October/November 2022 ertonline.co.uk


Philips OLED907. Below, the OLED937


There’s a choice of finishes available, from a standard fabric fascia to stylish Scandi-style slatted wood. There are options to wall mount, fix pedestal feet or place on a free-standing circular stand. The Dolby Atmos-enabled Beosound Theatre


boasts 12 speakers: two overlarge 6.5-inch woofers sit either side of a high performance coaxial centre driver, while to the side are up- and side-firing drivers. The total power output is a formidable 800W. The Beosound Theatre also bucks the current trend for meagre connectivity, with four HDMI inputs, and can be incorporated into a much larger ecosystem of Beosound speakers, as many as 16! ERT heard the unit demoed with stereo tunes and


movies, and it sounds suitably immense. All music is upscaled to take advantage of its wide driver array.


Friendly competition It’s clear that Bang & Olufsen is taking aim at Sennheiser’s Ambeo with this new flagship, but Sennheiser isn’t hanging around, and had its own surprises to unveil at the show: the Sennheiser Ambeo Plus and Ambeo Subwoofer. Smaller than its predecessor, but utilising the same proprietary Ambeo 3D sound processing, developed in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute, the Ambeo Plus is a sleeker, more living room-friendly take on the original Ambeo Dolby Atmos soundbar. The new Plus is built on the same OS platform, and supports Apple AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect. It also works with Google with Chromecast built-in, Alexa and Siri.


Like the Beosound Theatre, it employs a sophisticated room calibration system to tune its output to any listening space. Once this self- calibration has run its course, seven virtual speakers ostensibly surround the listener, with four more positioned virtually overhead. The all-new Ambeo Sub, priced at £599, features an eight-inch woofer able to drop down to 27Hz. The Soundbar Plus will sell for £1,299; the provision of the Sub upgrade will doubtless be a welcome add-on upsell.


New TV models incoming Philips also ran a concurrent IFA event to preview its upcoming TV ranges (the only big TV brand to talk about specific new models). Announced were the new OLED+907, which integrates a Bowers & Wilkins audio system, and the range topping OLED+937, with a Dolby Atmos B&W sound bar, with tweeter on top design.


interest from the gaming community when they’re used as a near field monitor. I had hands-on time with the Flex and it’s impressive. The 43-inch screen offers 20 points of adjustment, controllable by remote control. The concept is that streaming TV content would be viewed flat, while the panel is curved for gaming. Picture quality wise, the screen is basically the same as an LG C2.


QLED over OLED?


Both models use new OLED EX glass, with the latter adding a physical heatsink for higher peak brightness.


Philips also revealed that the 2022 version of its P5 AI Intelligent Dual Engine picture processing now includes an Advanced HDR feature able to optimise HDR performance by tone mapping content frame by frame, rather than averaging values scene by scene.


The OLED+937 is also one of the first sets to feature Next Generation Philips Ambilight technology, capable of more precise colour matching. But on the IFA show floor, LG pushed the envelope with a 97-inch G2 Evo screen, the largest 4K OLED EX panel yet seen. A trio of them towered over guests who visited its booth. Like other G2 models, the mega panels use a brightness boosting heatsink, along with clever algorithms and mysterious deuterium technologies to enhance brightness by up to 30 per cent, when compared to a conventional OLED display. Arguably the biggest screen draw was the LG Flex, a novel OLED gaming TV that can be viewed either flat or curved. Of course we’ve seen curved screens come and go, but while they failed to gain a foothold in the living room, there’s definitely


8K was on the stand too, albeit only in the form of a 77-inch 8K Z2 OLED screen (below). As a format, few folks were talking about 8K this year, although Samsung did host a behind the scenes briefing for media where it once again stressed the inevitability of the format, and explained why it felt QLED rather than OLED was the way to go when it came to popularising 8K UHD screens. >>


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