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Samsung Claims Its New QLED TVs Are Better Than OLED TVs (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the he-said-she-said dept.

Samsung recently unveiled its latest flagship televisions at CES 2017, the QLED series. The company is challenging the notion that OLED TVs represent the pinnacle of picture quality in the living room. According to Samsung, the QLED TV represents its best achievement in image quality and viewing experience yet. The Verge reports: Of course Samsung would say that at an event meant to showcase said product. But the company insists it's made very real improvements compared to the flagship TVs it unveiled only a year ago. One of those upgrades pertains to brightness. The QLED TVs reach a peak brightness between 1,500 and 2,000 nits -- up from the 1,000 peak from 2016's lineup. Color reproduction has also been improved. The QLED sets handle DCI-P3 "accurately" and are capable of reproducing "100 percent color volume" -- something Samsung claims to be a world first. "This means they can express all colors at any level of brightness -- with even the subtlest differences visible at the QLED's peak luminance -- between 1,500 and 2,000 nits." Samsung says all of this is possible because it's using a new metal material along with the quantum dot nanocrystals. On the software end, Samsung's 2017 TVs are still powered by Tizen and feature basically the same user interface as last year. But there are some new additions like a sports mode that aggregates scores and other content from your favorite teams and an expanded Music section that lets you Shazam music as it's playing in a TV show and immediately launch that track in Spotify another streaming services. Samsung is also looking to clean up how its TVs look in your living room. New this year is a clear-colored "Invisible Connection cable" that runs from the TV to an external breakout box where you'll find all the HDMI ports and other critical connections (besides power, which is a separate input).

190 comments

  1. Now with Quantum LED... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...it's both overscanning and underscanning at the same time.

    What's so hard about showing the picture as it was originally intended?

    1. Re: Now with Quantum LED... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The legacy of CRT means some signals are meant to be shown overscanned and some are not, and neither have the information of what is meant embedded.
      And even if the signal is pixel perfect, ehat is a TV to do if it has a different size of pixels? The most technically accurate reproduction (nearest pixel) is also the most visually horrible.
      And don't get me started on interlacing and fucking 3:2 pulldown.

    2. Re: Now with Quantum LED... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Try playing a classic game console like the original NES, or SNES, or the SEGA MS/MD frequently things don't work very well on a LCD either due to latency, lack of the original color blur (fake transparency, especially relevant on the MD) and so forth.

      Unfortunately, only US-market TV's even have analog inputs for such devices, and between all the voltage stepdowns, upscaling, buffering and so forth, it is not possible to get good, let alone lag-free game going. Even a 98% accurate software emulator still has the problem and has to resort to ugly hacks to make games look reasonably and perform like they are supposed to.

    3. Re:Now with Quantum LED... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      What's so hard about showing the picture as it was originally intended?

      Since you ask...

      The director has a properly calibrated high end display. To match that on your screen, it also needs to be calibrated and capable of displaying a wide colour gamut. But your environment is probably very different to the director's, likely much brighter. So the TV has to compensate with very high contrast levels.

      Most people don't really want accuracy though. What sells is eye-popping colour and high brightness. If you go into a showroom you will find that Samsung TVs always have the brightness cranked right up, and it's very eye-catching. Horrible to look at for more than a few minutes, but it sure looks impressive in the store.

      --
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    4. Re: Now with Quantum LED... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or you could go into the setup menus and turn that crap off. I don't want movies to look like a soap opera anyhow.

      The only thing you can't be sure of turning off is overscan. In some sets you have to guess the strange name they give to the mode that causes them to display the full resolution that the HDMI interface advertises, in others you have to give the interface a specific name like "PC", and in some (Sharp Aquos in particular) it may be a service menu option, and to get into the service menu you need a code that is different for every sub-series of sets and only found in the $ervice manual.

    5. Re:Now with Quantum LED... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's so hard about showing the picture as it was originally intended?

      They eliminate that possibility with the curved screen. I thought that gimmick would have died by now. What idiots are buying curved TVs?

  2. marketing B.S. by iggymanz · · Score: 1

    even if they can reproduce a larger subset of the color gamut than other TV they can't make all possible colors, using only a select green, blue and red prevents that.

    1. Re:marketing B.S. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      They told me a Monster Cable would fix this problem.

    2. Re:marketing B.S. by wagnerrp · · Score: 1

      Color gamut isn't about making all the colors, it's making the appearance of all the colors, as interpreted by the human eye.

    3. Re:marketing B.S. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      GP is right though. There are shades of cyan for instance you can never make by mixing any combination of a primary green and blue. Even representing some of those shades rely on computer's using gamuts that contain imaginary colours.

    4. Re:marketing B.S. by lgw · · Score: 1

      Yeah, to get it perfect you'd need 6 colors, not 3, including red and violet at the ends of the visible spectrum, and something near cyan and yellow. You can get quite close, however, with 3. Normal LCD is so bad when it comes to color that I welcome any new alternative, as my plasma screen is quite power hungry (and hot - 600W space heater).

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    5. Re:marketing B.S. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even representing some of those shades rely on computer's using gamuts that contain imaginary colours.

      Careful now, that might cause your new Samsung TV to catch on fire or explode.

    6. Re:marketing B.S. by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      WRONG, the "color gamut" ALREADY is built around human perception. A three color system cannot cover what the human eye can perceive.

    7. Re:marketing B.S. by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 2

      The genericised form of the headline is actually:

      $vendor announces $newthing for TV, better than $oldthing

      with a subhead of:

      Everyone throw away your six-month old $5,000 TV and buy a new $5,000 TV that's exactly the same, only different.

    8. Re: marketing B.S. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I saw it more as $new_breakthrough_technology has now started making its way into $consumer_products.

    9. Re:marketing B.S. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > There are shades of cyan for instance you can never make by mixing any combination of a primary green and blue.

      There are cyan LEDs which are not a mixture of green and blue.

    10. Re:marketing B.S. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's odd, considering that all the colors the human eye/mind perceives is made up of signals from three types of color receptors in the eye.

    11. Re:marketing B.S. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's odd, considering that all the colors the human eye/mind perceives is made up of signals from three types of color receptors in the eye.

      Possibly four

    12. Re:marketing B.S. by GuB-42 · · Score: 1

      6? Why not 5 or 7?
      Technically, you need an infinity of perfectly monochromatic sources to get it perfect.

    13. Re:marketing B.S. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not odd at all. The three receptors have varying responses to all wavelengths, with peaks in different positions. There is no single wavelength that can stimulate any one of the colour receptors without also stimulating the others to varying degrees. So it shouldn't be too surprising that a three colour system can't produce all possible combinations of receptor response, even ones that can be produced by real light sources at intermediate wavelengths. The XYZ system can do that, with the slight drawback that none of the three "colours" in it actually exist (i.e. they don't correspond to any actual wavelength of light). Alternatively, you can do it with three real colours, provided you allow some of them to have negative contributions (good luck with that), or add sufficient white light to make all the contributions non-negative (which reduces saturation - the colours we can't produce are generally very saturated).

    14. Re:marketing B.S. by SandorZoo · · Score: 1

      That's odd, considering that all the colors the human eye/mind perceives is made up of signals from three types of color receptors in the eye.

      That's because the eye's colour receptors respond to a range of wavelengths and those ranges overlap.

      The RGB wavelengths emitted by a TV are over fairly narrow ranges, and correspond to the wavelengths where the eye is most sensitive. For example, pure blue from a TV will be around 470nm as that most strongly excites the blue receptors of the eye, but it also weakly excites the green and red receptors.

