dimming abilities, which meant the dark surroundings that contrasted with the overhead lights and lights from Bruce’s equipment create a higher dynamic range.

Still, the Bravia 7 II demonstrated strong backlight control, better than almost any standard mini-LED TVs I’ve tested this movie on. I also praised the Hisense UR8 for this, so it certainly looks like RGB TVs have unlocked better contrast and dark area control for LED TVs.

In the subway fight scene, the C6 once again proved to have the better black tones, accurately capturing the gloomy tone of the film. However, on the Bravia 7 II, more details such as Batman’s armor and the texture of the back wall were legible, thanks to showing them in slightly higher brightness (more on that in a while), compared to the C6.

The C6 itself showed the occasional sign of black crush compared to the Bravia 7 II. For out and out contrast though, I preferred the C6’s look, but the Bravia II was impressive.

Watching in a dark room, the C6 has the benefit of no backlight, meaning there was no ‘cloud’ effect, where a backlight is obvious over a dark scene. While the Bravia 7 II did show the odd moment of clouding, again it showed excellent backlight control compared to the competition.

There was also very little blooming in the scenes I tried; it only became obvious when a bright menu appeared on the bottom of the screen. Even the Bravia 7 II’s viewing angles were solid, not showing anywhere near the level of blooming a standard mini-LED TV would when watched way off-angle.

I decided to try one final black level test, using the scenes of space from Alien: Romulus. As expected, the C6’s black levels were inky and deep, delivering strong contrast against the stars.

Again though, the Bravia 7 II’s black levels were very good for a backlit TV, although there was some graying on occasion.

I did notice more blooming on the Bravia 7 II in this film however, most prominently whenever bright, white text appeared against black backgrounds. Still, the Bravia 7 II fared better with this movie than I thought.

Brightness

I'm about to get into brightness measurements, but there's a caveat. For my testing, I profile a Klein K-10A colorimeter and Jeti Spectral 15VA spectroradiometer for the best accuracy — and for some reason, I could not get the two’s Delta-E results to line up completely when preparing to measure the Bravia 7 II.

The same equipment worked fine with other TVs when I checked it, so it suggests there’s something odd with the 55-inch Bravia 7 II unit I tested, or perhaps with the way the equipment interacts with it.

Before my full review, we’re getting a different, 65-inch unit in, and I will measure it again — however, I'll provide the measurements I took so far for reference, because while the Delta-E wasn't perfect, it wasn't too far off, so they should be instructive. (And the LG C6 measurements have no issues.)

Brightness results for these two TVs are actually quite surprising. In Filmmaker Mode, the C6 registered 1,427 nits of peak HDR brightness in a 10% window, while the Bravia 7 II registered 1,218 nits peak HDR brightness in its equivalent Professional mode. I was surprised to see that the C6’s peak brightness was higher, as I thought an RGB mini-LED would hit much higher numbers than an OLED.

Looking at fullscreen HDR brightness (a 100% window), this is where the real difference lies. The C6 hit 247 nits in Filmmaker Mode, while the Bravia II registered 957 nits in Professional mode. This is a huge difference — this is the area where mini-LED in general trump OLEDs, though 957 nits is especially high, even

Seeing how this translates into real-world viewing, it shows mostly in bright scenes or scenes with a lot of white. Watching snow scenes from the Spears & Munsil demo footage, a shot of some horses in heavy snowfall is significantly brighter on the Bravia 7 II compared to the C6, giving it a more realistic look.

Another shot of a cliffside during the daytime again looks much brighter on the Bravia 7 II compared to the C6. As the cliff takes up a large portion of the image, the Bravia 7 II, which is brighter in measured areas like 50%, 75% and 100% compared to the C6, means the image looks brighter overall on the Bravia 7 II.

In scenes from Speed Racer, the C6’s peak brightness means white highlights look glossier, such as on the shell of the Mach 5, and colors have more punch in highlight areas, such as the red M on Speed’s helmet. But as the Bravia 7 II has higher fullscreen brightness, the picture does look brighter overall on the Bravia 7 II.

Finally, using a scene in the white-sanded desert from Lawrence of Arabia, this is one movie where the C6 and Bravia 7 II are much closer in brightness in real-world movies. As Lawrence rests on a rock, the sands behind him look punchier on the C6. His metallic watch had slightly more pop too, although this was minimal.

When the sands take up more of the screen, as a stranger approaches Lawrence and his guide, the C6 once again had higher perceived brightness for me.

In this instance, it seems to be related to both TVs color profiles. The Bravia 7 II’s warmer color tone, giving it the brown/orange tint you expect from this type of picture mode, blends more with the desert, whereas the C6’s red tone gives the desert a little more pop.

In terms of bright-room viewing, where you're contending with reflections, the Bravia 7 II is better overall, although the C6 does handle brighter scenes well, such as the ones from Lawrence of Arabia.

With darker movies, the Bravia 7 II is the better option, but it is still prone to mirror-like reflections (the Bravia 7 II doesn’t have the same anti-glare screen as the step-up Bravia 9 II). However, they weren’t as noticeable as the mirror-like reflections from the C6’s even glossier screen.

A step forward, but not quite there yet

Whenever I’ve compared standard mini-LED and OLED, OLED has often come out on top, thanks to its richer black tones and contrast, more refined image and deeper, bolder colors. RGB has been touted as the latest big rival to OLED, and the Bravia 7 II gives the C6 OLED a really good fight.

When smaller RGB TVs first joined the market this year, with the tech itself only arriving in 2025, I thought prices would be inflated. While the C6 is the better priced TV right now, with a 55-inch model costing $1,499 / £1,499 / AU$2,995, a Bravia 7 II isn’t priced too differently, with a 55-inch model costing $1,799 / £1,799 / AU$2,995. (Though LG TVs tend to get more aggressive discounts than Sony TVs, so LG might retain the edge over time.)

For now, the C6 is still the TV I recommend between these two, because it offers the crisper look, bolder colors and more dynamic contrast I’m looking for, as well as a cheaper price. But, there’s a lot to like about the Bravia 7 II and if this is a sign of what’s in store for RGB TVs as the tech develops, OLED will need to watch its back.

Thinking of buying a new TV?

Try our TV size and model finder! You tell it how far you sit from your TV, we'll tell you what size to buy based on viewing angle advice from image quality experts, and we'll recommend our three top TVs at that size for different prices.

Smart TVs have long been in controversial waters as far as privacy goes. From claims that your TV is a "privacy nightmare" to accusations of some models being a "mass surveillance system", you probably haven't failed to notice the periodic storms that have erupted around what televisions get up to in terms of data and telemetry. The latest lightning strike that hit last week was a development around LG TVs (and PC monitors) whereby voice features (and a McAfee pop-up ad in Windows) came under fire.

LG has defended its position in no uncertain terms, it should be noted (although the mentioned Windows 11 pop-up has since been retracted). But regardless of the rights or wrongs here, this affair was enough of a reminder to prompt me to finally take action on something I've been meaning to do for quite some time anyway.

Namely, to take my smart TV offline, once and for all. This means I can ensure that I know for certain that my television isn't get up to any online 'shenanigans' with whatever data may (or may not) be getting sent here or there — because it isn't online at all. And I don't need it to be online, either.

Maybe this is something you'd like to do, as well, so if you're thinking of following in my footsteps, I'm going to break down everything for you. That includes whether you actually need to have your smart TV online, and how to go about disconnecting it from the internet while still installing updates for the television manually, should you wish, which is possible in many — but not all — cases.

Do you really need to have your smart TV online?

I'd argue that you don't need to have your smart TV online, although that said, answering this question isn't exactly straightforward and there are caveats depending on your personal situation.

Obviously, if you use the TV maker's smart hub for any of your viewing needs, and the apps therein for streaming (or anything else), then clearly, you will need the television to remain online. Although these days, most people use a streaming stick to watch all their content and don't ever go near the smart TV hub, such as the Fire TV Stick (most commonly). It's just a much better way of working. (And yes, I do realize that any such hardware may come with its own privacy-related nuances and issues, but I'm not going to get into all that here – except to say that you'll want to consider Apple TV as an option if privacy is high on your list of priorities for streaming devices).

Assuming your viewing is done via a separate stick or box of some kind, then, the only real reason to keep your TV online is to get updates from the manufacturer. In my case, I have a Sony TV that's now four years old, and at this point, updates have reduced to a trickle – and they're mostly trivial tweaks and the like.

There's nothing I really need, and arguably, firmware updates are as much of a risk as they are a potential benefit at this stage of the TV's life. I like the way my Sony runs now, the picture is great, and everything's good – and who's to say an update might not throw a spanner in the works and break something? These things happen, even if it's something as simple as resetting my TV settings, which isn't fatal, but is annoying (and it has happened before).

Okay, so one thing I won't get that's regarded as vital is security updates and fixes. And I understand why these are thought of as critical, but hey, guess what: I'm taking my TV fully offline, so I won't need them. (There's no greater assurance of security than ditching online connectivity, anyway).

Granted, there are other online features I'll lose too – voice command functionality with the TV, for example, but it's all minor stuff in the great scheme of things, and none of it matters to me personally (I use my streaming stick's voice search, anyway).

If you have an older smart TV, you're likely in a similar boat to me, although if you have a newer model, then maybe your television is still receiving firmware updates which are important, with fixes or new features you actually want.

