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When we saw the gorgeous Samsung Super OLED TV at CES, we were stunned. We wanted it in our living room. We thought about stealing it. We wanted to buy it but turns out, we can’t afford it. It’s going to cost around £5,500.
Now known as the Samsung ES9500 OLED TV, the 55-incher is targeted to launch in South Korea in the second half of 2012 for the sticker shocking price of 9 thousand dollars. That’s about twice as expensive as high end models right now. And though the picture is more than twice as good, that’s still an insanely expensive price to pay for a TV. Not when you can get something good on the cheap these days. Enjoy it, rich people. [CNET]
I bought the 11-inch Sony XEL-1 for my kitchen about 3 years ago for about£2.5-£3k (I can’t remember the exact price paid) because I was so impressed by it at a Trade Show (it still turns heads today). I believe they were around the £1k mark just before they were discontinued about 18months later.
It’s like a reverse Moores Law. In about 18months, this tech will be available for about 1/2 to 1/3 of the price quoted above. I’m in love with the Series 6 LED Samsungs that were recently released. As soon as these go OLED and 4K, I’ll be in a shop begging them to take my money.
I’m probably going to regret asking this, BUT, is 4k literally just 4000 pixels compared to the current HD of 1080? Or is there something more to the technology than that?
Whoa there Sanchez! £3k on an 11″ TV for your Kitchen?????
I’m shocked.
Well done for getting to the point in your life that’ll allow for that and i’m sure you work very hard at what you do, but £3k on an 11″ TV for your Kitchen?? That’s a ludicrously obscene amount to pay when you can get a 22″ from Tesco, with a built in DVD no less, for under £200!
@fasterthanapigeon You will likely regret asking, but essentially the number of pixels are doubled across both the vertical and horizontal planes to give double the resolution of 1080p. The name comes from the total number of horizontal pixels (which equates to roughly 4,000)
@Spatchmo I just saw it and was floored. I have always been in job roles that are heavily performance-based and laced with commissions, bonuses & incentives. It has meant that I’ve frequently had money burning a hole in my pocket for indulgent gadget purchases (I’ve never really been a saver). Rather humourously I am currently in a position where I’m on compulsory 6 months paid Gardening Leave (after having announced my intention to leave my company but to remain within the industry) so I’m between roles and technically unemployed.
Hence the borderline ‘camping’ on Gizmodo…
4 times the resolution. If its double the resolution both ways, that means you can put 4 1080p screens which is 4x the res.
Yes, sorry that does sound ambiguous now you’ve pointed it out. I meant that as being “double the horizontal resolution” and “double the vertical resolution”, which of course gives 4x as many pixels as a 1080p HD Television.
It does get confusing as that results in what is known as “Quad HD” (3840×2160). 4K is actually 4096×2160 and doesn’t conform to traditional 16:9 aspect ratio of HD TVs.
The only thing people really need to know is that it’s about 4x sharper than current HD. And you probably won’t notice the difference unless you get up really close, have Superhero Vision, or a 60″+ TV.
9000 bucks for a tv that can’t do 4k is like paying £20000 for a new car that only ran on 4 star in the 90′s.
What the TV manufacturers haven’t realised yet though is that they are playing to a small niche by producing tv’s with these fanciful incremental technologies – I have a 42 inch Panny Viera Plasma from 5 years ago and I aint going to replace it as its the content that I want – not LED’s coming out of my rear end.
Sorry, you’re questioning the strategy of massive manufacturing firms who have teams of accountants larger than your extended family because you personally don’t bother upgrading your television often?
Eh. I don’t know *anyone* who “upgrades” their TV until it actually breaks somehow. And he’s right; this is basically a device for people for whom money is a trivial irrelevancy and/or know nothing about what they actually want or need from a TV. Much like the poster above who spent £2.5-3K on an 11″ TV. That’s hilarious. He actually bought a tech demo.
Every single technology starts out expensive. They don’t expect high uptake from these. But they use them to lay out the techniques and materials they’ll use for the later, cheaper models. The phrase I objected to was:
“What the TV manufacturers haven’t realised yet though is that they are playing to a small niche”
Of course the company realises. That’s the whole point. Second guessing a large company as an individual is absurd. They have dozens of people with more qualifications and experience in the relevant area than you working 8 hours a day 5/6 days a week on which market to target, predicting the number of sales, and otherwise running the numbers. They know exactly what they’re doing. Occasionally it cocks up, but this isn’t one of those times.
