The Era of Curved 4K TVs and Why You'll Want One
Curved Screens Ahoy!
If the TV industry has its way, it won't be long before you'll join the 4K TV or better yet, the Curved 4K TV bandwagon. Think it’s a gimmick? You're not the only ones. After all, the advantages aren’t immediately apparent besides the impressive engineering feat when these TVs have only been showcased at tradeshows without a detailed hands-on experience - at least until now.
Curve TVs aren't exactly new for those who've been following the tech scene closely. In fact, Samsung unveiled a sizable curved OLED TV for showcase at CES 2013. Moving forward, LG became the first to ship a curved OLED TV in to worldwide retail channels and in fact, HardwareZone conducted a PlayTest event to talk about TV trends and show off the LG EA9800 curved OLED TV exclusively to our members. It is however a full HD TV.
Since then, a number of newer curved TV screens have been announced in CES 2014 with Samsung the first to deliver curved 4K TV screens to the market. As reported just a couple of weeks ago at a local media launch event for the new range of Samsung TVs, there are four more curved screen TVs joining the local TV market in addition to the lone LG model. Of the four new Samsung curved screen TVs, two of them support 4K resolutions - making them truly the world's first curve Ultra-HD TVs to hit retail.
To get a better understanding of how the new generation curved UHD TVs are going to improve our TV viewing experience, HardwareZone paid a visit to Samsung's headquarters in Seoul, South Korea.
Why Consider 4K TVs?
Before we move forward with curved 4K TVs, let's take a step back and study the 4K proposition since curved 4K TVs build upon their advantages.
Last year in 2013, the highlight of the TV industry was the debut of Ultra HD TVs in retail. Also commonly referred as 4K TVs, such TVs are able to render content at a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels, which is four times the spatial resolution of Full HD TVs (1920 x 1080 pixels).
Now, a common question we've seen and heard in discussions is why the need to go to 4K TVs when many content and broadcast channels are still struggling to deliver 1080p in this region. Fortunately, most if not all the 4K TVs from the major brands have incorporated image processors that can up-convert any signal or content of any resolution to that of 4K resolution. And this works reasonably well because the upscaling is linear in nature. While it won't match real native 4K content, you'll be pretty satisfied with the outcome. Here's a split-screen sample of Samsung's 65-inch UA9000 series UHD TV upscaling 1080p content:-
Whether you realize it or not, the limits of 2K resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels) are starting to show these days because of the following reasons:-
TV designs are increasingly taking the minimalist approach with almost nonexistent bezels and slim designs. That and the fact that TV prices are generally progressing on the downhill path, thus encouraging potential customers to shop for larger screen TVs.
As more people jump on the large screen bandwagon, the current sweet spot are TVs that are sized between 50 to 60 inches. As you progress towards screens larger than this size range, individual pixels are easily visible and this dents the viewing experience even on a 2K resolution screen.
Display technology used on your smart mobile devices are improving at a faster pace as the screen sizes are rather small as compared to the TV and are easier to evolve. Because of the high pixel density on premium mobile products, consumers tend to expect the same on the big screen too.
4K displays solve both of the above concerns by quadrupling the number of pixels required to be rendered on the screen.
Another not so commonly shown example is how 4K displays can improve your Smart TV experience. The new 2014 TV models from Samsung come with an updated Smart Hub feature set which includes a function called Multi Link Screen that allows you to watch a TV channel and a video from the Smart Hub content channels simultaneously, or watch TV and browse the web side-by-side.
The problem with standard 2K resolution TVs is that web browsing and reading content are still less than desirable where text may not be easily readable at a distance. With a UHD TV, you'll get much sharper text which overcomes this issue. To prove this point at an extreme level, Samsung showed off two similar TV models, one with Full HD resolution and the other at Ultra-HD resolution, displaying the same text heavy content.
Note that the source content resolution for each is also native to the respective TV's display capability.
The Case for Curved TVs
Price aside, we guess 4K TVs now sound more palatable. So why should you consider a curved TV or a curved 4K TV? Spending some time with these new generation TVs, here are a few key reasons, some of which might strike you more strongly than others:-
Immersive viewing experience
With a curved TV, the entire screen from the center to the edges of the screen is equidistant from your eyes. By bringing the screen edges closer, curved TVs are perceived to offer a wider viewing experience (due to a wider field of view) than the equivalent flat TV counterparts.
Comfortable, Distortion-free Viewing Experience
As the entire screen being equidistant from your viewpoint, it provides you with an uniform viewing experience.