In that case, you may still want to jump online to download and install those upgrades, but you only need to hop on temporarily to do so (maybe once every few months).

However, there is another way to get updates for your smart TV while keeping it offline permanently. Admittedly, it's a bit of a hassle compared to a seamless update within the TV's interface itself, but it does avoid going online at all, while still ensuring your smart TV is kept fully up-to-date. So, let's look at how to do that — but first, it's worth quickly touching on how to take your TV off the internet in case you're in any doubt.

How to take your TV offline

If your TV is online and you wish to revoke that internet access, it's a simple matter of turning off the Wi-Fi in the television's settings. (Assuming you're connected via Wi-Fi to your home router, of course — if you have an Ethernet connection, it's just a case of unplugging that cable from the TV).

You'll find the wireless network options somewhere in your TV's settings menu, generally under a category called 'network' or 'internet'. Head here and there'll likely be a slider or some kind of choice to turn off the Wi-Fi, and it should be as easy as flicking that switch. Of course, the method may vary slightly from TV to TV, as ever (consult your instruction manual if you get stuck).

You'll also see your home Wi-Fi network listed under available networks (or similar), and you can generally go into that option and select the choice to 'forget' the network (remove it permanently from the TV's memory). It's probably worth exercising that option as the safest way of fully disconnecting your television (although it does mean that if you want to add the wireless network again in the future, you'll have to re-enter the password).

How to install a firmware update with your smart TV offline by using a USB stick

The way you install an update with the TV offline is to do so via a USB stick. This means using another device that's online (your PC or laptop) to download the TV firmware update you want, then you copy it onto the USB stick, and plug that into your TV, piping the update through locally from there.

How this works may vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, as you might expect, but it's broadly the same. Follow the general instructions below, but bear in mind that you may have to adapt them slightly based on exactly which firm makes your TV.

1. Find out your exact TV model

First things first: you should note down the exact model name of your TV. You'll find this on the invoice (from when you bought it), or on the back of the TV set itself, or it'll often be in the settings in the TV menu (generally under Settings > System > About, or similar – or find it via the Help button on your TV remote, under system information or the like).

When I say full name, you'll need that to search for the correct firmware and ensure you download the right file. You can't just search for 'Sony Bravia 55-inch TV', you'll need the exact model with the full complement of letters and numbers, such as 'Sony K55XR80PU' which I'll use here as an example.

2. Download the latest firmware from your TV manufacturer's website

On your PC, run a Google search (or your preferred search engine) for the model name and firmware, so in our example here, we'll search for 'Sony K55XR80PU firmware'. You should get a link that takes you directly to the support web page where the manufacturer provides the relevant firmware download.

At that page, you may find the model name is truncated — it's the Sony K-55XR80 in this case, as the 'PU' bit at the end is regional model info relating to the UK. (Note that you can search directly for the firmware on the manufacturer's support site, but due to variations in the model names as observed, the site might fail to find it, so it's generally best to try Google first).

When you reach the support page for the relevant TV model, you should see the latest firmware update listed with its release date and notes about what it does. It may be referred to as 'firmware' or a 'software update', and in some cases, it might come with instructions. (Samsung calls its firmware downloads 'upgrade file USB type', for example — catchy, huh? — and LG includes a PDF guide with some downloads).

Click on the file to download it to your PC (and the instructions, too, if present).

3. Put the update files on a USB stick

Once downloaded, you need to put the firmware files onto the USB stick, so insert that USB drive into your PC, and copy them across. Exactly what you do here may vary slightly — and if you have instructions from the manufacturer you can, of course, follow these — but let's continue with our Sony example to give you an idea of what's involved.

With the Sony K-55XR80 firmware update, what's downloaded to the computer is a ZIP (compressed archive) containing three files. Extract those three files to a temporary folder on your system drive, then copy them over to the root drive of the USB stick (meaning just copy it straight onto the stick — don't put it into a folder). Note that the USB stick doesn't have to be empty, it can have other files on it (the TV will ignore them and pick up what it needs — although you will need enough room for the firmware update files to fit on the USB drive, naturally).

4. Insert that USB drive into a free port on your TV

Turn on the TV and plug the stick into an available USB port, and the television should detect the update, and start the installation process. (Sony suggests not having any other USB devices connected, by the way, and also rebooting your TV first, but the latter isn't really necessary — you can just turn it off, then on again, assuming it isn't off in the first place).

Slight variations with different TVs

Depending on your TV, you may have to proceed a bit differently — as noted, you can follow the instructions provided by your manufacturer on the firmware download page (or the downloaded installation guide, if you get one).

For example, with LG TVs, you need to put the update files in a correctly named folder on the USB stick as detailed in the provided PDF guide (and not the root of the USB stick, as with a Sony TV). Samsung TVs require the files to go in the root of the USB stick — not in a folder — like Sony, although with a Samsung model, the update may not kick off automatically when you plug in the USB drive, and you might need to trigger it manually. (Go to Settings > All Settings > Support > Software Update in the Samsung TV's menu, then select 'Update Now').

But broadly, whatever your TV, the idea is the same: download the update files (or file), put them on the USB stick, then plug the stick into a free USB port on your TV, where the update should be automatically detected and installed. The main differences will likely lie in the number of files you may have to download, and whether or not they need to go in a folder on the USB stick. At any rate, be sure to follow the manufacturer's instructions carefully.

Done and dusted

As ever, once a firmware update has begun, don't ever turn off the TV, unplug it (or remove the USB drive), or otherwise interfere with the process, as that runs the risk of seriously messing up your precious television. Sit tight and watch the update run its course, with the TV rebooting itself automatically at some point – and then you're done and dusted.

In many cases, then, there's no need to connect your smart TV to the internet ever, even to get firmware updates. Although don't forget that you'll need to manually keep tabs on when the latest updates emerge, regularly checking the manufacturer's website, as your TV won't flag update availability for you if it isn't online.

There's a final caveat to remember here, namely that some TV manufacturers may not provide updates for download and manual installation with certain models. In that case, you're rather stuck, and indeed Panasonic is notable in this respect, because this TV maker has ditched manual updates entirely for its newer models, with firmware only available via a direct download on the TV. However, even in these scenarios, you can still keep the TV off the internet most of the time, periodically venturing online just to grab the latest firmware (should you want to).

Dolby Atmos gets plaudits as the more popular immersive 3D sound format, but a lot of its love from home theater enthusiasts isn't about the spatial audio, but is more about the lossless audio quality you get on 4K Blu-ray. It's not the only game in town for this, however: there's also DTS-HD Master Audio (MA).

I’ve been testing new 4K Blu-rays as part of the Blu-ray Bounty, my monthly feature where I review the best new 4K releases for sound and visual quality, and tons of them use DTS-HD MA — especially older titles.

While DTS isn’t supported as widely in hardware as Dolby Atmos (new-release LG and Samsung TVs don't support DTS, for example), it’s an excellent sound format that can still deliver an immersive surround sound experience, especially in 5.1 surround systems.

While DTS-HD MA may not utilize height channels like Dolby Atmos does, there are a few 4K Blu-rays I’ve tested whose DTS-HD MA soundtracks sound so good, they had me asking who needs Dolby Atmos height effects anyway.

Below, I’ve picked seven of my favorite 4K discs that feature brilliant DTS soundtracks — most are 5.1 surround sound, but one is actually stereo (as the creator intended).

What do you think of Dolby Atmos vs DTS? Any other DTS 4K discs you think people should check out? Be sure to let us know in the comments below!

Chungking Express

Chungking Express follows the separate stories of two policemen in Hong Kong, both of whom are going through breakups and meet new strangers.

Where the DTS-HD 5.1 MA soundtrack shines here is capturing the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong. During one scene where Ah Wu (Cop 223) enters a night market, the sound of raised voices, goods being exchanged and the general chaos of a busy market sounds realistic and detailed.

The surround channels are used to full effect and sound is accurately mapped to them. The movement of sound had me double-checking the room, the sounds of the market are so convincing and tactile.

A later scene where Cop 663 visits a restaurant, the conversation of the patrons, clinking glasses and cutlery being used are given ample room to breathe, and the sound placement is precise. Again, the scene had that immersive feel that I’d found during the aforementioned night market scene. Throughout, the jazzy score is well balanced with other elements in the mix.

Tombstone

Tombstone follows the story of Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell), a retired lawman who moves to the titular town with his brothers Virgil (Sam Elliott) and Morgan (Bill Paxton), and along with Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer) they must defend the town from a group of outlaws.

As you’d expect from a Western, there’s plenty of gunfights that demonstrate excellent surround sound and dynamic range. The DTS-HD 5.1 MA soundtrack here accurately maps ricocheting bullets to rear channels, while also following their trajectory. There’s good impact from said bullets too, showing some nice power from the front channels.

Elsewhere, other effects such as the clinking of spurs have a bright, clear sound and again sound realistic, with a clear connection between the sound and the action. Whenever horses gallop, there’s some meaty bass that delivers a solid rumble. The subwoofer of the system I use delivered plenty of oomph that even made our testing lab shake. Crucially though, despite bass volume, it’s well controlled and balanced within the mix.

Dunkirk

Dunkirk, directed by Christopher Nolan, follows the events of the Dunkirk evacuation in WWII, told from three different perspectives of people in the land, sea and air. It stars an ensemble cast that includes Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hardy and Cillian Murphy.

