Panasonic issued a press release at CES describing their new OLED TV, but they never mentioned it in their press conference and we never saw it at CES. We heard afterwards that it was shown in a private room, but we didn’t get an invite (Europe-only press was invited – Man. Ed.). But the bottom line is: this TV is not coming to the US this year – it is only destined to go to Europe.
The EZ1002 4K OLED is said to produce “double the brightness levels of a regular OLED screen.” That would mean 1000 or more cd/m² of luminance, which would indeed be surprising and leading edge. Panasonic gets panels from LG Display and they say 2017 panels will be good to about 800 cd/m², so Panasonic’s claim is either exaggerated or impressive indeed. We had a close look at development sets at IFA and at that time, the panel peak luminance was stated as 800 cd/m². Will this lead to a shorter lifetime, one must wonder if the higher luminance level is accurate?
At IFA, the company was suggesting that 55” and 65” models would launch. At CES, the company only confirmed a 65” model, the EZ1000. HDR connectivity has expended from the current CZ954 curved OLED model to include HLG as well. The color gamut is said to be close to 100% of DCI-P3.
One of the most impressive upgrades we saw at IFA was the deep black level gray level performance. Most OLEDs clip the darkest blacks having a hard time rendering very dark shades. At IFA, Panasonic show rendering of very dark gray levels next to a Sony RGB OLED reference monitor to illustrate that it is now able to duplicate the low level performance.
New for the EZ1000 is a “Dynamic Blade speaker” consisting of 14 speaker units (8 woofers, 4 squawkers and 2 tweeters, plus quad-passive radiator).
The TV has been certified by THX and Panasonic is working with the UHD Alliance to have it “UHD Premium” certified. It has not yet received the certification but Panasonic is confident that it will pass before the TV is released this summer.
Also launched at CES is a trio of UHD Blu-ray players – the DMP-UB400, UB310 and UB300. All can handle 4K video and are compatible with 4K video-on-demand services and footage from 4K cameras. – CC
