Welcome back to cnet's live coverage of cnet 2021.
I'm Lexy Savvidies.
Now it's no secret that CES is a huge television shows, so to break down all of the new announcements All of the trends and everything come into our living rooms in 2021.
I am joined by CNET TV guru, David Katzmaier.
Now it's pretty well common knowledge at CNET that anytime any one of us needs to buy a new TV David is the first and only person that we Heat up for all of our TV knowledge.
So David, thank you for joining me today.
It's so great to have you today.
So obviously, you know, there's a lot of stuff that we're going to see in our living rooms over the coming year.
But LG Display is always the most out there sort of technology and it kind of really sets the stage of innovation in terms of the TV space.
So give me a bit of a lowdown on what we've seen from LG Display and the cool stuff.
The wacky stuff the most out there stuff that is coming our way.
So this is transparent OLED.
This is a TV you can see through so they're saying this year that it got the transparency up from 10% to 40%.
So you can see through it even more the coolest concepts Include this sushi bar where you have this partition with the menu and even TV shows there and it separates, the the chef from the customers which is great in our pandemic era and there's even a little touchscreen along the bottom.
So you can Border your stuff without you know getting fingerprints all over that big transparent OLED.
You know again, they've done a lot of these types of displays in the past.
These are not TVs that you can buy now but it just shows us what technology is capable of here we got a subway platform or subway Window so behind there's a simulated scene you can imagine riding on a train and seeing instead of you know, what's going on or over later.
What's going on the weather some tour guide information route stuff, you know to get a gouge you along on your Subway trip, so pretty cool that they showed us this stuff and gave us this sneak peek from their labs there in Korea I always remember walking around the LG Display booth with you and it was always really mind blowing stuff you know we started off with kind of like curved bendable displays, those sort of airplane concepts and and now even now there's a TV in my bed I mean this is like the most perfect thing for the pandemic honestly we spending so much time in bed and so much time in our living rooms.
I want this in my house.
Now this is like, we're not gonna be able to buy this anytime soon, right?
This is just up in the sky at the moment.
Or can I buy?
I mean, fingers crossed, who knows?
They could announce it next week, but I doubt it.
I'm I mean this is crazy because they have two TVs here you can see through the TV at the foot of your bed and it raises and lowers and looks really cool.
Then you got your regular TV on the wall for when that thing's hidden, so really doubling down Down here on this concept, but yeah, it's the kind of thing that you don't see every day.>>I love it.
Look, I'm just going to have some wishful thinking that it's going to come to reality sometime soon.
So I guess it's time To bring it back to the stuff that we're actually going to be able to buy this year seeing as we are spending so much time at home.
Give me a lowdown on kind of some of the big overarching trends that you're seeing in the TV space this year.
Yeah, so the biggest trend well is size we'll start there because again, TVs just keep getting bigger.
They keep getting less expensive, massive growth, especially in TVs larger than 75 inches this year.
But the other big thing that's going on is kind of a brightness arms race.
So, I track picture quality.
I compare TVs Pretty close to my lap here and they just keep getting brighter and brighter, and it's really to help with HDR that's the big thing high dynamic range of content is coming from a lot of different sources this year again with the new being consoles, Playstation five Xbox, Series X and S, all those things they do HDR, and so people are starting to get a lot more of this really bright content in their home.
So the TV manufacturers are trying to one-up one another by having the brightest televisions.
Yeah, it really does seem like there's so much competition in that space.
Because I guess we've kind of reached the limit of a couple of other things too, which we'll talk about in a little bit in terms of improvements, but I do want to talk a little bit about the Samsung range that was announced.
So walk me through kind of what you saw because you actually got to go and see these in person which was, I guess a bit of a rarity in this in this day and age kind of seems weird that we would always.
Go and see these TVs in person.
But you know the past year it's been very difficult.
So you actually saw these in the flesh.
Tell me what we're seeing on the screen now some QLEDs.
What's new from Samsung there?
So yeah, you're right.
Right Lexi, it was really cool.
Samsung, you know, went through the effort to you know, put together a whole studio here that we could go into you see I got my mask on there.
