LG Unveils The World's First 84" Ultra HD TV At Gadget Show Live Christmas
There's little to deny that LG has delivered something truly special with this beauty: a super sleek, room-swallowing 84-inch 'Ultra HD' TV that the company claims to be not only one of the very first Ultra HD displays to reach UK market, but one that also happens to be the largest.
Forget, then, for a second that the rarity of other such TV's means there's an unsurprising scarcity of native Ultra HD content out there (though with the likes of the London 2012 Olympics being partly filmed in the format, rest assured it is coming). And forget too that LG's display – officially unveiled at Gadget Show Live Christmas – will set you back a none-too-small a sum of £22,500. Because yes as you can no doubt tell from our footage, the TV is a phenomenal thing to see in the flesh. Ultra HD, for those unfamiliar, is the next big step for televisions, boasting four times the resolution of our now-standard Full HD 1080p displays (or 3820 x 2160 pixels). And what that means is a quality of picture like no other for a TV of this size; with the kind of vivid colours, deep blacks and smooth frame rate familiar to those who own high-end displays, but with a pixel count rarely beaten.
Exactly four times the resolution of 1080p, up-scaling high-definition content to images approaching Ultra HD is also relatively straight-forward, with LG Resolution Upscaler Plus promising a “better viewing experience” with whatever you throw at it. For fans of Passive 3D in favour of Active 3D, there's no denying a leap to Ultra HD will be hugely beneficial likewise. Whereas Active 3D delivers full HD to each eye when viewing 3D content, Passive 3D's reliance on inexpensive polarized lenses means a filter effectively halves the number of horizontal lines on show for each eye (to 1920 x 540 pixels), more in line with standard definition than the HD we're now used to. The two-fold increase in pixels means that viewing Passive Ultra HD 3D will bump the resolution on offer with Passive technology up to Full HD for each eye.
Boasting LG's award-winning Smart TV in addition, as well as 'Dual Play' which allows viewers to watch different images simultaneously on the same screen, there's no denying the TV's credentials, nor its impressiveness when witnessing it in the flesh. Still, there's a long way to come before Ultra HD becomes a mainstay in our living rooms, with everyone from film-makers to TV networks to videogame developers needed to push the format forward. Early impressions though? Stunning.
Also on display at the LG stand was what the company claims to be the world's largest OLED TV, the simply stunning 55” EM970 that's not only impossibly thin - just 4mm thick, it's breathtaking to see in the flesh, almost disappearing from view when seeing it from the side – but also a TV set capable of some of the most vivid, colour-rich pictures you're likely to see until the aforementioned Ultra HD TV's come around. 'OLED' stands for Organic Light-Emitting Diodes, a display technology that does not require a back-light to work, resulting in some of the deepest blacks and the most crisp visuals we've ever seen. Simply put, the LG stand was a particular stand-out for the day.
Richard Birkett
