back to article Samsung forks 4K with Tizen tellies

Samsung has decided that 4K TV isn't quite enough; it wants to do even better. The South Korean mega-firm drew a packed crowd to a CES press conference that included the unveiling of a new class of TV screens dubbed SUHD. The company said that the SUHD sets would offer a superior picture to current UHD screens including …

  1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    Entertaining

    Someone needs to go back to business school.

    The best way to slow down the adoption of a product is to create a standard war around it. Dumb... Dumber...

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Entertaining

      Samsung are confusing the issue by their choice of nomenclature: UHD is a standard, whereas S-UHD is Samsung's term for their sets that use a new filter technology. Sony are already shipping sets with what sounds like a similar tech, Quantum Dots, that they dub 'Triluminous'.

      Both technologies are said to improve colours and black levels - an obvious target perhaps, since many consumers have previously enjoyed the pictures from plasma televisions.

      Its good see that the big players are looking at more than just resolution, and are competing on black levels and colour accuracy.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Entertaining

        >> Both technologies are said to improve colours and black levels - an obvious target perhaps, since many consumers have previously enjoyed the pictures from plasma televisions.

        Quantum dots arrived to the market just at the right time. You cannot shrink the cells in a plasma monitor down to the size needed by 2160p without exceeding EU and California power regulations, which is why UHD plasma monitors will never advance beyond a few prototype models.

        >> Its good see that the big players are looking at more than just resolution, and are competing on black levels and colour accuracy.

        The new UHD specification (Rec. 2020) includes more than just increases to pixel resolutions. The specification calls for color bit depths of either 10 or 12 bits and a color gamut that is over twice the coverage of HD.

        I'd argue that this is really going to drive the adoption of quantum dot LCD, OLED and laser display technologies over traditional LCD (which can barely handle the current HD color gamut), especially for smaller monitors that can't take advantage of 2160p resolutions. When you throw Avatar on a wide gamut monitor, people are going to be absolutely blown away by the color.

        1. Frank Bough

          Re: Entertaining

          ...assuming that the whole process of remastering Avatar for beyond rec709 and beyond HD takes place, and is then made available on a suitably high-band delivery mechanism. I'm not sure there's enough appetite out there to move on from HD. Who will buy 4k discs when SD and HD disc sales are in free fall?

    2. tmTM

      a standard war

      With sod-all content.

      There's next to nothing available right now, but still the push is to get more sets out there and not on the content to actually watch on them???

  2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

    Which part of the article suggests that? They're forming some sort of talking shop to increase the amount of 4K content. That should help avoid a standards war. Moving all their own screens to a particular implementation doesn't actually hurt, unless they start requiring that content demands the additional features.

    If you want a proper standards war, I think your best hope is that some disagreement will emerge surrounding HDR.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: Customers want the UHD experience

    Not me. Give me 50Hz or 100Hz content on my existing HD screen first please.

    1. James Micallef Silver badge

      Re: Customers want the UHD experience

      Agree. Most of the push for higher definition comes from action films and sports, both of which would benefit more from doubling frame rate rather than doubling pixel count. It's not either/or though, is it?

      Also, to be fair, it seems like the industry HAS realised that higher frame rates at source are required

      http://nofilmschool.com/2013/07/4k-uhd-color-space-gamut-frame-rate

  4. Sealand
    FAIL

    So what is SUHD exactly?

    Samsung Ultra High Definition or Super Ultra High Definition?

    Expect someone to announce SDUHD any time soon ...

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: So what is SUHD exactly?

      SDUHD

      Super-duper-ultra-high-definition?

      1. Sealand

        Re: So what is SUHD exactly?

        Yup!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So what is SUHD exactly?

      In another article Samsung said the 'S' doesn't stand for anything.

      I'm sure their marketers want consumers to think it stands for 'Super' and Samsung's SUHD is somehow better than the competition's "mere" UHD TVs.

  5. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    "Customers want the UHD experience," said Samsung EVP Joe Stinziano.

    "We want to sell you UHD devices because 3D was a flop and now you've all got big LCD screens there's no other reason for you to replace them."

    There, fixed that for you Mr. Stinziano.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "We want to sell you UHD devices..."

