[CES 2013] LG has announced that it will demonstrate a new range of televisions including a huge 84″ that features a UHD/4K resolution, and a 55-inch OLED model which will be the follow-up of last year’s introduction of OLED televisions as official LG “commercial products”. It’s clear that UHD is best demonstrated with larger sizes and so far, most 84″ television that we’ve seen (including Sony’s own Sony XBR-84X900 84″ LED TV) have looked extraordinary.
However, the real question for both OLED and UHD TVs is: how fast can the prices drop? It seems really hard to sell a 55-inch OLED TV for $8000, so this has to come closer to $3000 before people start buying in volume. The 84″ has to drop by quite a bit as well. We’ve seen 70″ TVs (1080p) going for less than $2000, so although UHD is very good-looking, the lack of content and the high price tag may prove difficult to overlook for you and I. Yet, it’s hard to be insensitive to the sheer beauty of UHD on a 84″ display.But LG is not giving up on the traditional LCD TV market, and its second push at CES will be in the user experience (UX). We already know that LG has been working on a new Magic Remote which has voice control, but the company plans to improve the user interface in addition to adding ever more video on demand services.
LG has also made clear that it intends to have its TVs interact with smart devices like tablets, smartphones and computers via LG SmartShare and thanks to technologies such as NFC, Miracast or WiDi. Of course, one of the major complaints about smart TVs is that the user interface is laggy, so LG is going to update the central processors and graphics processors of its new TVs. A “120% faster” number has been mentioned in the announcement, so stay tuned. It would be amusing if we started running CPU benchmarks in television reviews.
Finally, LG has promised that the screen bezels will be squeezed even further, but of course, the company wants to keep the lid on the actual design, and no photos have been revealed.
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