by J.R. Powell

Created on: January 20, 2012

During 2012, new televisions will become available which will have new features, screen technologies, and higher resolutions. Some of these technologies include web connectivity ("Smart TVs"), OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) TVs, "4K" TVs, and 3D.

OLED TVs

OLED TVs use organic light emitting diodes to create the colour for each pixel. This is in contrast to current "LED backlit" TVs which use non-organic LEDs as a back-light for LCD. LCD screens have had problems with black levels, and while local dimming LED backlit TVs (but not edge lit ones) have allowed for more accurate control of the lighting in different regions of the screen (current displays allow up to around a hundred LED zones), they can't control the back-light for individual pixels (unlike OLED - or Plasma).

These new OLED TVs should be lighter and thinner than other display technologies, allow black levels as good as or better than Plasma, with contrast and brightness ranges as good as or better than other available display technologies.

LG have been demonstrating a 55" 1080p OLED TV (the 55EM960V) at just 4mm thick. It offers Passive 3D (3D using polarized glasses - instead of the shutter glasses type), and comes with "Smart TV" technology (see below) and a remote control that features voice control. This OLED TV is set to launch in the second half of 2012 in the UK.

Samsung and Panasonic are also developing OLED TVs which could be released this year. Panasonic are looking to manufacture 37" OLED TVs which they hope to release at around the same time as LG and Samsung release theirs.

Unfortunately the pricing of OLED TVs are likely to be very expensive when first released (possibly around £8000 for the 55" OLED display). Also, while other TV technologies (eg. LCD) are being made with higher resolution screens (eg. 4K), this year's OLED TVs will be at 1080p - a quarter of the resolution.

Smart TVs

"Smart TVs" are TVs which feature internet connectivity for playback of video content etc. from the internet.

4K TVs.

"4K" TVs mean TVs with approximately 4000 pixels across. While there are some projectors which can now output 4096 pixels across, current "4K" TVs are not "full 4K" but instead have a resolution of 3840x2160 pixels - which is 4 times the number of pixels of a "full HD" TV. LG and Toshiba will be releasing 4K LCD TVs.

The Toshiba 4K TV allows viewing of 3D content without glasses, but the 3D quality is not as good as TVs that use 3D glasses, and the resolution of each view

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