LG OLED TV begins selling in Korea in February

LG's 55EM9700, which measures 0.16 inch thick, will be the first large-screen OLED TV available for sale.

(Credit: LG)

Today LG announced it would make the first 55-inch OLED TV available to the public next month in South Korea for a cost of around $10,000. Select Korean stores will begin taking preorders tomorrow.
LG said that it would announce availability in additional markets, likely including the U.S., "over the next several weeks." I'm taking a wild guess that more will be said at the company's 8 a.m. (PT) CES press conference January 7.
The television, model 55EM9700, is the successor to the 55EM9600 that won CNET's highest honor at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2012 but never actually shipped. Judging from LG's press release the two TVs appear basically identical.

Promising revolutionary picture quality in an incredibly slim design, LG's 55-inch OLED TV might be worth the wait. At only 0.16 inch thick, it's the thinnest TV we've ever heard of, and about half as thick as the OLED Samsung announced last year. LG integrates carbon fiber-reinforced plastics into the rear of the television, which provides reinforcement and keeps the weight down to a feathery 22 pounds. Beyond its striking thinness, OLED has the potential to outperform any current flat-panel display technology. CNET Asia's Philip Wong got a hands-on look at the EM9600 and said it had the "deepest blacks we've seen among flat-screen TVs."

LG 55EM9600 OLED TV (CNET Asia pictures)

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While the public may remember Sony's 11-inch XEL-1 from a couple of years ago, and be familiar with the AMOLED screens of various cell phones and the PlayStation Vita, LG's 55-inch OLED TV features a unique spin on the technology that involves a fourth "white" subpixel. The TV has a white pixel layer with a color RGB filter over the top, and the fourth pixel is left unfiltered. In comparison, Samsung's ES9500 uses native red, green, and blue OLED pixels.

Samsung's TV uses actual red, green, and blue OLED subpixels (left) while LG's TV uses white OLEDs overlaid by a filter.

(Credit: LG)

LG says the TV uses a proprietary algorithm designed to improve and refine hues and tones when viewed from a wide angle. According to LG, other OLED TVs "exhibit drastic changes in hues from different viewing angles and abnormal color gamut." CNET Asia's Wong noted "negligible color shift when viewing a scene directly in front of the panel compared with viewing it from the sides."
Although the press release wasn't specific, we expect the set to include all of LG's new 2013 Smart TV bells and whistles, including the new Magic Motion remote with voice control, and passive 3D.
We also expect the EM9700 to include the breakout media box found on the EM9600, a necessity since the TV is too thin to accommodate conventional HDMI and other inputs. It also doubled as a stand and featured a unique optical AV connection between itself and the TV. We wouldn't be surprised if LG made another version of the TV soon, sans external box.
We'll have more information during our liveblog of LG's CES press conference next week and some hands-on follow-up at the show.

Ref :cnet

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