CES 2018: Look to the Processor, Not the Display, for TV Picture Improvements

Hmm. Reminds me of https://superuser.com/questions/1282598/what-sense-does-it-m... - what's happening with these "picture improvements" is effectively post-processing "photoshop". They will generally be displaying TV from digital sources, so the need for denoise is questionable. Anti-banding might give you nicer sunsets. But fundamentally you now have a TV that rather than displaying the input signal decides to give you something it considers better. Results are likely to be variable.

Also:

"Samsung, though it didn’t tout a new processor, promised that all its gadgets, big and small, will be a lot smarter this year—and will, by 2020, be using AI and talking to the cloud."

Fully compliant with all major buzzwords. Also employing a black box user surveillance engine.

"In the shorter term, the technology would enable scenarios like someone asking the TV what is in the refrigerator, then having it display a recipe then send that recipe to the stove."

From now on, I will interpret this being the first idea floated as the use for some IoT tech as "we have no f'ing clue what we're going to use this for".

Thirty years ago, this problem was perhaps unsolved. Now it's solved in at least two ways, with tablets and voice interactions, and those are better.

Sorry, Sony, Samsung, etc, there is no way my TV, which is in the ENTIRELY WRONG ROOM, is going to wedge its way into my recipe workflow, and if that is the best idea you have, as evidenced by it being the first idea mentioned in this article... you have no ideas. Note how even in the example I quote above, WTF is the TV doing in that interaction flow in the first place? What I should be "asking" what is in the fridge is my cell phone, and by extension since they share OSes, optionally a tablet.

(The core problem here is that Smart TVs are now mature. Ignoring surveillance and privacy issues, what we need are just more responsive UIs, and preferably, some sort of plan for how we're going to maintain these TVs in the future because especially at the high end these things are too expensive to be treated like cell phones that don't get updates after a year and a half. But that sure doesn't win any CES awards.)

Why on earth does a TV need denoising built-in? I've noticed this trend—when I rarely visit electronic stores—where all the display models have huge vibrant screens, but whatever they show on them is always oversaturated, sharpened, and in general overprocessed. On top of that, when I visit some people's houses, they have everything setup completely wrong: stretching the picture to avoid letterboxing, upscaling from a lower resolution signal (acceptable depending on your distance, but better to have an HD signal for an HD TV), motion interpolation, and so much more. What ever happened to a television naively playing what it was given? Why does everyone want a neon prickly picture and assume they know better than the people who mastered the content? I know some will say "personal preference", but there's no accounting for taste and settings like these can ruin something carefully crafted. Lastly, to get back to denoising, noise is actually detail, stop removing it (and you'll almost never have it in modern stuff, mostly just old films—where it's part of the actual negative). This trend extends to photography as well, with editors not knowing when to ease off the saturation (the greens would hurt your eyes IRL) and contrast sliders, which might explain public perception or expectation.

Its always about the buzzwords... a few years ago I tried to buy a TV without 3D-support because I didn´t want to spend the money on a useless feature (for me). Guess what, no major brand offered a TV without 3D, I ended up buying the usual suspect. But now the situation has improved ! It got easy again to buy a TV without 3D-support at least :D Same for the current must-have features...

I think the common nerd would love a dumb display with decent calibration etc. out-of-the-box, so he could just connect his favorite media-box and have fun for a reasonable price. But this isn´t where the profits are made!

edit: Because you could just replace your mediabox after a few years, when e.g. netflix stops playing on it. I´m really waiting for a new player who gives us this dumb high-quality display so many nerds are waiting for.

Games designed to be played in 4K 60FPS HDR can feel pretty "future-proof". Playing Horizon Zero Dawn, an open world rpg with mech dinos, on the PS4 is stunning. Even if rather buggy. You are reminded it has been some time since you last were awed by the quality of snowflake particle effects.

I realize a $2K+ setup is beyond the reach of all but hard core enthusiasts. Especially as Gigabit connection speed availability is all but required. But 4K video will probably remain the standard for the next 4-5 year time frame.

> The company gave a don’t-blink-or-you-might-miss-it peek at what it says will be the world’s first commercial MicroLED display, available sometime this year. MicroLED technology operates like the Jumbo Tron in a football stadium, with a dedicated LED for each colored subpixel—shrunk down to the size of a standard TV, that is, with subpixels so small your eye can’t distinguish them. It doesn’t require filters or backlights, so color and brightness can be exceptional.

Isn't that what OLED is?

Will these household appliances with general purpose CPUs and WiFi chips receive the necessary updates for an entire lifetime? I have a CRT TV that is over 17 years old and still works. Will manufacturers provide even 5 years of security updates? Because if not, the next big vulnerability could mean we're all screwed.

Isn't one of the problems of all those picture improvement technologies that they increase input lag?

Sadly, from a usefulness perspective, it seems these improvements are incremental, and the increments are getting smaller every year.