LG 4K LED TVs : Nine Series at CES 2015

As usual, CES is truly the “Big TV Show”, and LG will be one of the main company to watch for that. The company has made it official that it will present no less than 9 series of TV products (in order of quality: UC9, UB9800, UF9500, UF9400, UF8500, UF7700, UF6800, UF6700). This year, the two buzzwords at LG will be Quantum Dots and ColorPrime.

Quantum Dots is a display technology based on crystal materials that emit different colors depending on their particle size. This allows the creating of displays with better color characteristics than those using a white-light and color filters. ColorPrime is more of a marketing term that actually encompasses, but is not limited to, Quantum Dots. It’s LG’s way to say that the color gamut can be up to 30% better, according to LG’s own data.

As we’ve said before, Web OS  will be a critical part of LG’s 2015 TV lineup, but since there is still relatively little 4K content, it’s also important to handle 1080p content in a manner that makes the new 4K TVs look better: that’s where the upscaler comes in. It can take a 1080p input and upscale it to 4K using image processing algorithms to sharpen and enhance the source image. For sure, it’s not as fancy as a native 4K image, but upscaling can work wonders in many cases. The internal HEVC CODEC also supports 4K in 30 or 60FPS.

Last but not least, five out of nine models will use the ULTRA surround sound system, which has been developed with Harman/Kardon. This is a very interesting development because many new large-TV buyers find after the fact that the audio of their new TV doesn’t match the visuals. That is exactly why the sound bar market is on fire as of late. I’m also curious to see what surround sound format the LG TVs will support.

Note that this announcement concerns LED TVs only. It is unthinkable that LG won’t announce any sort of OLED line-up as well. At this point OLED still leads in terms of color gamut and contrast, but at prices that are not yet consumer friendly. Any improvements in the LED space is still very much welcome, especially when it comes with a friendly interface like Web OS.

Hubert Nguyen
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Tags: CES, CES 2015, lg 4K led tvs, televisions