We have a big issue of MDM this week with reports from the SID Vehicle event in the US and a short report from the Paris Motor Show. Chris also sent in a report from the Display Summit event, most of which is in LDM. As the editor, the range of different applications and technologies have shown how vibrant the display industry is at the moment. LCD, for a short while (in historical terms) pretty well took over the industry for a while, but OLED is chipping away at the total dominance. MicroLED is also very interesting, but still some way away from full scale commercialisation. We report in LDM that Sony has got approval for its CrystalLED display from DCI. At the moment, the technology looks too expensive for anything but the most prestigious cinema screens, but if you have seen it, you know how good it is.
Reports of the death of projection may also be exaggerated – in LDM we report that a French cinema chain is going all in on pure laser (not laser phosphor) projectors. That is really going to improve the average cinema experience. Samsung’s 8K QD LCD TV is about to hit the streets and pricing in the US looks as though it will be a bit less in price than expected at $15,000 for the 85″. The first reviews of the 85Q900R are coming out (e.g.here)
) and most are impressed, especially with the native 8K content that Samsung has been providing for reviewers. An interesting point confirmed by WhatHiFi with Samsung is that the company has said that it will provide a free of charge update to a new HDMI2.1 compliant One Connect box next year, when the chips catch up to allow the support for 8K at 60fps. The set as it is now can support input signals at 30fps only.
Reviewers are particularly impressed with the upscaling technology used in the set (described as ‘little short of miraculous’ in one review) and Samsung has done a good job in reducing the off-axis viewing performance in its best sets. However, they are not universally convinced by Samsung’s decision to slightly raise the luminance of the lowest black levels to get over some criticism of crushing of the lower black levels in the earlier Q9FN. There are mixed reports of the issues of blooming from the 480 dimming zones, the same as the Q9FN, and which were criticised by those that looked at the sets in the annual Value Electronics Shoot Out that Ken reported on. (High-end TVs Shoot it Out in Scarsdale)
The Samsung will only be available in 85″ in the US, while in Europe, there will be 82″, 75″ and 65″ variants (we heard at IFA that the 82″/85″ issue is because of the need to have two suppliers of the panel and not just rely on Samsung Display for all the 85″ panels). An unknown is whether the 82″ will have as good off-axis performance as the 85″.
It will be interesting to see if LG Display can make 8K OLEDs in volume. There are a number of really tricky technical hurdles, including (but limited to) an incredibly complex backplane and the difficulty in compensating the pixels, which you need to do to ensure uniformity over the product life. However, the combination of the latest scaling technology with an 8K OLED panel could deliver a very, very good image. LG Display has shown an 8K panel privately in its suites, but LG Electronics has not shown a production set, yet (the set shown at IFA had no delivery date or price). No doubt it will at the next CES, as LG Display’s Japanese set customers, Sony and Panasonic, particularly, will need to offer something in 8K and, no doubt, would prefer to remain consistent with OLED.
Anyway, all this activity and competition, the winners, as usual, will be the consumers. What consumers get in their devices these days is absolutely phenomenal, these days!
Bob
