back to article What a whopper, LG: Feast your eyes on this 77-inch bendy TV

LG gave the UK press its first gander at its world’s first curved 77-inch 4K OLED TV in London yesterday, choosing a live World Cup football match to show off its handiwork. Indeed, screening the beautiful game was somewhat fitting, given footballers will be among the few likely to afford its £19,999 price tag when it goes on …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Am not seeing any reason to give up my current 50 inch plasma. 20,000 quid for a curvy screen? Pass.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      What, you don't want the opportunity of buying a bigger house to fit it into? and that lovely extra mortgage (for the house + telly) of course ...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Plasma

      Exactly, is the colour palette as good as the Plasma?

      For me the big Plasma screens from Samsung and Panasonic (now finished production sadly) still offer the best visual HD experience.

      Does the upscale to 4K and latest panel negate the "cartoon" look of LCDs versus Plasma screens? I will wait for the professional reviews

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Plasma

        > the "cartoon" look of LCDs

        I must admit that I thought this when I went looking for my 55"er. The LCD TVs in the shop all look utter shite: non-existent skin tones, plastic looking people...until you realise that there is actually a setting they activate for shop use that makes the output utter rubbish.

        I nearly didn't get one just on that basis alone. Most LCDs have a "shop" mode which increases the contrast to get them noticed in shops. If you switch it off, a good LCD looks really rather nice. Sounds to me a bit like compression in audio to make it sound louder, which also makes it sound shitter.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "Cartoon Look"

          This is from the over the top software smoothing, colour correction and motion blur. You can turn it all off. It's the current "poor brightness settings" of yester year.

      2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

        Re: Plasma

        Does the upscale to 4K and latest panel negate the "cartoon" look of LCDs versus Plasma screens? I will wait for the professional reviews

        OLED has a huge colour gamut and blacks as black, if not blacker, than plasma. But they tend to come poorly calibrated (oversaturated, too high contrast and not enough gamma) from the factory. You're right to wait for the professional reviews but I think you're likely to be surprised as to how good big OLED screens really are.

  2. JDX Gold badge

    What's the focal length?

    Anyone want to guesstimate the maths?

    1. John Tserkezis

      Re: What's the focal length?

      "Anyone want to guesstimate the maths?"

      I've wondered that myself, but didn't want to look like a dick in the shop with a tape measure and calculator.

      At this point, I'm pretty sure it's not going to matter enough to make a difference - not enough to buy a curved screen because it's a curved screen, rather than a flat one - the other specs will take full priority on my decision.

      At this point, I really don't know if the curved screen is purely because it's technologically possible now (and not before), rather than possible and we should be doing it because it's better. I'm not entirely convinced of the latter. or yet, anyway.

      On the down side, it would certainly put a damper on our viewing conditions: Our living room through a number of reasons, has people positioned not only in front, but on either side as well. Our flat screen is very much usable as-is, and a curved screen would probably wreck that for those on the side extremes.

      1. Robert E A Harvey

        Re: What's the focal length?

        You'd not want it in a sunny room - come home and find a scorched line across the carpet. And the cat not speaking to you.

      2. DrGoon

        Re: What's the focal length?

        It's a zoom.

        "Users can adjust the bending radius of 5,000mm with a remote controller.."

        http://en.chinaflashmarket.com/TradeNewsDetails.aspx?QXJ0aWNsZV9JRD00MzAz

        So that's down to 2500mm focal length.

  3. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Sir Sham Cad

      Re: So you have to clamber around the back to plug anything in?

      Not at all. If you look closely you'll see the bloody thing costs 20 grand so anyone buying one will have a manservant to do the clambering and nervously fiddling with the gigantic, cumbersome beast.

    2. Crazy Operations Guy

      Re: Good I/O Design - I've heard of it!

      Most people don't want to see cables sticking out the side of their electronics. If you want to be able to access a port without going behind you can plug in a short extension cable, or just buy some extra regular cables and have them hang out in front of the TV,

      1. stucs201

        Re: Good I/O Design - I've heard of it!