      In nature a wavelength of 400 nm will weakly excite the blue receptors only, and not the green and red receptors at all. A TV can't do this - it would need to be able to support "negative" values for the red and green channels.

    15. Re:marketing B.S. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Measurably yes, perceptually no. No human can perceive the difference between a 510nm monochromatic source and a 511nm monochromatic source, and a combination of two other colours that crosses this line close enough would not benefit from an additional line between them.

      The horseshoe plot is shaped like a horseshoe for a reason.

    16. Re:marketing B.S. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To get it perfect, you'd need to use infinitely many, since the edge of the gamut is a curve.

    17. Re:marketing B.S. by GuB-42 · · Score: 1

      Yes, I understand this, the real question is "why 6?".
      How does 6 improve on 5? Why is 7+ unnecessary?
      Are there technical reasons, such as efficiency or the availability of light sources at the proper wavelengths?

    18. Re:marketing B.S. by sh00z · · Score: 1

      Because 7 8 9?

    19. Re:marketing B.S. by GlobalEcho · · Score: 1

      Even representing some of those shades rely on computer's using gamuts that contain imaginary colours.

      Whenever I want imaginary colors, I just multiply my existing colors by i

    20. Re:marketing B.S. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really? What if the spectrum of those RGBs exactly matches the sensitivities of retinal cones? What if the space spanned by them is larger than the space spanned by retinal cones? Pure BS. Not the marketing, the parent. Even though the marketing is probably also BS.

    21. Re:marketing B.S. by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      only if it has iridium connectors and silver braiding to transport the ones and zeros in rigidly faithful and optically crisp manner from source to destination without distorting the subtle hueing of fundamental colors and the finer nuances of unsaturated pastels.

    22. Re:marketing B.S. by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      funny, no one has invented an LED like that yet. chance to make your millions. of course, there is evidence of additional type of cones responding to other colors that women seem to have more of then men....

    23. Re:marketing B.S. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >Color gamut isn't about making all the colors, it's making the appearance of all the colors, as interpreted by the human eye

      Except limitations come from more than just the display. Apparently because of limited color saturation of reds when using CFL backlights, the ATSC broadcast standard HAS REDUCED COLORSPACE (gamut) compared to the analog NTSC standard. That's right, the best red we get broadcast is reddish-orange.

      Go out and look at a new fire engine sometime.

      The 1954 television sets from RCA produced full NTSC color, but what they sold after that didn't. There was a change in the sulfide red phosphor used (to get more brightness but not saturation) and a resistor was left out of the IQY (in phase and quadrature color plus monochrome) to RGB decoding to dodge a patent issue. Few people have ever seen a healthy RCA CT-100 (CTC-2 chassis) tv in operation, but the reds really were better.

      So is someone going to change the U.S. broadcast standard to carry real red??? A wider gamut display isn't fully appreciated if the color isn't in the signal.

      Color decoding has been compromised in others ways previously. Changing the phase demodulation angle of the quadrature decoder slightly and shifting the weighting of the decoder matrix reduced the tendency to get green or violet face colors, but it also degraded the look of a green hillside or pasture. But did any of you care??

    24. Re:marketing B.S. by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      Take a look at https://dot-color.com/category/color-gamut-standards/. Make points along the periphery to represent monochromatic sources. Connect the points with lines. The area within the lines represents all the colors that can be produced with those monochromatic sources. With 3 sources, all the colors that exist in nature (Pointer's gamut) can just barely be shown (assuming normal vision and other reasonable things.) With 4 sources more colors ("unnatural") can be shown, mostly covering additional colors in the green-blue region. 5 sources is even better, etc.. 6 is not a reasonable improvement.

      The number 6 comes from color printing, which has different limitations from emissive displays. See hexachrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexachrome for an example.

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    25. Re:marketing B.S. by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      If the spectrum of the sources exactly matched the cone spectral responses, the result would be inferior. Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell and see how much the red and green cone spectral response overlap. Do some thinking about how you would best stimulate red response without stimulating green, and vice versa.

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    26. Re: marketing B.S. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is no reason. The colors are made in your brain. When you make new color by mixing other colors and give it a name, make it well known by coloring a popular item with your new color, and you have created a new color.

      For example I never heard of the web color maroon. Before I was playing with HTML/CSS I thought it was just red. That's how I saw that particular color. Only after having made several websites I started to see maroon as a separate color. Until half way the nineties I only saw red. I couldn't see a difference. Yeah one was a bit darker, but both were red. Now I can identify maroon without reference.

      That's also how it works with televisions. The colors aren't really there. It are you brains that fill in the colors. Often you only know the color because you know what the real life object looks like. A movie with special filters/or a broken television still lets you see skin color even when in reality the television shows for example purple skin.

    27. Re:marketing B.S. by lgw · · Score: 1

      You have 3 color receptors in your eyes, each of which has a bell curve of responsiveness to frequency. These bell curves overlap, allowing you to tease out quite a bit of information about color from the strength of these 3 signals. Most colors we see are themselves bell curves of emitted frequency, because most light sources are.

      You could fake all this exactly with 3 colors, if you could chose the specific 3 colors emitted on the fly for each pixel (three variables, three unknowns). But since you have to pick the colors ahead of time, any 3 you pick will have issues. If you want the full spectrum, you need a light at either end of the spectrum, because you can't "synthesize" the endpoints form the middle. But those extremes aren't useful for most colors (the eye is barely responive there). As sibling posts have explained, you get real improvements with 4 and some improvement with 5 colors. I called out 6 for that "100%".

      Because of the way the first layer of visual processing for the eye/brain works, it's really handy to have red, green, blue, and yellow, but there are other 4-color combinations that can work noticeably better than RGB as well. (Why those particular 4? The brain first turns raw color data into R+G, R-G, B+Y, and B-Y. This is why there's not a shade that mixes red and green, why red on a green background or vv sucks, etc. But the R/G effect is more important then the B/Y effect, making RGB the easy choice for 3-color emissive displays).

      Fun bonus fact: across human cultures, there's little agreement on the boundary between colors, e.g., where blue-green becomes "green" instead of "blue", but lots of agreement on where colors are centered. It took linguists surprisingly long to figure this out when trying to understand the definition of a color word in a new language. Kind of an interesting problem, when you think about it.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    28. Re:marketing B.S. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Because horseshoes. Look at the horseshoe, try to approximate it with points, and then factor in a law of diminishing returns bearing in mind that for every single additional colour you need to add 8million additional pixels to a monitor. If your goal is perfection over all then 7+ is not enough. If your goal is to create a product that could best cover the human eyesight and still be sellable to a large number of humans you're looking at around 6.

    29. Re:marketing B.S. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Funny you should say that, it's exactly how the math sometimes works out when working in the ProPhotoRGB gamut.

  3. Breaking News by Luthair · · Score: 4, Funny

    Shock waves reverberate around the planet as Samsung claims it has better products than its competitors. This revolutionary marketing technique is sure to catch on with other companies and before long no one will admit they make second rate products publicly.

    1. Re:Breaking News by mikeiver1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That and the OS pushes adds on the desktop on boot of the display. No way to remove or turn them off. I have a pair of Samsung plasma displays and like them but the new 4K I bought for my desktop PC has this issue and it pisses me off to no end. Even if the display is marginally better than the LG OLED I will not buy another samsung display because of the adds.

    2. Re:Breaking News by DRJlaw · · Score: 1

      That and the OS pushes adds on the desktop on boot of the display.

      Just wait until they push subtracts, then multiplies and divides. It'll be mathemagical.

