Panasonic Z1

Panasonic’s flagship HDTV is its thinnest 54-inch (137cm) plasma HDTV ever, with only 2.5cm depth. They did it by eliminating a third sheet of glass found in all other plasmas except Pioneer’s Kuro and bonding the anti-reflective coating directly top glass. The Z1 employs SiBEAM’s 60GHz 1080p for wireless glitch-free images sent via the included transmitter/media box from up to 10m away. The Z1 has THX picture mode and a custom calibration mode, plus nice bonus features including Viera Cast internet connectivity and an SD card reader for photos. The Z1 delivers amazing performance with full 1080-line motion resolution, accurate HD colour, deep black levels and 96Hz for judder free movie viewing.

The sexiest HDTV of 2009, the TH-P54Z1A has an RRP of $7000 in Australia.

Pioneer Kuro Plasma Screens

The Kuro models offer the deepest black of any high-definition display on the market — without any white-letter-on-black-background halos occasionally seen on plasma TVs. The Kuro models feature hand-selected parts, 6cm depth, custom calibration, 72Hz refresh and control over the internet via its Ethernet connection. The Pioneer uses a single top sheet of glass to minimise internal reflections, with the anti-reflection coating bonded directly to the surface.

In Australia, the 50-inch (127cm) PDPLX509A retails for $6499, while a 60-inch (152cm) size PDPLX609A has an RRP of $12,499.

Samsung Series 8

Samsung has the slimmest LED television in the world (3cm deep). It’s feature packed with wireless connectivity, four HDMI inputs, no edge blur thanks to 200Hz refresh, a PV+C input for connection to your computer or HTPC, and it uses 40 per cent less energy than previous similar-sized LCD TVs. This is a benchmark LED LCD to judge against every other make and model.

All this performance comes at a price. The 46-inch (117cm) UA46B8000 and the 55-inch (140cm) UA55B8000 retails for $4699 and $6499, respectively.

LG LH90QD

This LG has all the hot LCD performance features video freaks crave, including LED backlights for excellent black levels, invisible speakers, and TruMotion 200Hz for increased sharpness and reduced motion blur. This LG also has all the tweaks anyone could ask for including ISF calibration and LG’s “picture wizard” for user set-up without calibration discs or external test signals. The LH90 isn’t the thinnest LED LCD, but it more than makes up for it with its price.

The LG LH90 series is available in 42-inch (107cm) and 47-inch (119cm) screen sizes in Australia. The 42LH90QD has an RRP of $4024 and the 47LH90QD goes for $4944. In case you couldn’t tell, the LH90 series is the value/performance leader of the pack.

Sony XBR

The XBR series is the only HDTV available with separate red, green and blue LED backlights (rather than all white). It’s got accurate HDTV colour, local dimming for deep black levels, enough brightness for a beach house, a 178-degree viewing angle, 100Hz Motionflow technology and Sony’s Bravia Engine 2 signal processing.

There are three screen sizes available in Australia. The KDL40XBR45 40-inch (102cm) version retails for $2999, the 46-inch (117cm) KDL46XBR45 retails for $4999, and the 55-inch (140cm) KDL55XBR45 goes for $8499.

Gary Merson is the HD Guru, the industry’s leading HDTV journalist. He’s been reviewing TVs for well over a decade, and recently wrote a guide to choosing an HDTV.

The “3D LED Wall” is on show at the International Broadcast Equipment Exhibition in Japan, and really highlights just how much of a boner Sony has for 3D right now. They’ve got 3D laptops, TVs and Blu-ray players planned, and don’t forget new games and a firmware update will bring 3D to the PlayStation 3 next year, too.

[TechOn via Engadget]

The first 100Hz LCD TV sets were shown off by Samsung back at CeBit back in 2006. Using advanced processing powers, the TV analysed each frame, and then created a composite frame in between the two to smooth over motion blurring. This essentially allows the picture to run at 100 frames per second, which translates to smoother pictures.

