To discuss these changing industry trends and the future of consumer preferences, Samsung Newsroom sat down with Kang-il Chung, Vice President and Head of Future Planning Group at Samsung’s Visual Display Business. Read on to learn more about how Samsung’s continuous TV innovations keep up with rapidly changing consumer lifestyles.

It’s that time of year again! The holidays are fast approaching, and the holiday spirit is in full swing. Although we can all agree that 2020 has been a year unlike any other, the true meaning behind the season – the sense of togetherness, fun and cheer – remains as important as it’s ever been.

Like the holidays, Samsung QLED 8K brings people together, although they do so in a slightly different way. The first part of our series guided you through picking out the perfect holiday gift from Samsung’s lifestyle TV lineup. Here, we’ll show you how Samsung QLED 8K’s combination of convenient features and immersive entertainment can make celebrating the holidays that much more fun.

‘Deck the Halls’ with Ambient Mode

What better way to get in the holiday spirit than by surrounding yourself with holiday-themed art?

Samsung QLED 8K’s Ambient Mode allows you to do just that. The feature adds a fun new dimension to decorating your living space by transforming your TV’s off screen into an immersive canvas. It’s perfect for those of us who love watching cozy content around the holidays, because it offers us more opportunities to enjoy festive imagery.

Make Time for a Holiday Movie Marathon

Watching films with friends and family is such an important part of the holidays. With so many classics to choose from, you’ll want a TV that allows you to enjoy each and every one in crystal clear quality.

Available in sizes ranging from 43 all the way up to 98 inches, Samsung QLED 8K takes movie marathons to a whole new level. Immerse yourself in your favorite holiday films with bright, vivid colors and jaw-dropping detail.

Enjoy Concerts and Musicals

For many of us, the holidays just wouldn’t be the same without the music – the concerts, musicals and more – that makes this season feel so special. With so many concerts and performances going virtual this year, many of us are turning to our TVs to enjoy this important part of the holiday experience.

Samsung QLED 8K allows you to view concerts and performances at a level of quality that makes you feel like you’re there. They do so by combining impeccable visuals with powerful audio innovations like Object Tracking Sound+ and Active Voice Amplifier (AVA). The former follows movement on screen to create lifelike, three-dimensional sound, while the latter analyzes scenes in real time to optimize sound for speech, music and more.

Unwrap a More Immersive Gaming Experience

With next-generation consoles set to be among this year’s hottest gifts, those who wish to get the most out of their gaming sessions will require TVs that are capable of supporting the most immersive experience possible.

Samsung optimized its QLED 8K, inside and out, to offer gamers an edge over the competition. The TVs work seamlessly with consoles to minimize barriers to your immersion, including tearing, stuttering and lag, producing the type of smooth and crisp gameplay that takes console gaming to the next level.

Make More Memories Together

More than anything, the holidays are about spending quality time with friends and family, reflecting on memories, and forging new ones.

Samsung QLED 8K’s built-in screen-sharing features make it easy for families to relive precious moments. Sharing home movies and music couldn’t be simpler with Tap View and Multi View. Both features allow you to instantly mirror content on your smartphone’s screen to your TV’s spacious display. Once you’ve found a video you’d like to show the group, simply tap your smartphone to your TV’s side to mirror it with Tap View, or use Multi View to create a picture-in-picture window of your smartphone’s screen that you can display alongside what’s on TV.

Samsung Electronics’ 2020 TV lineup has already made its mark on the industry, receiving recognition from leading industry media through accolades for leading device and feature innovation.

At this year’s CES, Samsung unveiled their very latest QLED 8K and 4K lineup, new TVs that combine cutting-edge picture and sound innovations with premium designs to offer users unparalleled new viewing experiences. Several leading consumer technology publications in the U.S. and the U.K have subsequently awarded Samsung’s latest QLED 8K and 4K lineups with some of their top distinctions, highlighting the TVs’ stand-out picture quality, sound enhancements and design innovations.

Read on for some of the award-winning TVs and their best-in-class features.

Award-Winning Advancements

Samsung’s QLED 8K Q950TS/Q900T received high praise from Forbes for its picture quality and design, with the outlet highlighting how the TV’s upscaling technology produced a sense of depth, texture and detail – for example of tiny figures walking down a distant street – to singular effect. The Q950TS was also awarded the ‘Best in Class’ distinction by U.K. outlet AV Forums. AV Forums applauded the Q950TS’ new ‘Infinity’ design, which features minimized borders at the edge of the display and is only 15mm deep, and praised the device as “an impressively specified 8K TV that boasts a host of high-end features.”

The QLED 8K Q800T received both a five-star review and the Editor’s Choice Award from U.S. outlets HD Guru and Tech Aeris respectively. HD Guru praised the Q800T, along with the rest of Samsung’s 8K TV lineup, for their best-in-class image and sound processing systems, noting that the greater pixel density provided by the Q800T’s 8K delivers accurate color reproduction, 100% color volume and overall HDR performance, even for images with fine shadow detail. Tech Aeris cited the device’s design aesthetic as its winning feature, praising that, with the bezels at a thinner footprint than ever before, “it really does make this QLED TV look as if it’s floating in front of you.”