    3. Re:Breaking News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      WHAT. THE. FUCK. If I ever get a TV into my house and it starts playing ads I'm going to return that shit before the day is out.

    4. Re:Breaking News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did you perchance get a so-called "Smart" TV? I guess the smarter they are, they better than can show ads. Now I shall double my efforts to avoid them, and to ensure that they never get a live internet connection if I do end up with one.

      Samsung is adding new obtrusive ads to your old smart TV

    5. Re:Breaking News by lsatenstein · · Score: 1

      Shock waves reverberate around the planet as Samsung claims it has better products than its competitors. This revolutionary marketing technique is sure to catch on with other companies and before long no one will admit they make second rate products publicly.

      Soon, they will need to manufacture their products in the USA, because of job creation and NIH. (Not invented here)

      --
      Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
    6. Re:Breaking News by mikeiver1 · · Score: 1

      lol, missed that mistake... Thanks

    7. Re:Breaking News by mikeiver1 · · Score: 1

      Yah, smart... I do not give it an internet connection to keep the ads to a minimum when it starts. That and I have little desire of it getting bricked if some script kiddie finds it by some outlandish odds and compromises the the OS.

  4. And QLED Means What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There needs to be a rule that acronyms need to be defined in the summary for a certain amount of time until the term becomes mainstream.

    1. Re:And QLED Means What? by toejam13 · · Score: 4, Informative

      QLED = LCD screen using an LED backlight and quantum dot phosphors

    2. Re:And QLED Means What? by wagnerrp · · Score: 2

      I'm finding it difficult to find meaningful information on this, but it seems the quantum dots are electroluminescent, being lit up directly by the driving circuitry, rather than being excited by an LCD-filtered backlight.

    3. Re:And QLED Means What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It means these TVs come from Q Continuum and will only display episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation over and over and over.

    4. Re:And QLED Means What? by toejam13 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Organic LEDs (OLEDs) are electroluminescent. Quantum dots are fluorescencent. They require a backlight of some sort to produce light.

    5. Re:And QLED Means What? by theendlessnow · · Score: 1

      QLED = LCD screen using an LED backlight and quantum dot phosphors

      Q.E.D.

    6. Re:And QLED Means What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      this is snake-oil logic. samsung's very own amoleds in their galaxy devices had improved in overall nit brightness compared to the iphone over the years (*cough* oled improvements inevitable and for a superior display tech ultimately desirable over filtration process (lcd, tft lcd, led lcd (not led [market hype], but "led backlit lcd"))

      >> "so good color accuracy" (*cough* we're talking about the dci-p3 colorspace)

      bitch, srgb is a fine workspace to work within for viewing unless specifically editing an image in which case mac-dogma of "thou shalt only use dci-p3" is irrelevant when the important colors are subtle ones (desaturated and saturated highlights and shadows) which automatically improve using 10bit+output gpu and wide-gamut setting of oled (capable of beyond adobergb anyway) and without destroying the image's likeness to its original appearance (like a gamma manipulation will in fact destroy)

    7. Re: And QLED Means What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wtf is a nit?

    8. Re:And QLED Means What? by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      OLED, QLED... gosh, only 24 letters remaining!

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    9. Re: And QLED Means What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Wtf is a nit?

      Here you go

    10. Re: And QLED Means What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I could live with that.

    11. Re:And QLED Means What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/12/oled-explained-incredible-tech-but-what-about-cost-and-content/

      Samsung has another technology in the works to counter OLED's rise, and it's called quantum dots. Though backlit, these Samsung panels will emit a blue backlight, as opposed to the whiter lights in LED panels. When the screens' dot arrays are hit with that blue backlight, they light up with specific red, blue, and green values. The idea, Samsung says, is that these dark-blue frequencies are far less perceptible to the human eye, which could get the screens' lowest-black value somewhere close to that 0.0005-nit threshold mentioned earlier (which the Ultra HD Premium certification calls out).

    12. Re: And QLED Means What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What fuck education up alphabet are you using?

    13. Re: And QLED Means What? by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      Can you elaborate?

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    14. Re:And QLED Means What? by poofmeisterp · · Score: 1

      Q = Distraction from Exploding Batteries

      Had to. Sorry.

    15. Re: And QLED Means What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a subset of LGBTQLED

    16. Re: And QLED Means What? by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      A nit is the egg of a louse. Thus these TVs are lousy.

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  5. Excited by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm excited at the thought of at least OLED-level image quality with much better product lifetime. The question is how much time it will take to adapt this technology to high resolution monitors.

    1. Re:Excited by nitehawk214 · · Score: 1

      Not long:

      http://4k.com/news/samsung-unv...

      --
      I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    2. Re:Excited by Namarrgon · · Score: 2

      Looks like those are ordinary quantum-dot LCD panels like Samsung's TVs from the last two years. That's a different technology to these new QLED panels, which are emissive like OLEDs and don't use LCDs at all.

      --
      Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
    3. Re:Excited by Guspaz · · Score: 1

      RTFM:

      > Samsung’s QLED TVs still require backlighting and those crystals don’t self-emit light in the same way that OLEDs do. This isn’t some reinvention of display technology.

      These aren't actually QLED displays (QLED would be self-emissive), so they're just using QLED as a fancy marketing name for quantum dot LCDs designed to trick the consumer into thinking they're like OLED via the similar name. It's like how DSL and cable companies try to pretend their copper is fibre, with Bell Canada going so far as to call their DSL service "Fibe".

      Basically they have a regular backlight and a regular LCD panel, but instead of using a colour filter layer, they use the light from the backlight to excite the quantum dots, and modulate it with the LCD panel.

      As long as they're still relying on an LCD, at the very least they will still suffer from the comparatively slow response time of an LCD panel.

      It's true that real QLED displays could compete with OLED in many regards, but these aren't QLED displays.

    4. Re:Excited by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

      Yeah that may indeed be the case - a lot of articles are contradictory, but the more I read the less these TVs look like real QLEDs. But if so, why they would label these TVs as "QLEDs" when they're apparently working on genuine QLED TVs is beyond me.

      --
      Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
    5. Re:Excited by Guspaz · · Score: 1

      Because real QLEDs are likely some way away, and they'll sell more of them if they can convince consumers that somehow their displays are better than OLEDs.

    6. Re:Excited by nitehawk214 · · Score: 1

      Typical. Everything has "quantum" in the name to sound new and super high tech.

      --
      I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    7. Re:Excited by Guspaz · · Score: 1

      Well, quantum dots are actually a thing, and they are appropriately named (they're very small, with the size of a particular dot determining the colour they emit) and this display does use them... it just doesn't use them how their marketing name of "QLED" implies they're using them.

    8. Re:Excited by nitehawk214 · · Score: 1

      That is exactly what I mean. I think it should be illegal to have deceptive marketing like this.

      --
      I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
  6. Re: The Hypocrisy of the Open Source Community by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's the ghost of trollmas past! Oh spirit, you realise Christmas has been now, right?

  7. Re:Still not useful for Slashdotters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, fellow Slashdot dork, what's burned on *your* TV?

  8. Not sure what they're talking about by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just a week ago I visited the closest to my apartment mall and compared 2016 SUHD Quantum Dot Samsung TVs and LG's OLED TVs.

    And you know what? LG's blacks are just mind boggling, I mean the contrast ratio of LG's display was head and shoulders above what Samsung can manage.

    Maybe Samsung can claim and does have higher brightness (not sure if it's relevant since most people have their TVs at apartments/houses and usually watch them in the evening/at night) and a wider gamut, but when it comes to darkness/dim lights, OLEDs are miles better. I'd have deeper blacks over higher brightness/wider gamut any time, please.

