Philips Embrace 4K OLED TV But Ditch 3D for 2016

In a pleasant surprise, TP Vision – the company responsible for the production and marketing of Philips televisions in the UK and Europe – has revealed that it aims to launch its first consumer OLED television later this year. The statement came during a picture quality workshop hosted by Philips’ TV guru Danny Tack at the brand’s annual launch event in Brussels.

Philips OLED TV

Tack actually went as far as setting up a prototype 55-inch OLED display beside an edge-lit LED LCD television, and began to demonstrate OLED’s numerous virtues. Indeed, the Philips OLED not only exhibited significantly inkier blacks, but because of its unrivalled contrast performance, brighter elements (we were shown fireworks exploding against the night sky, albeit not in HDR) actually produced greater impact than what’s witnessed on the LCD display.

OLED vs edge LED blacks

Interestingly, Tack proceeded to compare the motion on both displays with a clip of a moving train. Because of its insanely fast response time, motion on the OLED prototype was cleaner, not to mention sharper with interpolation enabled on both sets. Showing a clear grasp of the reasons behind motion blur, he admitted that 70% is down to sample-and-hold, but explained that it’s currently not possible to implement dark frame insertion or scanning backlight techniques on OLEDs because the luminance loss would be too great given the display technology’s ABL-restricted brightness limitations.

Tack was upfront about the source of the Philips OLED panel: it’s going to be supplied by LG Display, which comes as no surprise at all since the South Korean vendor is pretty much the only player in town as far as OLED is concerned. The UK and Europe will most likely only get a 55in flat-screen model, whereas Philips will seek to launch a curved 65-inch version in China. As with the rest of the company’s 2016 television range, there will be no 3D support on its new 4K OLED TV.

Tack and other TP Vision executives at the event refused to be drawn on release dates, but the pressure is certainly on for an IFA 2016 unveil come September. Pricing-wise, TPV said that it wouldn’t make sense for the company to price its OLED offering lower than a similarly-specced model from LG (i.e. the OLED55B6, what with its 55-inch screen size, flat form factor and lack of 3D capability), since Philips will be adding its own video processing to the mix.

A lot of things are still up in the air, but if a Philips UHD (ultra high-definition) OLED TV does materialise at IFA, 2016 is going to be an exciting year for video enthusiasts. Considering that TP Vision/ Philips hasn’t announced a 9 series for the first half of 2016, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the OLED will take up the 9000 flagship mantle, and quite probably be the world’s first OLED television with Ambilight and/ or Android TV.

7 comments

  1. Interesting and unexpected move from Philips. My heart sank a little when I read they’re going to use an LG panel. I don’t know if there’s any cost effective way LG can sort out the uniformity issues (banding). I hope Samsung consider another run at OLED with their own panels.

  2. I hope Samsung release another rgb Oled. Because these lg panels uniformity tinting banding is still here in 2016. Whilst the 2013 Samsung Oled had none of the problems.

  3. @Craig:
    LGD (on the manufacturing side) and LGE (on the implementation side) have improved the uniformity recently, although it’s still not perfect.

    One of the problems is that the uniformity actually gets worse with higher resolution, for practical reasons. Remember that we’ve never seen a 2160p Samsung OLED, only a 1080p one.

  4. @David:
    Yeah I heard the 2016 models were a bit of an improvement over the 2015 models. If LG could nail this down I’d be happy to try again. I had a 930V for almost a fortnight, took it back for this issue. I wonder what produces the bands? I reckoned the curve at one point but the flat models have it too.

    I’m eager for Samsung to get back in the game because every high end Samsung panel I’ve had seems to have close to perfect uniformity when I use my test images. Compared to Panasonic, Sony and LG Samsung seem to be king of uniformity!

  5. Edit: 2015 models over 2014!

  6. Lack of 3D is a show-stopper for us. I had seriously been thinking about Philips in view of their outstanding picture processing software but no 3D rules them out. 4k in terms of pixel density is actually irrelevant for most people given how far they typically sit from a TV, but it does offer the chance to have 1080p passive 3D, and on an OLED that is a vivid experience. My family loves 3D movies and we always buy the blu rays offering that option. For us Philips has got this wrong.

    Right now we have an LG 930 55in. No issues with banding and only the hint of a tint on B&W images – i.e. we never notice it in real viewing. But I think the OLED market would benefit massively from a healthier competing manufacturing base, both in terms of price and driving up quality. Meantime my next TV will be an LG 4k OLED unless Panasonic start selling at a sensible price point. What i want to see is better motion processing, from whoever.

  7. Fairy tales again about not enough nits for having BFI… sigh. Appearently Philips thinks either we are dumb, or that we like to play our SDR 60fps games with more than 100 cd/m2.