The QLED 4K Q90T has become one of U.S. outlet AVS Forums’ ‘Top Choice 2020’ by merit of its 4K display’s versatility and performance, citing its refined technologies, such as the TV’s sharpening algorithms and their ability to effectively bring out texture and detail, as offering the best 4K QLED performance yet.

A Bright Future

“Our 2020 QLED 8K and 4K TV lineups bring together Samsung’s industry leading picture quality, cutting-edge design and dynamic sound experiences,” noted Jongsuk Chu, Executive Vice President of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “These awards and distinctions underpin our relentless commitment to delivering advanced breakthroughs for consumers that are as useful as they are innovative.”

For more information on Samsung’s award-winning 2020 QLED 8K and 4K TV lineups along with the company’s other leading TV & audio innovations, visit news.samsung.com/global/category/products/tv-audio.

“Samsung is constantly transforming the technology we put in front of our consumers to give them the ultimate home entertainment experience, so leading this endeavor was a natural step,” said Hyogun Lee, Executive Vice President of the Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “NEXTGEN TV powered by ATSC 3.0 enhances the at-home viewing experience for our 2020 QLED 8K owners and beyond. We’re excited to see how the standard steers our broadcast partners into developing content and experiences for our 8K ecosystem. We are just beginning to scratch the surface and are excited about the full potential enabled by ATSC 3.0.”

One of the key benefits and improvements of NEXTGEN TV powered by ATSC 3.0 over the current ATSC 1.0 standard is its potential to receive and playback content in up to 4K resolution, rather than just Full HD that is currently available. This ensures that Samsung QLED 8K owners are able to playback 4K broadcasts and content when the signals are transmitted.

Alongside the vivid resolution, NEXTGEN TV brings audiences a more engaging and realistic audio experience. The standard’s Multi-Channel Object Audio and Dialogue Enhancement features give users louder and clearer sound enabling immersive experience in addition to the traditional surround sound. The standard also revamps the capabilities with enhanced content and added information.

Samsung has been at the forefront of development efforts around high-resolution broadcast for years. The company has also been working with Pearl TV and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) on testing new features and broadcasting experimental transmissions, across many industry events and collaborations. These efforts have ensured that Samsung is leading the world with the best in class Ultra HD viewing experiences and have given broadcasters the ability to continue innovation within the 8K ecosystem.

For more information on Samsung’s 2020 QLED TV lineup and NEXTGEN TV, please visit www.samsung.com.

“We are proud to be one of the founding members of the 8K Association and to have our new lineup of QLED 8K TVs certified by the program,” said Hyogun Lee, Executive Vice President of the Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “Our goal is to provide consumers with the ability to easily identify premium 8K displays from other devices when making purchasing decisions. Home entertainment and TVs are important investments for many of our consumers, and we hope that the 8KA Certification Logo will help guide them.”

The 8KA Certification Program aims to distinguish televisions featuring four times as many pixels as the standard 4K televisions for clarity, contrast and color and high dynamic range (HDR) performance. Among the features tested include display resolution reaching 7680 x 4320, peak brightness greater than 600 nits, image transmission of HDMI2.1 and high efficiency video codec (HVEC).

Member companies like Samsung Electronics will be able to promote 8K certified TVs after they are validated by the 8KA. The 8KA also plans to increase educational programming efforts this year across many different industries in order to promote member participation, innovation and content development within the 8K ecosystem.

In addition to expansion across different industries, the 8KA plans to spread promotional activities for the 8K industry through demos, showcasing the advanced technological development of 8K-enabled products, production workflow, delivery options and display devices. The programs and initiatives will showcase how consumers can engage with 8K content, the ecosystem and its standards.

The 8KA anticipates further adoption of 8K content creation, distribution and home adoption, similar to the evolution of 4K standards adoption and consumer purchase cycle over the past several years. To-date, partner companies and organizations have all joined the 8K Association – further broadening the membership to more than 22 companies.

For more information on the 8K Association and Samsung QLED 8K TVs, please visit www.samsung.com.

About the 8K Association
The organization’s mission is to grow appreciation and awareness of 8K products which will provide an even higher level of entertainment which is paramount to large screen entertainment. Our activities include development performance and interface specifications, compliance logo programs, education and coordination with 8K ecosystem developers to help build the 8K market.

Samsung Electronics has been at the forefront of this signage evolution – leading the display market for ten consecutive years while pushing the industry further, through a number of technological transformations. Samsung has overcome numerous challenges along the journey and has introduced innovative, new products year after year.

Samsung Newsroom has explored how Samsung SMART Signage has evolved in the last decade and tracked its journey through to today.

Making an Airport Debut

“What is the necessity for installing large digital signage indoors just to display information? And why is this different from or better than a TV screen?” This was the most frequently asked question for Sungtae Lee in the early 2000s when digital signage first emerged. Lee was one of the trailblazers in designing commercial signage products at Samsung Electronics’ Visual Display Business.