That was a NEO q led superbright television and I'm walking over here to a TV where they're demoing more of their game features.
I mentioned that earlier.
They've added a new screen to the television pops up here.
It shows you all the different features Are on these new consoles like 120 frames per second HDR which we mentioned variable refresh rate.
Before it was kind of a mystery of whether this stuff is actually engaged you have to go in a bunch of different menus to find it.
It's nice that Samsung is showing people that bought these new consoles whether these features are actually active here in one easy to see screen.
LG did something similar I mentioned on their 2021 TVs as well.
again, gaming is a huge focus for these TV makers this year.
Definitely, especially with all the consoles coming out which is kinda seems to be a big driver to cause people to upgrade.
This sets but let's talk about the other Samsung that stuff that we've seen.
Now the frame now this is something that isn't exactly new.
We've seen this before.
It's kind of like Samsung's beautiful way to display artwork in your home.
It looks a little bit more stylish than your traditional TV what's new with the frame this year.
So the frame is one of these things that's been around for a couple years like 2017.
It first was debuted.
We're actually seeing some some LG OLED stuff here instead.
But the frame is Samsung's It's like their art piece.
Basically the idea is you hang it on the wall, and it looks a lot like a picture.
In fact, there's this library of content you can get on the frame.
That is actual art from around the world from various.
Museums and things like that.
Here we go, and this so you can see you can actually put a bezel around the edge custom edge around the frame to make it look like you could frame the frame essentially, and make it blend even more India decor.
So the idea is it's off generally but it's showing our instead of being a big black rectangle and then of course You can fire it up and have regular television be displayed on there.
So new for 2021, they didn't really do too much different.
What they did is they made it thinner.
So it really hugs the wall and, I think it's a little over 20 millimeters thick.
So really similar to what a standard picture frame or other wall art Is and makes it blend in even more.
Alright.
Well, let's let's switch to LG now because I know that was another big announcement of the show.
Now.
It's kind of a I guess there's two technologies that it's OLED versus QLED or.
Q and Q and Ed now this is the confusing one for me.
There's a lot of acronyms being thrown around.
Especially this Q led q any day anyway, let's let's talk about LG first and then we'll dive into what the acronyms all mean.
OLEDs, LG, LG is known for its exceptional OLED picture quality.
If it seems like what else can they do?
It's already so good.
What are the updates gonna be like this year?
So they've added a new word Evo to their OLED TV lineups.
So the idea there is it's brighter.
As I mentioned before, these guys are in his arms race and OLED TVs are traditionally dimmer than a lot Other models on the market that use LCD technology.
So at the high end of the market, they're saying these OLED TVs are brighter than they were before that can help with HDR that can help with gaming could help with bright rooms.
If you put one of these.
These TV's in a room with a lot of windows makes the picture look better.
So that extra brightness is actually the first real innovation we've seen on these led panels.
They've been so good for so long.
But they've been really similar from year to year.
This is the first time Well, to coin a phrase use an evolution of the OLED panel.
So LG is not the only one.
Sony also announced this, so it really should help them compete again at the very high end of the market.
I don't know about you These CDs are super expensive anyway.
They're, I don't know if it's going to be worth it for most people to invest in this brighter OLED technology trickles down a little bit.
And there are others also adding this and you saw briefly to make it look a little bit But more like a picture here.
But their televisions also include and I totally forgive you Lexi for being confused about this QLED thing that they announced.
Because My gosh, I was I couldn't believe it when they first told us in the press that they were calling their TVs QLED.
For the uninitiated Samsung, sells QLED TVs media for a while.
TCL also does.
So LG decided for some reason that is totally about to call their new 2021 LCD TVs.
QNed, Q N E D, not a misprint, not a typo, so
That's so confusing.
I honestly, the first time that I saw your pace on that, your subheading for that article is that it's not a typo.
This is actually what it's called.
So what is the technology difference there between Q Ned and Q Ellie day?
Like.
it's very similar, right?
It's just a different name to wrap it all up.
It's, yes, my gosh!