    1. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's all about the contrast ratio.
      Who the hell wants grey as a background and 1500 nits of brightness? My TV is set around 150 nits and it's plenty bright.
      1500 nits is like staring at a bare 100w bulb, who the hell wants that?

    2. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by mykepredko · · Score: 1

      Agreed. The LG OLEDs are stunning and the blacks are perfect - I'm just waiting to see how they age.

      As the AC says, it's all about the contrast ratio.

      --
      Mimetics Inc. Twitter
    3. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't worry...it'll come with sunglasses.

    4. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That said, I picked up a 2016 Quantum Dot display for my mame/steam cabinet, and it sits pretty close to my LG OLED...and the poor blacks definitely stood out to me. But I bought it for it's insane response time (for a TV), and was extremely impressed by that, as well as the black frame insertion that really works well with some retro content (which LG will hopefully get on soon, if they haven't already...though I wonder if there are limitations in the OLED tech that makes it impractical).

    5. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

      Attention morons!!!
      There are two HUGE areas that ALL of these panels fail at

      1) In comparison to CRT's... black level, aka contrast. Specifically 0 IRE, blacker than black. Yes there is such a terminology thing. But you wouldn't know it unless you grew up NTSC / HDTV engineer.

      2) Color gamut. This is improving so I won't bitch.

      NO ONE gives a fuck about 'brightness' ok, in the real world, all flat panel TV's are sufficiently bright enough, particularly in the dimmed home movie environment, and certainly for the lame daytime shows. These aren't CRT / FPTV / RPTV affected by room light. So if you are buying and perpetuating the 'brightness" panel demand, you're an idiot.

      Where they suck balls is in the ability to block all light resulting in true black, then after that, in true contrast ratios.
      THIS magic black and blacker than black, GENTLEMEN, is what makes a good set really pop!!!
      And you can't get it with any current technology on the market until you start demanding it and throwing dollars at it.
      Establishment of 4k FPTV / RPTV CRT production is possible if you demand it.

      My 2k CRT projectors do this (and you can't have mine :-)

    6. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by toejam13 · · Score: 1

      when it comes to darkness/dim lights, OLEDs are miles better. I'd have deeper blacks over higher brightness/wider gamut any time, please.

      Same here. While the clarity and resolution of those Samsung SUHD QD panels were fantastic up close, it wasn't such a big deal when I moved as far back as I sit from my current TV. But even from that distance, I could tell the difference in black levels and color between it and the late model Panasonic VT60-series plasma I have at home and the LG OLED at my friend's house. For every scene that the Samsung looked better, there were two or three where the plasma and OLED look better.

    7. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's needed for when you watch a 3D movie, and those active LCD glasses dim the image ?

    8. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      OLED TVs have true black. Go see one for yourself.
      They're an emissive technology not a filtering technology like LCD.

    9. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LG OLEDs have over 500 nits of brightness. Way brighter then necessary, even with 3D glasses on.

    10. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Two possibilities here:

      a) Samsung are talking out of their arse, and frankly they have to anyway because releasing a new model without bold claims would result in nasty things happening to a company's share price.
      b) Their TVs are actually good. After all they are talking about improvements over last year's model ... the very models you're comparing to the LG OLEDs.

      That said I am blown away by the OLED TVs. If I didn't have a perfectly good TV right now ....

    11. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Peak NITS is about getting HDR to look like HDR. A few 100 nits for a nice bright blue sky with some white fluffy clouds, and all the rest for the sun, which is now painfully bright like the sun.

      The human eye has something ludicrous like 11-stops of exposure latitude (a good digital camera has about 3)

    12. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Can't wait to be rendered blind by some director's "vision".

    13. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

      I saw this movie called "outside" once, man that was bright. Not sure my dazzled eyes ever recovered fully. Really needs a warning, like "please put on your special dark glasses now".

      --
      Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
    14. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Untrue. There are some instances where their OLEDs indeed are not bright enough. Many people do not watch in only dimly lit situations, and much of the potential brightness is eaten up because they need room for other parts of the scene or related scenes to be brighter. In other words, to maintain contrast, much of the potential brightness is wasted, and the TV needs to be capable of much higher light levels than usually need to be displayed. Additionally, many screens can only get near maximum brightness briefly, and in very limited sections of the screen. This is why numbers like 4,000 (or even 10,000) are considered the standard going forward, even though current TVs don't get even vaguely that close. (With the 1,500 to 2000 of these new Samsung TVs being a real advancement).

    15. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by Jeremi · · Score: 3, Funny

      I was at Best Buy last week; all of the TVs there looked awesome. I'm sure some of them looked slightly better than others, but really, who cares? At this point the quality of your viewing experience will be determined almost exclusively by the creative content of the programming you chose to watch, not by any limitations of the display technology. Adam Sandler movies will continue to suck no matter how large the contrast ratio gets.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    16. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by sexconker · · Score: 1

      The trick some clown director gonna put details in the dark area you need to see then a big bright shit in the center to fuck with you.

    17. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by golgotha007 · · Score: 1

      >>And you know what? LG's blacks are just mind boggling,

      That's because showing black just means the pixel is off. I just purchased a LG OLED, and I'm constantly picking my jaw up off the floor. If a movie ever fades to black, it's like my TV is turned off. Crazy.

    18. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good cameras are in the 10 - 12 stops of dynamic range.

      http://www.techradar.com/reviews/cameras-and-camcorders/cameras/digital-slrs-hybrids/canon-eos-80d-1315060/review/5

    19. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by Kjella · · Score: 2

      I was at Best Buy last week; all of the TVs there looked awesome. I'm sure some of them looked slightly better than others, but really, who cares? At this point the quality of your viewing experience will be determined almost exclusively by the creative content of the programming you chose to watch, not by any limitations of the display technology. Adam Sandler movies will continue to suck no matter how large the contrast ratio gets.

      And how your commute is will be more determined by where you live and where you work, but that's no reason to stop refining cars. A car from the 80s got you from A to B too, but we keep tweaking them and making them better. I want to look at a TV and wonder if I'm looking out a window. I want the blacks to be black. I want the bright whites to be bright white. I want all the colors to be there and to be just as clean and vibrant. The real world doesn't have color banding. The real world isn't fuzzy and doesn't have film grain. The real world isn't interlaced or run at 24 fps. If you want it for a "filmic" look that's fine. If you can achieve overkill, you can always back down later that we don't need 8K 120Hz with 100% Rec.2020 colors at 12 bits and HDR bright enough to stare into a virtual sun. Don't get me wrong my TV looks okay too, but it clearly has a few shortfalls as a "reality reproduction device", even if works as an entertainment device. Well, except when Adam Sandler is playing then it's a torture device.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    20. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ummm - actually showing black is not just about turning the pixel off - a large part is about reducing reflectivity to zero (unless you always want to watch it from a dark room(

    21. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have used CRTs a lot, until quite recently and they have three big problems.
      1) CRTs haven't got the same contrast ratio as OLED panels. All CRT phosphors suffer from afterglow, and this is noticeable as a grey-blueish tint and loss of detail in the darker tones.
      2) Even good CRTs have conformity issues. On an OLED panel or LCD straight lines are straight and distances are correct. CRTs have subtle curves and sag all over the place.
      And last but not least:
      3) Flicker. Even high-frequency CRTs flicker and cause eye strain. I was very reluctant to switch personally, but after I did I felt so much better, it's indescribable.

    22. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The real world doesn't have color banding. The real world isn't fuzzy and doesn't have film grain.

