SYDNEY: OLED 4K TVs have had a number of whispers circling around it too expensive to make for the consumer, high-failure rates in factory testing in short, great tech that’s struggled to climb out of the too-hard basket.
Well, rumours are damned. The day has arrived LG has launched an OLED 4K TV, as of today, in Australia.
OLED is the next-generation of displays – a new technology that is a significant upgrade from LED and LCD displays, which allows for individual pixels to be turned completely on or off. Instead of a backlight needing to light the panel, causing dark scenes to be difficult to see well, OLED offers a true black, with a colour contrast far surpassing current technology. That also helps to create a richer, vivid display for colours, too.
The other aspect is that the technology is sophisticated enough to deliver fast refresh rates for moving images (this makes it great for gaming) which reduces power consumption.
OLED is worth waxing lyrical about.
Ultra HD, also known as 4K, refers to a screen resolution of 4,096 x 2,160. That’s a whole lot better than Full HD, also known as 1080p, at the resolution of 1,920 x 1080. More is better, but the problem with 4K displays is that there isn’t a lot of content available in full native 4K. Netflix is streaming shows like Daredevil and Marco Polo in 4K, YouTube has plenty of content in 4K (and even 8K!), and GoPros and the best smartphones can record in 4K.
But there isn’t much else readily available, and if you want to stream 4K, you’ll need a fast-broadband connection, with even a fast ADSL2+ unlikely to deliver streaming 4K.
What’s available now?
The LG range of OLED 4K TVs come at a cost, but that’s the price for future-proofing. It’s going to be very hard to justify buying any other TV if you’re shopping at the price point.
The curved EG960T OLED 4K range, available in 38 Harvey Norman stores initially, are priced at $9,999 for the 65-inch model and $5,999 for the 55-inch model. You may be able to work with the retailer to get that price down a little too.
This complements the 55-inch Full HD OLED TV, the 55EC930T, which has been available in Australia for some time, and is priced at RRP$3,999, although we note retailers are offering it for as low as $3,288 if you shop around.
And the original OLED TV has proven popular. LG’s home entertainment marketing manager, Grant Vandenberg, told Techly in March that LG was selling $1 million a month worth of OLED TVS. It has sold 6,000 of the 55EC930T thus far, with the OLED 4K offering set to add further weight to sales.
LG is the first manufacturer to bring OLED 4K TV to Australia. Both LG and Samsung have shown OLED 4K TVs at tradeshows, but LG has beaten its Korean competitor to the retail market by some margin.
Samsung offered a 55-inch OLED screen as far back as 2012, but struggled with problems manufacturing the panels at mass, and going to ‘Quantum Dot’ LCD televisions.
