When it comes to setting new standards in performance, Samsung’s 8K AI upscaling technology has equipped the company’s TVs to provide truly captivating viewing experiences. Likewise, ‘The Wall’ – the first-ever modular display with MicroLED, capable of expanding to a size of hundreds of inches – provided a snapshot of what the future holds for display technology. In terms of design and lifestyle leadership, a host of Samsung solutions including ‘The Serif’ and ‘The Frame’ have set new benchmarks for how your TV might look and interact.

Check out the infographic below to learn more about how Samsung has constantly innovated to push its TV offerings to greater and greater heights.

John and Mary are a couple. They have been shopping around for a new big screen TV and have finally chosen a Samsung SUHD TV based largely on its amazing Quantum dot color abilities. John is a big sports fan and loves watching all the big matches of the season on a bigger TV display. Mary gets into her favorite TV series and can be found racking up her viewing hours whenever there’s a chance to sit back and relax. But they both look forward to the times they’ll have to snuggle up together on the couch and watch a good movie on their new big screen TV. The thing is, it’s not just John & Mary in this story. They’ve also found three new little buddies, the Quantum dot brothers, who regularly venture out from the Quantum dot TV display, and want to help them get the most Quantum dot color magic out of their new SUHD TV.

How the Quantum dots in SUHD TV work

The Quantum dots in their SUHD TV are a relatively new discovery. Back in the 1980s scientists began experimenting with nanoparticles and discovered that by adjusting the size of the Quantum dot particles that they could in effect render different colors across the spectrum with extremely high precision. And so it has been applied to TV technology. When the light source hits a Quantum dot in the SUHD TV display some of the energy is absorbed and then re-emitted as a longer wavelength dependent on the size of the particle. The resulting colors are incredibly pure so the images that appear on their big screen TV are wonderfully vibrant, all thanks to our Quantum dots brothers working diligently together.

Vivid & vibrant–Quantum dot color

By adjusting the size of our tiny Quantum dot particle friends, a billion different colors can be expressed for more realistic images on John and Mary’s big screen TV. What’s more, their SUHD TV utilizes 10-bit panels for 64 times the color expression of conventional 8-bit panel TVs—a much greater range of colors than what you’re used to seeing on 8-bit panel TV displays. Like both Red and Mary said, the resulting images are vivid and vibrant!
Our friends the Quantum dot brothers can certainly can express an incredible range of colors to deliver stunning images on the SUHD TV but they also have a few other tricks up their sleeves. Stay tuned to find out more about the many talents of the Quantum dot brothers in the next installment of our story.

When you hear Quantum Dot, it may be easy to write it off as a something only seen in sci-fi films. Sure, the latest Samsung SUHD TVs are tapping the power of deep physics to provide our most colourful and energy-efficient televisions, but what exactly is a quantum dot and what does it do? In case you don’t have your own electron microscope, here’s a peek inside the inner workings of these strange and nearly magical particles.

How Small Is a Quantum Dot?

Quantum dots are extremely small nano-sized particles. There are billions of these things inside a Samsung 4K SUHD TV screen. The largest quantum dots are 7 nanometers wide, while the smallest are a mere 2 nanometers wide. To give you some idea of how tiny they are, 2 nanometers is the same as 2 billionths of a meter, or 1 / 5,000 th the thickness of a human hair, or 30 atoms wide.

Take your pick. It all means the same thing: quantum dots are so extremely small that you can’t see them with the naked eye.

What Do Quantum Dots Do?

What makes quantum dots really interesting is that they are photo-active—meaning if you shine a light on them, they absorb it like a sponge. Then they turn around and use the energy from that light to make their own light. The light each quantum dot emits, however, is always a specific, pure colour, based on its size. The smallest quantum dots emit blue light, for example, while the larger ones emit red light.

How Do Quantum Dots Save Energy?