Samsungs TV dept is loss leading, they make their money through Mobiles at the moment. This will be a mass market product with limited uptake which will mean yet another loss leading product for Uncle Sammy. Also the money is in content at the moment – they need to create a killer interface for easy content access before someone else does.
And its called an opinion. I am qualified to have one and make one.
@CGB1 I know plenty of people that have perfectly functioning rear-projection/CRT Televisions lurking in their lofts. I’ve got a tiny portable CRT ALBA somewhere that’s still in perfect working order.
There’s plenty of reasons why people upgrade. It’s about manufacturers giving them a compelling reason to do so. My main television is a 42″ Pioneer Plasma from when I moved into my house about 5-6 years ago. In terms of an upgrade, 3D didn’t really appeal, Smart TVs and connectivity functionality was just as easily served by other ad-hoc means and though I would have liked a larger panel, OLED and 4K have tipped the balance in favour of me upgrading the main set sooner rather than later. The Pioneer Plasma is still perfectly functional, but a little older and less fully featured than the TV in my bedroom, so it might serve as part-exchange or go to a relative.
The little Sony is no tech-demo for me, it’s by far the nicest picture available in a house full of screens. It perfectly suits it’s purpose of watching the news or an episode of a Sitcom while I eat my breakfast, and I feel I got good value for what I paid. I certainly have no regrets. I could have sent money to starving kids in Africa, or I could have written a nice cheque to Comic Relief, but I decided not to resist the compulsion to have a new sexy little gadget-y thing. It’s my ‘Special Interest’, just like others might buy a Season Ticket to their local football team, or similar. It’s the same reason I decided to get a Sony Rolly and a ride-on lawnmower, I wanted one and had the means to make it happen. Don’t begrudge me that.
i upgraded when my old tv was fine. you upgrade because you’re replacing it with something better, not because the old one broke (thinner, hd, digital tuner etc). value for money is relative. i can’t believe anyone paid over x for x brand car and why everyone drives anything other than a cheapo clio. a £50k bmw may be cheap in the eyes of some, no? and even if it is expensive for someone, if its their thing then why not? you could scoff at any hobby/interest purchase, just cos its not your thing. e.g who would pay £x for a stamp… a stamp collector.
I’ll be definitely interested in getting one when the price comes down!
I have a problem with these prices and it’s not about how high they are (which they are). It’s that these Samsung panels are getting close to Bang & Olufsen Samsung-based panels (give or take a grand or so).
To be honest, for effectively the first comparable TV featuring a new technology, that’s not that expensive at all, compared to what Plasma TVs were when they came out.
It’s really good news that in 12-18 months these TVs might be available at the high end of normal prices.
Exactly! And if there wasn’t some semblance of a market for these things at these “early adopter” prices, the cost would never come down as you describe.
It’s like VW Group throwing money at their Bugatti division, “losing” millions in R&D, and then effectively selling the Veyron at a loss. They’re not stupid for doing so, the situation is quite the opposite. They know that once they find a less expensive way of implementing the technology they develop, they will be able to offer that tech at a competitive price in their Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini & Bentley divisions, and eventually under the SEAT, Skoda and VW marques and recoup the cost of bringing the cars like the Veyron to market.
The only difference is that with the possible exception of companies like B&O, TV Panel manufacturers often sell all price-levels of TVs under one branding.
You can pick up a Blu-ray Player for about £50-£70 now that would have better functionality than one you would have spent £500+ on 5 years ago.
Price is probably one of the main issues about not going with Samsung OLED screens. However the second main reason why I would not go with Samsung is because of their issues with burn-in screens. It is not a for sure about their TV line, but their cellphones that use AMOLED have been facing burn-in issues. Over usage of Samsung cellphones that use AMOLED technology will have burn-ins and Samsung said that they will not take responsibility for this issue. If Samsung chooses to use AMOLED for their TVs, I am not going to be going with Samsung, rather I would go with LG OLED. I am not going to pay that much money have the screen burn out and have them say that they are not responsible for it.