LG Unveils 88-inch 8K TV That Doubles as a Giant Speaker (tomsguide.com)

Last year LG Display unveiled a rollable OLED TV prototype, which is reportedly becoming a real retail product in 2019. This year they're at it again with a giant 8K OLED set that doubles as a speaker and a weird flower sculpture made entirely of the flexible OLED panels. From a report: As TV's get thinner, it's getting harder and harder to produce audio that isn't thin. Enter LG Display's 88-inch Crystal Sound OLED set. It has a 3..2.2 sound system embedded directly into the display. The sounds emanate from the panel itself. And, thanks to Dolby Atmos support, LG Display says that viewers will be able to hear dynamic sound come from their top, bottom, left and right. Sony introduced similar technology on its A8F OLED TV, but that was a 4K set.

Comments

take it up to 11!

[Joe_Dragon]

take it up to 11!

Re:take it up to 11!

[olsmeister]

fuck everything, we're doing 5 blades.

Re: take it up to 11!

[Anonymous Coward]

We shall see soon enough

Re:take it up to 11!

[bosef1]

Citation provided:
https://www.theonion.com/fuck-...

Re: take it up to 11!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am so glad you found this. I never would have located that

Re:take it up to 11!

[stealth_finger]

Listen to this...seven...minute...abs

3..2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the heck is a "3..2.2 sound system"?

And good grud, people, "4K" UHD is virtually indistinguishable from FHD/1080p from across the living room. What does re-quadrupling the pixel count over a 1080 TV really offer?

Re:3..2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the heck is a "3..2.2 sound system"?

2.2 delivers two channels of audio, left and right, and additionally two other channels limited to the lower 8k of left and right, for two subwoofers.

The "3.." prefix however means they are faking those 4 (really 2) channels by using only three total speakers/sound sources.

Ultimately that means your left and right channels are only able to give you about two thirds of the reported dynamic range, and the extra subwoofer is worthless.

In fact I'd bet both subwoofers are worthless in this case.
If you take a single center low freq channel and actually wire it into a real subwoofer, as in a speaker with a large enough cone and range to reproduce low frequency bass, that does help add to the experience.
I somehow doubt their oled panel will be capable of that however.

Two high and two low frequency channels forced through three crappy high freq speakers is likely going to suck worse than a set of good headphones.

Re:3..2.2?

[LynnwoodRooster]

It's actually a Dolby ATMOS numbering system. The front 3 (3) are left/center/right. The next 2 are the subwoofer channels. The last 2 are overhead/ATMOS channels. So a 3 around/2 sub/2 elevation speaker setup would be 3.2.2. If you pair it with a few surrounds for the rear, you'd have a 5.2.2 system.

Re:3..2.2?

[Bobrick]

Nevermind the pixel count, where is the 8k content for this?

Re: 3..2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on your perception I guess

Re:3..2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

All the speakers are in the unit. That's the point here, derp.

Re:3..2.2?

[Miamicanes]

You're assuming everyone has a relatively small (under 50") TV that's hanging on a wall on the opposite side of a large room.

If you have a 65" TV sitting 5-6 feet away, the difference between 1080p and 2160p is ABSOLUTELY visible.

There's another reason to favor 4k content, EVEN IF your display is "only" 1920x1080 -- overcompression vs oversampling.

If your content provider overcompresses 1080p video, it's going to end up with less hard detail than your 1920x1080 display is physically capable of reproducing. If the same content provider overcompresses 2160p video, it'll probably STILL end up with significantly more real detail than the official 1080p version. So if you ignore the 1080p stream you're "supposed" to use, and instead grab the higher-bitrate 2160p stream and locally resample it down to 1920x1080, it's like applying oversampling.

Re:3..2.2?

[vux984]

"If you have a 65" TV sitting 5-6 feet away"

Then you are sitting too close? :)

Maybe not for THX specs or something, but for a normal human being / normal living room it is.

That said, I noticed an immense difference in the readability of text on the HTPC/TV setup I use for gaming, when i went from 48" 1080p to 70" 4k. I used to have to frequently move closer to the TV from the couch to read something. Now its crystal clear from the couch. Obviously the larger size is helping a lot with that, but I do think the 4k is a lot crisper too. For video... meh... a good 1080p stream looks perfectly fine to me, and I rarely notice or care that video content is 4k. At least with a 70" set and ~8-10ft away.