If that sounds a bit confusing you should check out this old post explaining the NTSC version of the same technology, 120Hz. The difference between the two is that NTSC traditionally runs at 60Hz, where as PAL runs at 50Hz, and so both techs simply double the frame rate. It’s argued though that 120Hz, which is a multiple of the 24p frame rate of movies, is therefore superior for watching films.

The simple rule today is that if you’re buying an LCD TV, make sure it has at least 100Hz technology on board. There’s another, newer version of the tech called 200Hz, but as a minimum requirement, having 100Hz is a must.

History of TV is Giz AU’s month-long look back at the development of the world-changing medium and its influence on our daily lives.

Actually, I’m not sure if this flowchart makes anything easier. In the end it might just make fun of you and bring you back to square one. Still, there is some useful information in there if you are willing to go on the journey.

Make sure to click on the image to see the full size chart. [Gliffy]

To be clear, we’re only looking at sets that are at least 46 inches (117cm) — go big or go home. And though there are some nice 720p plasmas out there for amazing prices, the majority of TVs we’re concerned with are 1080p — it’s the standard now, even in cheap HDTVs, and probably the only resolution you’ll see next year.

We focus on LCDs quite a bit here, not because we prefer them, but because there are key enhancements that can be put in LCD technology to make them look better. With plasma, the problems — energy consumption, weight, thickness — are more of an evolutionary, year-to-year thing. A cheaper plasma often is one that’s just using older technology.

Also, we’re using Amazon as our pricing base line, since it’s on average a good standard for low but legitimate street prices, and we use Samsung examples a lot because they have a ton of different models on the market, so it was easier to isolate individual features and to gauge subtle differences in pricing.

Size Matters

The first and most obvious thing that’ll cost you is more screen real estate. There’s not an absolute inches to dollars ratio, but generally speaking, the first step up is the cheapest, and somewhere in the middle there’s a sweet spot, after which you basically lose money by upgrading. The funny thing is, each maker seems to have a different idea of where the sweet spot is, which you could play to your advantage:

Take for instance, Panasonic’s plasma G10 series. It’s $US200 to go from the 42-inch model to 50 inches, and then $US400 to go up to 54 inches. So the sweet spot is at 50 inches. Similar thing happening with Vizio’s XVT line: Going from 42 inches to 47 inches is just $US250, though going up to 55 inches from 47 inches costs about a grand. Hence 47 inches makes the most dollar-per-inch sense if you like that TV.

With Sony and Samsung, though, it pays to keep going up. In Sony’s top-of-the-line Bravia XBR9 series, the hop from 40 inches to 46 inches is $US360, but going from 46 inches to 52 inches is just $US250. Samsung’s LED-backlit TV costs $US350 to go from 40 inches to 46 inches, and just $US500 to go from there to 55 inches. (There’s a limit, of course, Samsung’s 65-inch LN65B650 doesn’t have many of the frills discussed below, but still lists for $US6000.)

The real lesson here: Don’t think of size as a foregone conclusion. When you’ve narrowed down your options using all the criteria, go back and check the sizes and relative prices. There may be a surprise, hopefully good but possibly bad.

Vroom, Vroom

Everything after size you can roughly sweep everything you’d pay more for into the category of performance. The grand trick of buying TVs though, according to our friend Gary Merson of HD Guru, is that “the TV industry is set up like the car industry”. Just like buying a Corvette to battle your mid-life crisis because it vrooms real good, when you pay extra money for extra horsepower, you’re also going to get leather bucket seats and the in-dash GPS. It’s hard to buy a stripped-down car that just delivers better performance, and the same goes when you’re trying to scrimp on a TV without compromising picture. In the case of TVs, a higher performer might come with a million HDMI jacks or integrated Wi-Fi and video on demand, and you never know exactly what you’re paying for.

Fortunately, we can break performance into two major categories so it’s slightly easier to interpret those price differentials: Backlight (for LCDs) and panel quality.

