If you’re in the market for a new TV, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a premium model, such as a flagship OLED, commands a premium price.
Our 2025’s best OLED TVs, like the LG G5, launched for over $3,000 in a 65-inch screen size. But now that we’re heading toward the end of the year, prices have dropped quite a bit, with models such as the G5, the Samsung S95F, the Sony Bravia 8 II, and the Panasonic Z95B all selling now for under $3,000.
If you’ve got the cash to spare, those discounts may make you consider upgrading to a larger screen size, such as a 77- or an 83-inch model. Yet another upgrade to consider: an external video processor.
Video Envy
When I attended the recent Audio Advice Live 25 AV show in Raleigh, North Carolina, I had the chance to meet with madVR CEO Richard Litofsky and get an overview and demo of that company’s Envy series video processors.
While madVR video processors are mainly found in high-end home theater projection setups that use an ultra-wide, 2.35:1 aspect ratio screen, I was surprised to learn that they also get regularly paired with big-screen OLED and mini-LED TVs. Well, I shouldn’t have been completely surprised – even the best TVs can have performance shortcomings when it comes to motion handling, 4K upscaling, and HDR tonemapping.
Those shortcomings can all be fixed by an external video processor. The problem with that fix, of course, is price. MadVR’s lowest-cost video processor, the Envy Core MK1, is priced at $4,995, while the new Envy Core MK2, which was just announced at CEDIA Expo 2025, is priced at $6,995. The company’s flagship, the Envy Extreme MK3, costs $15,995, which is not far off from what you’d pay for a high-end, 8K-compatible home theater projector like the JVC DLA-NZ800.
So, what does a video processor like the Envy Core MK2 do that would make you even consider adding one to your TV or projector?
HDR dynamic tone mapping
Not all TVs handle HDR tone mapping, which is the process of scaling the dynamic range in HDR sources to accommodate your TV’s maximum brightness capability, equally well. Highlights in pictures with HDR can end up looking blown out, and shadows can look flat, with a loss of detail.
In madVR’s demo, a clip from the Spears & Munsil demo disc mastered at 10,000 nits – an unusually challenging brightness level – was displayed on a Sony Bravia 9, that company’s flagship mini-LED TV, with the input switched between a direct feed from a 4K Blu-ray player and the output from the Envy processor. There was a notably higher level of detail in the picture from the Envy, which provides frame-by-frame dynamic tone mapping, along with highlight and shadow detail recovery features.
Aspect ratio management
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Whether you’re using a projector with an ultra-wide 2.35:1 aspect ratio screen or a flat-panel TV with a 16:9 aspect ratio screen, you’re going to see some degree of black bars depending on the program you’re watching. And when viewing movies shot in IMAX format that regularly switch between aspect ratios, those black bars can become even more of an issue.
Interstellar is a good example of a movie that frequently jumps between aspect ratios, and madVR’s demo showed how an Envy processor can rid an image of black bars on both 2.35 and 16:9 screens using its automatic aspect ratio detection and next-gen non-linear stretch (NLS+) features. NLS+ uses both vertical compression and horizontal expansion to intelligently fill the screen, and it removed all black bars from Interstellar without geometrically distorting the picture.
Upscaling
Upscaling lower-resolution sources like streaming services, broadcast TV, Blu-ray, and DVD is one of the best reasons for adding an external video processor, especially for TVs at larger screen sizes where video compression noise, banding, and interlacing artifacts can be more clearly seen.
The MadVR Envy Core MK2 uses an Nvidia 5060 GPU, which is a considerably more powerful processor than the ones found in TVs, and it provides both AI-based 4K upscaling and de-interlacing. Core MK2 processors also feature 48Gbps HDMI 2.1 ports with 4K 120Hz and VRR support, so they can be used with the latest gaming consoles and PCs, and they also feature a new low-latency mode for gaming.
Dynamic subtitle overlay
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One of the things that most impressed me during my madVR demo was dynamic subtitle overlay (DSO), a feature that will be coming to the company’s processor lineup in fall 2025.
DSO uses AI to dynamically reposition subtitles so that they appear in the active image area, and not on the black letterboxed bars in widescreen movies. It can also dynamically reduce both subtitle font size and brightness (based on average picture level), as well as change the subtitle color to match the prevailing color scheme on a scene-by-scene basis.
In the demo I caught of this feature, it had the effect of smoothly blending the subtitles with the overall picture. The benefits were most clear in movie scenes, where bright, white subtitles can glare annoyingly against backgrounds and also reduce picture contrast, especially with projectors.
The price of perfection
There are many, many more features in Envy processors to discuss, such as motion interpolation, which is handled on a per-pixel basis by madVR’s MotionAI feature. But that feature is exclusive to the Extreme MK3 processor, which is priced at $15,995.
How much money are you willing to spend to make your TV’s picture look perfect? As it turns out, the price of perfection equals several times what you’ll pay for the best TVs on the market. But if perfection is what you’re chasing for your home theater, an external video processor looks to be the ticket.
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al.griffin@futurenet.com (Al Griffin)