Re:3..2.2?

[ShanghaiBill]

And good grud, people, "4K" UHD is virtually indistinguishable from FHD/1080p from across the living room.

Not everyone uses it from across the room. I use a 43 inch 4K UHD TV as my desktop computer monitor. That doesn't work with 1080.

Re:3..2.2?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Check out what soundbars do. Check the ATMOS spec. You can put all the channels in the same physical place as long as you can beam-form and steer sound to where it needs to be. Derp, indeed...

Re:3..2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

All the speakers are in the unit. That's the point here, derp.

Re:3..2.2?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Yes. And they produce a 3.2.2 ATMOS surround experience. That's why it's called what it is. You get 3 front channels, two subwoofer channels, and two elevation channels. All from the speakers in the unit. Just like ATMOS soundbars.

Re:3..2.2?

[LynnwoodRooster]

I'm a fan of Milo Yiannopoulos and he proudly states he loves to do as you suggest. Does that count?

Re:3..2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

All the speakers are in the unit. That's the point here, derp.

Re:3..2.2?

[LynnwoodRooster]

2.2 delivers two channels of audio, left and right, and additionally two other channels limited to the lower 8k of left and right, for two subwoofers.

The "3.." prefix however means they are faking those 4 (really 2) channels by using only three total speakers/sound sources.

Derp, yourself. That is all flat-out wrong. That's what I corrected. Sucks to be you!

Re:3..2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're assuming everyone has a relatively small (under 50") TV that's hanging on a wall on the opposite side of a large room. you have a 65" TV sitting 5-6 feet away, the difference between 1080p and 2160p is ABSOLUTELY visible.

I agree with parent 4k is probably worthless to most mortals. Our set is 70" small house closest seating position 10ft away. That's 67 PPD at 1080 already pushing against limit of perfect human vision to say nothing of "give a fuck" margins... to say nothing of bitrate being limiting consideration by a mile.

Have to admit 4k technology demos up close are impressive... sure they push 80-130mbit/s and chance of living long enough to see any delivery network I can afford pushing bits at that rate is zero but still fun to watch.

Re:3..2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nevermind the pixel count, where is the 8k content for this?

You really don't want to know.

Re:3..2.2?

[Miamicanes]

Do yourself a favor... the next time you have the house to yourself for a few days, take the TV off the wall or cabinet, and move it to a spot that's 5-6 feet in front of wherever you're sitting. If it feels like it's too low, get a $2 concrete block from Home Depot. Ideally, your natural & comfortable gaze should fall slightly below the top of the screen.

I guarantee that you'll never again be satisfied with having the TV far away or hanging high after experiencing it in that position.

The truth is, 90% of people have their TVs in totally wrong places for viewing comfort. Forty years ago, 25" console TVs put the picture tube a few inches above the floor... because it was the most natural, comfortable place to put it. Then, people started putting smaller 19" TVs in stands to raise them up so their top was approximately where the top of a 25" console TV's display would have been. Sometime in the 90s, console TVs went away, TVs gained another two inches, and... stands remained the same height, because stores didn't feel like stocking two different families of stands. And because stores were able to convince people to spend hundreds of dollars on something that's basically four sheets of laminated particleboard with a pressboard back and doors on the front, they weren't about to let people walk out the door without doing their best to sell them the highest-profit item in the entire store.

Fast forward a few more years. CRT TVs grew to 32", and kept growing towards 40"... and the stands remained the same size. By this point, TVs were uncomfortably high... but because "everyone's" TV was that high, people assumed it was somehow desirable. Perversely, this is ALSO when wall units became really popular... many of which jacked the TV up even higher so they could keep the doors symmetrical with the bottom doors in the adjacent units, themselves tall enough to accommodate two rows of books or VHS tapes. In other words, by this point, viewing ergonomics had TOTALLY gone out the door for the sake of storage space and furniture aesthetics.