Fancy Backlighting

The single most expensive upgrade for LCD TVs right now is LED backlighting. As we explain here, there are a bunch of advantages to LED over conventional CCFL backlighting for LCD TVs. Which particular advantages you pick up depends on the kind of LED backlighting in the set. While both offer instant on and power savings, edge-lit models mainly deliver serious thinness, while backlit sets can offer local dimming, which delivers noticeably better black levels and contrast.

How much will it cost you? Well, comparing two Samsung sets with fairly equivalent panels, the price difference is about $US500. The CCFL-backlit LN46B650 is $US1360, while the UN46B6000 is $US1850. Because it’s got LED edge lighting, the B6000 is only 3cm thick, compared to the B650’s 7.8cm. When you step up and compare Samsung’s edge-lit to back-lit, the difference isn’t as great: A 46-inch 8000 series edge-lit model goes for $US2300, while the 8500 series with local-dimming is $US2600. (If you’re already paying for LED technology, you definitely want to step up.)

So yes, backlit LED sets with local dimming tend to cost more. Sony’s year-old Bravia XBR8 uses tri-colour LEDs to improve colour accuracy over the most LED sets, which use white ones. Though its production is discontinued, it’s still nearly $US2200 at 46 inches. However, Toshiba consistently delivers cheaper sets than most of its fellow “name” brands, and their 46-inch LED backlit set with local dimming is just $US1700.

Panels and Oh, It Hertz

The panel is the other major thing that determines how good an HDTV actually is, and it applies to both LCDs and plasmas. Typically, as you move up in price, you get a better panel. Cheaper sets generally use older panels with previous-generation tech that Merson says have a poorer viewing angle, so there’s a smaller area you can actually stare at on your TV to get a good picture. The problem is that no TV manufacturer actually declares its panel attributes on the box, so you’re often on your own to figure it out. The best way is to go to the store and check out the viewing angles.

Hertz, for the uninitiated, is simply the number of times per second that LCD TVs refresh their picture. (Plasma isn’t part of this discussion because phosphor pixels work differently than liquid crystal ones, and plasma’s “refresh rate” would be way higher — to the point of irrelevance.) A 60Hz LCD refreshes the picture 60 times a second, 120Hz is 120 times a second, and so on, up to 240Hz in the top-priced LCD sets. A higher refresh rate is supposed to increase the ability to see fast-moving video at its highest intended resolution, and it works well in theory, though there are issues with 240Hz execution. At this point, a minimum of 120Hz is a given on all premium LCDs, says Merson. There isn’t one LED-backlit set that doesn’t have it.

Here’s how the refresh-rate step-ups look: The 46-inch Samsung B550 is a standard 1080p CCFL-backlit set for $US1020. Moving up to the same size B650 for $US1360 — $US300 more — gets you 120Hz (plus a higher contrast ratio). Going up again, to the B750 for $US1630, another $US300, you get 240Hz, and again even better contrast ratio. That’s about the top of Samsung’s CCFL-backlit line.

You can see the same thing with their LED sets: The 46-inch B6000 is a 120Hz LED edge-lit set for $US1850. The 46-inch LED edgel-lit B8000 goes to 240Hz and it costs $US2300, about $US450 more.

What About Plasma?

As we mentioned, plasmas are a little less complicated, since there’s nothing like refresh rates to deal with. On the other hand, the situation may be more obtuse, since you don’t always know what the real differences are. Merson says there are a few basic levels of plasma performance. Stepping up to the 50-inch 1080p plasmas will generally cost $US300 to $US400 more.

There are more issues, however. Panasonic has a new panel called NeoPDP that’s more energy efficient, but it’s sometimes hard to tell which models have it and which don’t. (Hint: Look for the Energy Rating sticker.) Finally, you have THX-certified panels that offer nearly perfect calibration right out of the box. Beyond that, contrast ratios do tend to get better over time, but it’s relative: At the low end of the HDTV price spectrum, plasma sets have generally delivered better picture than LCD anyway.