      So, you want your TV to correct for the low bit-rate encoding your provider is shoving you on your face?

    23. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by sh00z · · Score: 1

      Attention morons!!!
      There are two HUGE areas that ALL of these panels fail at

      1) In comparison to CRT's... black level, aka contrast. Specifically 0 IRE, blacker than black. Yes there is such a terminology thing. But you wouldn't know it unless you grew up NTSC / HDTV engineer.

      2) Color gamut. This is improving so I won't bitch.

      NO ONE gives a fuck about 'brightness' ok, in the real world, all flat panel TV's are sufficiently bright enough, particularly in the dimmed home movie environment, and certainly for the lame daytime shows. These aren't CRT / FPTV / RPTV affected by room light. So if you are buying and perpetuating the 'brightness" panel demand, you're an idiot.

      Where they suck balls is in the ability to block all light resulting in true black, then after that, in true contrast ratios.
      THIS magic black and blacker than black, GENTLEMEN, is what makes a good set really pop!!!
      And you can't get it with any current technology on the market until you start demanding it and throwing dollars at it.
      Establishment of 4k FPTV / RPTV CRT production is possible if you demand it.

      My 2k CRT projectors do this (and you can't have mine :-)

      This is just wrong in so many ways. OLED can absolutely produce a true black, by turning off the pixel. With no light source, emissivity is essentially equal to the reflection from the screen. In a sufficiently-darkened room, this can be pretty darned black. Perhaps your projector is capable of a true black, but the darkest black level you'll actually see is your WHITE screen.

    24. Re:Not sure what they're talking about by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      Black in the IRE system is 7.5 units. The 0 IRE is a voltage representing nothing that can be displayed. It's a convenience for the sloppy capabilities of 1950's tube technology, so that a poorly adjusted monitor won't show retrace lines.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  9. Better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Q is 2 better than O.

    What happened to PLEDs?

    ("They were not entirely successful.")

    1. Re:Better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Probably the same thing that happened to Preparation G.

    2. Re:Better by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      It's all downhill when you get to SLEDs.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  10. No way by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I DONT want a smart TV that will be abandoned in a few years. I expect a TV to be useable for 10-20 years.

    Give me a dumb TV with multiple HDMI inputs, a VGA input and a digital sound out, and maybe a "freeview" receiver though I suspect broadcast TV will have gone the way of the Dodo before long.

    That way I can plug my Mac mini, AppleTV, Kodi box, Firestick, or what ever I want into it. And when something new comes along I plug that in and away we go.

    Smart TV is marketing BS for "higher profit margin".

    1. Re:No way by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No sense even bothering with the discrete digital sound out. You can either do ARC on one of the HDMI inputs, or you can do SPDIF, and SPDIF is mediocre in its capabilities.

    2. Re:No way by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, I bet you want cable channels a la carte, too.

    3. Re:No way by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ARC is meaningless in such cases like these : game console, PC or phone is plugged in through HDMI. Sending sound to the TV then immediately getting it back is weird. It's like you're on IRC and have no friends, so you message yourself.

      Also, TV is a source of its own when using the included tuner for air broadcasts.
      SPDIF is mediocre yet perfect if used for what it was invented for : digital stereo.
       

  11. Lots of promises by Nikkos · · Score: 2

    Then they'll delay any fixes 'til forever, cancel and discontinue apps that were key features of the TV, etc, etc.

    I've got a JS9000 (2015), and I'm still waiting for them to update their HDR code - they've been promising the updated firmware since before the 2016 series came out. The latest promise was that the update would roll out in December - now we're in January and still nothing.

    Samsung was great 8 years ago, now they're just pumping out shiny new equipment with features that only partially work. They're the Korean Apple.

    1. Re:Lots of promises by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can't be worse than Sony. For years (YEARS!) people have been complaining that the video app in Sony TVs cannot play videos in the correct aspect from USB drives or from the network via DLNA. All videos play only in 16:9 aspect and are stretched vertically or horizontally to fit. You would think that playing videos from USB or network is a pretty basic function for a smart TV. Sony has so far ignored all pleas for help.

    2. Re:Lots of promises by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > You would think that playing videos from USB or network is a pretty basic function for a smart TV.

      You would think that aspect ratios would be a solved problem by now!

    3. Re:Lots of promises by jabuzz · · Score: 1

      There is a large volume of high quality TV that was recorded long before 16:9 was a twinkle in anyone's eyes. In fact some of this TV is among the best *EVER* produced. As such I expect a requirement to play 4:3 format for the rest of my life.

    4. Re:Lots of promises by coofercat · · Score: 1

      Apple generally make good hardware and good software experiences to go with it. We can argue about unwelcome changes, but I'd say most people generally accept Apple are good at hardware and software.

      Samsung, on the other hand are good at hardware (phones are a great example, as are TVs as it happens). Software though is awful. Look no further than the Android 'samsung push service', or the Samsung Games Hub, the Samsung Reading Hub, etc etc. All truly terrible apps, awful UX and whatever reason they were created to address has been entirely forgotten due to lack of updates, lack of any sort of attempt at engaging users and a vast array of competitors doing a far superior job.

      Honestly, if Google hadn't have 'given' Samsung Android, Samsung wouldn't be in the phone market at all. Until someone gives them a TV OS, their TVs are going to suck for anything other than "Select HDMI1, and leave it alone forever". You're still paying for all that unnecessary software that's so terrible you can't/won't use it though, so think about that when comparing brands/models in the shop.

    5. Re:Lots of promises by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Okay, to be more specific, you'd think playing 4:3 content on a 16:9 set would be a solved problem by now!

  12. But what is the latency? by HalAtWork · · Score: 1

    If it doesn't have 0 latency on displaying the image I can't really use it the way I want... Game Mode on my Samsung TV still has around 24ms latency

    --
    Twinstiq, game news
    1. Re:But what is the latency? by GNious · · Score: 1

      Don't worry, there'll never be a TV you can use then, if any latency is too much latency.

  13. The LGBTTQQIAAP displays are even better by elrous0 · · Score: 1

    Seriously, TV display acronyms are getting out of hand.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:The LGBTTQQIAAP displays are even better by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      What the heck are you talking about? Not a single TV acronym was used in the summary, only the actual names and acronyms of various generic display technologies.

  14. More marketing bs. by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 0

    This means they can express all colors

    The world isn't digital limited to 8, 16, 24, 32, or even 64 bits. Good luck trying to express all possible colors using a limited amount of pixels with a limited subset of colors. Squids have 16 different color receptors, not just red-green-blue for most humans, and 4 base colors for quadrachromic-sighted humans.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    1. Re:More marketing bs. by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      The world isn't digital limited to 8, 16, 24, 32, or even 64 bits. Good luck trying to express all possible colors using a limited amount of pixels with a limited subset of colors. Squids have 16 different color receptors, not just red-green-blue for most humans, and 4 base colors for quadrachromic-sighted humans.

      Well one day maybe we can build TVs for squids. Right now TVs are a long shot away from being able to display all the colours HUMANS can see, and this is well and truly a step in the right direction.

    2. Re:More marketing bs. by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      It's just more marketing hype. It's like trying to claim that the latest LED TVs are better than the top-end plasma TVs from a few years ago. Just BS to sell a product that is cheaper to make.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    3. Re:More marketing bs. by sexconker · · Score: 1

      If I were a display manufacturer I would secretly have my panels display colors that attract bees but that humans can't see.

      Everyone will wonder what the buzz is all about.