As any stage performer can tell you, bright lights emit a lot of heat. While traditional LCD panels have been remarkably effective, they do cast off heat as well. In fact, the brighter the scene is, the more power the TV consumes and the warmer the screen gets. This means there has always been a limit to how bright a TV can be without turning your family room into the equivalent of a sauna.

Because quantum dots absorb light as well as emit light, they can display scenes with a brightness you’ve never seen before, while staying cooler and using less energy.

How Do Colours Create More Colours?

If you’ve ever worked with watercolours, you know that, if you put a yellow too close to a blue, you get green between them. This is essentially what happens with traditional TVs and prevents you from experiencing a full richness in colours. The colour in each subpixel would get watered down by the adjacent colours.

Quantum dots don’t have this handicap. The colours they emit are so pure that they’re hardly affected by adjacent colours. Through bright scenes and dark scenes, Samsung SUHD TVs show you more colours than ever before.

Just how many colours? How does one billion sound to you? That’s 64 times as many colours as a typical TV.

Photo Credits: Samsung

2016 saw the South African Communications Minister, Faith Muthambi, congratulate the South African television industry as it entered into its 40th year of broadcasting in colour. It was in January 1976 when the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) sent out its first colour show to the nation after spending several months transmitting experimental broadcasts. Times have changed since that pixelated analogue broadcast and the television has evolved into something remarkable.
 
For those who watched that first colour broadcast back in 1976, the quality was amazing and the experience utterly immersive. Today, few can imagine sitting clustered around such a tiny screen – a mere 11 inch, 90 degree Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) – and being captivated by tiny people in bright colour that the technology of the time could deliver. As the television’s popularity grew, so did its functionality. The last vacuum tube set was the Philco-Ford in 1973 and 1978 was the year in which the last black and white consoles were manufactured.
 
At that time, the screens felt perfect and the fact that the shows were in colour was a huge deal. Then, in the 1980s, things really began to take off with accessories, consoles and Video Cassette Recorders (VCRs). Yes, this was when people were inflicted by Betamax and Video Home System (VHS) and the tedious enjoyment of unravelling a cassette stuck inside the machine.
 
In the United States, cable television took off in the 1980s and marked the arrival of classics such as The Cosby Show, Married with Children and Rosanne. South Africa saw the first Digital Broadcast service in 1985 with Multichoice (Mnet), Africa’s first Pay TV Service. The 1980s also saw the release of the Sinclair Pocket TV set which could possibly be the first mobile device used for enjoying television viewing. It came with Polaroid power packs and had a two inch cathode ray tube screen. After the launch of SuperSport in 1998 with Mnet, came the 1990s an era when the television and technology suddenly seemed to explode. The personal computer became more affordable, the Internet arrived and programmes such as Seinfeld, Friends and Twin Peaks settled into public consciousness and became cult classics. The firs Digital Satellite broadcast was also done in 1996 in South Africa. Additionally, the television received a makeover as plasma and Liquid-Crystal Display (LCD) entered stage left, although the weighty CRT remained dominant until the 2000s.
 
Towards the end of the 1990s and in the first half of the 2000 decade, televisions became so much more than just a way of watching movies and shows. There were new features built into sets such as sleep timers and parental controls. The chunky CRT was starting to be replaced by the slender LCD and Plasma screen which had far more screen real estate and went from functional tool to stylish addition.
 
The emergence of the home theatre mind-set and increased adoption of the TV saw the market change and mature. Owning a television was no longer a rarity and technology transformed viewing into an experience. Colour television had evolved from the limited resolution of the 1960s to the gorgeous 40 inch flat panel colour television from Samsung in 2007. It also saw televisions become connected; smart devices that could record TV and go a little bit further than the norm. In 2008 Samsung led the television market by introducing the first content-orientated television that allowed connection to internet services. Then, in 2009, digital took over from analogue and the old TV set went black And Samsung again made groundbreaking development by introducing Smart TV with internet-based widget services.
 