Frills and Other Stuff

The funny thing about TVs nowadays is that there’s more to them than the screen. Like inputs. Until recently, one thing you got more of by paying more money were more holes to stick things into. That’s not really the case once you get up into 46-inch sets — you’re gonna get four HDMI slots in a set that big no matter what. But there are other things nowadays. Like video services that come in through other holes, or maybe without wires at all.

An example, to use our old friends at Samsung: The B6000 looks a lot like the B7000, but with the B7000, for $US180 more you get online video services via Yahoo’s widget engine, like YouTube.

Or, let’s look at the upcoming crop of LED TVs that aren’t even out yet, or are in limited distribution for now. LG’s 55LHX and Sony’s Bravia XBR10 both have wireless HDMI and 240Hz, but with Bravia Internet Widgets and Slacker radio, the Bravia is $US5000, $US200 more than 55LHX. Wireless HDMI itself is a pretty pricey feature. Same Sony, compared to Samsung’s 8500. The 8500 has built-in video services, but no wireless HDMI, and it’s $US500 cheaper, at $US4500. Oh, and did I mention that the Sony is even 7cm smaller than the Samsung and LG?

Wireless is still in the gimmick phase, but next year, we assume we’ll be able to track its price premium as well as we can track size, refresh rate, backlighting and other factors today, $US300 to $US400 at a time. How do you get from $US600 to a $US6000? You just add, add some more and then keep adding.

Backlighting is where an LCD stores all its mojo. It controls the brightness, the contrast, and the overall performance of a display. Not all LED backlighting is created equal though. Fortunately, there’s this great post explaining the intricacies of the different LED backlight types.

According to Wikipedia, the first commercial LCD TV with LED backlighting was the Sony Qualia 005 back in 2004. It used RBG LED backlighting, although it lacked the more recent ability to dim different sections of the screen that many current LED backlit TVs do. This means that these televisions are able to show blacks as true blacks, rather than a dull grey colour, thanks to the ability to turn off the backlight altogether.

Yet despite LED backlit TVs launching five years ago, it’s only in the past 18 months that the market has really started to offer LED TVs. Now, almost all TV manufacturers are promoting LED as the next big thing in TV technology. And until OLED becomes big enough and affordable enough, it probably is…

History of TV is Giz AU’s month-long look back at the development of the world-changing medium and its influence on our daily lives.

You will learn important lessons like: sizing your TV to optimise resolution, whether to choose LCD vs plasma vs LED and why you don’t need to spend money on a 240Hz TV. So make sure to check out the following link before you shop. [HDGuru]

Picture resolution in television has always been a problem. Depending on where you are in the world, the resolution of your TV broadcasts were widely different, with the US using NTSC (480 horizontal lines interlaced), while Europe and Australia use PAL (576 horizontal lines interlaced). Even today, if you buy a US DVD, you’ll only be able to watch it at 480i.

With high definition though, resolution becomes a constant globally (although refresh rates – which are part of the NTSC/PAL standards – are another thing all together). You either get 1280 x 720 progressive or 1920 x 1080 interlaced or progressive, no matter where you are in the world.

The first HD broadcasts occurred in 1996 in the US, although at that stage there weren’t HD TVs to enjoy the experience, instead being watched in special theatres capable of receiving the HD signal. Europe launched HD broadcasts in 2004, eight years later.

In Australia, High Definition has been relatively slow to roll out. Originally mandated to be a part of the launch of digital television in 2001, the free-to-air networks managed to get out of broadcasting true HD content thanks to the Australian Government’s false belief that 576p was high definition. In 2003, the Government changed their tune, requiring networks to broadcast 1040 hours a year of high definition content in the major cities around the country, although that could still be 576p content.