Christopher Nolan notably never uses Dolby Atmos with his movies, and Dunkirk is no different. While any Nolan movie could make this list (and this isn’t the only one), Dunkirk is easily one of the most impressive.

In the opening scenes, as the British soldiers attempt to outrun the gunfire, the mapping and directionality of the bullets was pinpoint accurate, coming from behind my head and ramping up the anxiety. These bullets also had plenty of impact and punch, delivering some serious power with every hit.

This is another DTS mix that despite a lack of height channels, delivers enough immersion that it feels like there’s height. Anytime a plane flies overhead, there’s absolutely perceived height, and the drone of the plane's engines has a clear sense of direction. Throughout the movie, bass levels are powerful but well controlled and dynamic, really giving a subwoofer a workout.

Interstellar

Interstellar is the story of Coop (Matthew McConaughey), a NASA pilot who joins an expedition to find a new home for humans, as Earth succumbs to famine and crisis. The movie also stars Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain and Michael Caine among its cast list.

Christopher Nolan’s second movie on the list, Interstellar delivers an impressive showcase for DTS-HD 5.1 MA. As the Endurance navigates the Gargantua wormhole, bass levels are strong, but there’s an added (intentional) sense of direction to the low frequencies as well, as the sound moves from the front to the rear speakers to create a fully immersive and engaging sense of reality bending around you. The roar of the ship’s engines delivers a seriously powerful rumble too, showing what your subwoofer can do.

There’s some fantastic detail within the sound mix too. During Coop’s daring docking sequence with the out-of-control Endurance, the sound of debris crunching into the ship and the directionality of the spinning ships are all intricate, audible and precise. There’s an excellent balance between every element, even with the powerful, organ-led score over the top of it — this is a really tough scene for speakers to drive, and is a great showcase for why Blu-ray is superior to streaming: it sounds so much weaker from any streaming source, but is brilliantly overwhelming here.

As Coop encouncters the black hole, the rattling sound of the dust again scrapes along the outside of the ship convincingly and sharply, really putting me inside the Ranger ship myself.

Minority Report

Minority Report, loosely based on Philip K Dick’s novella The Minority Report, stars Tom Cruise as John Anderton, the chief of the Precrime unit, which uses clairvoyant people to predict homicides before they happen. When the clairvoyant ‘precogs’ predict that Anderton will commit a homicide, he must go on the run.

Despite the lack of height channels in the DTS-HD 5.1 MA soundtrack featured on the Minority Report 4K Blu-ray, there are plenty of scenes where a sense of height is created. During the jetpack fight scene, the movement of sound and the spatial elements within the scene are enough to create the feeling of height to the mix.

The same is true in another scene where John escapes along a magnetic car freeway. Cars over John’s head, as he scales up the automated lanes of traffic, sound like they’re coming overhead, even with the missing height channels in the mix.

The detail in this disc’s soundtrack is just excellent. Other elements such as punches during fight scenes deliver solid impact and heft, with some meaty bass as well.

Fight Club

Fight Club is the story of an unnamed narrator (Edward Norton), who's an insurance agent who meets a mysterious soap salesman named Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and starts an underground fight club for disillusioned people.

As you’d hope from a movie as gritty as this, there’s plenty to like about the 4K disc’s DTS-HD 5.1 MA soundtrack. During fight scenes, punches and collisions have real impact, feeling every bit as gruelling as the scenes themselves. More visceral sounds, such as the bag of fat splitting open, are gruesome and realistic, sounding worryingly detailed. The narrator’s speech is crystal clear throughout most of the movie too, balancing well with the score and other effects.

Again, this is another mix with a real immersive feel in some scenes, delivering perceived height effects. During the opening, as the camera drops down through the building where the narrator is held at gunpoint, to the parking garage below, the sound of the breeze accurately follows the trajectory of the camera, creating that sense of height despite the lack of height channels.

Blow Out

Blow Out follows Jack Terry (John Travolta), a sound technician who is embroiled in a murder/assassination plot when he inadvertently captures evidence of the assassination while recording audio for a low-budget slasher film he’s involved in.

What makes this disc’s soundtrack so interesting is that rather than DTS-HD 5.1 MA surround, which the other entries in this list have been, this uses a DTS-HD 2.0 surround mix, preserving the original presentation, but in the best-quality mix we can deliver today.

While stereo may sound limited, some excellent sound design means the movie absolutely feels immersive. This is best demonstrated during a scene where Jack records audio in the park near the opening of the movie.

As he aims his microphone to capture audio, the sound of the wind and distant traffic fills the space with subtlety. When louder audio comes in, such as the hooting of an owl, the other effects don’t go away. As the car swerves off the bridge, the sound of the screeching tyres moves from side to side, again utilizing the surround channels well. There’s still some good impact as the car crashes through the fence into the river, too.

Thinking of buying a new TV?

Try our TV size and model finder! You tell it how far you sit from your TV, we'll tell you what size to buy based on viewing angle advice from image quality experts, and we'll recommend our three top TVs at that size for different prices.

• SyLC 3D Player supports everything from 3D Blu-ray to Apple spatial videos, and it can convert 3D video to display it on Apple Vision Pro headsets
• It's backwards and forwards compatible — and the creator says it can get dual-HDMI output for dual projection, for future-proofing
• The app runs on Windows, and is free via Github 'because this format deserves better than a slow death'

One of the great tech disappointments of the last few decades was 3D TV. Like many movie fans I was excited by the possibilities, invested in a 3D TV, and watched the entertainment industry ensure that yet again, 3D movies were a short-lived trend. By 2013, it was already generally agreed that 3D TV was dead and that smart TVs and 4K were the way ahead.

Not everyone got the memo [I had mine until 2020… -Ed]. Over on the r/audiovisual subreddit, Jarod-The_Centre is determined to ensure 3D never dies — so they have been making a free player that now "plays EVERYTHING in 3D" from Blu-ray to Apple spatial videos.

And that's just the beginning of its talents. If you're a fan of things pointing out of the screen for no good reason, Jarod's player is fascinating.

I refused to let 3D die ! So I spent months building a free player that plays EVERYTHING in 3D: Blu-ray MVC, 4K HDR side-by-side, even Apple spatial videos. And it converts your 3D Blu-rays to Vision Pro format... from r/audiovisual

What does the 3D player do?

What doesn't it do? The player, called SyLC 3D Player, is a Windows app that's now in its fifth release. It's designed to play three different generations of 3D content: Blu-ray 3D/ISO/MVC MKV; HEVC/H.265 3D up to 4K 10-bit HDR; and Apple's MV-HEVC spatial videos. "The MVC of the 2020s, playing on your 2010s 3D TV," Jarod writes. "There's something poetic about that."

The app outputs in frame-packed 3D for compatible 3D TVs and projectors, and it can do something else that's really impressive: it can export 3D content as MV-HEVC, so you can take a 3D Blu-ray and turn it into a spatial video for Vision Pro.

I love Jarod's explanation for making the app. "It exists because this format deserves better than a slow death, and because apparently I don't know when to stop."

Jarod's in good company. Reddit's response to the latest announcement has been really positive and packed with good ideas, so for example Acceptable-Rise8783 suggests that for future-proofing, the app should be able to "send the two fields separately but in sync through two HDMI outputs."

With 3D TVs and projectors becoming increasingly hard to find — as they point out, "projectors are dropping support left and right because the chips that do 3D are becoming hard to come by" — the choice of viewing platforms will be reduced to dual-projector 3D or VR headsets.

The creator says this is something likely to appear in the player in a future version as the player already drives two windows simultaneously — and it means that dual projectors is the most 'future-proof' option for 3D, and the app supports it as best it can.

The whole discussion is fascinating, and I think Jarod sums it up beautifully. "Keep the faith. The format's not dead while we're still building for it 🔥".

Thinking of buying a new TV?

Try our TV size and model finder! You tell it how far you sit from your TV, we'll tell you what size to buy based on viewing angle advice from image quality experts, and we'll recommend our three top TVs at that size for different prices.

You may not have heard of the Armour Home Group, but you have almost certainly heard of its three hi-fi brands: Q Acoustics, QED, and Goldring. Q Acoustics is one of the masters of great-value value speakers, QED is one of the best-known cable makers, and Goldring is a 120-year-old turntable specialist.

And you may not have heard of its new Managing Director, Charlie Henderson, but you will absolutely have heard of the audio brands he's helped to lead, including Cambridge Audio, Naim, and Jabra.

I've met Henderson before in his roles at Cambridge and Naim, and I was fascinated by how the email I received announcing his appointment promised to focus on expanding the brands "beyond the hi-fi" sector.

I wondered if that meant moving into more 'mainstream' parts of the audio world, and I wasn't sure how that would really work with a brand like QED, so I wanted to find out more — but it turned out that Henderson had something completely different in mind.

He wanted to talk about how the brands can support the return of public listening rooms, how they can engage with the new wave of people getting into hi-fi — and how the hi-fi world can get its "mojo" back.

TechRadar: You said in your introduction at the company that "My goal is to elevate these brands beyond the hi-fi sector and into the broader music community", referring to Q Acoustics, QED, and Goldring. So what do you have in mind?

Charlie Henderson: I have felt for a long time that the hi-fi industry has lost some of its mojo. If we go back to the '50s, '60s, '70s — kind of the essence of British hi-fi in particular — lots of those company founders were either part of rock bands, or they were gigging, or they were visiting live venues, and that's why they got into this industry. So a real love of music was always there.

