Offering the screen size and resolution of four 42-inch Full HD LCD TVs squeezed into one gigantic panel, LG ushers in a new 'UD' era.
Fittingly choosing Sydney's IMAX, home of the world's largest cinema screen, as its venue, LG yesterday launched its biggest TV ever in the Australian market, what it calls the world's first 84-inch Ultra-Definition 3D TV: the LG UD 3D TV (aka model 84LM9600).
With a display resolution of 3,840 x 2160p -- what other vendors in the industry refer to as 4K -- the LG UD 3D TV effectively provides the same display size and screen resolution of four 42-inch Full HD panels stuck together, outputting a whopping 8,294,400 pixels on screen. Put simply, it will eat your current large screen TV for breakfast and ask for seconds.
And it looks stunning, with beautiful crisp visuals for native UD/4K footage and upscaling features to make the most of Full HD content. There are, of course, a few caveats to bear in mind. Cutting-edge displays like this don't come cheap: the UD 3D TV will be on sale next month from a select group of retailers for an RRP of... $15,999.
Yes, that's sticker shock right there, but it's worth noting that this is less than the expected price on Sony's 4K effort set to be released later this year. LG has stated it is consciously seeking to redefine the premium end of the market, with the company sharing numbers yesterday that a third of all large-screen TVs sold in Australia are 55-inch (plus) displays, a category steadily growing year on year.
But perhaps the biggest problem will be finding content to play on the thing. As yet there are no UD/4K TV broadcasts, although you can find 4K movies on the net and YouTube offers limited support for the format. And this brings us to the final hurdle: 4K data weighs in big. A full-length movie can run to several hundred gigabytes, so for now you'll require a PC with a hard drive to feed the content, but special players are also expected to be available from as early as next year.