Even if you're not seated directly in front of the TV, we've found that viewing experience is still better than if it was a flat screen TV. For example, if one were to sit at the left corner of the room, on a flat TV, the center to the right portion of the screen would certainly appear distorted. With a curved screen, viewing the same area would be less stressful as the screen is slightly curved towards your seated area. You might argue that the left side of the TV would then appear distorted since the screen is curved inwards. We had the exact same thought as well - until we tried the curved TVs personally in various seating positions and found that to be a non-issue.
In short, the curve TV experience did indeed improve viewing experience, but it's not immediately evident unless you give further thought and make comparison notes.
Optimal Viewing Experience
Our above findings are also partly due to the time invested by Samsung to figure out the optimal viewing distance as well as the ideal screen curvature. According to Samsung's internal study conducted to visit various homes to figure out the average living room size, preferred screen size and the seated distance from the screen, the investigation revealed that most homes these days have a small living room with a comfortable viewing distance of 3 to 4 meters from their TV.
Based on the viewing distance and the living room size, Samsung has determined an optimal curvature of their TVs using a radius of 4.2 meters, or also otherwise abbreviated technically as 4200R.
Since most homes either position their sitting furniture at a similar distance from the TV or don't have a large living room, Samsung has applied the same curvature to all their curved TVs, regardless of size. This means, the larger a Samsung curved TV gets, your immersive level increases as the screen envelops you more.
This is a different approach to that taken by its competitor, LG, who has chosen to deploy screens with varying curvature depending on screen size, such as 4600R and 5000R. For example, LG's sole curved 55-inch EA9800 TV uses a curvature of 5000R. Using a larger radius, this means its curvature is slightly less pronounced than the equivalent sized Samsung model.
At this point of time, these differences aren't immediately apparent and it will take us time to do a more thorough evaluation to convey our findings. So stay tuned for that in the future.
Clearer Picture
Say yes to less reflections and light interference with curved TVs! This has been a major bugbear for many home owners as most TVs have a glossy finish which ends up performing poorly in rooms with bright ambient light. Curved TVs definitely help reduce reflections and according to Samsung's study, it's about 50 to 80% less than a flat screen TV. This alone helps improve the TV's contrast ratio by 50%, thus giving it a more vibrant, punchier and clearer picture than an equivalent flat TV.
The Samsung Edge: Auto Depth Enhancer
As if the curved TVs needed any more assistance to further stand out, Samsung has equipped its curved TVs with a function called Auto Depth Enhancer that analyses images and helps create more visually stunning images that give it a sense of depth – somewhat. It’s not 3D, but the enhancement does give it a slight tinge of that effect.
It’s an exclusive function to their curved TVs and you can’t disable it, nor can you find it in their traditional flat panel TVs. Here’s a snippet from Samsung on what the function does followed by sample photos of it in action when compared with a flat TV:-
“Samsung utilizes an area-based contrast enhancement algorithm called Auto Depth Enhancer to elevate the perceived depth from a curved screen for consumers to experience life-like, multi-dimensional pictures and maximize their immersive experience with Samsung curved TVs. Auto Depth Enhancer works by splitting each frame into multiple areas to analyse the similarity of brightness and color histogram. It then automatically optimizes the contrast for each area to add greater depth to the scenes”
Behind the Scenes: Creating the Curved UHD TV and TV Trends
So we've expounded quite a bit on why you would be compelled to make the change to a UHD/4K TV, or better yet, a curved UHD/4K TV. Since we were at Samsung's headquarters, we struck a dialog with the top heads of the company's Visual Display Division in Samsung Electronics on how they came about their curved TV designs and other TV trends:-
Mr. Iksuk Choi: Vice President, Head of Asia Product Marketing, VD Division, Samsung Electronics
Mr. Sangdo Lee: Director, Global Product Marketing, VD Division, Samsung Electronics
Mr. Gwonjin Moon: Principal Engineer, TV R&D, VD Division, Samsung Electronics
HWZ: What are some of the changes that have occurred that allowed Samsung to make a curved TV?
Samsung: The trend started to change when Samsung introduced LED TVs to the global market in 2009. Samsung found a solution to make these TVs have a very thin form factor, and with this solution we thought, why not bend it. By curving the TV, we would be offering an even better solution to our clients.
So last year Samsung introduced their curved OLED TV to the market, and the feedback from the customers was very positive. That is why we've expanded our efforts to apply to the UHD TV line as well.