I think we've seen maybe over the last 10 years or so that it's gone a bit stale. And I think in all the roles I've had in this industry, I've been really keen to make sure that we reboot it. So we talk about our mission as a business, which is to move beyond the hi-fi bubble and become part of music culture — almost as though that's revolutionary, but it's not; it's just going back to what hi-fi was. It was always part of music culture.

But if we think about going around Vienna High End or the Bristol Hi-Fi Show or any of these kinds of events, it's usually less about the music and it's mostly about the equipment and the technology. I think that's a shame. It's not why I'm in this industry; it's not why all the people I tend to find that I'm working with are in this industry.

So that is our mission, and the way we do it is by just being authentic about why we're really here.

TR: It's funny, of all the big tech shows, IFA is the one that has started doing what you're saying, and trying to be a cultural hub as well as a tech show. But really audio is such a kind of tangential part of IFA compared to these music shows that you're talking about.

CH: I remember chatting to a [very respected] hi-fi journalist at the Munich show a couple of years ago, and he just hung out with us. This was in my Cambridge [Audio] days, he just kind of just hung out because he was like, 'Man, at least someone's playing some proper music.'

You walk around the halls and it's Kate Bush and Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin and all of the usual stuff. Great artists, they're still important musical acts and incredible — but decades have moved on and there's different artists today, you know? People like Fred Again and Ren are my two favorites at the moment, because I think they're British artists who are defining the real musical culture right now. And I haven't heard any Fred Again or Ren at an audio show.

I probably would hear it at IFA, and I think it's because IFA represents companies who understand that they are part of consumer culture. I think the hi-fi industry maybe sometimes thinks that consumer culture is a dirty word. I couldn't disagree more. Knowing who your customer is and what appeals to them and being part of their world, that's our responsibility as manufacturers ultimately.

TR: So what do you see music culture as being in 2026? We're in the middle of one of the most interesting times of audio I can think of, where the new audience who grew up on streaming are coming in and going, ‘I want to move beyond this.’ And that is partly behind the vinyl revival with young people really wanting to actively get into that side — but it's also leading us in the direction of every device having streaming built in or being ‘active’. There are these two arguably separate paths, so where can you ‘meet’ music culture as a company?

CH: There's a little bit of convenience going on here. Active is clearly a future direction for our industry, fueled by convenience and simplicity. I've spent a long time in my career involved in separates hi-fi, and that has a place, but I think even companies who have been focused on that over the last few decades realize that active is the direction of travel. I think that's down to people just wanting a simpler life.

But then there's the ironic flip side of that. We talk about the vinyl revival and analog renaissance and all these things, [including] CDs. I'm using one of my old Motorola phones for my phone because I don't always want to be connected on a smartphone.

But one of my favorite cartoons is [the one that asks] ‘What got you into vinyl? Was it the inconvenience or the expense?’ You know that one? I think the ritual [of playing and choosing vinyl] is really important.

Just for a second, I'm going to kind of dive off into part of how we'll execute our mission. You know, moving into being more a part of music culture isn't just about understanding the music side of it, it's actually how people experience music. I think as an industry, the hi-fi industry has long lamented the question: how do we get people to come in and listen to what music should sound like?

I don't believe [getting people to come to us] is the right answer. Go to where people are listening to music and show them how it could sound. There is a bar culture called the kissa bar culture that came out of Tokyo over the last 20 or so years. It manifests itself in these listening rooms, and you see them at Studio 180 in London, for example. Spotify has just announced its own version of one of these listening rooms as well. That's where music culture is for me.

There was a great article I was reading the other day where it's basically saying listening rooms like that are the new nightclubs. I thought that was super interesting because it's a place where people just assemble, share a passion of music. They might be sipping nice teas or drinking great whiskey or maybe just chatting, you know? It's a place to socialize.

We're seeing this resurgence of gaming, and I mean board gaming. I think that's beautiful, because it's people coming together and escaping the distractions of modern-day technology. It's definitely a younger audience who are doing that because they are sick to the high teeth of everything being online, everything being intangible and losing that connection with friends.

You're seeing it also manifesting in things like running clubs appearing and becoming a huge thing for people in their teens and 20s and early 30s, just craving for human connection.

And I think that is part of music culture. It's human connection. It's why gig tickets are going through the roof again — Glastonbury's selling out faster than ever.

And people really spend more on music, on a hi-fi system or an audio system. They're quite happy with their [premium] Apple Bluetooth products, they're already spending that money. They're dropping £1,000 on Glastonbury tickets and spending all this money on Taylor Swift to get the eight different versions of an album that she releases. They're obsessed by music, but they don't know who to talk to because no one's talking to them.

TR: This might tie back to what your plan is to get out there and interact with people, but the immediate problem that occurs to me with having more of these spaces — and about these spaces becoming more popular even though there's appetite for them — is the general collapse in the ‘third-place’ concept. Places you can go that are not work and that are not home and that are also sustainable businesses. A lot of these places are struggling. Board game cafes have done all right, but you've got maybe one or two per city. They're not like how pubs and bars have been absolutely everywhere in the past. So do you see yourselves opening some of these venues, or supporting them directly in other ways?

CH: I think the pub reference is interesting because we've seen a decline in pubs. We know how many pubs are shutting every week, and nightclubs. I think it's just a different way of people getting together. I'm not surprised that there's only one or two [board game cafes] in a town, because there's probably only ever been one or two nightclubs in a town. Clearly not the same number of people going through [board game cafes as nightclubs], but it's just a place where people can get together.

But just because they're not doing it publicly, doesn't mean they're not doing it at home, you know? We know that vinyl and turntable sales continue to increase year over year over year because people are creating their own environments at home.

In terms of how we execute it, it's by working through our relationships that we have as a team — and that I bring to the business as well in terms of relationships in the music industry and venues within the music industry — and saying ‘how do we support you creating your own listening bar environments’ or being able to [develop] kissa bar culture.

And doing that globally, importantly, as well. We might be based in the UK and proudly British hi-fi brands, but we're a global business, so how do we get a venue in Tokyo, the home of all of this culture? We've had some really good conversations in Vienna just last week about being able to do this in places in Australia, and opportunities in places like New York and across Europe. Spain, Italy and France are way ahead of the UK when it comes to this listening bar culture already.

And then obviously in the UK, our approach will be to support those venues either by equipping them with the right kind of technology to be able to deliver it, or helping people to open them. There's a difference between pop-up events, which are fun for the industry, and actually supporting these venues to be successful in what they're trying to do.

There's an ethical story here. Sometimes people say, ‘So what is it you do as a business? You're making stuff?’ I'm like: no, it's bigger than that. We make products for sure, but they transform people's lives.

It sounds very floaty and you know, almost ephemeral, but it's true: music changes how people feel, so we have a responsibility to make that available to people wherever they want to be. That's kind of our cultural thing, and we'll do that by making sure that the great kit that we make is in the places they want to go to — the two come together.

The outcome is that people realize that [our brands are] actually part of music culture, and therefore we are the people who are signposting who they could listen to great music through, and that's the business upside of it.

TR: So when you talk to these places about what support they need from you, what are they saying?

CH: Support financially. Equipment. There are some which have been really successful with very advanced audio systems, but most locations can't manage that.

We are proudly in the accessible end of the spectrum as a company, particularly around the Q Acoustics range. It's high-quality equipment, but it doesn't cost the Earth, so we can help some of these smaller venues perhaps be part of this movement; we can loan equipment to them, or work with them on [cost]. I think that's probably the practical thing that we'd be able to do.

TR: You’re talking about getting closer to music culture and being a music-listening brand, not a technical brand, if you think of it in those terms. Do you think that's something that separates you from the Chinese hi-fi brands that are exploding in popularity? A lot of them feel quite led by technical people who are able to create pretty incredible products for low prices, but the pitch feels based on technical specs.

CH: I think these brands aren’t that different to traditional hi-fi companies. You know, I've worked in a number of brands where it’s an engineering-led culture — and there's a bit of a transformation that we'll do at Armour Home; there's a degree of engineering-led culture [there].

What has been fun is seeing everything from the engineering teams, but also that our designers saying, ‘Hang on, we could be bolder and braver and less safe and actually be really exciting.’

So I'm already seeing renders for products that will come out in the next 12 to 18 months where I'm like, ‘Yeah, OK, now we're talking’. These are products that really speak to having a sense of style and presence, and really selective decisions around the colors, materials and finishes that we use, and being much closer to interior design. Pantone colors of the year and these similar cultural cues that matter [to people] — just being cool and relevant, that alone is more than maybe the Chinese brands are able to do because they're not attuned to it in quite the same way.

There is a distinction, though. It isn't just British tastes that matter; it's understanding the global tastes as well. So working with our global distributors as well to really get a sense of what is current right now in China or in Australia or in the US, and bringing that as a bit of a mix. Otherwise we fall into the trap I think British hi-fi brands have done in the past where they think everything starts and stops at the English Channel.

TR: Right now, Goldring is really a turntable accessories company that happens to make one turntable [the Goldring GR3]. So, is your plan to expand its reach by offering more turntable models, or are you thinking more about expanding the kind of accessories it makes into phono stages or something else that's not in the range at the moment?

