LG has hit back at Samsung’s claims that it will come to dominate the market for 8K TVs within the next few years.
During a presentation at the LG Electronics Science Park in Seoul, South Korea this week, the company insisted that this is unlikely to happen as its OLED display technology is superior to LCD when it comes to showing “high quality videos” in 8K resolution.
Kang In-byung, chief technology officer and vice president of LG Display, said during the presentation that LCD panels tend to be more “limited” than OLED when it comes to expressing 8K or clearer images, BusinessKorea reported.
"OLED panels are more advantageous in the 8K TV age when 8K TVs need to control 33 million pixels," Kang said. "Self-lighting display OLED panels are optimal as the higher resolution is, the smaller pixels become."
OLED’s superiority explains why Samsung is accelerating its plans to start mass producing OLED displays for its own 8K TVs, Kang said.
Kang’s claim was surprising to hear, because Samsung hasn’t made any official statements about its plans for OLED TVs for quite some time. Samsung has built a few concept OLED TVs in the past, but in recent years it has switched focus to QLED, which features an LCD display combined with Quantum Dot technology that helps to produce a wider colour gamut.
It’s widely held that one of the reasons for Samsung’s switch to QLED is because it’s been unable to perfect the mass production of OLED panels in the same way that LG can. True or not, Samsung claims that QLED is actually just as good as, if not superior to OLED, and last month insisted that the technology will help it come to dominate the market for 8K televisions in the next few years
However, rumours have persisted in recent months that Samsung is actually trying to develop Quantom Dot OLED TV panels as well. If true, that might suggest that Samsung isn’t quite as satisified with the quality of its QLED displays as it says it is.
The idea of a QD OLED display is an certainly exciting prospect, because it would combine OLED’s sharp contrast ratios with the more vibrant, natural-looking colours created by Quantum Dots and potentially produce more realistic images.
Throw in 8K resolution, and we might just have a new world-beater on our hands.
