HD Televisions

Sony has announced it is due to release LCD TV’s with 200Hz refresh rates - double that of the best available at present.

Sony’s Z4500 HD TV with what they call “200Hz Motion Plus” technology will yield the “smoothest and crispest LCD image ever” they claim.

The Z4500 has a 80,000:1 contrast ratio and is vertified by the Digital Living Network Alliance to enable simple streaming of content over a network from PCs and other devices which is an excellent addition and hopefully more will follow suit.

The european launch is due before Christmas.

Also confirmed at the IFA, Philips confirmed their latest offereing - An HD TV measuring a super-slim 38mm at its thinnest point. The Essence HD LCD TV also comes with a refresh rate of just 2ms and of course, full 1080p resolution.

The set comes with a seemingly standard 3 HDMI ports, but also has a DLNA network streaming link, and a great a removable 2x 15W sound bar.

Along with the Essence - model number 42PES0001 - the TV comes with a “connectivity hub” tuner box into which you can connect all the cables from consoles, STBs, DVD players etc which includes all video, power and audio. From the same box there is just one cable that extends up to to the display itself making it a neat cable tidy too.
  
Current pricing estimates put the Essence at around the £2000 however so it is not cheap - it is due to release in September.

Panasonic unveiled its 150in Viera display at IFA in Berlin. The TV also has an amazing resolution of 4096 x 2160 which puts any other TV to shame.

They didn’t say however whether the Television - which stands at 3.81m tall - is based on plasma, LCD or another technology, but all specs seem to indicate it is a plasma. Panasonic claims the immense picture would even be apparant when using the televisions multiple picture-in-picture images.

The set will launch in the UK next year although the price hasn’t been unveiled yet - get saving now though because this will surely be expensive. Its also worth rememebering that most manufacturers claim largest/best/insert_craze here and its usually been beaten within a few weeks/months.

OLED televisions are the latest buzzword amongst electronic companies marketing teams. However, there is little to no information about the technology. This article takes a deeper look into OLED.

The screens are ultra-thin, making them lightweight and easy to move around. They also offer wider viewing angles that current sets. SED was once quoted as being the next technology that will arise, but after patent disputes with a company called Nano-Proprietary, it pretty much killed the technology. OLED, if it makes it, is not without its problems - Plasma and LCD are the current focus point and are selling very well, but the IP behind OLED is held tightly, so any firms wishing to invest in development has significantly increased costs, but of all the new “latest-and-greatest” tech, this one is most likely to succeed.

OLED tecnhology has been around since the 1950s. It was much later however before the first demonstration of the screens took place, in the mid-1990s. OLED technology uses organic compounds that generate light when they an electric current passes through them. If this compound is sandwiched between electrodes on a sheet of glass and it replicates the same thing - albeit only one colour. Of course, to utilise colour, the panel must be made of of red, green and blue (RGB).

One advantage of OLED over LCD is that the panels generate their own light - LCDs require a seperate light source which leads to poor color reproduction. Not only is this far better in OLED but it also leads to less power consumption. The backlighting required on LCD screens means that it is always present, wether there is 1, 100 or 10000+ pixels lit. OLED pixels however consume power only when they are lit.

Not only is the color reproduction better, but this also means the contrast is better than LCD - on the best LCD set, due to the backlighting, even the areas that are meant to be black on a screen let some light through.

The pixels on OLED’s can also be turned on/off very quickly, which is another let down on LCD screens. The response times on LCD’s varies but is generally about 1000 times slower than an OLED screen. Although 100hz refresh rates are meant to counter this, there are still often complaints of “ghosting” on LCD sets when watching fast moving content, such as sports. (Ghosting is the term used to describe artefacts left on a screen as it cannot update the picture quick enough - almost like its left a ghostly trail that slowly fades out).

The main thing consumers will be interested in is that the screens are typically ultra-thing - the 11in model from sony is only 3mm thick, the picture quality is far more advanced, with contrast levels of up to 1million:1 and there is, in theory, no reason (except cost!) why screens cannot be made that are bigger than even the biggest plasma screen available today.

The sets are not without problems. Firstly, as with all new technology, they are currently very expensive to make. The same 11in sony set costs in the region of £2500. Then main drawback however of OLED sets at the moment however is the lifespan - it is currently nowhere near ready for mass production, and the duration is no where near that of LCD and Plasma. Unless this can be sorted out quickly then the sets will not make it very far, and will be shrugged aside when the next technology buzzword appears.

Sony has announced an extension to its Sony Bravia TV range with a TV can apparantly automatically dim itself to reduce power consumption and improve contrast. It also boasts “floating speakers”.

The Sony Bravia X4500 uses clusters of energy-efficient red, green and blue LED backlights – rather than the more traditional white, one-colour LED backlights. Sony claims that means the Television can dim itself momentarily in dark areas of a picture, lowering power usage. (there are currently no claims as to how much this saves however).

Sony is also claiming that this feature also provides deeper blacks and enhanced contrast as it reduced to level of light lost, although this seems to be a claim in most new features they add. The speakers, despite the announcement, do not float on water - they do however appear to float in the air, but use of thing perspex bars on either side of the Television which are attached to the screen’s frame at the top and bottom of the set.

The screen offers 1080p resolution and provides support for 24p playback. The contrast is also an impressive 1,100,000:1.
There are 4 HDMI ports for plugging in all your HD television equipment, and the set also has a USB port for flash drives etc.

There is a lower model also launched, the Sony Bravia W4500 which doesnt have floating speakers, or the RGB backlight.

The Sony Bravia X4500 comes as 46in and 55in models later this year, but the W4500 will appear as 40in, 46in and 52in models next month. Sony has yet to confirm prices.

Matsushita - the owner of eletronic giants Panasonic – has previously said it will be aiming to deliver 37in OLED TVs by 2011. However, it is now beleived the company will make 40in OLED screens available within the same timescale.

A report from the Japanese news source “Nikki” and also reported by the Associated Press, and theregister, Matsushita is beleived to be be churning out sets through a mass production facility which will include the 40in OLED panels - also by 2011.

They are thought to be investing ¥300bn (£1.4bn/$2.8bn) in a manufacturing plant where OLED screens will be produced, however there is no information available on how much the sets are likely to cost at present.

It is likely to be several thousand pounds however, given that Sony (which are traditionally quite expensive in comparison) has already developed an 11in Oled screen which will cost around $2500 (about £1300) and will be commercially available by 2009 in the UK.