CH: One of my observations when joining the Armour Home Group is that we focus a lot around the Q Acoustics business. And then we have two other businesses within it, which are Goldring and QED. I think that focus is a miss, [and] that's a shame, because we have 120 years this year of history with Goldring. It is one of two of the oldest audio brands in existence, and it has been there at all the defining moments over a century.

Then we have QED, which is 53 years old this year, and it was the brand that started the whole cable revolution from bell wire to proper audio hi-fi grade cables. Something called the Genesis report, which was written by the guys at QED, is still the bible that everyone else has followed ever since.

Q Acoustics has been the new kid on the block a little bit. It's 20 years old this year, so I kind of joke with people in the business that it's not a teenager anymore, we're a grown-up… but we have 120 years of Goldring.

So in the context of your question, Goldring is a beautiful thing for us to have in the family because it allows us to talk about 120 years of history, and iconic decks like the G99 or GL75 with Lenco that were built over the decades. But it's also bang up to date, because vinyl culture is hot.

So we have to do a couple of things. One is to celebrate the past and then also bring things bang up to date in the future. I've had some extraordinary conversations with some of the people I've met in this business, but one of them in particular is a guy called David Giffin.

He's been in the business for 40 years, his father was in the business for 41 years before that, and he was sharing with me this extraordinary scrapbook of all of the sort of cuttings over decades of this business.

That is extraordinary in itself, but he's now the person that people come to from all of the forums going, ‘This is the guy who can rebuild whatever cartridges from around the world’. He's showing me pictures of some Japanese cartridges, like super-esoteric cartridges made out of marble, that he's been tasked with repairing.

So this extraordinary level of skill sits in our Goldring team, and we don't talk about that nearly enough; it's extraordinary. How do we make that manifest itself in the consumer world? We let people know that we have some of the best cartridges, certainly for consistency of performance, that money can buy. We've got everything from entry level right up to Ethos at the top level

You can come to us for turntables too. We have GR3 as a turntable at the moment, and without giving any secrets away, of course we're looking at what more we can do more around that.

But I need to make sure that [a new] turntable is something truly iconic that celebrates 120 years of Goldring, that reminds everybody that this was the brand that started it all, and can sit proudly in a kissa bar environment, celebrated on this plinth, almost like they're shrines. Something that's truly special.

And then at the same time, [should] tie our brands together, so I can use QED technology in the development of that turntable, and I can also make sure we've got Q Acoustic speakers that do service to a turntable with 120 years' worth of history. That’s where some of these new flagship projects that we're working on are really exciting, because the material choices alone are bold.

I talk a lot internally about the thread between the brands. They're not disparate brands. We're incredibly fortunate to have three brands that bring everything together from the source through the connectivity through to the output, and we need to do more of that.

TR: So we should probably expect a cohesive, very premium, very celebratory set of stuff to come from this thinking?

CH: This is where I get kicked under the table by my PR handlers. You should expect a much more bold and confident view as to what we bring to market because I believe we've earned that over many, many, many, many decades.

TR: Are you considering doing something like special edition versions of Q Acoustics speakers that are Goldring-branded or designed? Q Acoustics' design language tends to have friendly, rounded corners, and rounded edges. I look at the GR3 and I see this stark, hard-edged cuboid block. Do you want a set of Q Acoustics speakers that are equally hard-edged and glossy-finished, [and] maybe have the Goldring logo on?

CH: I think it could be that way, or it could be the other way around. You could see a Goldring turntable that leans more into the home-friendly design, or I could see everything elevating to a new design approach as well, sure.

What I can be clearer about is that I think it's important that there are technology linkages where possible across the three brands, and design cues where appropriate across all three as well, without betraying the core design fundamentals of each brand. It's a balancing act.

TR: The biggest missing pieces of your portfolio are the amp and streamer. Is that something you think about expanding into, or do you think the future is more in the combined active speaker route in the Q Acoustics range?

CH: There are two parts to that. We have our core business, and we have our distribution business in the UK, and it’s important to mention that our distribution business is really interesting.

We've got Xgimi at one end in terms of cutting-edge projector technology; we’re just rolling that out with retailers across the UK, and we literally can't keep up with demand.

Almost at the other extreme we've got Grado. Cool as hell, legit New York vibes, super interesting, iconic design. And then in the middle we've got Burson Audio, a head-fi and amp brand.

But there is the missing link [in our brands], which is amplification and streaming. Active speakers definitely support that, clearly, but we have a very successful passive speaker range, and I need to work out how to tackle that. Is that through partnerships? Is that through collaboration with existing manufacturers in the industry, those who are on the same mission as us of understanding that music culture is really important for the industry? Or do we treat it as a distribution opportunity for us in the UK? And I don't have the answer yet, but I know it's important.

TR: QED is surely the hardest brand here to expand beyond the core hi-fi community, unless you take a bit of a left turn. So what is your thinking there? Would you keep QED as a nice ‘glue’ option to connect everything together, or is there some future for QED that goes beyond what it does now?

CH: I would start by saying it’s about re-remembering that QED is the brand that started it all, and helping that awareness grow. There are other brands out there who've established a strong position in the premium and luxury cable sector, but they're all essentially going back to the Genesis report.

We are working on redefining the ranges, I'll put it that way, so you'll see some news coming out of QED fairly soon anyway.

I think connectivity is a question in itself. Cables were the original connection, but now wireless is a connection, and so I'm certainly pondering in my idle moments about whether QED should be in that wireless area. Because it's the modern day glue, and it's interesting you ask the question because it's definitely in my mind.

TR: You alluded to this earlier, but it's the old business study question of asking ‘What do we actually sell? Is it cables or is it connections? And if it's connections, then should we think about something medium than cables in the future?’ Is that the kind of question you're exploring for QED?

CH: Absolutely. And I’m only four weeks in, which is why I'm not giving you clear answers, but I can see that there is a clear consumer understanding among those who know us today that we are the connection. But there are consumers today who don't even know us, they're not being signposted well enough because of the music culture topic we've gone into as to how they listen to music — so they might recognize QED as being the connection, but they're only used to wireless connectivity. And so what do we do with that?

TR: I'm sure you are not going to have anything specific to say on this subject when it comes to products, but it's very relevant to this topic: have you seen the Pro-ject Wireless Box E? They've made this little box that connects directly to the speaker posts on the back of your passive speakers, it plugs into power, and it makes them wireless using the WiiM platform.

CH: I think that's actually quite exciting for our category. A theory I have is that a lot of people are starting to inherit hi-fi, so family members might be getting to an age or passing on, sadly, and people are discovering turntables in the loft. ‘What do I do with this?’

That's interesting for me as well, which is getting people on a journey. One of the companies I worked at was world-famous for understanding the importance of being there at the beginning of someone's journey and being with them for life. It’s a separates company, and it's the upgrade journey that people went on that's really important to me. It's one of the things that I'm talking to the marketing teams about, within the group. It's about making it easier to understand where you start and where you could go.

QED is a perfect example actually, where it's a bit of a maze and really hard to navigate, so making sure that, just from a packaging and a communications point of view, people know where they are on that journey. Are they at the beginning? Are they at our ‘good’, our ‘better’ or our ‘best’ — so they can work out where they could step up through their audio life.

I don't think we have done that enough in our ranges. It's the same with our 3000 series to our 5000 series range, and then up to our Concept portfolio, in Q Acoustics. It's making it really clear about what this [product] does at this level, what you can expect at this [higher] level and what you can expect at this [highest] level. This idea that it's always a little itch that's not quite scratched; it could always get better.

TR: One of the entry points that I think we're seeing a lot of at the moment is desktop speakers. You guys have compact speakers, bookshelf speakers that are pretty small — but in particular, there's this kind of breakout sector right now that’s one step down in size from there. Quite often wireless or active, but designed for people who are getting into the audiophile stage via their desktop. Based on what you were just saying, are you guys exploring more of these opportunities where there is some breakout sector where you can say ‘OK, this is where we can get people on board in our journey’?

CH: I'm gonna half answer that. We have three different bookshelves in our 3000 series and the same in the 5000 series, and those are to meet the needs of three different kinds of bookshelf customer. Some of them are international, like the 3030c, because they’re the bigger of the lot and the US buyers like a larger volume for the cabinet.

The 3010 and 5010 are our small footprint version. They are used in home offices a lot, but I think there are new audiences coming through. There's gaming, and there are younger consumers who might be in flat shares or whatever that need something smaller. So yes, we are watching that part of the industry very closely.

TR: We’ve talked a lot about music, and that's kind of clearly where your focus is as far as building a new identity and the opportunities. But Q Acoustics has such a successful history in the home theater space; it was one of the earliest pioneers of soundbars and soundbases, but left that area really right as it was exploding — though exploding with entries from the likes of LG and Samsung. At the moment, there's no a product in that area; is that something you could see the brand getting back into, or do you want to focus on that music side?

CH: So there is a crossover. Being part of music culture doesn't mean it's exclusive to other elements of it, and I think home entertainment and AV is still very much part of that culture of entertainment. And it is important to us strategically; we still have products in the range that allow us to satisfy a lot of those needs. We have a range of subwoofers from entry through to high performance.

In terms of the soundbar category, it’s quite a scary category. It's very hard to compete with free, and the TV manufacturers will offer a soundbar as free, or give a retailer the latitude to offer it for free to close a TV sale.

I've been actively involved in some products in that space in the past, and I've seen how successful they can be if they are designed really well.