    4. Re:More marketing bs. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My car used to do that.
      Nissan Super White had UV fluorescing pigments that attracted bees like you wouldn't believe. I'd return to my car in the summer and there would be half a dozen on the hood.

    5. Re:More marketing bs. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      The latest LED TVs ARE better than top-end Plasmas from a few years ago. If you stop cherry picking your specs to suit your pre-conceived biases then you'd have thrown away Plasmas a long time ago.

    6. Re:More marketing bs. by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      Try doing a side-by-side. Stand off to the side - plasmas still kick ass at all angles.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    7. Re:More marketing bs. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Let me quote myself for you since you didn't understand the first time:

      stop cherry picking your specs

      If viewing angles were all that was important to you then you'd have no problems with a well manufactured H-IPS LCD panel.

    8. Re:More marketing bs. by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      It'll certainly be great once the various MPEG standards are upgraded to support a color system that isn't ultimately designed to translate to and from RGB.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    9. Re:More marketing bs. by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      It's not all that's important - but it's definitely a factor - and LCDs, even IPS, are still second-class.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    10. Re:More marketing bs. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      What's wrong with RGB? An good screen with great primary colour reproduction can produce most of what you're capable of seeing with a red a green and a blue, and the conversion between the colour spaces can be done in a lossless way if the recording is done in a wider space than the playback.

      RGB isn't the limiting factor yet. It's a long way from that point. Using a colour space that is designed for a common screen is.

  15. Liar. by jcr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In fact, SCO's claims of copyright infringement are generally accepted as mostly correct.

    Not by anyone other than SCO's former management and their lawyers, they're not.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    1. Re:Liar. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You forgot to include Florian Muller in that list. I don't think he's moved on yet.

  16. Great? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Great! Now let's give consumers an option that doesn't have smartTV features/ no wifi-constant-call-home-crap and it would be even better.

    I would instantly buy two instead of none.

    1. Re:Great? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't plug in the network cable or give it your SSID/password?

    2. Re: Great? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can do that? I'm buying two instead of none now! Thanks, bro!

  17. Marketing bullshit by JustNiz · · Score: 1

    Nope don't believe it.
    Its fundamental that a properly controlled light source (OLED) will necessarily give better results (especially contrast) than any kind of full-spectrum light source behind a controlled filter (LCD) ever could.

    1. Re:Marketing bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not once you account for ambient light reflecting off the screen. If the display light is sufficiently brighter, and the filter bleed relatively low, it can lead to far superior results in bright conditions. Ideally, of course, you could combine the increased light and direct illumination, but that is not the situation most of the time. (OLEDs do have spectacular blacks of course, but black level is not the only factor).

  18. Actually by Namarrgon · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ordinary quantum dots, as used by Samsung in their previous TVs, are indeed photo-luminescent, requiring a backlight and an LCD filter.

    However, these new displays use QLEDs (aka QD-LEDs), which are actually electro-luminescent very much like OLEDs - they're stimulated by electrons instead of photons, so they don't need a backlight. It also means they can be directly turned on and off like OLEDs, so they don't need an LCD filter and you also get those wonderful perfect blacks. QLED TVs are a lot like OLEDs, only brighter.

    Unsurprisingly there's some confusion about the terminology, even among reporters, and Samsung isn't helping much. But if you look up earlier articles on QLEDs, and look at the comparisons vs OLED that Samsung has been doing, you'll see how much of a jump QLEDs are.

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
    1. Re:Actually by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All Samsung TVs use edge LED lit LCD panels. If they've switched to QLED they haven't made it public yet.

    2. Re:Actually by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

      ... and now I'm not so sure. While real QLEDs (as developed by QD Vision, now owned by Samsung) are indeed emissive, there's some doubt as to whether these new TVs actually use them. Some articles are claiming Samsung's new "QLED" TVs don't actually use their real QLED technology, but instead use a refined photo-luminescent quantum-dot system that still needs a backlight.

      While Samsung seem to have nailed the picture quality in their new TVs, they surely messed up their messaging. Is it really a genuinely emissive challenger to OLEDs, or did they just confuse any future marketing by mislabeling these? Guess I'll have to wait longer to find out for sure.

      --
      Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
    3. Re:Actually by slew · · Score: 1

      All Samsung TVs use edge LED lit LCD panels. If they've switched to QLED they haven't made it public yet.

      FYI, the KS9800 is a QLED tv (which apparently also does full-array local dimming)...

    4. Re:Actually by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Please define "full array local dimming". Hint - it's got a set number of "zones", often in the dozens, rarely in the low hundreds. FALD should be EACH backlight being individually dimmable (and truly, one backlight per pixel). I haven't seen any TV advertising FALD where this was actually true unless you define the "full array" as the set of zones they program onto the board of LEDs that act as the backlight, making the distinction (FALD vs LD) completely pointless.

    5. Re:Actually by BigZee · · Score: 1

      The article (which I did read), states the display still requires a backlight.

    6. Re:Actually by sh00z · · Score: 1

      QLED TVs are a lot like OLEDs, only brighter.

      Which makes the technology "meh" for me. Getting my LG OLED properly calibrated resulted in setting overall brightness to 41%, so there's no way I need anything brighter.

    7. Re:Actually by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You are right and wrong at the same time. Samsung have simply redefined what QLED means, as explained in this article:

      http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2016/12/21/samsung-to-launch-new-class-of-tvs-at-ces-say-hello-to-qled/#4e1f72bf1cbc

      "The QLED name was seemingly chosen because it helps consumers understand that the new TVs use a combination of LED and Quantum Dot technologies.

      Some readers may recall that the QLED term was first coined by Quantum Dot maker QD Vision (which Samsung now owns) to describe an experimental emissive technology, where each pixel made its own light. However, my Samsung source assures me that the brand’s QLED TVs will be based for the foreseeable future on various edge and direct backlighting solutions."

    8. Re:Actually by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      QLED TVs are a lot like OLEDs, only brighter.

      Which makes the technology "meh" for me. Getting my LG OLED properly calibrated resulted in setting overall brightness to 41%, so there's no way I need anything brighter.

      The higher brightness is needed for the higher contrast of HDR. If you were just calibrating for a standard picture, you'd be calibrating for around 120 nits and wouldn't need anywhere near 1000-2000 nits.

  19. Has burn-in been addressed yet? by sims+2 · · Score: 1

    I'm going to nitpick here. While OLED screens look great there are a huge number of used phones out there with screen burn-in issues this is a problem LCD displays don't have nearly as good contrast ratios and black isn't really black.

    Not everyone can afford to buy the newest phone. So making sure that when the used price drops in a couple years 90% of what's available has angrybirds burned in to the screen does not help matters.

    This is great for people that can afford to buy new devices every two years but it really hurts the resale value.

    --
    Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
  20. Who measures the nits? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm kinda satisfied with my 2006 Bravia... I can't really conceive of any big leaps in TV tech that might happen, I might keep it for the next twenty years in fact.

    > The QLED TVs reach a peak brightness between 1,500 and 2,000 nits

    Who measures the nits? Is it easy to tell the difference? Is there somebody at Samsung who's job it is to decide whether something is 1,800, 1,900 or 2,000?

    Sounds like in every sense he'd be a nitpicker. :)

  21. Independent way to test and verify? by PeeAitchPee · · Score: 1

    Is there a colorimeter-based solution that one can actually put on the screen to measure a TV's output and verify any of these claims? E.g., with a "pro" color accurate monitor, you can calibrate it and the software measures and then confirms that the display is operating within the requested parameters. It sure seems that we are counting an awful lot on buzzwords from the marketing shills that these expensive TVs really are "better," but there's no way for the public to measure their performance to be sure.