        Also if you care enough about your screen based entertainment to spend 20k on a screen are you really connecting stuff directly to it? I'd expect it to be accompanied by a correspondingly nice AV receiever. Which means a one-off connection of power, HDMI and possibly aerial and ethernet to the tele itself - everything else can go through the receiver.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Good I/O Design - I've heard of it!

      If you spend 20k on this, you spend 5k (or whatever) on a good AV receiver and push everything through a single HDMI cable to the TV. No swapping. If you do want to plug in a camera/phone to watch back some holiday snaps (and don't have wifi) you can use the front mounted ports on the AV receiver.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Good I/O Design - I've heard of it!

      Back in the last century, if memory serves some of the Pioneer plasmas, which at the time were bleeding edge stuff, had a 'tuner box' that was separate from the tv, for you to plug your stuff into. At the time, I thought that was a stormingly good idea. No more trying to get round the back of the telly to plug in something, and only 1 connections cable going into the set, rather than several. Seems I was in the minority though, cos my 2 year old LG LCD has about 10 cables going into it.

  4. DrBobK

    Off-axis OK, what about from below?

    We used to have a CRT telly sitting on top of the fridge in the kitchen. When we replaced it with a small LED one all you could see looking upwards to the new telly was a yellowish blur. I'm not proposing balancing a 55" curved monster on top of the fridge - but, for future reference, do OLED panels look OK from low viewing angles?

    1. HelpfulJohn

      Re: Off-axis OK, what about from below?

      "... for future reference, do OLED panels look OK from low viewing angles?"

      Mostly, yes, though as one would expect they are foreshortened. Circles become elipses and suchlike geometrical topological thingummy.

      And just for future reference, ElReg-Writers, *I* could afford one of them there 77-incher, and it would fit in my front-back room, though getting the box in the front door might be an issue. I have never played a game of soccer in my life and I'm a pensioner.

      I would never buy one, not until the price drops to about £150 - £200 or so, because there's never anything good to watch on TV and it's expensive for a DVD monitor, but I *could*.

      Not all people who don't kick balls are poor.

      1. steogede

        Re: Off-axis OK, what about from below?

        > Not all people who don't kick balls are poor.

        Not all people who can't afford to blow £20k on a telly are poor.

  5. defiler

    Curved telly?

    Not really feeling it. Recently bought a 65" LED-backlit Samsung. 1080p looks fantastic on it, since not only do I not have any 4k content, but I don't even have a device that could produce it right now. The backlight spread is not perfect (though it's damn close), and the image processing (frame interpolation) occasionally screws up a frame (maybe 2 or 3 over the course of a movie), but I'm delighted with it.

    You know what the best thing is? I can stick it up on the wall. Great, eh? Of course, I look forward to buying a lighthouse so that I can stick a curved OLED up on the wall...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Curved telly?

      How on earth can you know the frame interpolation gets screwed up for 3 frames in a movie? Do you sit there with remote in hand examining frame by frame? I call bollox. You would never notice 3 frames in ~90 mins.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Curved telly?

      Seen the Curved on a wall. It can be done nicely. But in all honesty, the curve is snake oil and Emperors clothes.

      The motion smoothing does really trash the images. Not once, but all the time. Some times it is more noticeable than others, but any fast motion, like aircraft wings, get all scrambled. Even legs wobble when people run.

  6. Caaaptaaaain kick arse

    4k netflix?

    Cant wait to see BT/VM buster blood-vessel

  7. Cynic_999

    Older Smart TV sets have one advantage - no Cinavia (unless you allowed them to update their firmware).

  8. Christian Berger

    Might make sense for a desktop screen

    Since you are closer to the screen there, a curved screen makes a lot more sense there.

  9. Brian Miller

    How the other (less than one-) half lives...

    My, there's £19,999 I'll never spend! Nice that when you're viewing people (werewolves?) with yellow eyes you'll have great color. Maybe as you barricade the door and arm yourself with your custom hunting shotgun, you'll be able to take them on the rise after they smash down your door and leap for your throat...

