If an OLED TV has superior black level on a bright retail showroom floor, will anybody see it?
That was the question debated by company spokesmen from Samsung, Sony and LG during a Next TV panel at last week’s CE Week in New York City.
In a discussion on LG’s decision to carry OLED to market alone, Philip Jones (pictured above at left), Sony product marketing specialist, reminded that Sony continues to build Academy Award-winning OLED monitors for professional applications but the current high price, smaller screen sizes and lower brightness levels, makes the technology prohibitive to produce for the current consumer marketplace.
“When a consumer walks into a store they make their purchases in what they see as a brighter room,” Jones said. “A lot of the time, [OLED’s] dark black level is not visible. You have a large range in your eye, but you have irises. So the second it gets bright your iris [adjusts] and something that looked gray to you now looks black. So, unless you are watching a TV in absolute darkness it is very difficult to see a difference in black levels between an OLED and an LCD. You can see enhanced brightness and that gives you visible contrast.”
“It’s not hard to see the black level. I’m sorry,” Tim Alessi (pictured above at right), LG Electronics new product development director, retorted with a smile.
More on the OLED debate after the jump:
Steve Panosian (pictured in the middle at top), Samsung spokesman for product marketing management and former Samsung plasma TV marketing manager, said that his company continues to study OLED for a return to the consumer market.
“We launched OLED, DLP and plasma in the past, but the consumer has voted for a brighter more colorful experience, and there is a delivery map across a number of screen sizes between 40 and 110 inches,” Panosian said. “We have plenty of other TV technology options. Today, consumers are looking for a brighter, more colorful experience and a great value and price. Each year we will of course stand up on delivering technologies that are proven and bring that more powerful performance down to more affordable price ranges.”
In the meantime, Alessi said LG Electronics is content to go it alone with OLED.
“If we have to carry the OLED ball alone we’ll do it. We’ve already started that process,” said Alessi. “We are expanding our line from two models to over seven by the end of the year. We are perfectly happy to do that. LG believes in the technology. It’s a huge step forward in picture quality.”
In listing OLED’s advantages, Alessi pointed to a wide viewing angle… “if you get just a little bit off angle with most LED TVs you start losing contrast and color saturation very rapidly,” he said.
He also cited: “great contrast. You get peak light where you need it. You get perfect black where you need it and no light bleeding, and that also creates the perfect pallet for color. There’s a lot of technology that goes into how OLED makes color, with 3D mapping and extended color gamuts.”
He said the simple structure of a self-emissive OLED panel also allows making it curved or very flat and flexible.
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The speakers also responded to a question asking if all TVs announced as supporting high dynamic range (HDR) metadata in 2015 will support the same base-level format or is there a chance some TVs won’t be able to play the selected standard?
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“We are all part of the Ultra HD Alliance,” Sony’s Jones reminded the audience, “and we are all working to ensure that the televisions we list with HDR will give you the ability to accept and playback HDR.. but what separates a good HDR TV from a great HDR TV is how well the TV extracts that HDR signal. So the goal of an HDR TV is getting the most out of it, no matter what the television is being fed, and that includes the current HDR content.”
Samsung’s Panosian agreed, adding: “The television sets that are in our lineup will read the content that’s encoded including the metadata that will be delivered in higher dynamic range. So what you see in our product lineup is [something that] will read that content and deliver [the best result] within the limits of.. that television.”
“It’s the work of what our companies are doing with the studios, new technology and delivery companies through the certification bodies to look to what is to be considered the best,” he continued. “It’s up to the CEA and the DEG and others to define all of this technology and at this particular point in time I don’t know where that line is. But I can share that the TV is built on what HDR is for 2015 and it is built on the open standard, which is what is consistent with what you see for Ultra High Definition HDR.”
Panosian later explained that the Blu-ray Disc Association has already selected the ITU 2084/2086 HDR standards for mandatory next-generation Ultra HD Blu-ray player support, with support for other formats left as an option to the manufacturers and content producers, and at a basic level Samsung’s SUHD TVs will support those formats.
“There is an open standard for interoperability and then it will depend on whatever is the display capability,” noted Sony’s Jones. “The curve is going to be the curve so you need the ability to map that curve and choose the full spectrum output.”
“Whether it’s Blu-ray or broadcast you are going to get the best experience,” Jones assured. “Remember, it’s a curve. Just like we have curves for traditional SDR content and there is already a curve being worked out for HDR content.”
“We have something called an Evo Kit that allows for a path to update to a new standard or whatever might come along,” Panosian added.
The panelists said that all of the changes in the past six months should make for a different TV purchasing atmosphere this holiday season
“There is going to be more 4K content available this season,” Alessi reminded. “Last year at the holiday season Amazon had just launched a UHD experience, and Netflix’s 4K service had been out for a little time before that. Now there is a lot more content available. The biggest thing is that there are a lot more options.”
