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Television Technology

Samsung Making It Harder To Know What Type of OLED TV You're Getting (arstechnica.com) 47

Posted by msmash from the blurring-the-lines dept.
Samsung's 2024 OLED TV lineup will feature both QD-OLED and WOLED panels, making it harder for consumers to distinguish between the two technologies. The company announced three new series without specifying the panel types, but reports suggest that even within the S90D series, both QD-OLED and WOLED may be used. Samsung's decision to use both panel types is attributed to LG Display's request not to position WOLED as inferior to QD-OLED.
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Samsung Making It Harder To Know What Type of OLED TV You're Getting More

Samsung Making It Harder To Know What Type of OLED TV You're Getting

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  • OLEDs have great colors and great contrast. They're already able to be brighter than I want to view them. I'd just go for the cheapest OLED that does 120hz.

    • Re:Not sure I can tell the difference (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07, 2024 @03:54PM (#64297882)

      With WOLED, you're getting color from phosphor, not directly from the OLED. So everything you've heard about OLED's "great color" is out the window.

      Same with QLED, but quantum dots have better spectrum than phosphoer+filter.

    • Does it really matter whether you're getting, QD-OLED, WOLED, CODERED, or LGBTQ+LED, as long as it looks good? Will anyone but a hardcore geek actually care?

      • I think things like burn in and longevity, DO matter to the average consumer. If you make it hard to tell if your blue pixel will burn out in 5 years vs 10 years vs 15, that is deceptive.

        Discerning customers are the minority in most industries, but that doesn't make it ok to remove ingredients from labels on food.

  • Reviews will tell (Score:3, Insightful)

    by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Thursday March 07, 2024 @03:53PM (#64297876)

    I base my purchases on reviews from rtings.com.
    They have pretty comprehensive TV reviews and so far they were spot-on with their recommendations.

    I have a 65QN95C Samsung TV on my wishlist, but was waiting for the 2024 line-up. Once reviews start appearing, i will know what to choose.

    • Review samples may differ from actual product.

      • Indeed. TFA: "but reports suggest that even within the S90D series, both QD-OLED and WOLED may be used."

        They may swap on whim. Isn't that illegal in some states?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by msauve ( 701917 )
          >They may swap on whim. Isn't that illegal in some states?

          Why would it be, if they're not claiming use of one or the other, and either type meets the published specs? Could you sue a candy bar maker if they switched from cane to beet sugar when the ingredients just said "sugar"?

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Tablizer ( 95088 )

            > Could you sue a candy bar maker if they switched from cane to beet sugar when the ingredients just said "sugar"?

            Back to the OP, if the reviewer reviewed a beet-sugar bar, but the factory switched to cane-sugar, it may taste different than what the reviewer tasted, perhaps worse.

        • They may swap on whim. Isn't that illegal in some states?

          The tech industry gets away with it all the time. "Product specifications subject to change" and all that jazz. A few years ago, Apple took a bit of heat for shipping iPhones with either a Qualcomm or Intel modem, with Intel being objectively inferior.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ffkom ( 3519199 )
            Indeed. Not long ago, AMD scammed their customers by claiming ECC support for the 8000G series of CPUs on their official specification page and in the specs of the main-board vendors as well, only to then suddenly strike this essential feature from their specs when people noticed it wasn't there: https://www.tomshardware.com/p... [tomshardware.com]

            Corporations have long lost all shame to directly scam and lie to their customers. "Reputation" is not anything CEOs are interested in anymore.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            The tech industry gets away with it all the time. "Product specifications subject to change" and all that jazz. A few years ago, Apple took a bit of heat for shipping iPhones with either a Qualcomm or Intel modem, with Intel being objectively inferior.

            And Qualcomm sued Apple for it - because Apple deliberately hampered the Qualcomm performance so they were identical to the Intel chipset.

            But Apple never said which phones used which chipset - people found out, but the official specification didn't mention any

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by chill ( 34294 )

          Back in the day, Packard-Bell made a business model out of this. Their computers were the cheapest because their components were simply whatever they got cheapest. Whether audio cards or surface mount components on circuitboards, they didn't bother to distinguish makes, models, or revisions. The exact same motherboard revision with only a different manufacture date, could easily have different components.

          They made utter shit.

      • I would rely on rtings.com detailing how to tell them apart. There are two possible outcomes here:
        1. The panels can't be told apart. Then, it doesn't matter which one is in the TV I buy.
        2. The panels can be told apart. Then, I could run that test, return if I end up with he worse panel.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Their "about" page claims that they buy the products they review themselves. I suppose it's not impossible for e.g. Samsung to collude with retailers to make sure they get the best samples, but their reviews have a good reputation for being accurate reflections of what a consumer can expect.

