Is 4K the next big thing in TV?
Ultra high-definition tellies on show at CES.
From afar, this year's Consumer Electronics Show seemed no great shakes.
The giant Las Vegas trade gathering had its usual share of quirky gadgets but offered few clues to where the industry is heading in 2013.
The year in consumer electronics will be defined by whether Apple enters the TV market or not. But, as usual, the company was absent from CES.
What we did see was a wave of so-called 4K ultra high-definition (UHD) televisions, which offer four times the resolution as a high definition (HD) TV.
One of the 4K tellies is already on sale here – a $24,999, 84-inch model from LG. Like other 4K TVs, it supports 3D, but the technology seemed out of vogue at CES this year.
Is it worth shelling out for a 4K TV (and believe me, you will shell out; Samsung's first 4K model will $US38,000)?
Nope.
By all accounts, HD (1920 x 1080 pixel) content looks fine when upscaled to a 3840 x 2160 for display on a UHD telly, but US PC World says you would be struggling to tell the difference.
It will be several years before content makers and broadcasters universally fall in behind HD, which they will want to milk for quite some time before upgrading to support UHD. In terms of film content, Sony is promising 10 film titles in ultra high-definition format.
But my main worry comes from the other direction: standard definition broadcast TV (that is, most Sky content today) could potentially look worse blown up onto an 84-inch screen.
A second TV technology previewed at CES showed more immediate promise: OLED displays. Sums up PC World:
On an OLED HDTV, colours pop like nothing you've seen before. There is no blacker black than the black you'll see on an OLED TV, and coloors look vivid and twinkly against that pitch-black background. You also get ultra-wide viewing angles. Because of the display's fast response rate, fast motion looks fluid on the screen and 3D content looks amazing. OLED TVs don't need a backlighting system, so they're the thinnest HDTVs on the planet.
Sony will have a 55-inch OLED TV out in March in North America for $US12,000. Other TV makers will follow.
These technologies aren't mutually exclusive. A 4K TV can have an OLED display, and Sony and Panasonic have duly partnered to create 4K OLED TVs that were previewed at CES.
That sounds like just the ticket for your next TV - maybe in 2016, when the price inevitably falls below $1000.
Meanwhile, my feel is that what most people want from television is internet connectivity - and not just a handful of of apps but open-slather access to web.
Last year, TV makers focussed on 3D, while punters went ga-ga for watching lo-fi YouTube clips. As always, it's all about the content. If Apple released a television that offered full App Store access (the Apple TV wi-fi box offers a limited amount of internet content), it would kill ...
Chris Keall
Mon, 14 Jan 2013
Mon, 14 Jan 2013
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Is 4K the next big thing in TV?
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