      Arguably they don't want to sell UHD tellies at all, because if they did they wouldn't be taking a punt on Tizen. There's no theoretical reason that Tizen couldn't deliver, but based on the precedent of the depressing standard of TV UIs and firmware, the dreadful ad-loaded programme guides and privacy concerns, the lack of software support the moment it leaves the factory, the weak functionality, tumbleweed strewn proprietary app stores, painfully slow processors, inadequate input options........

      All these things make me hugely dubious of any maker introducing a new OS.

      1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

        Easy enough to fix a TV UI...

        ...get a raspberry π.

      2. Down not across

        Sod the UI, gief ports

        Arguably they don't want to sell UHD tellies at all, because if they did they wouldn't be taking a punt on Tizen. There's no theoretical reason that Tizen couldn't deliver, but based on the precedent of the depressing standard of TV UIs and firmware, the dreadful ad-loaded programme guides and privacy concerns, the lack of software support the moment it leaves the factory, the weak functionality, tumbleweed strewn proprietary app stores, painfully slow processors, inadequate input options........

        Ah, my pet peeve.

        I don't want "smart" TV... I'd rather they used the money for more ports. Most BR players duplicate the "smart" UI (and I suspect fair few tellies will have one plugged in. Ofc there are other options like Pi, Roku, etc not to mention than in UK for example most are likely to be tethered to a Sky or VM box.

        I couldn't care less about the UI, but I would like row of (lots) A/V inputs prefreably with discrete selection. Also more than one HDMI should support ARC.

  6. cortland

    I want

    I want UHD or more for my COMPUTER. Scrw television; I'm editing digital images. 19 inches, please. (Heh; quantum dot pixels.)

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: I want

      apparently Apple make a nice device called the iMac Retina that might do what you want.

      mines the one with a big 'downvote' target on the back.

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I want

        Samsung also sells a 26" 4K IPS LCD for $599 in the US.

    3. Cameron Colley

      Re: I want

      I want 16:10 for my computer, please. 16:9 is just a little lacking in "lines" and with 16:10 viewing at full 16:9 and having a title bar, controls, or whatever is still possible.

      I really would like to be able to replace my old 1920*1200 iiyama with something with a higher resolution.

  7. Da Weezil

    Samsung would do better sorting out the durability across thier range, after a lightly used 42" had a motherboard failure at 13 months, and my galaxy s3 lost its usb port at 17 months I am sure there is NOTHING I want Samsung to sell me

    Thier loss means a gain for Panasonic and Apple.

    I'll pass on this toy just like I did with 3d.. its only TV... HD is more than adequate for most peoples needs.

  8. daviboy88

    Errrrrr OLED

    Seems to me that Samsung are touting SUHD (bit of a gimmick) because they can't match OLED picture quality. Interestingly, their press conference did mention it was better than OLED - I doubt it - but we will see what the reviewers say!

  9. A Known Coward

    People don't want UHD/4K

    They don't even appreciate HD, why else would they put up with all these services both streaming and broadcast which provide crappy over-compressed video at 'HD' resolution which looks no better than you'd expect from a DVD or worse. The only reason broadcast HD sometimes looks so good is because they dramatically reduced the resolution of SD channels at the same time in order to make room.

    Amazon's 4K streaming bitrate is a pitiful 15Mbps FFS! Yet people are paying for it ...

    Yes, they'll buy the TVs because it's "new" and it will look great in the showroom, but the picture quality of what they watch at home won't be any better and they won't care.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: People don't want UHD/4K

      Really it's difficult to predict what consumers will wan't/buy in actual, quantifiable numbers. If it were predictable, well, that would put a whole lot of marketing types out of the employment market entirely (and me potentially very wealthy since I do love the challenges in all aspects of predictive analytics). Now if you argue that they won't realize any better technical results, I'd almost buy that right up until we hit the dreaded "placebo effect."

      Me? Yon 3D HDTV sees personal use of only a few hours (<24) per month, if that. Every once in while I will dredge up an antique (by Hollywood standards) that isn't the remake of a remake ....

  10. Alan Denman

    Same old S

    Well, its shove an S on it and see if the suckers bite again.

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