Is 84-inches the new 55? It is when you’re talking about LED-based 4K flat panel TVs. Last night LG held a small event near the CEDIA Expo in Indianapolis to show off its latest big screen, the 84LM9600, but it wasn’t the only company to sneak in a surprise 4K TV into Indianapolis.
LG’s 4K beast, which we first saw in January at CES, sports 3840 x 2160 resolution, what the company calls “ultra definition.” LG isn’t worried about the lack of 4K content however, as a built-in 4K scaler takes any incoming signal and processes it up to the panel’s native resolution. The benefit of the increased resolution is a smaller pixel size, which means you can have a very large screen and still sit close without seeing any of the grid pattern from the pixel structure.
The edge-lit LED TV will be available to check out and purchase at dealers in October for $19,999, or about $5,000 less than the Sony 84-inch TV we told you about yesterday. It will be found only at select specialty AV retailers who are cable of installing the unit. No online sales will be allowed, which means you can’t order it from Amazon and expect the UPS driver to wrestle it off the truck and into your living room.
In addition to being big, it uses the same passive 3D technology of LG’s other LED TVs, and includes LG’s full assortment of smart TV features and the Magic Motion remote with voice technology built in.
The company also mentioned that its OLED TV, also shown back in January, will be available later this year, but no details were revealed.
Curiously, both JVC and Runco offered 4K TV surprises. At a press conference, JVC stated that it has a 4K 84-inch monitor, but it wasn’t available for viewing by journalists at the time. At Runco’s CEDIA press conference attendees were greeted by its 84-inch model (sporting a Planar logo) at the front of the room. Reporters were told the TV was being developed for commercial applications, but we expect a home-bound version is also on the drawing board.
We also suspect that all of the companies mentioned here may be getting their panels from the same source, but none would comment on that. LG at least confirmed that their TVs use their panels.
We would have loved to have seen one of these 4K TVs in the same room as a Sharp 80- or 90-inch 1080p LED TV to gauge see side by side what impact the extra resolution has on the viewing experience.
Planar’s 84-inch 4K TV.