I'm dancing around an answer to say: no plans at the moment. It is a category that I look at with curiosity, but I'm not sure if it's the absolute priority yet. Surround sound, yes — but soundbar, I'm not sure yet.

TR: In surround sound, what we’re seeing there is, again, a lot of people who are ready to step up, in the same way as we talked about people in hi-fi wanting to move up in the journey. One of the key trends happening in home theater right now is the move to wireless surround systems. Do you think that is a route you can see Q Acoustics going down? It's a complicated technical thing to deal with, but I feel like it's something that any company in the space right now needs to reckon with.

CH: So we've definitely got the capabilities to develop solutions in that space. An area we haven't talked about is install, and I think there is a bigger opportunity actually about making install an option for homeowners. We have a branch of products that we call ‘easy install’ — the name says it all, you know, super easy for the average DIYer through to electricians to install. I see that there's probably a future for much more there, in terms of in-ceiling speakers and maybe some satellite speakers to create this environment.

There's a whole tangent we could go down about whether Atmos has gained momentum. I think for me, it's still a ‘watch and see’.

But I think the idea of in-ceiling or in-wall speakers and satellite speakers, and maybe some floorstanders or bookshelves as an option, and them all working together, that's interesting — and I think wireless within that environment is really interesting. And by ‘interesting’ that means ‘yes, I'm considering that’.

The ‘easy install’ stuff is super interesting though for us, because we've all been in this industry a long time. We've seen that installation systems are seen as complex and scary and difficult and expensive. You need a server-mounted system and you need specialisms and you need lots of complexity and disruption to your home… it isn't like that anymore. I've been really blown away.

My wife doesn't know this yet, but I'm going to switch stuff out in our house, because I've suddenly realized how easy it is. Q Acoustics has a thing called the E300a, which is essentially a built-in amplifier and streaming modules in a down-lighter-like size. Wire it up to a couple of in-ceiling speakers, you've got a system ready to go. It couldn't be easier. Voice controlled, so you can say ‘Alexa play BBC 6 Music’ or whatever.

I don't think people realize they can do this yet generally, and that they can do it themselves on a weekend, or they can get their local electrician to come and pop it in, because it's easy. And we're trying to support the electrician channel to do more of that. Maybe that's more interesting than the soundbars on their own.

Let's get nerdyish for a second. HDMI ARC I think is really, really important. Thank God for it, because I think particularly if you're earlier on in your [hi-fi] journey, you have to make some compromises, but you can enjoy hi-fi quality sound through an HDMI ARC interface and it'll still be part of a pseudo AV system.

Sure, it's compromised because you're not going to get the bells and whistles coming from all around — Titanic isn't going to sound quite the same — but it's going to sound beautiful when you listen to music. In that kind of relationship between ‘is it music’ or ‘is it audiovisual’, I think it’s entertainment as a whole, and finding the best of both worlds. HDMI ARC has been a savior.

TR: There's also the element where, if people go to [the] Reddit home theater community for their advice on whether to buy a soundbar, or which is the right soundbar, what they will get is a lot of people saying that they should actually get a stereo setup. There are people who say this will always be better than any soundbar, and you guys do have that option in your active speakers.

CH: That's what I mean; you can get the best of both worlds. That stereo presence though is always going to be better; that’s the point, isn't it, because you're not compromised by [having] the bar in the middle.

TR: So finally, what is the holistic brand proposition you want to offer from Armour Home? If you're addressing what you want all of your brands to do at once, and you’ve got this idea of how you can integrate with the community, what do you want people to think about Q Acoustics and QED and Goldring in combination?

CH: I want people to see that there is a relationship between all three brands that takes us from the origins of the audio experience right up to the modern day. That there is some confidence in those brands, that we understand the legacy that they bring, and that Q Acoustics kind of brings that freshness to it as well.

That we can bring those technologies together more, so there's more integration there and the design and feel about them having a relationship closer together as well. So rather than Armor Home as a parent company being a collection of brands, Armor Home is the home of source through to the output.

And that we've got a vibe as well, that we're not passive, forgive the pun, in this industry — that we recognize that it's about the hairs on your arms. It isn't just about the engineering.

It's just about having a shared passion and experience and being visible to everybody in the places that they enjoy being. This idea of ‘we'll come to you, you don't need to come to us because we are the same as you’.

LG’s OLED TVs are often among the best TVs I test each year, and 2026 has been no different. Both the LG G6 and LG C6 earned full five-star ratings in my reviews, while the LG B6 also earned four-and-a-half, proving itself to be a fantastic affordable option.

On paper, all three of these TVs share a lot of the same features, especially for gaming, and they all scored highly for their picture quality, but how do they compare alongside one another in a real-world setting? I conducted this same test last year with the LG G5, C5 and B5 and in that instance, the LG C5 was my top pick, with the best balance of price and performance.

I’ve already compared the G6 and B6 this year, but now that I have access to all three TVs at the same time, I couldn’t wait to do a real world comparison between the three. The C6 has a new built-in processor (the same Alpha 11 AI Gen 3 the G6 uses), the B6 I tested hit new brightness heights and the G6 delivers even more impressive colors than its predecessor. All three still have big shoes to fill, so let’s see how they compare.

A quick note: I’m using the LG B6E here — a more affordable version of the LG B6 that I used for my review. While there is a price difference, LG has told me they are fundamentally the same TV; the B6E is missing some remaster features and has a plainer back panel, but still has important features such as Dolby Vision and the same gaming features.

Colors

The best OLED TVs often produce rich, vibrant colors that add real depth to a picture, and all three of these 2026 OLED TVs do the same across the board. Watching The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, the colors rendered on all three screens are stunning. The red and green of Mario and Luigi’s hats and overalls are both punchy and lifelike on each TV, and in this scenario, there’s not a lot to choose between them.

Any time the Lumas are on screen, there’s gorgeous visual pop with seriously bold colors on all three TVs, but this is where differences started to show. While there was a nice vibrancy on all three TVs, the G6 demonstrated the richest and brightest colors thanks to its higher peak brightness (more on that in the brightness section). I was surprised, however, at just how close to the G6’s colors were to those of the C6. The Lumas had the same color depth and luminosity (pun intended) on both.

Switching to another colorful movie in Speed Racer, all three TVs again accurately delivered super-saturated, vivid colors throughout the movie. The bright decor of the Racer home, with its orange and blue walls, really explodes on screen and again, the G6’s brightness gives its colors the most outright impact. Clothing, such as Speed’s blue shirt and Pops Racer’s red and orange shirts, are vibrant with plenty of visual punch.

One thing I did notice while watching Speed Racer is that on occasion, the G6’s color luminance could get ahead of itself. Colors would sometimes lose the richness I’d seen, bordering on too-bright. The C6 on the other hand, kept that nice depth. This was true particularly in the bright greens of grass and in the neon signage along the various racetracks. The B6E did a very good job demonstrating the same gaudy colors as its step-up siblings, but didn’t quite have the same wow-factor as the other two.

In terms of color accuracy, all three TVs did a good job, but I did notice that the G6 and B6E exhibited signs of a green tint that has been an issue for some LG OLEDs in the past. The C6 however, showed little to no sign of this green tint. The tint was particularly obvious in skin tones. Watching the opening scenes of Lawrence of Arabia, as a reporter interviews several outside Lawrence’s funeral, I could see people’s skin had a green/yellow complexion on the G6 and B6, which didn’t look right. The C6 showed a more natural skin tone. This was true in Speed Racer as well, shown most of all on several of the commentators.

Contrast and dark room viewing

All three TVs demonstrate impressive contrast, but the strength of the contrast depends on the scene. Watching The Batman in dark and ambient conditions, there’s a great balance between light and dark tones on all three screens. The scene where Bruce is in the Batcave early in the movie shows strong HDR highlights from the lamps, which contrast well with the dark surroundings. The G6’s higher brightness meant that light sources had more impact and created stronger perceived contrast than the other two models, but the C6 was a very close second.

All three TVs delivered deep blacks, and other dark tones looked authentic. In the subway scene, as Batman stands on the platform post-fight, I did notice that the green tint was prevalent on the G6 and B6E in darker room conditions. I found that dropping the G6’s contrast from 100 to 95 in the settings reduced the green tint significantly. On the B6, I couldn’t find a way to reduce it. On the C6, the picture looked accurate in its default settings, accurately portraying the gray color of the platform.

While all three TVs had great shadow detail as well as satisfying dark tones, I found on occasion that black crush could occur on the C6 and B6E. The G6 had better detail retention in dark areas such as creases in Gordon’s coat or the texture in Batman’s armor, showing better contrast balance and shadow detail overall. While there were some obvious differences between these three, it was clear all three demonstrated strong contrast overall, which is one of OLED’s main strengths.

Brightness and bright room viewing

Looking at these TVs together, the brightness differences are obvious. In terms of measurements, with all three TVs set to Filmmaker Mode, the G6 registered 3,004 nits peak HDR brightness — a staggering result for an OLED — while the C6 hit 1,427 nits, and the B6E clocked in at 808 nits. All of these numbers are increases over their predecessors (the G5 hit 2,268 nits, the C5 hit 1,180 nits, and the B5 hit 668 nits), resulting in more impactful pictures.