“On top of that,” said Jones, “there has been a lot of conversation about whether you can see the extra level of 4K resolution from [typical] seating distances. But everybody can see the difference when it comes to high contrast and a wider color gamut. When you combine resolution, color, contrast and more content at prices that are more attainable to more people the adoption of 4K television sets is going to increase.”
Panosian said that with more than 500 4K Ultra HD titles available from different services and over-the-top (OTT) streaming providers, “it’s very different from when we transitioned from analog to digital TV. It’s here today.”
“This year our SUHD series will support HD [BT.709] color or native P3 color. Our customers have plenty of choices in taking advantage of native 4K content.”
“Our job is to provide the best consumer experiences possible using the sources you are going to get, whether that’s Netflix, streaming content, Blu-ray Content, or eventually broadcast,” said Sony’s Jones. “There’s more to 4K than just the television set. It’s about more resolution, better pixels, about more contrast and more content.”
By Greg Tarr
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Why don’t they leave the lights on in movie theatres? LCD is fine for a kitchen environment, but not for serious movie viewing.
LG your OLED’s are beautiful and I commend you guys for being the vanguard of this superior technology. I look forward to buying your 77″ OLED as soon as the price drops.
John, we do have a choice, and no, *hell no*, we don’t have to accept upscaled from lower resolution fake UHD.
What I would love to see, is studios label their UHD releases to let the consumer know whether the title is a full upscale, a partial upscale or a true UHD. That would be honest, at least, and would let the consumers make an informed choice. And while I’m dreaming, I’d like a flying car capable of interstellar travel that can do bazillion miles per a pint of water.
Petri rereading your post I was referring more to the hardware rather than the studios but fully agree the studios should state if its true UHD or list the ratio of up scaling used. But after they stop selling DVDs to be used on large screen HDTV’s! Might as well bring back VHS tapes. They take advantage of any money making opportunity exposing the problem with a consumer driven market where you end up with averaged out consumer need products where grand ma’s survey carries half the vote and she still needs the kids to turn on the TV’s sound system she complains about.
“more than 500 4K Ultra HD titles available” – except not really. How many of those are true UHD, and how many are either totally or partially upscaled from 2K footage? I’d hazard a guess that of those 500 titles less than 50 could be called true UHD.
You can cross from the list anything shot on Arri Alexa, for example. In its early days it was limited to HD; a bit later an upgrade allowed 2.8K, then 3.2K. But that’s its limit – and since Alexa has a Bayer pattern sensor, its effective resolution is less than 3K.
The Hobbit trilogy was shot in 5K on RED Epics. But that was only the live action bits. All digital imagery was rendered in 2K, and live shots were downscaled to match that for a 2K finish. The 4K DCI master is upscaled from 2K.
There must be hundreds of titles that were finished in 2K, despite being at least partly eligible for a 4K finish.
So far I know of only two Hollywood blockbusters that had a full 4K (or higher) pipeline all through the production: Interstellar and Tomorrowland. And while many (most?) of Interstellar’s VFX shots were rendered in IMAX resolution, it contains VFX shots that were rendered in 2K, then upscaled for IMAX.
Pushing upscaled 2K as 4K/UHD? I call that scamming the consumer.
Petri, I wouldn’t call THAT scamming the consumer as historically the hardware always comes before the software needed and that always takes time. I think selling DVD’s in a store that sells HDTV’s and hasn’t sold a standard definition TV in almost a decade is scamming the consumer… big time. I think we have no choice and must accept lower resolution offerings to allow higher resolution televisions to be established as it takes time to create a new media standard.
And by all means educate people to use their buying power to their advantage and not run their cars on dirty sink water that costs almost as much as gas.
Any info on sizing and pricing of the seven OLED sets he spoke of coming out this year?
Clearly, profitability rules. How LG markets OLED, even if the company solves its production yield issues and it becomes expensive than the competition, will determine whether LCD sends it to the plasma graveyard. That marketing is a tricky proposition in the store where it matters most. That’s the point Sony was making; for most consumers, things are black enough except for manufacturer profitability.
To ignorant people, all televisions look the same in bright showroom conditions. The LG 55EC9300 is not as bright as Samsung and LG LED sets but the black levels clearly stand out. No if, ands or buts. Sony’s Jones clearly is using a smokescreen to justify Sony’s inability to manufacturer one in the consumer’s price range…maybe he’s smoking is what adding to the smokescreen.
The major drawback to LED is the narrow view angle where you are constantly having to correct your view point to get the best picture. That drives me nuts! Anyone sitting off to the side suffers from not have a direct view and the larger you make LED TV the worse it gets. Do we want “average” consumers dictating what is available” They still buy DVD to watch on their HDTV’s. It’s not just the better contrast of plasma TV that gives them a better picture, it’s the normal viewing angle that let the person setting to the side of you see the same quality of picture. LED is constantly reminding you it’s not real every time you move your head.
Thank you Tim Alessi for being the voice off reason. In a bright showroom all TV’s look the same, it’s when you get them home in normal light you see the defects and decide to take it back.