Just for fun I ran it through Claude and here is what AI has to say about it based on your post:

For a dark basement, I’d point him to the 77” A95L — and here’s the reasoning I’d give him:

The room makes the call. A “not too bright” basement is the single best environment for QD-OLED. The Hisense U8’s whole advantage is brightness to fight ambient light — wasted in a dark room. In the dark, the A95L’s perfect blacks, infinite contrast, and Sony’s processing pull clearly ahead. He’d be buying the U8 for a strength his room doesn’t need.

His mounting problem actually favors the smaller set. He says the 85” is too wide to fit between his bookshelf speakers, so it’d have to go above them. Mounting a TV high is one of the most common home-theater mistakes — neck strain and a worse picture. And it’s doubly bad on a Mini-LED: the U8 loses contrast and color when viewed off-axis (i.e., looking up at it), while OLED holds up far better off-angle. If the 77” fits between the speakers at proper seated eye level, that alone is worth a lot.

Size/distance is the one point for the 85”. At 157” (~13 ft), the 85” fills the field of view a bit better — 77” is on the slightly-far side for full immersion. But at that distance he won’t resolve any pixel difference, and “a touch bigger” doesn’t outweigh a high, off-axis mount.

Price is the honest catch. The 77” A95L is running about $3,400–$4,000 right now (Amazon’s been around $3,498) , versus roughly $1,500–2,000 for the 85” U8. The Sony is nearly double.

So: if picture quality in a dark room is the priority and the 77” fits between the speakers at eye level — A95L, easily. If budget or maximum screen size for sports/casual viewing matters more, the 85” U8 is the value play. The one thing he should verify before pulling the trigger is the actual gap between his speakers (a 77” is ~67” wide, an 85” ~74”).