Samsung discussed both hardware and content at its 2015 CES press conference and at a press preview the night before. The company introduced its SUHD lineup of 4K UHD TVs that focus on image quality.
With its latest lineup of LED-lit 4K UHD TVs, Samsung doubled down on its commitment to improving LCD display technology. The company also reaffirmed its asserting that consumers love curved TV screens.
The three new series that comprise the SUHD lineup are the JS9500, JS9000, and JS8500. Samsung introduced a total of nine new SUHD models between the three series. All three series claim superior color accuracy and gamut thanks to the use of nanocrystals aka quantum dots. Samsung says its new SUHD lineup "surpasses the limitations of previous displays."
Samsung demonstrated the benefits of HDR and expanded color gamut in this side-by-side display. The JS 9500 SUHD is on the right.
In case you were wondering what the S in SUHD stands for, the answer is a not any one word. Instead, it is associated with a number of words that include stylish, superb, seductive, smart, striking, and special. Of course it helps that the letter S is the curviest letter of them all.
The JS9500 series is at the top of the SUHD lineup, and it offers high dynamic range (HDR) as well as full-array local dimming (FALD). Samsung says the JS9500 is the first curved FALD 4K UHD TV on the market. According to the company, the new TVs feature 2 ½ times the maximum brightness of conventional LED-LCDs—perfect for HDR.
The JS9500 comes in 65-inch and 88-inch screen sizes. Because it is a FALD TV, it is not as thin as edgelit models. However it looks quite slick thanks to its chamfer bezel, even if the curve is not exactly necessary. Samsung says that its customers love curved screens and that more than half the 4K UHDTVs it sold last year were curved.
The edgelit JS9000 and JS8500 SUHD TVs are also designed as SUHDs. The JS9000 series is curved and the JS8500 series is flat. The JS9000 series is available in four sizes: 48 inches, 55 inches, 65 inches, and 78 inches. The JS8500 omits the 78-inch size but does offer 48-inch, 55-inch, and 65-inch options. Samsung said the flat version is for the US market only, where there is still a demand for non-curved televisions.
At the press event Samsung showed its new S9W TV, designed by Ives Behar. It's an 88-inch 21:9 4K UHDTV with a unique cube-shaped base that was likened to a pedestal for a sculpture. Supposedly the curved screen makes the displayed image more akin to a sculpture than a painting, and traditionally sculpture rests on a pedestal. The base allows users to move the TV in various ways, I'll have to get a closer look at Samsung's latest artistic statement in TV design on the show floor.
Ives Behar and Joe Stinziano show off the new S9W 21:9 ratio 4K UHD TV.
A 4K UHD TV is no fun if you have no UHD content to watch. To address that, Joe Stinziano, Samsung Electronics Executive VP, announced the company's participation in the HD Alliance, which aims to establish common standards for next-generation content. The alliance consists of 20th Century Fox, DirecTV, Disney, Dolby, Netflix, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Technicolor, and Warner Brothers. Hopefully, cooperation between companies will result in much more 4K UHD content in 2015. Samsung also announced a collaboration with 20th Century Fox to remaster movie titles in order to take advantage of the expanded gamut and HDR capabilities of Samsung's SUHD TVs.
There was news about Smart TV functionality. Samsung touted a switch to its Tizen operating system running on eight-core processors. The company says Tizen makes the smart TV experience run faster, smoother and offers improved opportunities for interactivity. The company announced several new additions to its suite of smart apps including the PlayStation Now video game streaming service and its new Milk Video app.
The company touched upon its commitment to better audio by touting its new state-of-the-art research center in Los Angeles. And it took the opportunity to introduce its new omnidirectional speakers featuring "ring radiator technology," the WAM 6500 and WAM 7500. The new speakers work with Samusung's mullti-room app and Milk music service and provide a whole-home audio solution.
I'm quite pleased to see Samsung concentrate on image quality at the show, even at the expense of building a thicker TV. Of course these are still LED-lit LCD TVs with vertically aligned (VA) panels, so there are isssues with viewing angles and screen uniformity. However, it turns out that many other major TV manufacturers have some variant of quantum dots in their LED-LCD lineup. In order to stand out from the pack, Samsung needed to offer something more. By embracing FALD and HDR, the company might just have achieved that with the JS9500.
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