I don't want to go too down too far down the rabbit hole but they They're saying that it uses a new back lights called mini LED.
That's actually important because again, we're talking about brightness before, these mini LED's, they can pack more behind the screen.
Which of course can make them brighter.
So just imagine a whole bunch of tiny little light bulbs.
Now they're smaller behind the screen and now they're packed more tightly so they can increase the precision, Samsung's neoci LED from before has that mini LED technology.
Another company TCL was actually the first with many LED.
So those guys have been rolling it out for all through last year and even in 2019, they had many LEDs.
So that technology, from my perspective is really cool.
It does improve picture quality.
And of course TCL is well known for their inexpensive televisions.
So they're they're kind of forcing these other guys.
To play catch up on the mini LED side.
Well, I'm glad you brought up TCL because that is what I do want to talk to you about now in terms of they're climbing up the ranks in terms of market share, the six series which is one of your favourite TVs from last year.
I know that and so.
TCL obviously is, becoming really big in the market.
So what is their big push this year is it's all about the eight K.>> There it is, the eight K, so 8K resolution.
Again it's four times the number of pixels as a 4K TV.
Extra sharpness at the top line info that these guys want you to know.
What they don't want to know is that there really isn't any 8K content right now like literally there's Almost thought you could watch a couple videos on YouTube and Vimeo no real sign of that changing anytime soon.
And so you're stuck with these big TVs that have all these extra pixels with nothing to fill them.
Also, that it's really hard to see the difference 4K TVs are superduper sharp, they kind of approach the limit of human vision already.
And unless you're talking super gigantic Pictures that you're sitting really close to I've seen these things.
It's hard to tell the difference in person with that extra resolution, but TCL so saying you know what?
We're gonna sell an 8k TV anyway, it's going to be their first one.
For 2021 and as I said those guys really do push the market pricing down.
I mean they have, as you said, great market share.
They're the number two TV manufacturer United States TCL after Samsung.
So that's that's pretty cool.
And this new 8k TV they're saying is going to be cheaper.
Well, with that in mind, I mean, you're talking about the lack 8K content.
There are consumer devices like foreign that are able to film in 8K albeit a little bit choppy.
But, is this the year that you think people should be finally looking in 8K TVs?
Because I remember the past two or three years, you told me explicitly.
It's no point buying an 8K TV like don't do it, but maybe this could be the year.
I mean, there's AI upscaling technology.
There's a little bit more 8K content.
Maybe you could play something you filmed on your phone, or is this the year to finally pull the trigger or should I just wait a little bit longer.
Yeah, let's see you should wait.
[LAUGH]
Sorry, this is 4k again is perfectly good and until we see, The real issue is until we see these prices of 8K TVs become affordable.
So right now to put it in perspective, the cheapest 65 inch 8K TV you can get is from Samsung.
It's 2800 bucks.
2700, 2800 bucks.
That's it.
More than double, its triple the price of TCL, excellent six series, and more than double, some of the, really good 4k TVs out there.
It's more than a 4k OLED TV, for example.
So, that's crazy.
If TCL comes out with a TV, that's 8k resolution, in the six series like they're saying.
Maybe if it gets down to 1500 that's a huge discount compared to the current line but then you have to look at the OLED TVs and go those things have better picture quality cuz they have really high contrast, excellent viewing and all the things we've been talking about with OLED for the last few years.
And what if you can't really see the resolution improvement is it actually worth getting, you know, an 8k LCD versus a 4k?
All at the same price.
I would still say no again, I haven't seen these in person.
We'll see how really good they are.
And maybe we'll be surprised.
I mean, apparently the Olympics, if it happens this year is going to be filmed in AK, from Japan.
So that would be your first real flagship piece of AK content.
So, I, my dad is now, maybe wait until 2022 or maybe even later for these AK TVs.
All right, well my wallet Thanks you very much.
And David katzmaier Thank you for joining me today for all of the best TVs of ces 2021.
Make sure you keep it here on CNET for all of our live coverage around the show on YouTube and cnet.com and stay tuned up next We have a deep dive on the future of 5G and beyond.