In many conversations, before explaining how Samsung products were different from the others, he had to introduce the value proposition of digital signage and the different ways of utilizing the products: “We had a firm belief that digital signage would profoundly change the way people communicate. But it was not accepted as easily as we had initially thought,” noted Lee.

Samsung Electronics installed the world’s largest indoor airport LED signage, covering a total of 1,012 square meters, at the New Istanbul Airport in 2018.

Perceptions changed as digital signage began to create new markets by converging with new technologies. For Samsung, this convergence and opportunity started with airports, according to Lee.

An airport is a large and complex structure that requires the processing of substantial amounts of information in real-time – from check-in counters to baggage claim. Naturally, digital signage products and solutions were inevitable. “Offering our proprietary software, Samsung was a pioneer in introducing a Flight Information Display System (FIDS) that was designed to remotely process video clips and deliver information through the data networks 24 hours a day. This implementation laid the groundwork for Samsung SMART Signage,” said Lee.

3.4 Times Bigger and 54 Percent Slimmer, a Decade of Efforts to Go Beyond the Limit

In the early 2000s, Samsung introduced its LCD signage, 32-inch in size. Comparing this early model to the 110-inch LCD signage, unveiled in 2014, the size of Samsung’s digital signage had increased by 3.4 times in a decade.

It became slimmer as well. Samsung’s latest 4K signage, introduced in 2019, is 49.7 mm thick. Compared to the first model, which was 109 mm thick, the thickness of Samsung’s digital signage has more than halved through the company’s extensive research and continuous efforts.

In addition, the locations to install digital signage are being diversified from airports and inside of buildings, to offices, clothing shops, bus stops, subway stations and large-sized outdoor billboards.

As Samsung digital signage expanded into different spaces, it required technologies that addressed the challenges presented by various environmental factors, including temperature, humidity and solar heat, such as UV rays and infrared rays.

This was how Samsung Magic Glass was born. By blocking reflected light, Samsung Magic Glass increased visibility and reduced infrared rays by 40 percent. “We adopted a distinctive heat protection technology to improve durability and also acquired high standards in waterproof, dustproof (IP56), and breakproof specifications (IK10). That’s why our digital signage works properly even with severe dust and harsh environmental conditions, and can also withstand a strong shock,” said Sehee Park responsible for planning outdoor products at the Visual Display Business’ Product Strategy Team.

Bigger and Brighter Samsung SMART Signage Leads the Trend

Samsung has shown its innovative leadership in the digital signage industry, most notably with the installation of its large-scale LED signage at the COEX Shopping Center in Seoul in March 2018. Connecting two walls using a single continuous screen with curved corners, the signage is comprised of approximately 31,000 LED display modules attached 10mm from each other, demonstrating an impressive level of precision and accuracy. This product is a perfect example to demonstrate Samsung’s expertise and leadership in digital signage technology.

“We incorporated an optimized waterproof solution into every connecting part of the display for maximum durability. Our proprietary picture quality processing technology allows the display to express colors vividly for a long period of time,” said Seungjae Soh at the Visual Display Business’ Product Strategy Team.

Additionally, by acquiring YESCO Electronics in 2015, a company specializing in commercial LED display, Samsung has solidified its leadership in the LED market.

Retail spaces have also presented opportunities for Samsung. Since outdoor signage is used to attract shoppers, it must immediately grab their attention and catch their eye, further demonstrating the importance of both vivid and vibrant colors.

To meet such needs, Samsung unveiled a high brightness signage lineup in various sizes. In particular, double-sided high brightness¹ signage has been well-accepted by retail shops and Quick Service Restaurants (QSR), as it supports up to 3,000 nits for outdoor screens and 1,000 nits for indoor screens. Moreover, the latest 85˝ double-sided display can be installed at bus stops for street advertising, targeting commuters and passers-by.

In an ever-evolving industry, one of the latest trends is QLED 8K signage. Samsung is leading this innovation as well, as it was the first company to introduce an 82” ultra-high resolution 8K signage product, taking a step forward in signage innovation. Moreover, the AI-based quantum processor allows any video clip – no matter the resolution – to be converted into 8K resolution, providing a truly vivid expression of color. Samsung’s 8K product lineup is poised to expand its horizons in the second half of this year.

“There is a strong need for our latest 8K signage amongst luxury retail stores which want to display vivid images. In addition, thanks to our AI upscaling technology, which converts any content to 8K regardless of the original resolutions, the 8K signage is being well-received by customers. Just like we did in the last decade, we will always continue to provide industry-leading products and services,” stated Seog-gi Kim, Executive Vice President of the Enterprise Business Team, Samsung Electronics.

As digital signage is rapidly becoming a next-generation communication platform, Samsung is aiming to push forward with new solutions. Stay tuned to our next episode to discover the future of digital signage.

¹ This technology extends Dynamic Range to make bright spots brighter and darker spots darker so that color range and contrast appear much closer to reality.