Fullscreen HDR brightness also jumped for all these TVs, with the G6 hitting 451 nits, the C6 hitting 248 nits, and the B6E hitting 148 nits. While the B6E’s boost over the B5 is minor, it’s a 50 nits jump for the C6 and a huge 120 nits boost for the G6. Fullscreen brightness is important for bright room viewing and for sports, as higher fullscreen brightness can be useful for displaying large areas of the same color on screen, say, a football field.

How did these numbers translate into real-world scenes though? Watching some footage of snow scenes from the Spears & Munsil UHD Benchmark 4K Blu-ray, the white of the snow has a lot more visual punch on the G6 than the other two TVs. But while the huge difference in brightness numbers may make this seem obvious, it’s not always been the case during my tests. It’s even clear on fullscreen brightness, as the opening shot of the demo footage shows the top of a snow-covered mountain, the G6 practically radiates brightness while showing the white sky, compared to the C6 and B6E.

Using brighter movie scenes, however, the perceived brightness becomes a lot closer. The white of the Mach 5 and Speed’s helmet in Speed Racer is still brightest on the G6, but the C6 still delivers plenty of vibrancy and brightness, and the perceived brightness gap isn’t as big.

The same is true when watching scenes from the desert in Lawrence of Arabia. The white sands surrounding the well dazzle on the G6, but the C6 still has plenty of impact, with bold HDR highlights. Even the B6E does a decent job rendering the brightness, although it lacks next to the G6 and C6.

With more colorful movies, such as The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, the brightness again is much closer. The Lumas I mentioned in the color section still have plenty of pop on all three screens, and despite the G6’s much higher brightness, these Lumas are only a bit brighter compared to the C6 and B6E. Fireworks also shine on all three screens, and while the color of the fireworks shines brightest on the G6, they’re close on the other two screens.

One thing that is undeniable, however, is which TV is best for bright room viewing. Most OLEDs struggle with bright conditions due to their glossy screens. While Samsung’s OLED Glare Free screen, most recently used on the Samsung S99H, is effective at eliminating reflections, none of these LG OLEDs use the same matte screen. This makes the G6’s anti-reflection so impressive, because not only does it do a great job reducing mirror-like reflections, but it maintains the crisp black levels OLED are known for. So impressive was the G6’s bright room performance, it became my choice of bright room OLED when I compared it to the Samsung S95/S99H.

This is one area where the C6 falls short. It has a very reflective screen, meaning trying to watch dark movies such as The Batman is impossible in Filmmaker Mode. The B6E seems to have some form of anti-reflection that does a better job reducing mirror-like reflections compared to the C6, but its lower brightness again affects bright room performance. For bright rooms, the G6 easily comes out on top.

Which to buy?

Which LG OLED is best for you will ultimately come down to how much you want to spend. Each TV delivers fantastic features, excellent picture quality and is superb for gaming. Even their processors operate at similar speeds. For my money though, the best value model and my top pick is the C6.

A 55-inch C6 (the size I tested) is available at the time of writing for $1,499 / £1,499 / AU$2,495, whereas a 55-inch G6 will cost you $2,199 / £2,099 / AU$3,995. The C6 not only carries the same processor, but shows a more accurate, out-of-the-box picture with no green tint, and it’s the model with the biggest improvements over its predecessor.

The B6E is a bit of a steal at $799 / £899 in the US and UK for the 55-inch, which is an excellent price for a brand new OLED. In Australia, the B6 is AU$2,495 for the 55-inch, the same as the C6. While the B6E is best for budget buyers, it doesn’t deliver the same performance as the C6, hence why the C6 is easily my top pick of LG three 2026 OLEDs.

Thinking of buying a new TV?

Try our TV size and model finder! You tell it how far you sit from your TV, we'll tell you what size to buy based on viewing angle advice from image quality experts, and we'll recommend our three top TVs at that size for different prices.

As a Batman fan, I was disappointed to learn last week that The Batman Part 2 has been delayed until February 18, 2028, another four-month wait to add to add to its last (delayed) intended release date of October 1, 2027. This latest holdup is actually the fourth time the long-awaited sequel to The Batman has been delayed, with its initial release originally set to be October 2025.

Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to enjoy Batman content at home while we eagerly await The Batman: Part 2’s 2028 release. From Christopher Nolan’s iconic Dark Knight Trilogy to the awesome Batman: The Animated Series, there are tons of choices. And there’s no better way to enjoy Batman’s many adventures than with a 4K Blu-ray. I’m a 4K Blu-ray fan and collector, so I’m always testing the latest releases for the Blu-ray Bounty and finding new discs to test the best TVs and best soundbars.

Below, I’ve picked three of my favorite Batman-related 4K Blu-rays, not just because they’re my personal picks, but because they’re also great examples to show what 4K can do, especially for your home theater.

The Batman

Where else to better prepare for The Batman: Part 2 than with its predecessor, The Batman. Matt Reeve’s The Batman follows Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattison) in his second year as Batman, where he must face The Riddler (Paul Dano), a revolutionary who uses a series of riddles and puzzles to test Batman, as Riddler plans to expose Gotham’s corrupt government and elite.

The Batman has become one of my main 4K Blu-rays for testing TVs. Due to its low brightness, some TVs can really struggle to accurately display the movie, compromising its dark tones. But, there’s also plenty of excellent-looking scenes with powerful contrast, balancing light and dark tones, that can really show off a TV.

The opening 20 minutes of the movie itself is all a big demo-reel for contrast. From the dark subway platform illuminated by overhead lamps as Batman fights a gang of thugs, to where we first see Bruce decoding Riddler’s clues in the Batcave, The Batman delivers truly dynamic and strong contrast, which I've found look superb on the best OLED TVs in particular.

There’s also a chance to show a display’s shadow detail, with plenty of scenes making use of shadows to create a captivating image. The aforementioned subway scene is one of these, with truly dark shadows creating a foreboding atmosphere that fits the gloomy tone of the movie.

There’s excellent detail throughout, with crisp textures that look refined and lifelike. Close-up shots show scars, wrinkles and stubble on people’s faces with impressive clarity, and texture in environments, like Mayor Mitchell’s house or the Batcave, are given a near-3D level of detail.

The Batman is an audio showcase as well as a visual one. The Batmobile chase has become a reference scene I use for showing off a sound system. The ignition of the Batmobile’s engines deliver room-rattling, powerful bass that through a subwoofer can create some serious roar. The 4K disc uses a Dolby Atmos soundtrack that creates an immersive and detailed sound.

As the Batmobile chases Penguin across a busy freeway, serving traffic and blaring horns are accurately mapped to the action. As Penguin fires a spray of bullets at the Batmobile, the sound glides around a surround system, as I found when using soundbars such as the talented Samsung HW-Q990H. There are plenty of Atmos effects too, as rain regularly falls throughout the movie, effectively using the height channels of any sound system.

The Dark Knight

Arguably the most popular Batman movie ever made, The Dark Knight is the second movie in Christopher Nolan’s trilogy. It’s one that’s stuck with me ever since I saw it as a teenager in theaters in 2008. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is a couple of years into his time as Batman and he faces his biggest challenge yet, when he squares off with the unpredictable and chaotic Joker (played brilliantly by Heath Ledger).

Unsurprisingly, where this disc shines is in its IMAX sequences. These IMAX scenes show impeccable detail and crisp, 3D-like textures. In the opening bank heist scene, every detail is refined, from the creases in the robbers’ masks, to the texture in buildings of the densely packed city. Oh, and don’t be surprised when the ratio changes from widescreen to fullscreen: that’s normal for IMAX on home media.

Black tones and shadow detail are excellent during the film's night scenes too (of which there are plenty), and they look superb on an OLED TV. Contrast is also strong, particularly during the prison escort scene. As trucks move under the freeway, the overhead lights balance well with the dark, shadowed areas of the tunnel to create dynamic contrast.

This disc is also an audio powerhouse. With a DTS-HD 5.1 MA soundtrack, there’s some fantastic detail. During the tunnel escort scene, the whir of Batman’s bike riding through the tunnel is mapped perfectly to every channel. As perspective changes, so does the sound. Bullets are precise, flying from the front to rear channels when the movie is from Batman’s point-of-view, and every individual effect is audible, such as flying debris and swerving tyres.

Bass throughout the movie is truly powerful. Bullets have serious impact and the roar of the Batmobile’s engines delivers tightly controlled, but hefty low-end that reverberated through our testing room when I watched.

The score is a showcase in and of itself, with superb separation across different channels of the Samsung HW-Q990C soundbar I was using. In the opening scene, the scratching strings came from the left rear, the ticking sound from the right, and the heavy bass exploded from the subwoofer. Crucially though, every element was perfectly balanced, within the score itself and with all the action.

Batman Forever

This pick will raise eyebrows, I’m sure. But, honestly, Batman Forever is the Batman movie I grew up with and despite its very corny nature, I enjoy it. It scratches the exact part of my brain that occasionally craves a nostalgic Batman fix. The movie follows Batman (played by Val Kilmer) as he does battle with the Riddler (Jim Carrey) and Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones) as they attempt to take over Gotham.

While this may be a surprising choice for a lot of people, this is a seriously good-looking 4K presentation. Batman Forever uses a lot of bold and vibrant colors, and in 4K, they really pop on screen. The green of the Riddler’s gaudy outfit and the purple of Two-Face’s injured side compliment each other well. There’s also a lot of neon-esuqe lighting used in the movie, with light tubes, red detail on Two-Face’s minion’s guns and the shimmering greens of Riddler’s hideout and event space. All these colors have a gorgeous punch that looks sharp and dynamic throughout the movie.