Then HDTV and DLP arrived... and stores pushed even HARDER to sell stands that were STILL absurdly tall to people buying them, even though most DLP TVs already had 4-10" of height below the screen occupied by the speakers, light engine, etc. People bought plasma TVs, and blindly put them at the same height as TVs that were on stands. Or worse, stuck them in even worse places, like high on a wall above the fireplace (attempting to get some use out of a wall that builders inevitably present as the focal point of a room that REALLY gets 99% used for "viewing television and playing videogames").

The point is, for the past few decades, people have been putting their TVs in the wrong place, for all the wrong reasons. Try putting the TV back where it belongs -- near the floor -- and you'll see firsthand how much nicer it is to watch in that position.

Re:3..2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know you can change fonts and sizes in some skins in Kodi, right?

Re: 3..2.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

right on!

Re:3..2.2?

[vux984]

'readability of text on the HTPC/TV setup I use for gaming '

Kodi was never a problem.

But for *gaming* the bigger + 4k made a big difference. As I've got my old 660Ti in the PC, I still usually run games at 1920x1080.

I've mostly switched video watching from the HTPC from Kodi to Plex on a Roku. (I got the Roku mostly because I was sick of the shitty Netflix experience on the PC and the netflix app on the smartTV was flaky too. The roku has been virtually perfect.)

Re:3..2.2?

[zlives]

"The truth is" people are watching stuff on mobile devices and tablets as much as tv's... they have no concept of audio and video quality.

64K

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the future.

Re: 64K

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a fantastic TV. I bought one for the family room but the kids were too rough and so I moved it upstairs where it would last longer. My wife disagrees. She does not like it at all

Video: Linux and license revocation, in American.

[Anonymous Coward]

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Ouch

[Anonymous Coward]

Panel doubling as a speaker surface? Very "creative". Problem is, a vibrating panel will look unclear. Small details smeared out by vibration.

Re: Ouch

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a nice looking TV and has a clever cord channel - if you need a different experience, like the subwoofers or whatever, or even a multi screen experience, you should get something else and not try to make an LG into a Visio, Atak, or Sceptre

Re:Ouch

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if it's vibrating towards you.

Re:Ouch

[OzPeter]

Panel doubling as a speaker surface? Very "creative". Problem is, a vibrating panel will look unclear. Small details smeared out by vibration.

Oh shit .. the LG engineers designed and built an 88 inch TV that doubles as the speaker surface without considering that a vibrating screen might look fuzzy.

Now that you have pointed out the obvious, I'm sure there will be much gnashing of teeth and wailing coming from Seoul as they realize how stupid their engineers are. After all .. who could have predicted such a thing? /s

Re:Ouch

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is at typical viewing distance it probably is not likely noticeable. The question I have is what does this do for the longevity of the panel? There is obviously the oled substrate itself, and then the interconnect between the oled panel and whatever the equivalent is of a TCON board for an oled

Sound dislocation

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what the formal name for what I'm describing is, but it's always ruined the movie experience for me when I'm watching on a TV that has a sound bar way below it. It's as if the sound isn't really coming out of the actors mouths. It would be a cool piece of tech if they could modulate the position (in future films) with some sort of 'sound centroid' tag, and generate the sound precisely where it ought to be coming from, ie the actors mouth, the exhaust of the car, the crackling of a campfire, etc.

4k is barely supported

[skam240]

Cool, so if I was an idiot with more money in my pocket than brain cells I'd hop right on an 8k TV when barely anyone makes media for 4k.

Re:4k is barely supported

[locopuyo]

There's plenty of 4k content. Every new movie, every new show on Netflix and Amazon are 4k. But yeah if you want 8k content, it's going to be a wait.

Re:4k is barely supported

[Octorian]

I really wish they'd just make a 4k OLED panel at this size. Until this launches, the largest OLED panel on-the-market for years now has been 77in.

Re:4k is barely supported

[thegarbz]

when barely anyone makes media for 4k.

What the hell are you talking about? There's plenty of 4K content. Not only is nearly every release getting a 4K version, but they are rapidly backfilling the catalogue with remasters too.

Then there's Netflix and other streaming content available in 4K too.

Re:4k is barely supported

[zlives]

could be a cable tv user... plenty of people watch their "high def" TV on cable which is looks worse than a 1080 blueray at every comparison including audio.

