LG thinks HDR is the future of 4K TVs
BERLIN — Who said OLEDs are too dim to deliver awesome 4K content?
On Thursday, LG unveiled HDR (High Dynamic Range) OLED technology for UHD TVs that it believes beats standard LCD on most critical viewing metrics. These HDR 4K OLED TVs will arrive in 2016. The company hinted at the HDR technology at CES 2015, but never officially announced anything.
During what could best be described as a master class in display technology, LG explained at a Thursday morning IFA 2015 press conference how OLED's more precise pixel control, which allows for better regional contrast, better blacks and truer colors offers better support for a full spectrum of high dynamic range (from true black to true white). Another way to think about this is in terms of F-Stops on a camera. Standard LCD handles about 12 F-stops. OLED handles roughly 20.
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However, the key to tapping into this ability is content companies providing HDR content. In other words, you may not enjoy the best experience with 4K OLED TVs without HDR content from television and movie studios. Standard HD TVs and 4K TVs without HDR content won't be able to play HDR content.
IMAGE: MASHABLE, MICHAEL RATHMAYR
It might, however, be five years before all of our cable networks and content producers are fully ready to deliver HDR content. According to Bram Tullemans, senior project manager for the European Broadcasting Union, who spoke at the press conference, cable companies will need to provide more bandwidth and content creators will need production upgrades to handle the higher bitrate of this HDR content.
LG Senior Vice President Nandhu Nandhakumar, Ph.D., though, said studios have made a commitment to this content because, for instance, current DVD sales are declining. They see a "need to provide that compelling value [of HDR]." The BBC and Amazon are reportedly early supporters.
IMAGE: MASHABLE, MICHAEL RATHMAYR
Overall, though, the early days of HDR content may very well be like those of HD, where there was first some HD content and no HDTVs to support it and then a lot of HDTVs with the content providers catching up.
LG also showed off a pre-production version of an HDR content player on a Western Digital Drive that won't arrive until 2016.
LG has a vested interest in consumer OLED adoption as it's probably made the biggest bet on the display technology. There's certainly a lot of opportunity for OLED in the 4K Ultra HD market. UHD shipments should reach 4 million units by 2015, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, and it projects almost 16 million shipped by 2018.
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Mashable.com
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