    1. Re:Independent way to test and verify? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep. They ain't cheap for a good one though.
      Lookup Datacolor spyder series for home level calibration.

  22. Same shit different year by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This year the TV is more lifelike. I mean really fucking lifelike color reproduction. Like more real than actual real colors. And this time the blacks are truly black. Like black black. Totally fucking black this time. I'm not making this shit up.

    1. Re:Same shit different year by JeremyR · · Score: 1

      It's like, "How much more black could this be?" and the answer is, "None. None more black."

    2. Re:Same shit different year by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      Nah. On a scale of white to black, this is at best Mexican.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re:Same shit different year by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I need a TV that goes to vantablack

  23. I can't wait! by irrational_design · · Score: 1

    I can't wait to watch "The Housewives of Atlanta take on the Kardashians" in 100 percent color volume!

    1. Re:I can't wait! by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      That's how TV develops. We watch less and less watchable programming on better and better systems, until we will have the most realistic experience of an experience we don't want to have.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  24. Just wondering... by hyades1 · · Score: 1

    What, then, of the LGBTQ-LED?

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  25. Maybe by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 0

    Without any doubt, however, they will be far, far hotter. We are already used to explosive products from Samsung; this company really knows how to keep the flame alive. I am sure that potential buyers will be burning with anticipation to acquire what can only be described as a glowing product. Samsung is on fire.

  26. i dont care about brightness or color reporduction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    gimme a set that fixes the damn stuttering and compression artifacts and will last with same-as-new quality and reliability for 30-40+ years... and while you're at it, give me back the 'cable readiness', too.

    so far analog was better than digital television. the digital transition wasn't for *us*, it was for big business and media companies and cable companies.

  27. Re:The Hypocrisy of the Open Source Community by Opportunist · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Trying the old "repeat a lie often enough and it will be believed" bullshit?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  28. In other words by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You will see the compression artifacts, flickering and pixelation with more colors now. Awesome.

    Face it, no matter how great the TV, as long as networks compress the signals badly enough to make YouTube look like HD in comparison, it will still suck.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:In other words by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Not sure what you mean exactly, as many Youtube videos are in fact in HD, and far surpasses the quality of my HD cable TV from Comcast, and has been that way for several years.

    2. Re:In other words by jittles · · Score: 1

      You will see the compression artifacts, flickering and pixelation with more colors now. Awesome.

      Face it, no matter how great the TV, as long as networks compress the signals badly enough to make YouTube look like HD in comparison, it will still suck.

      I signed up for DirecTV Now to take advantage of the AppleTV special offer and I can honestly say that the streams look amazingly clear. They have about the same quality as OTA broadcasts and is noticeably clearer than Comcast or U-Verse. The only problem is that the streams often pause even with gigabit Internet. This leads me to believe that they still have some technical issues on their end (though perhaps, since the gig ethernet is new in my neighborhood the issue is at my ISP).

    3. Re:In other words by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Before long they will probably solve the problems by reducing stream bandwidth, which in turn will make streams look worse.

      Anyway, even OTA shouldn't be considered some kind gold standard of broadcast quality because, well, it really isn't.

    4. Re:In other words by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      That's what I'm talking about. First of all, most YT videos are NOT in HD. But compared to Comcast et al, they sure look like they were.

      Once you've actually SEEN high definition, you wonder how you can even watch TV anymore. You'd feel like you would feel now watching an old 60s TV show on an old 60s TV.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  29. Colors by TheSync · · Score: 3, Informative

    The claim is "they can express all colors at any level of brightness".

    Currently every shipping consumer television (inorganic LED or OLED) can only display the DCI-P3 color primaries, making the entire color gamut a triangle substantially smaller than "all colors".

    Newer sets are able to receive color information in a container based on ITU-R Rec. 2020 color primaries, however no sets can actually display the colors outside of DCI-P3 but inside ITU-R Rec. 2020. Moreover, even the gamut of Rec. 2020 is not "all colors."

    To have a container for all colors with three primaries, you have to have color primaries that are not realizable, such as the CIE 1931 XYZ space or the ACES color space.

    However no one has yet invented a display system that can display colors that are not realizable, because they are not realizable.

    No system can display "all colors" additively, unless you use a system with color primaries based on all of the monochromatic colors (i.e. much more than three primaries - thousands). Four or five color primaries added together can get close. Allowing subtraction as well as addition of color primaries can help, but that is difficult to realize.

    1. Re:Colors by Kjella · · Score: 1

      The claim is "they can express all colors at any level of brightness".

      It doesn't mean what you think it means, if you have say a red, green and blue bulb then you can only do red at 1/3 intensity of white (R+G+B). Apparently this technology lets them shade all the lamps dynamically so you can have any displayable color at max intensity. It makes a huge difference for colors that are both strong and bright.

      Moreover, even the gamut of Rec. 2020 is not "all colors."

      It doesn't do all colors but it does do 99,8% of the colors you'll see reflecting off real world objects (Pointer's gamut). The only colors that are missing are those you'd only see by watching a laser show, because nothing but a 450nm laser looks exactly like a 450nm laser.

      No system can display "all colors" additively, unless you use a system with color primaries based on all of the monochromatic colors (i.e. much more than three primaries - thousands). Four or five color primaries added together can get close.

      My impression is that by using quantum dots you effectively have more, not infinitely many but as many as you have different sizes of QDs.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    2. Re:Colors by dingleberrie · · Score: 1

      White.... all colors could mean white.

  30. All I know is LCD and "LED" is awful. by AbRASiON · · Score: 2

    I'm a CRT and Plasma man.

    I will not be upgrading my plasma until there's a superior option, it's as simple as that.
    OLED does sound good but burn in (like plasma, and yes, plasma does burn in, even the final models)

    I'm patient, she's still humming along ok, I think I'll get another 3 years out of my Panasonic 65".
    I want exceptional blacks, fantastic colour range, a non flickery display, movement that doesn't look weird. I want interpolation which can be disabled.
    Considering where the TV market has gone the past 12 months and game consoles, I pretty much 'demand' HDR as well as 4k.

    So, I'll wait, I'll wait a long time until they sort it all out.
    P.S all this "but this new LCD / LED trick makes them amazing!" yeah no. Just no. The blacks don't cut it in a dark room, not even close.

    1. Re:All I know is LCD and "LED" is awful. by hyades1 · · Score: 1

      Once again stupidity triumphs. A Consumer Reports story noted that several employees were brought into a room with 15 televisions showing the same program and asked to choose their two favourite sets. Every employee chose the two plasma sets. I bet that would hold true if they brought in a hundred people.

      Plasma provides a better picture. It's exactly that simple.

      --
      I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
    2. Re:All I know is LCD and "LED" is awful. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I will not be upgrading my plasma until there's a superior option, it's as simple as that.

      If you believed that you would have thrown away both the CRTs and Plasmas a long time ago.

    3. Re:All I know is LCD and "LED" is awful. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I cried a little when my last CRT ghosted after 17 year of good service just recently. I had used it as a contrast and color reference for the LCD-tv. The light bleed, it doesn't make hearts grow fonder.

    4. Re:All I know is LCD and "LED" is awful. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have a Sony GDM-FW900 for color sensitive stuffs.

      A 9th gen Kuro for 1080p or less material.

      For PC gaming, coding, and other stuffs, a large 4k LCD is great. Yeah, it's an LCD, and the edges of the screen have viewing angle issues when im sitting dead center, and black performance sucks.. and there's too much latency... but otherwise I'm happy with it for its limited uses.