HWZ: Is a curved screen necessary?
Samsung: So we often get this question; do you curve it because you can or do you curve it because it's necessary? Or does it give benefits to the viewers? Well, we knew it would give benefits to our customers over the flat version. If you go to IMAX theaters, you can see that the big screens are curved to give a better viewing experience to the movie goers. We knew that the curve screen will give a better immersive experience for our customers. So for us in the display industry, we now had the form factor that allowed us to bend the screen to form the curve screen and with the form factor, we're able to realize the market needs.
HWZ: What are some of the challenges that needed to be overcome to bring about curved TVs?
Samsung: We had 3 major challenges. The first was that LED displays use backlights and it's quite difficult to bend the backlight portion as it comes with a lot of challenges. We had to make sure there was a uniform emission of light from the backlight.
Our second challenge was to ensure there's uniformity in the bend to assist in the uniform emission of backlighting. The third challenge was at the production stage to ensure we had a good yield.
HWZ: So is it more costly to produce a curved TV than a conventional TV?
Samsung: There are elements that could push the manufacturing cost higher because we need to add on extra facilities and also make amendments to our system and manufacturing facility. Also the materials that are used to create curved TVs are different.
HWZ: How much can you actually bend the screens from a technology perspective?
Samsung: We've run tests from 3000R to 6000R to see the suitability for our curved TVs and we've decided on the 4200R standard.
HWZ: The curved TV's front face feels like polycarbonate substrate, so what is it actually using?
Samsung: It's not really polymer plastic but it is bended glass.
HWZ: Can you bend any kind of display?
Samsung: With regards to the currently available displays in the market, we can bend them all. We do have our plasma displays, but we decided not to bend it because it's not worth the effort.
HWZ: Samsung announced some 4K content will be provided with their TVs, but does it apply in all countries?
Samsung: To provide content in all countries, we need to overcome the intellectual property rights issue across all of them. If we were to provide movies on a global distribution network, we would have to enter into an agreement according to the conditions set by each sovereign state according to their laws and bylaws. So we're currently procuring content that doesn't have any clauses or stipulations - content that could be provided at a global level without any problems for distribution. Content will be procured by HQ and it will be stored in our media player device which will then be handed over to our customers.
HWZ: With TV designs taking a minimalist approach, how is Samsung tackling this to provide an appealing design to its audience?
Samsung: Customers in different countries and regions have different taste. For example in India, almost all households want their TVs wall mounted. Whereas most houses in SEA, they want their TV to stand on a table.
So yes the bezels are almost diminishing. So in the case of India where most TVs are wall hanged, it may be difficult to distinguish in design. However in the majority of the other countries, the TVs are placed on tables - so there is still an element in which we can play to distinguish TV designs by evolving the stand. So yes, we still have some room to differentiate ourselves.
HWZ: With TVs getting ever slimmer, how are you managing people's expectation in delivering a great audio experience if one doesn't want to purchase additional audio gear?
Samsung: Audio is a very important element of the viewing experience. We give a lot of thought in enhancing the audio quality that comes from the TVs. We're thinking and studying ways to have a thin speaker that can give equivalent sound to the bigger speakers or even better. We're also working on technologies such as waveguide to enhance the hearing experience. We would of course endeavor to work on enhancing audio quality without hurting the TV design.
HWZ: In Samsung's point of view, is 3D still an important factor when buying a new TV?
Samsung: While 3D TVs have been introduced a few years back, because of limited content provided, expectation from the customers has been dwindling. According to market research, the demand for 3D TV has peaked out in the year 2013. In fact they are now entering the fade out phase, so going forward, much of the demand will be for UHD and Smart TV.
HWZ: Is Samsung considering Glassless 3D TV solutions?
Samsung: We are working on glassless 3D TV options and have showed off a sample in CES 2014. We will be introducing the product to the market when we are sure that it can give certain benefits to our viewers. We do have many technical proposals on our table and we're studying the possibilities of the various prototypes.
HWZ: What about curved Cinemascope TVs? When can we see that?
Samsung: We've showcased this technology via our 105-inch product design. However, to commercialize it, we would have to wait and see.
HWZ: Are 8K TVs the next leap forward? Is there a need for it?
Samsung: We've introduced and showcased an 8K TV in trade shows. However with the lack of 4K content, let alone 8K, while we do have the technology in our hands, we will have to see whether the market is ready to provide enough content to justify 8K.