Re:4k is barely supported

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone is waiting for media for displays such as this.

I have a 40" 4K TV I use as a computer monitor, and enough additional monitors around it for the total equivalent (in resolution) of a single 8K display. I'd replace all of that with a single larger 8K monitor if I could. No need to wait for "content" to be produced.

Doubles as a Giant Microphone Too

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess they prefer not to discuss all the exciting double features.

might be good for a conference room

[Anonymous Coward]

8k wall display for data analysis

Use case?

[Yaztromo]

Okay -- I'm trying to picture someone who has the kinda of deep pockets to be able to afford an 88", 8k TV set, but who needs to use the internal speakers because they can't afford a proper surround sound receiver and speakers.

Anyone?

Yaz

Re:Use case?

[Octorian]

Yeah, I wonder that too. Anyone who buys a set like this has likely invested real money in a sound system that's separate from the TV itself. There's really no reason they'd even care about having any speakers in the TV at all. (unless it can replace/complement the existing center channel of an existing sound system)

Re:Use case?

[locopuyo]

Imagine even deeper pockets where this isn't even their main tv. It's just mounted on the wall in the kitchen or something. It wouldn't be because of money.

Re:Use case?

[GuB-42]

Prices will drop. But more importantly, having the panel itself being a speaker is good at least for the center channel, and considering the size of the screen, maybe even the left and right.

The usual setup has a speaker under the screen, it is not ideal, the center channel is designed to come from center of the screen itself. In theaters, most speakers are behind the screen.

Re:Use case?

[AmiMoJo]

The kinds of people who buy these are already beyond caring about value for money, so manufacturers throw in some tech they want to test out manufacturing for, and to get some feedback from reviewers who will actually try it out.

If this systems sounds decent they will introduce it in cheaper models, if not it gets ditched and they write it off as an R&D expense.

Re:Use case?

[thegarbz]

Okay -- I'm trying to picture someone who has the kinda of deep pockets to be able to afford an 88", 8k TV set, but who needs to use the internal speakers because they can't afford a proper surround sound receiver and speakers.

Yeah sure plenty of cases. You see proper surround sound receivers and speakers are thick. Quite thick. The better the sound, the thicker it is. There is a huge market out there for the "wife friendly" home system which is how these damn soundbars became so popular in the first place.

LG's 88" screen is about a thick as an iPad would look frigging awesome hung up on a wall somewhere. The same can not be said for a decent surround sound system.

(Though personally any woman who considers a soundsystem based on it's looks rather than it's sound need not apply with me)

Re:Use case?

[thegarbz]

Yeah, I wonder that too. Anyone who buys a set like this has likely invested real money in a sound system that's separate from the TV itself.

Unlikely. It's amazing:
a) the number of people who don't give a shit about sound.
b) the number of people who would prioritize a minimalistic living room over sound (see the whole reason sound bars exist).
c) the number of people who buy TVs to glue them on a wall and complain enough about the space taken up by their cable box underneath.

Re:Use case?

[Ormy]

...unless it can replace/complement the existing center channel of an existing sound system

I find it interesting you should mention this. When I first tried to put together a 5.1 surround system on a tight budget I thought I could use the TV speakers as the centre channel meaning one less speaker to buy. Back when all domestic AV was analogue it would have been trivial, just take the 'centre channel output' from the amplifier (line level if possible, but if only high-level available then use resistors to attenuate) and connect it to the TV's 'audio input'.

However now that everything is HDMI-only, sending only the centre channel sound to the TV along the same HDMI connection as the video is impossible without specialist (expensive) equipment. All it would take to make it so easy would be for the TV to have an option to output only the centre channel sound. Or alternatively for AVR manufacturers (e.g. Denon/Onkyo/Marantz) to create an option to send only centre channel audio to the TV. The only minor difficulty would be volume control, matching the output of the TV speaker to your others speakers at all volume levels with a minimum of user input. Or even if the TV had the option to display video from a HDMI input but play sound from a separate analogue (or digital) input at the same time.

Re:Use case?

