2020 has seen us spend more time indoors with many choosing to improve their at-home life by investing in new entertainment solutions. However, buying a new TV can also be a daunting experience, made overwhelming because of the endless list of acronyms like OLED, ULED, 4K and HDR.
TV technology is constantly improving and evolving so it is important to understand and decipher the jargon before heading to a store. To get to the bottom of all the lingo, we have teamed up with Hisense Australia’s TV technology expert, Chris Mayer.
“All houses and entertaining areas are different, as re the viewing needs of a family and individual. That is why keeping up to date with new technologies and knowing what types of tech best suits your needs is essential when buying a new TV,” says Chris.
“For example, if you’re an avid gamer and a fast refresh rate is a ‘must have’ for you, make sure you look at TVs that boast features such as Game Mode,” he added.
To prepare you for your buying experience, Chris has compiled a list of important terms (and their explanations!).
SCREEN TYPES
TV technology has come a long way with many different screen types to choose from. In simple terms, their main point of difference is how the screen is lit up.
LED is the technology that allows for your television to be thinner and produce images that are much more vivid. This is because of the backlight that comes from the TV, creating a sleeker sharper look for your entertainment experience.
ULED is Hisense’s brand of LED LCD TVs. Offering a sleek design coupled with the latest tech advancements, including Quantum Dot Technology and Full Array Dimming, ULED technology is known for its picture definition and contrast boasting vibrant and bright colours.
OLED technology, which stands for ‘Organic Light Emitting Diode’, has the ability to turn pixels on or off individually, instead of using a backlight. This ensures no bleeding in bright images and creates captivating contrast, displaying incredibly deep black levels.
Dual Cell™ is a new and exciting technology pioneered by Hisense that fuses two LCD panels or cells together to deliver a true-to-life picture. The first is a greyscale or monochrome layer that controls luminance, which is precision-bonded to a second cell that controls colour, providing over 2 million dimming zones that can be controlled with remarkable accuracy.
Mini LED is another new display technology growing in popularity. As the name suggests, Mini LEDs are a lot tinier than regular LEDs and are tightly knit together, resulting in many more dimming zones and helping to create brighter, sharper images.
Laser TV’s turn your home into a real-life movie cinema by broadcasting your favourite movie onto a big 100-inch screen! Companies such as Hisense create Laser TV technology that comes with all the features of a Smart TV with all the big-screen capability of a cinematic Laser TV.
4K v 8K
The great resolution debate is one that many TV buyers have.
4K Ultra HD TVs use over 8 million pixels to display images, whereas full HD screen uses just 2 million pixels. The result is picture clarity that you literally want to reach out and touch. Streaming services such as Netflix and YouTube now offer content 4K specific content, meaning your binge-watching session has never looked better.
8K Ultra HD TVs have 33 million pixels, four times as many as 4K TVs. 8K resolution will give extremely crisp detail, especially in the larger sized TVs of 65 inches and above. Buying an 8K TV will future proof your home, however as they are very new there is limited 8K content available, meaning you will not be able to experience the full benefits just yet unless the TV has a sophisticated upscaling technology, in which case it’s a top choice!
TV TECH & SMARTS
Just when you think you’ve covered it all, there’s still so much more technology and features that go into a great TV.
Dolby Vision™ HDR is an advanced imaging technology that transforms the viewing experience by generating ultra-vivid picture quality with incredible brightness, contrast, colour, and detail.
Dolby Atmos™ Audio, puts the viewer inside the action with bigger, more encompassing sound that fills the room.
HDR, short for High Dynamic Range, allows for brighter whites and darker blacks, to create more precise colour hues perfect for viewing a more lifelike image. If you are planning to go for a 4K TV, HDR is a must.
Upscalers, as the name suggests, upscale the image quality to suit the TV capabilities. This is essential when watching old movies with lower quality pictures or when owning an 8K TV to be able to benefit from the full 8K experience. AI-powered upscaling is ideal and uses a deep learning algorithm to identify specific objects and react appropriately to different situations on the screen.
Local Dimming adjusts the many LED lighting zones on the TV screen and results in sharper contrast with darker darks and crisper whites.
Full-array Local Dimming Pro ensures richer blacks and brighter highlights, from edge to edge. Hundreds of LED backlighting zones adjust and create contrast based on what’s on the screen, resulting in a rich picture quality that allows images to leap from the screen.
Quantum Dot Technology is a film of red and green ‘dots’ added to a blue LED to produce richer, more vivid colours creating striking screen images. These tiny particles (almost the size of DNA!) are capable of emitting brighter than bright colour that is more accurate to what you’d experience in real life.
Wide Colour Gamut, not only lets TVs display more colours, but more lifelike colours. Thanks to wide colour gamut, the TV’s usable colours increase dramatically, from 16.7 million colours to over a billion, creating brilliant lifelike scenes that leap off the screen.
Refresh Rate refers to how fast the images change images on your screen per second. The higher the refresh rate, the smoother your picture quality will be. If you love sport, you’ll want the refresh rate to be super-fast.