Shadows are used a lot, with characters often standing over lamps or in shaded rooms to create strong contrast in images. The LG G6 OLED on which I watched this movie in our testing room celebrates these rich and inky dark tones, with the leather of Batman’s armor showing nice depth, but also balancing well as the light reflects off it. Shadow detail is excellent too, with textures in dark areas on screen legible (yes, even the strange texture of Batman’s armor). Skin looks realistic in the many close-up shots used, too.

This 4K disc also supports Dolby Atmos. There’s some excellent use of height channels throughout, with the sound of helicopter Two-Face uses to escape in the intro coming from overhead as I watched. Explosions have plenty of meat to them, producing some lovely low-end rumble during the movie’s more action-packed scenes. The sound of the Batmobile’s engines firing is another great demo for the powerful bass in the mix.

More subtle details are also fully audible. The sound of Batman’s batarang as he throws it is precisely mapped, with the sound eagerly following its trajectory. Bullets have great punch to them, and again these are accurately posited within the surround channels. Speech is consistently clear throughout too, even during the most chaotic scenes. You might not necessarily expect this movie to be such an audio showcase, but it really is.

• Prices on Roku streaming devices are going up
• The products are still available at 'sale' prices
• One source puts the change down to the memory crisis

Streaming devices like the Roku Streaming Stick Plus get you a whole lot of entertainment for relatively little money, but the value proposition is about to change: Roku is the latest tech company to jack up its prices in response to the global memory shortage.

As spotted by Ars Technica and others, the prices for streaming devices on the Roku US website have been put up, though the products are still available at their previous prices — now labeled as 'sale' offers. It's not clear how long this sale might last before the new pricing kicks in, but you might want to grab a Roku quickly.

The Streaming Stick is up to $39.99 from $29.99, the Streaming Stick Plus goes up from $39.99 to $59.99, the Streaming Stick 4K is now $79.99 rather than $49.99 (the biggest jump at 60%), and the Roku Ultra box is up to $149.99 from $99.99.

Looking at Roku's international websites, including the UK, there are no signs of price rises yet — but it seems inevitable that if the company is putting up the cost of buying a Roku in the US, then this will come to other countries too in the near future.

Time to switch?

Roku hasn't said anything officially about the new price changes, but according to the team at The Desk, a Roku executive they spoke to confirmed that it was down to "shortages in computer memory and other components".

We know that rapidly rising demands for AI compute capacity have led to a severe shortage of memory and rocketing costs, and everyone in the industry has been affected. Last month Apple raised its prices on a variety of different products in response, including iPads and the MacBook Neo.

Reaction online has been mostly negative, as you would expect. One Redditor says "it's hard to find another affordable option" for streaming devices like these, though other commentators are recommending alternatives from Google and Apple.

There's also some consternation over an increasing amount of ads being shown on Roku screens, and the company's recent acquisition by Fox. Whatever you think of Roku though, it's another sign of consumers being hit hard by memory shortages.

• Nearly 400 4K Blu-ray users shared info about player problems
• There's a huge gap between the best and worst in the poll
• Panasonic will be happy; Sony not so much

One of the things I like best about Reddit is the way people share their experiences of particular products: whether it's a kitchen knife, a portable AC or a Gibson guitar I know I'll be able to find sage advice on what to buy and what to watch out for. And now the good people of r/hometheater have come together to talk about the best 4K Blu-ray players and their reliability.

The poll was carried out by r/hometheater poster "requieminadream" and generated nearly 400 responses — almost double the number of previous poll respondents — from r/4KBluray, r/Bluray, r/PhysicalMediaMatters, the AVS Forums, and the Blu-ray.com forums. And there are some very clear differences between different firms' Blu-ray devices.

Requieminadream very kindly summarized the results in a sentence: "The Sony UBP-X700 is still the problem child, the Panasonic DP-UB820 is still champ, and the pricey UB-9000 posted the cleanest numbers (small sample though)."

But there were some interesting discoveries in the detail too, so it's definitely worth looking at if you're considering a pre-owned 4K Blu-ray player purchase, or just which one seems to make people the happiest long-term.

The 4K Blu-ray Standalone Player Reliability Poll numbers ARE IN! from r/hometheater

Which 4K Blu-ray players are the best?

One of the reasons I like Reddit wisdom is because with few exceptions, reviewers can't spend years with the products they test — so the reviews of my car don't know about the software issues that drive me wild and sometimes require a reboot at traffic lights, and the reviews of my router don't know about its tendency to misbehave every few weeks.

It's the same with Blu-ray players: even the most in-depth review won't be able to tell you if a player's likely to pack up in year two or three. (Though one exception is our Panasonic DP-UB820 review, written by our TV Hardware senior writer James Davidson, because he wrote us a fresh review based on combining using it in our test room and having used it daily for several years beforehand.)

But in general, polls like this are a brilliant resource.

By a large margin, the Panasonic DP-UB820 is the community's favored player: 43.4% of respondents have one, and its problem rate was around half that of the Sony UBP-X700. The rate of serious issues was very low, at just 8% — backing up what James had said, when he called it "the workhorse of the 4K Blu-ray player world".

The "problem child" that emerged from this latest poll is the Sony UBP-X700. Of the 103 Sony users, some 77.7% reported some issues over time; recurring and/or serious issues were 23%. The number one complaint is freezing during triple-layer transitions, which is something that has long been discussed on Blu-ray forums.

The poll shows another interesting pattern, which is problems over time. For the Sony, issues became more common over time — but for the Panasonic the pattern was of any failures showing up early, but better long-term reliability.

The other players in the survey came in between the two extremes, but some of the best results were from "other" players including games consoles and more niche Blu-ray products.

Satisfaction with those products was exceptionally high, with the PS5 getting a significantly higher rating than the Xbox. That's all the more striking given the Sony X700's performance: the PS5 is a more premium product and that seems to be reflected in its reliability — alas, we shouldn't expect any more PlayStations to arrive with a disc player.

I should make clear, as the original Redditor did, that in some cases the sample sizes for ownership in these polls is pretty low, so we should take the results with a pinch of salt. However, the Panasonic UB820 and the Sony X700 were the best-represented, and are the two most popular players, so their data is arguably the most useful anyway.

• Filmmaker mode in reverse: Creator Original embraces your TV's processing power
• Initially limited to 2026 C6, G6 and W6 OLED TVs
• Rolling out by the end of July 2026

LG Electronics has partnered with Prime Video to launch a new picture mode in select LG TVs. The new mode, called Creator Original, will initially be exclusive to three 2026 models: the LG C6, LG G6 and LG W6 series televisions.

The launch will be centered around the Masters of the Universe movie, which will be coming to Prime Video. And if you don't mind feeling very silly indeed, you can declare "I have the POWER!" into the LG Magic Remote for LG Smart TVs with webOS 23 or later to bring up content relating to the movie release.

Creator Original is the more interesting addition, though. It promises to deliver more control to creators than Filmmaker Mode, because it takes the opposite approach: instead of removing your TV's image processing and enhancement as much as possible, Creator Original embraces it, but with rules.

What is Creator Original on LG OLED TVs?

According to LG, Creator Original will enable TV and movie studios to set key parameters such as shadow detail and color balance, and to control how how motion processing and noise reduction are being used in your TV's processing, all to deliver the creator's preferred visuals, in theory.

In the case of Masters of the Universe, LG says that enables its TVs to "faithfully reproduce every glowing sword clash, shadowy Skeletor lair and explosive battle across Eternia."

Interestingly, Creator Original's pitch sounds remarkably similar to what Dolby is planning with Dolby Vision 2. Dark area handling and control over motion handling control are key features of DV2, which has the same goal as Creator Original: making the most of the capabilities of high-powered TVs without sacrificing accuracy by putting control in the hands of movie makers, and using data in the file to tell the TV what to do.

However, Creator Original won't have the bi-directional tone mapping and certain other features of Dolby Vision 2 Max, which also has a new and improved image quality engine behind it.

But still Creator Original looks like it may tick the most interesting boxes of DV2, and it has one big advantage over it: it looks like it's going to arrive first.

Dolby Vision 2 currently has one streaming partner, Peacock, and one filmmaking partner (StudioCanal), and there's no sign of a launch date as yet, though in discussions with Hisense and TCL we've learned that it's expected before the end of the year.

In contrast, LG says that Creator Original Mode for Prime Video "is scheduled to roll out by the end of this month," meaning July 2026, and if Prime Video adds support across more of its enviable Amazon Studios and MGM library, that could be a strong range of movies that use it. Of course, the fact that it only works on three TVs is a bit of a limitation.

When we asked LG if it has any plans to support Dolby Vision 2, it said that it would wait to see how support for the format evolves — but said we shouldn't expect current TVs to get it. So if you're thinking of buying the LG C6 or G6, this might be the best you can do for these kinds of next-gen image features.

As for the movie itself, we rather enjoyed it: in our Masters of the Universe review we said "it's the unrelentingly fun popcorn movie that [we] had expected recent Star Wars movie The Mandalorian and Grogu to be."

Thinking of buying a new TV?

Try our TV size and model finder! You tell it how far you sit from your TV, we'll tell you what size to buy based on viewing angle advice from image quality experts, and we'll recommend our three top TVs at that size for different prices.