Look at the ranges of this year's top TV brands and listen to them discuss their plans for the future, and pretty much all you'll hear is “OLED this” and “OLED that.”
Of course, LG has long focused exclusively on OLED, while the OLED-favoring gap in performance and market position between OLED and LCD TVs from Philips and, in particular, Panasonic in recent years has become increasingly marked and deliberate.
TCL, once a stalwart LED brand, is now talking enthusiastically about introducing printed OLED displays to its TV range in the near future, and perhaps most surprising of all is that even Samsung, traditionally the biggest 'holdout' OLED of the world, is doing it this year. putting its QD-OLED TVs at least on equal footing with its once-beloved LED models, it just signed a new panel supply deal with LG Display for regular WRGB OLED displays and overall sounds very optimistic about the role of OLED in its future plans.
However, just when you could be forgiven for thinking that OLED's dominance of the premium end of the TV market was about to be complete, one major brand suddenly seems to have other ideas…
LCD TV technology still has a bright future
That brand is Sony, and in recent months it has shown clear signs that it potentially sees LCD rather than OLED as the TV technology of the future.
The most recent evidence of this came with my recent experience reviewing Sony's second-generation mini-LED TV, the Sony X95L. This was such an improvement over what was actually a slightly mediocre debut range of mini-LEDs (2022's X95K and X90K) that it not only confirmed that Sony engineers are clearly taking mini-LED very seriously, but which also provided a powerful reminder of how much performance potential mini-LED TVs have. Especially when it comes to brightness and color volume, and when combined with proper intelligent processing and advanced local backlight dimming controls.
My experience with the 65X95L came on the heels of press demonstrations by Sony first in Japan in November 2023 and then again at January's CES 2024 in Las Vegas of what the brand describes as next-generation display technology. based not on LCD technology instead of OLED. .
These demonstrations (more details of which you can find in this CES article) attempted to demonstrate that an LCD display that combines mini-LED lighting and a new, advanced local dimming system with new dimming control algorithms and a new control infrastructure of radically redesigned energy could offer a lot. More brightness than OLED displays along with inky black levels similar to OLEDs. All of this creating very little evidence of the light “blooming” effect that LCD TVs with local dimming systems typically produce around bright, prominent parts of the picture.
Taking LCD brightness beyond OLED
This new generation of LCD TV technology also proved capable of running more efficiently than OLED screens with most content, something that has become crucial in an era of increasingly strict regulations on TV power consumption. TVs.
However, what really seems to be fanning the flames of Sony's renewed enthusiasm for LCD technology over OLED technology is the inherent brightness advantage of LCD.
Looking back at the history of Sony TVs since high dynamic range video became commonplace, there's actually quite a bit of other evidence that the brand sees value in brightness levels beyond what it's typically thought to be. organic screens are capable of doing.
No one who saw the 10,000-nit 8K display prototype at Sony's booth at CES 2018 will likely have forgotten the experience, for example. That TV seemed to me then to have the most spectacular picture quality I had ever seen, and looking at it now, the fact that it tried so hard to aim for the upper brightness end of the forbidden HDR brightness range was a clear indication of simply how much value it places on it. Sony to shine nits.
This literally dazzling prototype was quickly backed up with ultra-bright real consumer products in the form of 2019's ZG9/Z9G 8K LCD TVs. These powered its massive pixel count with by far the highest brightness levels (4000 nits, no less). that we have ever seen on a consumer television.
Taking the LCD screen out of the Middle Ages
In fact, we can trace Sony's love of the LCD screen and the HDR brightness it can deliver even further back to CES 2018 with the classic ZD9 range from 2016, with its then-innovative “focused beam” local dimming and image enhancement technology. local shine.
However, another sign of Sony's love of light has also emerged recently in its professional division, in the form of a new BVM-HX3110 LCD professional mastering monitor capable of delivering mastering-grade image management with a maximum brightness of 4000 nits. This is four times brighter than Sony's previous HX310 mastering monitor and matches the maximum brightness of the old 'Pulsar' monitor that Dolby developed back in the day to enable the full light expression of the Dolby Vision HDR format.
It can't be a coincidence that Sony develops a tool for content creators that can deliver much of the brightness potential of HDR and then, almost simultaneously, begins demoing a next-generation LCD-based TV technology focused on delivering high brightness and contrast along with something seemingly unprecedented. LCD light controls.
Both of these things together suggest that, as far as Sony is concerned, brighter and much more is the future of display technology. And since that fits much better into the LCD wheelhouse than the OLED one, that's the direction the company will take.
A sign of things to come
None of this means, of course, that Sony considers the best OLED TVs to use some kind of second-rate technology, or that it is likely to ignore it in the future. In fact, its OLED Quantum Dot A95L range is currently positioned as Sony's most premium TV solution.
Sony has also long stressed that it does not believe in dictating to consumers what they should buy, preferring instead to offer all technologies somewhere in its range.
However, all signs past and present suggest that Sony is determined to go in a different direction than most, if not all, of its big-name rivals. And if recent demonstrations of its new LCD prototype technology are anything to go by, I'm very intrigued to see where we end up.