  31. Re:The Hypocrisy of the Open Source Community by UnknowingFool · · Score: 2

    Let's be honest, it's an open secret that the Linux kernel contains large sections of copyrighted code from SCO UNIX.

    Let's be honest: that is a lie. When given the chance to present any evidence, SCO has refused. What was uncovered by the open source was revealed to be 1) not from SCO or 2) not in Linux.

    For those familiar with both collections of source code, it was generally assumed that SCO would win their lawsuit, and simply a question of what the fallout would be.

    For those familiar to the collections of source code, that is another lie. When SCO commissioned a study before the lawsuit to compare their source code to Linux, their own analysis revealed nothing.

    Although dismissed out of hand by IBM and members of the open source community who were constantly moving the goalposts, SCO did provide a comprehensive list of source files and line numbers in Linux that matched portions of SCO UNIX.

    Lie #3": Judge Wells dismissed 2/3s of their case because SCO did not provide specificity.

    The fact is, SCO's claims of copyright violations by Linux developers and users were valid, factual, and completely legal.

    Lie #4: Novell was found to by a court be the copyright holder of Unix and thus SCO did not have standing to sue. Thus it was not legal in any sense.

    To this day, the Linux kernel contains large sections of copyrighted code that came straight from SCO UNIX.

    Lie #5: Considering that the trial has not revealed these "sections" are I would have to rely on IBM's expert testimony that said SCO botched their code comparison tests when they said lines that remotely were not similar were similar, I'd have to think SCO is lying.

    The open source community generally is vocal in favoring the "little guy" against large corporations like Microsoft and Google, whose motives and actions are frequently called into question.

    Considering Google is a frequent contributor to Linux, I would say you don't know what you're talking about.

    It's bemoaned that the so-called little guy is unlikely to stand a chance against the massive and well-funded legal teams retained by large corporations.

    Lie #6: SCO sued IBM. It was not the other way around. At the start of the trial most Linux experts and insiders looked at SCO's claims and declared them bullshit because SCO accused them of stealing code when they had wrote most of it themselves.

    This is for good reason, that everyone should be entitled to the same rights, regardless of their ability to afford top notch legal teams.

    Lie #7: SCO hired a top notch legal team: they simply had no case.

    SCO was the little guy compared to IBM, a small company with limited resources simply trying to ensure their copyrights were protected.

    Again, SCO hired a top notch legal firm and were suing for rights they didn't own as Novell owned them.

    IBM squashed them like a bug, not because the lawsuit was invalid.

    False dichotomy: IBM squashed them like a bug because SCO's case was weak.

    In fact, SCO's claims of copyright infringement are generally accepted as mostly correct.

    Lie #8: No one following the case thinks that.

    Rather, IBM had the legal resources to draw out legal battles and win a war of attrition against SCO, no matter the validity of the claims.

    Lie #9: The record shows SCO was the one using delaying tactics. In fact, judges in their cases called them out repeatedly for trying a number of tactics like claiming that Oracle and Intel did not provide deposition testimony before deadlines: Oracle and Intel responded that SCO properly served them requesting depos

    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  32. QLED better than OLED ?!? by ctrl-alt-canc · · Score: 1

    But we missed PLED ! What happened to them ?!?

  33. Burn! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do they burn faster?

  34. Samsung has ALWAYS been the Korean Apple... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In fact it seems to me like there were MULTIPLE LAWSUITS over that exact fact!

  35. Was this invented by Africans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Manufactured by Africans?
    Why not?

  36. Fluff by ShakaUVM · · Score: 1

    No release date or price, so this is just a fluff piece, really.

  37. Why? by Chrisq · · Score: 1

    Surely since we have three colour receptors in our eyes three colours at the peak frequency for each would be able to reproducce all colours? (excepting the small number of women who have two types of cone

    1. Re:Why? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Except our colour receptors are not monochromatic and yet the devices we use to generate colour are (or at least getting even more close to). What you say is true if you can match the spectrum of each receptor perfectly and then control the simulation of each individual one.

      The math for colour analysis and conversion we did in our last year of uni brings back some bad memories. Like roll in the fetal position under the table kind of memories.

    2. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And don't forget about color blindness! Especially partial color blindness!

    3. Re:Why? by cellocgw · · Score: 1

      You're on the right track. To reproduce a particular color, you need to get the correct signal ratios from the R, G, B receptors. In general you can't achieve that with only 3 monochromatic inputs - you don't have enough input variables to control all th output functions.

      --
      https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
    4. Re:Why? by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      A monochromatic source in the cyan region would excite the green and blue cones with less response by the red cones, than a combination of green and blue sources with the same green and blue cone response would excite the red comes. By causing less red cone response, the cyan source is perceived as purer.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  38. Instead of giving us better TV displays... by LordHighExecutioner · · Score: 1

    ...could you please give us better TV programs ?

  39. ...quantum dot nanocrystals? by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

    Okay, I'm not even remotely knowledgable about such things, but whenever I see Star Trek-like technobabble like this, my woo alarms immediately start firing.

    Is this actually a thing, or most more marketing bullshit?

    1. Re:...quantum dot nanocrystals? by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

      To answer my own question, apparently it's both. It is a new atomic-scale technology, but marketing still used a stupid term to describe it. (I consider "Quantum" to be a completely destroyed, nonsensical term, like "Cloud")

      from http://www.explainthatstuff.co...

      "A quantum dot gets its name because it's a tiny speck of matter so small that it's effectively concentrated into a single point (in other words, it's zero-dimensional). As a result, the particles inside it that carry electricity (electrons and holes, which are places that are missing electrons) are trapped ("constrained") and have well-defined energy levels according to the laws of quantum theory (think rungs on a ladder), a bit like individual atoms. Tiny really does mean tiny: quantum dots are crystals a few nanometers wide, so they're typically a few dozen atoms across and contain anything from perhaps a hundred to a few thousand atoms. They're made from a semiconductor such as silicon (a material that's neither really a conductor nor an insulator, but can be chemically treated so it behaves like either). And although they're crystals, they behave more like individual atoms—hence the nickname artificial atoms."

  40. RLED next? by the_B0fh · · Score: 1

    I can't wait for 2018, the year of the RLED displays. or 2020, the year of the SLED displays. But what's going to be really amazing is not the TLED displays, but the XLEDs. Those XLEDs are going to be amazing!

    And the XXXLEDs? They'll fucking blow your socks off, among other things!

  41. Human female mutants can see four by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A couple percent of the population has duplicated blue-yellow receptors with a shifted crossover point. They see some colors more sharply. Thought to be a neutral mutation so far.

    Ditto for male color blindness which only sees two. Less deleterious since humans left nature and invented positional traffic lights.

  42. perfect monitor indistinguishable from window by peter303 · · Score: 1

    I have been observing experiments at SIGGRAPH several decades. Pixels resolution has gotten close to reality. Color systems like Samsungs are getting good. Six colors add some. What is really mindblowing is good dynamic range- capture bright light sources and deep shadows. A good HDR display starts to look like that desired window. Its not just the monitor. The full system requires a compatible camera and encoding protocol. The recently announced HDMI standard upgrade helps.

  43. Re:The Hypocrisy of the Open Source Community by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The open source community generally is vocal in favoring the "little guy" against large corporations like Microsoft and Google, whose motives and actions are frequently called into question.

    Considering Google is a frequent contributor to Linux, I would say you don't know what you're talking about.

    So is Microsoft.

  44. Re:The Hypocrisy of the Open Source Community by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

    At the start of the SCO lawsuit, it was not.

    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.