    Or maybe you'll have a better target for your Nerf Gatling gun.

  10. Robert E A Harvey

    Just F**k off, set makers.

    Some years ago I paid good money for a TV with 1080p resolution. I have yet to watch anthing other than a 625 programme on it. I've looked at the list of things available in "full HD" and it is pathetic. Do I really want to see Bill Oddie in shagwatch again? There are movies - which mainly seem to be about improbable ways of killing people - and, err, ...

    Do NOT keep inventing standards for which there are no worthwhile programmes.

    1. Matt_payne666

      Re: Just F**k off, set makers.

      Well, I welcome the increase in resolution... Even my luddite girlfriend can appreciate the colour and picture quality... we hardly watch anything in SD, movies on Sky HD also look fuzzy compared to the full Blu-ray... we do have everything switched through a big AV amp so HD audio is a bonus... but that's beside the point...

      I couldn't come close to affording one of these, but the technology (this is apparently a tech website) is cool.... I remember the first 10" or so OLED telly from Sony and the associated hurdles to build that so to see a monster like this, is something rather lovely!

  11. John H Woods Silver badge

    more excited about the gamut than the pixels ...

    Don't really understand the value of 4K on 77" - my kids have HD projected onto 100" and you can't see pixels at an appropriate viewing distance. Colour gamut - and perhaps frame rate - is where the quality will be most noticeable for anything but the vastest screens.

  12. Winkypop Silver badge
    Windows

    My 10 year old 42" HD plasma is doing fine thanks

    For the shite that is on TV these days, it's perfect.

    Let me know when the content improves, and I don't mean the resolution.

  13. redhunter

    4k is nice if you want to look at still pictures or watch Slow TV—notice that is what is typically showing when they demo these TVs. But the industry needs to deal with upping the framerates, which begins with shooting the content at higher frame rates. An action scene at 4k but shot at 24fps looks like stop motion animation.

    It may take awhile based on the reaction to the 48fps Hobbit movies so far. Some viewers have grown accustomed to the surreal experience that 24fps provides in movies, which maybe appropriate for a chickflic or as a visual effect for certain movies, but actions scenes require high FPS. For me after watching the first two Hobbits in 3D/48fps, I can't stand to watch any action scene in 24fps especially in 3D.

    1. Martin an gof Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      Some sensible comments above - but then this is The Register.

      1: Plasma still beats any LCD screen hands-down for colour, especially off-axis. I have several off-axis tellies at work, and it's getting bloomin' difficult to find plasmas these days. At home? I still have a 23" Sony Trinitron and I'm not replacing it until it expires, unless OLED tellies become available a: at 30 - 40" sizes and b: at LCD prices.

      OLEDs used to have very short (compared with LCD) expected lifespans, I wonder if that has changed? Plasma's Achilles heel is screen-burn.

      2: lots of pixels (like that silly LG phone I've just read about) are all about "mine is bigger than yours". It would make a much more difference for most people to stay with 1920x1080 and instead up the frame rate. Just going to 100p would make a heck of a difference and probably not use any more bandwidth than 4k@50i. On top of that it would remove the need for all the "interpolation", "frame doubling" and so on processing. We find at work(*) that the quality of the telly's processing that makes the biggest difference to percieved picture quality when viewing video sources.

      M.

      (*)Most of the tellies at work are showing output from computers, but occasionally they are used for television. Upscaling SD to HD really sorts the men from the boys on units which have similar panels.

  14. menotu

    buying an expensive TV is the equivalent of getting a solid gold Toilet Seat... totally useless...

  15. Sebastian Brosig

    re: menotu It's the content that counts

    I agree:

    Peter Jackson's Tolkien films will be boring no matter what. And seeing a good film will be good almost irrespective of the technical qualites of the TV set.

  16. George 8

    Any further Specs?

    Did HDMI2 get released? Does this TV have HDMI2 or is it HDMI1.4? Not sure I'd consider buying it if its running HDMI 1.4.

  17. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    FAIL

    The fat end of £20K on a telly

    F**k me sideways

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