        They also do the most extensive and valid burn-in testing, which has revealed that it's pretty much a non-issue for almost all users.

    • I base my purchases on reviews from rtings.com. They have pretty comprehensive TV reviews and so far they were spot-on with their recommendations.

      I have a 65QN95C Samsung TV on my wishlist, but was waiting for the 2024 line-up. Once reviews start appearing, i will know what to choose.

      I bought a 65" S90C last year based on their recommendation and could not be happier. Best TV I've ever owned.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      >Once reviews start appearing, i will know what to choose.

      The point of this article is that reviews won't be enough in the future: because samsung will vary the panel technology used without changing the model number. It will come down to luck or not buying samsung.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ffkom ( 3519199 )
        Customers will need to make use of their rights to return goods. The same kind of stunt was pulled when monitor manufacturers wanted to "educate" customers that faulty pixels were "normal" and "to be accepted". Simple consequence: mail-order a monitor, check it for pixel errors, return the monitor when there is one, without stating any reason for the return. Tit for tat. If manufacturers act like shit, they ask to be treated like shit. It's not like they had no alternative - of course they could be transpar
      • Changing a part without changing a part number is a major quality control violation. Suppose one of these screens has a problem with spontaneous combustion. How would they issue a recall?

  • Lemon market (Score:3)

    by TheNameOfNick ( 7286618 ) on Thursday March 07, 2024 @04:07PM (#64297912)

    If consumers can't tell the difference, they adjust their value expectation (their price) to the lowest quality.

  • May the odds be ever in your favor (Score:3)

    by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Thursday March 07, 2024 @04:19PM (#64297936) Homepage

    Folks who are nit-picky about this sort of thing have always referred to it as "the panel lottery", as there's typically significant QC variance between even the same panels. This just increases the odds of getting a panel you might consider to be unacceptable.

    Who this really sucks for is the retailers, since why would you want to sell something that has a good chance of being returned?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      OLED panels require extensive calibration on a per-pixel basis. The TV is supposed to do that itself, continually, so that as the pixels age it can compensate. So in theory, all panels should be pretty much equal, and if yours is not then it will get corrected at the next calibration cycle.

      Most TVs do calibration when on standby, so you need to leave your OLED on standby for a while now and then.

      There will always be people who are unhappy, but that's been true of TVs forever. Plasmas had a lot more variance

  • The high-end Hisense ones are just as good as the high end Samsungs at half the price.

  • Simple way of telling (Score:3)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday March 07, 2024 @05:53PM (#64298197)

    If they don't tell you which panel you get, it's a safe bet you get the inferior technology.

  • >"feature both QD-OLED and WOLED panels, making it harder for consumers to distinguish between the two technologies"

    Almost as bad as *all* TV manufacturers intentionally labeling LCD TV's as "LED TV" forever? Um yeah, it is not an LED panel. And calling it "LED" because it has an LED backlight is kinda like calling an ICE car an "Electric Vehicle" because it has a battery and some electric motors in there somewhere.

  • On so many levels this stinks. If Samsung had a better technology, QD-OLED, then why would they partner to use a competitor's displays? Why would they agree not to advertise their technology as better if was truly better? And why would you make the exact same model of TV with more than one panel type? Not only is the technology, brightness different but the shape of the pixels is arranged differently, as per the article. These different shapes lend themselves better to monitors, as opposed to TVs. Something

  • So, then WOLED is inferior. I can’t imagine LG quietly requesting someone tell the truth.

  • Buy one, then quit worrying about it. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Thursday March 07, 2024 @10:03PM (#64298783)

    Get one, set it up once, then stop reading about TVs and panels until it breaks. Don't read about tweaking, don't worry about the exact settings necessary for your light conditions. Just block out the noise. And you'll be happy with what you have. Almost all modern TVs above a few hundred dollars look great, and you'd never notice a difference unless you looked at the panels side by side. And you never need to do that.

    I'm not saying cheap out... buy a decent one. But then don't spend even one moment on the TV that might have been. Worrying that you might pick the wrong xxLED is ridiculous.Just watch your show, movie, or sporting event. If the content is strong, chasing the last ten percent of video quality fades away.

  • I have 2 50" TVs in my house... an approximately 22 year old Panasonic Plasma, which was somewhat high end for the time, and a 3 Year old Toshiba LED (nowhere near high end). The Plasma image quality is so superior to the LEDs that it is not even a contest. My friends have far more recent OLED/QLED TVs that cost >$3000, and I have been searching for reasons to buy one of these, but at least to my eyes the image quality of my Plasma is still far superior to these newer TVs. Dark scenes and high contrast s

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