The latest pleasant TV surprise at what’s already the most exciting CES show in years is the announcement by Sony that it is going to be launching its first ever big-screen OLED TVs.
I broke the news that Sony was planning to unveil an OLED TV range a few weeks back, but the scope and ambition of Sony’s OLED offering goes beyond expectations. These TVs are certainly not going to just be rushed out clones of LG’s OLEDs.
Rather Sony has gone to great lengths to ensure that the new A1E OLED series will arrive to market fully ‘Sonyfied’. For starters, all three sets (77-inch, 65-inch and 55-inch models will be available) will feature Sony’s Z1 Extreme 4K HDR processing - a system that’s consistently delivered outstanding results on other high-end Sony TVs.
Also present and correct will be Sony’s Triluminos color technology to deliver supposedly enhanced color accuracy, and Sony’s 4K X-Reality Pro engine for boosting detail response and enhanced upscaling of non-4K sources.
One of the most startling features of the A1Es, though, is their Acoustic Surface Technology. This seeks to solve the age-old problem of how to get good sound quality out of ultra-skinny OLED TVs by making the entire screen resonate so that the sound emanates from the screen itself!
Add to this Sony’s surprising but welcome decision to add include support in its new OLED TVs for the Dolby Vision HDR format alongside the more expected HDR10 and Hybrid Log Gamma systems and it’s fair to say that Sony’s new OLED sets may not be quite as affordable as an earlier informant told me they were likely to be! I’ll update you with pricing information as soon as it’s available.
Naturally Sony isn’t only selling OLED TVs in 2017; it’s also announced at CES new X930E and X940E LCD ranges. As with last year’s equivalent models, the X930Es (available in 55-inch and 65-inch versions) use edge LED lighting while the 75-inch X940E uses a direct LED array (this latter setup being a welcome feature that’s looking set to become increasingly hard to find in 2017).
The X930Es, though, use a new Slim Backlight Drive+ system based around a ‘unique quad-edge LED structure’ that Sony boldly claims delivers more brightness and deeper blacks than you would expect from a conventional direct-lit LCD TV.
All of these new LCD models will also add Dolby Vision support, leaving Samsung and Panasonic looking increasingly isolated in their refusal to buy into Dolby’s dynamic metadata HDR system.
I’ll be having a closer look at these new TVs over the next couple of days and will of course report what I find on my Forbes channel.
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