Samsung has provided a deep dive into the technical innovations behind its premium TV technologies centred around four key pillars – the significant difference and advantage of Samsung’s Matte Display technology, an evolution of OLED technology, the capabilities of Neo QLED, and Smart Calibration for a more personalised viewing experience.
Samsung Australia director – audio visual, Himal Jekishan believes Australia is a unique market for the TV category and there are three reasons why.
“Firstly, it’s a premium market with Samsung Australia ranking in the top five markets globally for sales of premium TV technology. In 2019, Mini LED and OLED had 14% market share but in 2023, we expect this to increase to over 40%,” he said.
“Secondly, Australians love big screen TVs and we expect 75-inch screen sizes and above to account for 35% of the overall TV market, making it the number one screen size. Samsung Australia is the leading subsidiary for big screen TVs ahead of all other markets.
“Thirdly, Australian consumers want choice and more personalisation. Samsung Australia is number one in the world for Lifestyle TVs as our larger homes can accommodate more screens within households.”
Matte Display
Samsung Australia head of product – audio visual, Aaron McNamara said Matte Display is a Samsung innovation that was piloted with The Frame in 2022.
“From a picture quality perspective, there is a noticeable difference between our 2021 and 2023 The Frame models in terms of colour saturation and retention, as well as the anti-reflective properties of the screen,” he said.
“Samsung Lifestyle TVs are a perfect option for secondary spaces. Most Australian homes have a lot of natural light filtering into their spaces so anti-reflective is a key and important feature for the best picture quality experience available in every room of the home.
“Matte Display is currently unique to our Lifestyle TV line-up across The Frame, Serif and Sero TVs. As the number one market for Lifestyle TV sales globally, it resonates very well with Australian consumers.”
Samsung Electronics principal engineer for video and audio processing, Kevin said, “Since launch, more than three million consumers have purchased a Frame TV for their home. We adapted a special surface treatment on The Frame TV to minimise light reflection and create a canvas-like texture. This kind of technology produces a pristine picture for both TV content and artwork for consumers to enjoy true colours and contrast. It also provides anti-fingerprint properties.”
McNamara added: “Samsung research found that customers were using Art Mode on their Lifestyle TVs for an average of three hours each day but were less likely to use it during daylight hours, which is why the team developed Matte Display so it could be viewed at any time.”
Samsung’s 2022 Lifestyle TVs were verified as Glare-Free by leading independent safety science company, Underwriters Laboratories (UL).
OLED technology
“Samsung entered the OLED TV market in August 2022. Our Research and Development (R&D) team have spent the right amount of time to create OLED technology that uses red, green and blue subpixels. This year, we have been able to expand the range into new screen sizes and series with the S95C available in 55-, 65- and 77-inch,” McNamara said.
“Our data suggests that one in five dollars spent in the Australian TV market is on OLED technology, so we are excited to be entering the market in a meaningful way in 2023. Our new and innovative technology can be seen in our S95C as a huge step up in terms of brightness and colour reproduction.”
Kevin then explained the two key OLED technology advancements for 2023.
“Firstly, the light emitting layer of the panel has been upgraded to improve both efficiency and brightness. We adapted our know-how from our Neo QLED technology and applied brightness booster to our AI processor to provide a 20% increase in overall brightness. Secondly, our OLED technology has larger colour volume than conventional OLED displays due to narrow LGB property that expresses the best colour range,” he said.
Neo QLED
In 2023, Samsung has also introduced key improvements to its Neo QLED line-up to improve overall contrast through shape adaptive light control and more dimming zones.
Samsung engineers have improved blooming control by doubling the number of local dimming zones in 2023 compared to 2022, which helps improve contrast and detail. Samsung is also using shape adaptive light control technology to control the light shape depending on the object on the screen to further improve contrast and detail, in addition to leveraging 14-bit contrast mapping control.
Smart Calibration
Smart Calibration helps consumers personalise their TV viewing experience, according to McNamara.
“Personalisation is often associated with design or choosing the right screen for the right room, but we want customers to get the best picture quality possible, so we have introduced a way to calibrate the TV using a smartphone,” he said.
With Samsung’s Smart Calibration tool, customers do not need a professional colour meter or video generator software. They can simply use their smartphone camera to calibrate the TV and optimise image quality with the SmartThings app and a stable Wi-Fi connection.
There are two modes to choose from – basic mode for a quick calibration that takes 15 to 30 seconds, or professional mode that optimises more details in five to eight minutes.