[drinkypoo]

I for one would like my TV to be able to function as the center channel. If they've got it set up to do that, and if it will do that job, then that would be great. I can make all the other speakers unobtrusive, but that one always bugs me.

I'm nowhere near the target market as my TV is still a pre-LED-backlight 52" LCD from Sharp, but I don't see why people with higher-end systems wouldn't have the same thought.

Re:Use case?

[TJ_Phazerhacki]

Except the rich-ass people who buy this stuff aren't bothering to add a bunch of component audio to it anymore. Think about it, these people are the reason we have crappy wireless audio mandated on most phones.

Re:Use case?

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

There is a huge market out there for the "wife friendly" home system which is how these damn soundbars became so popular in the first place.

Sad, but true. I'm considering having my girlfriend move in and one of the first things she mentioned was moving my front floorstanding speakers and center channel to free up room in the living room.

Not sure

[Anonymous Coward]

How integrating speakers into even a large panel is going to give bass. Electrostatics were huge and still needed a bass module. For bass, you have to move air and alot of it. My HT system has an 18" woofer with about a 4 cu ft box in it. Velodyne units are monsters with a feedback coil to help linearize the VC. And it shows, that thing can shake the 2x4's in the walls. I just don't see how you get a woofer out of a TV panel.

Re:Not sure

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably are not going to get a lot of bass response from something like this. Considering how many thin screens hang on the walls these days it would probably shake itself right off the wall mount if it did.

8!

[antdude]

Lucky number for Chinese. :D

TV speakers continue to be garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

As TV's get thinner, it's getting harder and harder to produce audio that isn't thin.

No. As it has been forever, you get the best sound by using real hifi speakers, not the toy ones that come with TVs.

Re: TV speakers continue to be garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anybody wondering wtf this sentence was supposed to mean?
"harder and harder to produce audio that isn't thin"
I think was intended to mean:
"more difficult to produce audio _hardware_ that _is_ thin"
but the inversion (which should hold true) is:
"it's easier to produce audio _hardware_ that _is_ thin"
which is really fucking with my head.

Why 8k?

[jellomizer]

There needs to be a point where the screen resolution is high enough where any improvement wouldn't add to the experience. Where then we could use the ever increasing bandwidth for more useful data, vs sending pixels that we will not see.

Re:Why 8k?

[nagora]

There needs to be a point where the screen resolution is high enough where any improvement wouldn't add to the experience.

We're well past that point already. I watched Wonder Woman on one of the largest cinema screens in London, and not very far back from that screen, either. The quality was great, but I've since learnt that the images was "only" 2K.

8K on an 88" screen is just a joke.

Re:Why 8k?

[Ormy]

I would argue that the point where most users do not notice further visual improvement in standard TV/Movies is 1080p or 4K, depending on your eyesight quality, distance to screen and size of screen. Gaming is a slightly different story, I personally prefer as much resolution as I can get to display more HUD info without obstructing my view of the scene, whereas for movies I'm happy with 1080p.

The extra bandwidth will be used (its already started) initially for more colour information, i.e. HDR functionality that has started showing up on high-end TVs. After that it'll be about time for the return of another '3D' fad, which will fail miserably (as ever) unless someone finally figures how to do 3D properly (read: holography instead of photography)

Re:Why 8k?

[AmiMoJo]

A high end phone screen is around 500 PPI and looks visually perfect (no visible aliasing) from 50cm away. To get that on an 80" TV at 3m viewing distance 8k is adequate, 4k is not.

So 8k is probably at the point where we can stop worrying about resolution.

Re:Why 8k?

[jellomizer]

Did you factor the inverse square rule?

While an 80" TV is quite big, you can still normally eclipse it with your phone at around that 50 cm away.

Plus also for a TV you will be watching moving images, vs a static high contrast image like on your phone.

Re:Why 8k?

[zlives]

the benefit of more dense image is depth perception, at 8k (real) we can have a substantive discussion about perceived 3d images.

Re:Why 8k?

[nagora]

the benefit of more dense image is depth perception, at 8k (real) we can have a substantive discussion about perceived 3d images.

Do you have a link to something about that?

Re:Why 8k?

[zlives]

i think it was ces a few years back... let me gulag it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...