Gadgetory

you know the average American home has something like three televisions in it these days and I'd wager most of those are working just fine which if you're a TV maker is not great news how do they get us to buy another one two clues OLED and 4k job says it's the best design TV they've ever produced this model here shows it cut away so that you can see what the speakers will look like it has four times the pixel resolution of a standard 1080p television you can see some more fanciful concept frames that LG might start making here's the bottom line in 2012 LCD flat panel TV sales were off one percent globally but all TV types combined were off six percent and a big 18 percent in all the developed markets and cratering in tech saturated but economically cool Japan couple that with the fact that every survey and every user knows we're gonna be watching less television on televisions going forward and the TV makers have got to make a serious play with new technologies this is the XBR 850 a series at Sony's least expensive 4k TV to date the Sony's triluminos display technology it also has Sony's dynamic edge backlighting so and all we expect this to be a really good performer some of the interesting features of the TV it features a front firing speakers set with a subwoofer and also includes an upscale ER for all of the 1080p content that you already have given that there's no 4k already this is the company's first use OLED technology that allows the TV to achieve superior picture quality compared to current plasma and LED TVs unlike those standard TVs this one has a curve and that's one thing you can only get with OLED 4k TV I think could be a bit of a crapshoot first of all it's primarily a fidelity argument in a nation that is not composed of a bunch of video files it's waiting for more really for any 4k content to really flourish and that may be a while before there's a fat pipeline of that couple that with the fact that one of the big benefits of 4k is being able to sit closer to the TV get more immersed in the picture and not see the pixels that's a conversation that really hasn't happened in the market yet so these are all challenges to you really wanting it I think OLED could be a different story the core technology organic light-emitting diodes emit color and luminance on their own without any backlight behind them that may sound like a technical nicety but it actually makes three important very obvious things happen first of all black when an OLED TV wants to show black it shows black and that makes a big difference because then all the colors around it have that much more saturation and high contrast the colors leap off the screen like no other TV then there's thin because OLED TVs have no backlight and their technology is very thin to begin with the overall finished television can be as little as a third of an inch thick front to back they look fundamentally different on a wall or in your living room consumers buy TVs almost as much from the side these days as the front so this is important and finally there's green consumers mostly give lip service to this more than wallet service but OLED TVs have the potential to consume very little power though the initial models are not that power stingy oh by the way I find the curved screen on some of the initial OLED TVs to be a bit of a red herring I mean it makes a mockery of the technologies innate thinness turning a third of an inch panel into about a six inch deep finished television I think it's mostly there to let this technology stand out in the store and a sea of flat black panels a key point OLED televisions can work pretty much all of their magic on the content you watch today where 4k TVs are sort of waiting for their knight in shining resolution in the form of native 4k content bottom line 4k + OLED will likely merge and be what you buy in three to five years making for a television like Noah