In fact, it was only in 2007 that the networks were able to launch an HD channel that broadcast completely different content to their SD offering. Ten was the first to announce their HD multi-channel plans, although Seven actually launched first in October 2007. Ten’s HD channel launched in December 2007 and Nine followed in March 2008. On the upside, the huge uptake in HD televisions meant that all three networks are broadcasting in 1080i, rather than the 576p some were passing off as HD.

Today, HD is now starting to truly make its mark. The Ten network launched One HD, a channel dedicated to HD sport earlier this year. Seven and Nine both have HD channels. Foxtel, which launched HD in May 2008, recently expanded their HD offering to more than 15 HD channels.

Considering how quickly we’ve gone from nothing to having a pretty wide selection of HD, it means the next few years will be pretty exciting for high quality TV pictures, especially as more and more HDTVs make their way into homes.

History of TV is Giz AU’s month-long look back at the development of the world-changing medium and its influence on our daily lives.

The latest object to shoot high-def video from the edge of space is… an armchair. To promote its REGZA SV LCD TVs (LED backlight, local dimming), Toshiba trekked into the Black Rock Desert with a helium balloon. This is the result.

This is the first part of the ad. The second half for their Satellite T Series ULV laptops will come out next year. [Toshiba UK via Engadget]

Facts about the shoot:

• The shots were taken at a staggering 98,268 feet above the earth using Toshiba’s own cameras
• To reach the altitude required and to conform with Federal Aviation Administration regulations, the weight of the rig had to be carefully managed to a weight of no more than four pounds
• Tied to the rig was a specially created full-sized model chair made of biodegradable balsa wood – the chair was made by a company called Artem and cost about £2,500
• Launch coordinates of the rig were – 119 degrees, 14 minutes by 40 degrees, 48 minute (12 miles North-East of the town of Gerlach, Nevada)
• The quality of the footage from the Toshiba IK-HR1S cameras was: 1920×1080 pixel count; 1080i @ 50hz; 100 Mbps
• The temperature dropped to minus 90 degrees when the chair reached 52,037 feet
• The chair took 83 minutes to reach an altitude of 98,268 feet where it broke and took just 24 minutes to fall back down to earth with the rig.

If you’re a fan of LCD TVs, then you owe a gentleman by the name of George H. Heilmeier your eternal thanks. Back in 1964 when he was working in the laboratories at RCA, Heilmeier discovered the ability to switch colours in liquid crystals through the application of electrical current. This discovery allowed a clear liquid crystal substance to turn milky, and was the first Liquid Crystal Display.

But a milky colour is a long way from the Full HD LCD TVs we see today. Heilmeier’s LCD technology used something known as “Dynamic Scattering Mode” to align the liquid crystals, yet this technique required lots of energy and was limited in its scope. In 1970, Hoffman-LaRoche in Switzerland filed for a patent for the “Twisted Nematic Field Effect”, which didn’t require a flowing current to work, making it much more attractive a display technology. It was this development that saw LCD make its way into the first digital watches in the ’70s.

In the 1980s, LCD made its way into computer monitors. The fact that it was a “thin” technology made it especially suited for this purpose, although the technology’s slow refresh rate meant that it struggled with moving images, like scrolling text. In 1988, Sharp took LCD to the next level by launching a 14-inch LCD TV, although it still battled with refresh rate issues and the subsequent difficulties with movement on screen.

When it came time to expand into the larger screen sizes, in the late 1990s and early this decade, LCD struggled to compete with plasma. It had the benefit of brighter backlighting and lower power consumption, but the bigger screens made the refresh rate issue even more noticeable. However, as this decade proceeded, developments such as improved refresh rates and the introduction of 100Hz saw the technology not only catch up to plasma, but overtake it.

Nowadays, you’re much more likely to purchase an LCD than any other display technology. Not bad for something that started out turning clear liquid to a milky substance, huh?

History of TV is Giz AU’s month-long look back at the development of the world-changing medium and its influence on our daily lives.