A/V Veteran

Last week Samsung held a launch party for its new SUHD Ultra HDTVs (forgive the redundancy!) in New York City. They kindly flew me from my new digs in northwest Florida to attend. New York based S&&V Editor Rob Sabin was there also, along with most of the consumer electronics press.

Two of the new Samsung SUHD LCD sets are the first consumer sets to support the new high dynamic range (HDR) technology that, along with a wider color gamut, a deeper color bit depth, and (of course) 4K resolution (3840 x 2160 pixels) are all central to a complete picture of what Ultra HD is all about. All UHD sets up to now have featured 4K only. That is, they were simply 1080p sets with four times as many pixels. Such enhanced resolution alone is arguably the least obvious benefit of UHD over 1080p, at least in the sizes of consumer UHD displays that are most affordable (though hardly cheap).

Getting Technical
The event was divided into two segments. The morning session, a technical briefing on the new sets including issues involved in testing and calibrating them, was by far the most interesting, and the most relevant, for we tech nerds. The presentation was given by well-known HDTV calibrator and consultant Kevin Miller. Four 65-inch high-end sets had been set up in close proximity to each other for close comparison. Two were Samsung models—one was the JS9500 SUHD, the other was one of last year’s UHD models. The other two sets weren’t officially identified, but the second most interesting model was an OLED. The fact that the OLED was not a Samsung was a pretty obvious spoiler as to its source, since only two manufacturers (both Korean) have made consumer OLED models lately, and only one of them makes a 65-incher.

All four sets were calibrated before the event by Kevin and his associates. The highlight of the presentation were all too short clips from Exodus: Gods and Kings, with the Samsung SUHD playing it in HDR. Many of us had seen these clips at the 2015 International CES this past January. They were just as impressive here as they had been there. The HDR Samsung clearly won the eye-popping prize. In other respects, here and with a 1080p source, the Samsung went neck and neck with the OLED, including black levels (the room lighting was dim, but not totally dark, which might have helped the Samsung a bit). Not everyone agreed however; some gave the black level prize to the OLED. The very darkest scenes invariably rely heavily on just how a display comes out of black (low level gamma) and this is very tricky to get right, particularly if the set doesn’t offer custom gamma adjustments.

There were color differences as well. None of us usually knows exactly what the source material was supposed to look like, so picking a winner isn’t always clearcut. But test patterns helped, and Kevin’s bench tests indicated that the Samsung had superior gamut tracking (that is, its color points, and thus its color, were more stable at different luminance levels than the OLED).

New Challenges for Calibration
Calibrating UHD sets will present new challenges, as new test patterns and measurement software will be needed. The two top Samsung UHD models are said to be capable not only of HDR, but of reproducing most of the DCI color gamut, more commonly called P3. This gamut, with wider color than the current Rec.709 HD color gamut standard, is expected to be offered on full-featured consumer UHD sources, along with 10-bit color depth (up to now, consumer color displays have been limited to 8-bits per color). No such advanced color material is yet available to the consumer, but virtually all recent films have been mastered with these color enhancements (though they’re downconverted to Rec.709, our current HD color standard, for home video release). So it won’t require that such material be remastered by the program producers, though it will have to be re-graded if HDR is desired. Because most current material is still Rec.709, it’s likely that calibrators will have to calibrate UHD sets (or at least those capable of the added HDR and color features discussed above, not those offering only 4K resolution) for at least three situations in three separate memories: 1080p, UHD without HDR, and UHD with HDR. It will be a new world, and a more complicated one until all source material is full-featured UHD. The latter will take years, if ever.

While UHD downloads using HDR, 10-bit color depth, and a P3 color gamut may be possible (they will certainly require far more bandwidth than Plain Jane 1080p), streaming could be dicey at best. It’s likely that it will take UHD Blu-ray, anticipated for late this year or early next, to offer pristine UHD with all of the enhancements the new format can offer.

Calibrating for HDR will present unique challenges. HDR requires a specialized gamma curve (the formal pro term for gamma is EOTR, for Electro Optical Transfer Function—I’ll continue to call it gamma, thank you very much). The Samsung SUHDs we saw at the event had been configured with the maximum Contrast and Backlight settings, as recommended by Samsung. This, and gamma, might explain the one issue I had with the HDR image on the JS9500. On some shots the image, particularly in some fleeting facial close-ups, looked a bit washed out. Presumably the sets will offer preset gamma settings for both HDR and standard sources, but our experience with preset gammas in the past has not always been a thrill (they’re often odd, to say the least—sometimes too high, sometimes too low, and sometimes S-shaped). And very few flat panel displays offer custom gamma adjustments.

Samsung's 2015 UHD Lineup
After the tech sessions we moved to different venue, the Rainbow Room near the top of the RCA building, for a formal and less technical press conference. This included the usual glowing hyperbole from a variety of Samsung and associated spokespersons. But in this case the over-the-top rhetoric appeared justified. A wide range of Samsung sets were arrayed around the room, and while they were most certainly cranked to the max, they were nonetheless very impressive.

We hope to get our hands on the curved, 65-inch JS9500 for review shortly. It has just become available, and retails (as most new technology does) for a not inconsiderable $6,500. The larger, curved 78-inch JS9100, at $10,000, is scheduled for release in May. Both use full-array local dimming, a technology required for proper implementation of HDR. But if the latter sounds pricey, remember that last year's Samsung 85-inch set, not so very much larger was, if memory serves, priced at nearly $40,000. And it lacked HDR and advanced color.

Below these two models are several other less expensive SUHD sets, three in the JS9000 range and three in the JS8500, topping out at 65-inches in each case. Some are flat, others curved. But these lines use edge-lit local dimming, which means they can’t do HDR, and no claims are made that they can take advantage of 10-bit and P3 color sources. There are also a number of other new UHD-only (no “S”) Samsung models. We expect a lot of confusion here; I wouldn’t trust the average sales person to keep all these models straight. Just remember, there are only two SUHD models that can do the full range of UHD tricks.

In fact, I’m not yet fully certain that the top two models will keep those 10-bit and P3 gamut inputs intact from input to screen, given a source that offers them. Claims of a 10-bit panel, for example, doesn’t guarantee 10-bit color from input to display. We’re attempting to get answers to this on the JS9500 and JS9100 and will let you know ASAP. Watch this space.