February 2018
ertonline.co.uk
LG’s OLED Canyon
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opened, with Hollywood major Warner Bros joining Fox and Amazon Studios in support. The studio, which was instrumental in turning the tide against HD-DVD in its format war with Blu-ray, currently supports Dolby Vision on streaming services and select discs. Would it now bump Dolby Vision in favour of HDR10+ on upcoming Blu-ray releases? No one seemed sure. Fox Innovation Lab chief Danny Kaye was less ambiguous, telling ERT that HDR10+ would soon be included on all Fox 4K HDR disc releases. Panasonic confirmed that its 2018 OLED offerings, the TX-FZ952 and TX- FZ802, will be HDR10+ compatible out of the box. Intriguingly, European marketing manager Craig Cunningham stressed that the benefits of dynamic metadata would be best demonstrated on lower-brightness HDR displays. “If you have a premium UHD screen capable of upwards of 1,000 nits, dynamic metadata doesn’t improve picture quality, as the set doesn’t need to tone map,” he explained. ERT believes that Panasonic will introduce HDR10+ support on a selection of low-priced 4K HDR LED LCD TVs at its European Dealer Convention this month. The company is currently discussing the minimum specification at which HDR10+ can be effective, confided general manager Paul Williams. Picture quality on the new Panasonic sets certainly looked outstanding,
with colour fidelity a real talking point. Working with an expanded colour Look Up Table (LUT), the new TVs monitor the average brightness level in a scene, updating colour information constantly. The technology is known as Dynamic LUT. To improve colour accuracy in shadows, Panasonic has included additional layers of LUT data for darker imagery. If you can think of a way to promote this in-store, do share. Mr Williams conceded that the concept of an advanced Look Up Table would be a challenging message to communicate to consumers already weary of HDR complexity.
Panasonic may have been all about HDR10+ at CES, but it also offered a
LG’s robot Cloi proved uncooperative
supportive hand to Dolby Vision – although not on its TV range. Instead, the company is adding Dolby Vision support to the flagship model in its upcoming 4K Blu-ray player line-up, the DP-UB820. Mr Cunningham said Panasonic’s dominant position in the UHD player market required them to offer Dolby Vision. “It’s only right that we offer support for those users who have Dolby Vision TVs,” he reasoned. “Not every 4K Blu-ray player buyer has a Panasonic TV, much as we would like that to be the case.” The player is expected to retail for £399 in the spring. Joining the DP-UB820 will be three more decks: the DP-UB420, DP-UB330 and DP-UB320. Both the DP-UB820 and DP-UB420 will support HDR10+, have dual HDMI outputs for isolating 4K video and amplifier audio and feature 4K VOD (Video on Demand) from Netflix and YouTube. All models will include voice control for both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Users
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