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LG‘s beaten its arch rival Samsung to the OLED-punch, with its brand new 55-inch 4K beauty. Finally, you can buy an OLED TV in a meaningful size (at least in South Korea), and make sure it’s not junk in five years, because everyone keeps their TVs for more than five years right? Especially when you’ve got well over £10,000 to drop on a TV.
This is the first time anyone’s managed to produce large screen OLED TVs in any significant quantity too, and shows that we’re finally getting there. OLED has promised for years and years to revolutionise our TVs, and while it hasn’t quite worked out that way on phones, with LCDs still holding their own, an OLED TV should be absolutely amazing. Plus, for the price of a car, you’ll get 4K UHD too, so what more could you want? Maybe two of them? Don’t forget one for the loo as well while you’re at it. [LG via WSJ]
LG Reveals "World's Largest" OLED Screen, at 55"
LG's Monster 55" OLED TV Priced at £9,999.99 for the UK
LG's Gorgeous New OLED TV Is Coming to the UK, But You Probably Won't be Able to Afford It
6 grand isn’t that bad, considering 6 or so years ago I paid £2,300 for a 43″ 720p pioneer plasma
I agree – 6G is ok for what you’re getting… I threw about 1400 on a 32″ 1080i Sony Bravia about 6 years ago.
This is a good step forward and I’m sure pricing will drop rapidly as they start pumping out volumes, but can someone explain to me whether for a 55″ TV there would be ANY benefit to increasing resolution to 4K?
Dont we get to the “retina” issue where the eye simply cannot distinguish the increase in detail above a certain PPI @ x distance?
I thought I saw somewhere a little while ago that for 4K resolution at normal ‘home’ viewing differences, a >80″ screen would be required to notice any difference? Or are there indirect benefits to motion etc?
*distances, not differences. EDIT BUTTON PLEASE
I saw toshibas 4K when I was last in Tokyo and I can definitely say YES. Easily.
But, as far as I read on other websites, this TV is NOT 4K. It is only Full HD.
I’d be seriously interested at around £4k. I just got a Samsung UE46ES8000 for the bedroom and it’s making my 5yr old Pioneer Plasma look a bit long in the tooth.
It’s £6,000. 4k is the resolution, and I’m not even sure that isn’t an error itself…
I know its £6k and that 4k is the resolution. I would be very interested if the price was closer to £4k.
Sorry, it’s just all these k’s…
Are we sure this thing is 4K? The LG press release doesn’t mention 4K or UHD at all, and the WSJ only mentions it in reference to their 84-inch behemoth.
That would make more sense, as 55-inch isn’t really large enough for a 4K telly.
Pretty sure it’s just OLED.
I’ve not seen any other site call it 4K or the Giz post linked, which states “84-inch 4K and 55-inch OLED sets”
Yeh I’m pretty sure this set isn’t 4K. Although I think 55 inch is just about big enough for 4K.
Really? That would be like watching 1080p on a 23in telly. Could you tell the difference between that and 720p when standing 10 feet away, or even 6 feet away? Most people couldn’t.
http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2012/07/why-your-hdtv-is-already-a-retina-display/
I thought that you couldn’t tell the difference before I saw one. And I must say that 4K in a 55 inch tv IS more pixels than you can see from a normal viewing distance as when I walked closer I could see slightly more detail. But 1080p is less than retina at normal viewing distances. You probably won’t be able to see individual pixels but it will and does look different to 4K/ Higher resolutions.
Retina seems to lie somewhere in-between 1080p and 4K.
I think it has to do with the image processing our brain does to get more detail from the image data that the eyes send it. Most calculations I have seen, aparantly “proving” we don’t need more than 1080p for televisions, make the mistake of calculating 1 pixel per 1 photoreceptor. But the brain can gain much more data than that using processing.
The same situation occurs with 3D stereoscopic technology. Although most biologist say that our eyes see at about 24fps on average we do not make 3D shutter glass run at 48fps (24fps for each eye). This is because each open and close of the shutter would have to be exactly timed with the change in the photoreceptor, which obviously doesn’t happen since the fps of our eye is not constant. So you actually need 120fps (or ideally higher) to be able to have smooth unnoticeable shutter switches.
We need these extra pixels to push televisions into the retina area. I may be wrong about it all but having seen one I can only say that it looked much better than even the best 1080p screen.
Sorry, for some reason I missed this response.
“Retina seems to lie somewhere in-between 1080p and 4K.”
When you say that, are you referring to a 55-inch screen viewed at around 10 feet? If so, I could believe you if your vision is well above average, but the calculations say that for a person with normal 20/20 vision, 1080p is already more detail than their eyes can resolve.
This isn’t a basic calculation of 1 pixel to 1 photoreceptor, it’s based on proven experimental data that’s used to define human visual acuity.
That said, I can believe that extra detail beyond what our eyes can resolve might actually have a positive effect on the image we perceive. Audiophiles make a similar argument all the time in defense of lossless audio formats. This might result in the image appearing subjectively ‘better’, even if it isn’t technically perceived to be any more detailed.
I’d really love someone to conduct a side-by-side study on the subjective benefits of 4K over 1080p at these screen sizes. It’s been done before when comparing 720p against 1080p, and the results weren’t encouraging.
55inch and at about 10 feet sounds about right. I do have very good sight which may make a difference but my girlfriend who wheres contacts also noticed the difference (or at least said she did).
I read somewhere the perceived improvement in details of 4K tv’s could come from their extremely high contrast ratio but I have seen 1080p tv’s with equivalent contrast ratios and they certainly did not look the same.
The video Toshiba had running on the 4K TV looked completely different to normal 1080p video. I remember it very vividly because it reminded me of the time when I first saw 1080p and how sharp and beautiful everything looked. This is anecdotal evidence, I know, but you just have to see one I guess.