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TECHNOLOGYTuesday 9 January 2018
Fear not the alphabet soup of TV features unveiled at CES
By RYAN NAKASHIMA In this Friday, Jan. 6, 2017, file photo, attendees stand in front of a QLED TV at the Samsung booth video hasn’t been adapt-
AP Technology Writer during CES International in Las Vegas. ed yet.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — New TVs Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HDR
are coming with an alpha- Associated Press 10 Pro
bet soup of features de- Translation: Dolby pushes
signed to get you to spend circuit elements that can gle than regular sets. fooled by what are la- the color envelope fur-
more. emit light under certain But OLEDs aren’t as bright ther using 12 bits of color
There’s OLED and 4K, with conditions; OLEDs do so as other displays and can beled “LED” TVs. These are depth to offer 69 billion
a dash of HDR. How about using a layer of material suffer “burn-in” if a static color variations. Video also
QLED and QDEF? Samsung, based on carbon, which image is left on screen for still LCDs, backlit by LEDs. comes with hidden instruc-
LG and other TV manufac- in a technical sense makes too long. tions for compatible TV sets
turers are showcasing new them organic. Sets using MicroLED Because there aren’t as to calibrate HDR frame by
models at the CES gad- OLEDs, primarily made by Unpacking the acronym: frame. By contrast, stan-
get show in Las Vegas this LG, tend to be pricey be- Micro light-emitting di- many LED sources behind dard HDR and HDR10 offer
week — all with acronyms cause these screens are odes. one setting for the entire
to set their sets apart. difficult to produce. Translation: Just as with the pixels as there are pix- video, which may not re-
Fear not. Here’s how to Pixels, the individual points OLEDs, sets with MicroLEDs flect what’s best for each
translate the tangle of that form an image, are have self-illuminating pix- els, there is still some wash scene.
great-sounding upgrades self-illuminating and can els, but the material used There’s no TV set yet able
into plain English. thus be shut off individual- is slightly different and isn’t of brightness where bright to handle the 12-bit range,
HD, 4K, 8K ly. That means images can organic. just some that use a 10-bit
Translation: High definition have truly black areas — Samsung says MicroLEDs and dark meet and less version of Dolby Vision. Sets
has 1,920 pixels across and rather than just very dark. are brighter than OLEDs that incorporate Dolby Vi-
1,080 vertically. UltraHD, Sets also cut down on light and offer the same ben- than complete darkness in sion pay a royalty to Dolby
or 4K, has twice as many spillage in scenes where efits of high contrast and for the technology. Not
in both directions — 3,840 bright and dark colors are deep blacks, without burn- dark shots. Still, many man- wanting to go there, Sam-
across and 2,160 vertically, side by side; you see sharp- in. sung developed some-
which gives you four times er contrast. OLED sets also Samsung is unveiling a 146- ufacturers tout “local dim- thing called HDR10+ that
as many pixels. 8K, primar- have a wider viewing an- inch MicroLED set this year. offers frame-by-frame HDR
ily promoted by Sharp, of- Questions surround their ming” or special control of but sticks to 10 bits. It’s an
fers 7,680 pixels across and ease of manufacturing open standard, one sup-
4,320 down. and ultimately, their price. the backlights to reduce ported by such major
8K sets are mostly for show Don’t expect to see mass- brands as Amazon, Pana-
for now — with video lim- market availability of this light spillage. sonic and 20th Century
ited to the occasional ex- kind of set any time soon. Fox.
perimental broadcast. LCD HDR and HDR10 Meanwhile, LG announced
The choice between 4K Unpacking the acronym: Monday it is doing some-
and HD is still a real debate. Liquid crystal displays. Unpacking the acronym: thing similar — and calling
It all depends on how far Translation: In an LCD it HDR 10 Pro.
away you’ll sit from your screen, the most com- High dynamic range using Quantum dots, QLED, QDEF
TV and how big it is, which mon form of display, a thin and Q-whatever
we explain with this handy panel of electrically con- 10 “bits” to represent color Unpacking the acronym:
tool at http://interactives. trolled liquid crystals se- It’s complicated
ap.org/2015/tv-buying- lectively blocks light or lets gradations. Translation: Quantum dots
guide . it through. The light that are tiny particles that emit
OLED makes it through passes Translation: Everyone sharp colors based on their
Unpacking the acronym: through red, blue or green particular size. Because the
Organic light-emitting di- filters to form a full spec- who’s ever used a camera size can be finely tuned,
odes. trum of colors. the colors can be very ac-
Translation: Diodes are The knock on LCDs is that has seen what happens curate. Also, because they
they must be “backlit” by give off color, there’s no
a light source. Don’t be when you under- or over- more need for filters — at
least that’s the promise. To-
expose a photo. Either the day’s quantum dot sets still
do use filters, though be-
bright parts wash out the cause of fine-tuning, they
represent reds and greens
dark parts or everything is better than other sets and
reduce the amount of
too dark. HDR aims to in- power wasted when light
gets filtered out.
clude both the brightest Beware of the stuff that
comes after the Q. While
bright parts and the dark- Samsung calls its version
QLED, it doesn’t mean it
est dark parts without let- uses OLED screens. Rather,
Samsung’s QLED sets are
ting either dominate the backlit by standard LEDs
and have the same prob-
image. lems with light spillage that
other LEDs have. QDEF is
An industry group calls for Hisense’s version, also with
light spillage. q
HDR TVs to display about
1 billion variations of color
and brightest brights that
are 20,000 times brighter
than the darkest parts of
the screen image.
Video needs to be
streamed in HDR format
for you to see the improve-
ments. Some online ser-
vices are offering new Hol-
lywood hits and their own
TV series in HDR, but a lot of
