Michael
Brown Executive Editor Michael is TechHive's lead editor and covers the
connected-home and home-entertainment markets. He built his own smart
home in 2007, which he uses as a real-world test lab when reviewing new
products. Michael also reviews routers and networking products for
TechHive and PCWorld. More by Michael Brown
Panasonic makes some very good LCD TVs, but it’s building its new
flagship on an OLED foundation for the first time. It’s been almost two
years since the company gave up on plasma, the previous high bar for
television display technology. But it sounds as though Panasonic knocked
it out of the park with its first OLED effort: The Panasonic TX-65CZ950
is the first 4K TV to earn THX certification.
The TV builder says OLED delivers better blacks than its best plasma TVs while avoiding plasma’s shortcomings.
OLEDs (the acronym stands for organic light-emitting diodes) are
self-illuminating, so they don’t require a backlight. To achieve a truly
black pixel, the set simply turns the pixel off so that no light is
emitted. That’s vastly superior to even local dimming on an LCD screen,
because some light always gets through to leave pixels shades of gray
instead of black.
In addition to delivering 4K resolution, the CZ950 series also supports
high dynamic range technology to produce images with wider luminance and
color ranges to deliver a more lifelike picture. Panasonic’s own 4K
Studio Master Processor was customized with the help of Hollywood
colorist Mike Sowa, whose film credits include Oblivion and Insurgent.
The objective was to ensure that movies played on CZ950 series look
exactly the way the director and cinemaphotographer intended.
At a Wednesday press conference, Sowa said Panasonic’s engineers
implemented every change he asked for until he was completely satisfied
with the TV’s picture quality. The 65-inch TX-65CZ950 “produced the
finest quality I’ve ever seen on a television,” Sowa said. George
Lucas’s THX group also holds a high opinion of Panasonic’s effort,
designating it the first THX-certified 4K TV.
The curved display is housed in an equally attractive chassis, with the
entire back panel wrapped in a soft suede-like material that begs to be
touched.
Why this matters: Directors and
cinemaphotographers go to great lengths to achieve just the right look
for the films they produce. All too often, those painstaking effort goes
right down the drain when their works are presented on a TV screen.
Colors aren’t right, there’s color where there shouldn’t be, and
washed-out grays where there should be nothing but black.
OLED displays do a much better job of faithfully reproducing color—along
with deep, inky blacks—and the Panasonic TH-65CZ950 on display here in
Berlin is a particularly great example: Its picture quality was
absolutely stunning. Also stunning: Its price tag, which is said to be
around $10,000.
Amazon Shop buttons are programmatically attached to all reviews,
regardless of products' final review scores. Our parent company, IDG,
receives advertisement revenue for shopping activity generated by the
links. Because the buttons are attached programmatically, they should
not be interpreted as editorial endorsements.
Post a Comment