The thing everyone wants to see at CES is the incredible display of mind-blowing televisions. This year, a lot of 4K TVs from every manufacturer. My count - about 50 billion 4K TVs on display. Last year, I waxed poetically about this Samsung 110" beauty, which was shown as a prototype. The good news - it is shipping now. The bad news is the cost - $150,000. Well now. A TV that costs more than a Lexus. Shockingly, Samsung is not expecting to sell too many of them. Their market - the guys who buy multi-million dollar yachts.
Curved TVs were the rage this year, with every company showing curved models. Samsung was even showing bendable TVs that you could change to be either flat or curved. On some level this just felt wrong - TVs should not bend... This 105" Samsung got the most attention, but for me the OLEDs had a better picture. I tried really hard to see the difference between flat and curved, and it was really hard. What they told me in the Samsung booth is the curved was not getting a good reaction, but we'll see what happens.
Gamers were drooling over the various 4K gaming demos. This was one that was in the Panasonic booth. Needless to say the detail was amazing.
So while Toshiba had 4K TVs on display, they upped the ante with a widescreen 5K model, with a pixel display of 5120 x 2160. It matches the widescreen 2:35:1 of anamorphic motion pictures. I must say, it did look pretty nice. If only I had a wall that I could put this on...
But those sneaky guys at Sharp just had to poop on everyone's parade, showing a prototype 8K 85" model. I mean, 4K is for wimps. They showed one last year, but this year it seemed to get more attention. The most common thing people did was go right up to the screen, within a foot, and stare at it. And yes, it passes that test - at 8" it is absolutely sharp and crisp and detailed. Blows the mind.