It has been seventy five years since the first television was trotted out to disbelief and laughter. Now it has evolved to become more than anyone could have expected back then. The Samsung Ultra High Definition Television (UHDTV) delivers pure 4K image quality – four times the pixels horizontally than that of Full HD – and abundant smart features, while being far more light-weight than the first colour sets from years ago. Now people can record television shows, use it as an alarm, control multimedia content across different rooms and spaces – taking complete control of their entertainment, all of it in rich, glorious and immersive colour.”
 
Samsung has been one of the leading manufacturers of televisions for many years, bringing both form and function to the living space and introducing revolutionary new concepts in design and capability. Its televisions consistently sit in top spots on leader boards – five spots in the Stuff Top 10 Best TVs for 2015, a top spot by WitsView as the best TV brand for 2014, as well as being the Global leader in television sales for 10 consecutive years, including the 10th consecutive year television leader in South Africa, according to GFK market and consumer information. In addition, Samsung’s KS9500 Series Curved SUHD TV managed to grace the title for “Best Innovation” which earned Reviewed.com’s 2016 Editors’ Choice award, High Definition (HD) Guru’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Top Picks award and TechRadar’s Best of CES award with a focus on quality, colour and style.
 
Samsung is still finding ways of transforming the humble TV into something so much more. With exciting new developments that are set to transform the industry coming soon to South Africa’s shores, there has never been a better time to watch this space.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. has announced the launch of its new Super Ultra High Definition (SUHD) TV line-up, which combines the latest in cutting edge innovation and stunning aesthetics, in order to deliver a television that is not just a consumer electronics device, but an integral part of a home’s interior design.

The latest range of Samsung TVs has been released hot on the heels of the company’s triumph as global TV market leader for the 10th consecutive year, while also being in its tenth year of dominating the local South African TV market, according to one of the world’s largest market research organisations, GfK.

The new Samsung SUHD television series comes equipped with second generation Quantum dot technology, which is renowned for its durability and extraordinary, lasting picture quality. This generation offers increased efficiency of the Quantum dot materials and an improved colour mapping algorithm. This enables the new SUHD TV to express brighter pictures and purer colours.

Matthew Thackrah, Deputy Managing Director and Head of Consumer Electronics at Samsung Electronics South Africa, explains that the material used for this cutting-edge display can reproduce the purest and most accurate colours as individual nanoparticles. “These are smaller than one ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair and deliver the cleanest and most vivid colours yet.”

“Samsung has applied the ‘HDR 1000’ technology to this device, which can present content with extremely high picture quality, as it expresses HDR with a peak brightness of 1000 nit – the standard for premium material produced in Hollywood,” says Thackrah.

“This allows viewers to enjoy visuals in great detail, whether the image is dark or bright. In addition, it can recreate brighter hues at a lower energy consumption than the first generation SUHD TVs.”

Thackrah adds that Samsung understands that while the demand for the latest generation of technology continues unabated, today’s TV is more than just an electronic device. Consumers today view TVs as pieces of furniture that contribute to a home’s interior décor.

“What consumers want is art in the living room – a beautiful TV that fits seamlessly with their living space and furniture. Samsung’s SUHD TV aims to deliver innovative, boundless aesthetic appeal with its 360-degree design, which ensures your television looks good from all angles and any position it is placed within the home. This design approach is not limited to just our premium models, but includes our entry-level TVs as well.”

Furthermore, the enhanced Samsung Smart TV platform allows users to enjoy a sophisticated Smart Hub powered by Tizen, which provides an effortless viewing and navigation experience as it transcends the boundaries between various TV user environments. The Smart Hub will auto detect all connected devices, such as decoders, gaming consoles or home theatre and audio accessories. These additions are managed through a centralised visual dashboard on the first screen, which requires the use of only one TV remote to control multiple connected devices, elimination the need for multiple remote controls in the living room.

“Samsung’s SUHD TV is a beautiful piece of equipment that takes a quantum leap forward in TV display technology. It will provide you with a viewing experience like you’ve never seen before,” Thackrah concludes.

– Source: http://www.gfk.com/en-be/about-gfk/about-gfk/