CES 2020: Samsung’s 8K QLED TVs Use AI Quantum 8K SoC, Add Support For AV1 Video
by Anton Shilov on January 9, 2020 2:00 PM EST
Most years CES feels first and foremost like a TV show, and certainly this year's show hasn't disappointed. Among the many vendors making TV announcements for CES 2020 was Samsung, who introduced its upcoming lineup of premium 8K QLED televisions, the Q950-series. Samsung's new Ultra-HD TVs offer a 7680×4320 resolution with quantum dot enhancements, while under the hood Samsung is using its new "AI Quantum 8K" SoC that brings support for the cutting-edge AV1 codec as well as some additional capabilities.
One of the key features of Samsung’s Q950-series 8K televisions is the so-called ‘Infinity Screen’ design that uses extremely narrows bezel to produce a scree-to-body ratio of 99%. Samsung also went thin on depth, with a thickness of just 15 mm, making the TV look rather small for the big panel within.
Unfortunately, though not uncommon for CES TV announcements, Samsung is not disclosing much in the way of the general characteristics of the Q950-series televisions; so if nothing else, we'd expect them to be same or better than those of its predecessors, the Q900-series. Which, as a refresher, those TVs featured a quantum dot-enhanced LED backlight that is also capable of FALD-like operation – which Samsung calls Direct Full Array Elite technology – driving a peak brightness of 4000 nits (the maximum luminance at which HDR content is mastered these days). Furthermore, the Q900-series TVs were already hitting 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut.
Moving on, another important element of the Samsung Q950 Ultra-HD TV family is that they incorporate the company’s latest "Quantum Processor 8K" SoC, which has higher compute and machine learning performance. Along with Samsung's latest generation upscaling technologies – all but required given the lack of 8K native content today – the SoC is also capable of AV1 decoding. This makes the Q950 among the first TVs to get AV1 decoding, and sets it up nicely to be ready for next-generation streaming options using the higher efficiency codec.
In addition to video-related enhancements, Samsung also improved the audio sub-system of the of its Q950-series TVs both in terms of hardware and in terms of software. On the hardware side of things, the TV has an integrated 5.1 audio subsystem. As for software, the televisions support such capabilities as Active Voice Amplifier that improves voice clarity based on ambient noises; Object Tracking Sound+ to enhance surround sound in response to movements on the screen, and Q-Symphony to align the work of built-in audio subsystem with Samsung’s soundbars. Last but not least, the Q950-series TVs also support various voice assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa, Samsung’s Bixby, and Google’s Assistant.
Samsung’s Q950-series televisions will be available later this year.
Related Reading:
- Samsung’s 8K QLED TV 55-Inch: A More Affordable 8K Ultra-HD TV
- Samsung's 2019 QLED UHD TVs: 8K TVs Revamped, 4K TVs Get New Panel & Backlighting
- Samsung at CES 2019: 219-Inch and 75-Inch Micro LED Ultra-HD TVs Demonstrated
- Samsung Announces iTunes Movie & TV Show Support In Its 2018, 2019 Smart TVs
- Samsung Begins Sales of 65-Inch Q900R 8K UHDTV in the UK
- Samsung Starts to Take Pre-Orders on 85-Inch Q900 8K UHDTV
- Sharp to Demonstrate 120-Inch 8K LCD TV & 8K TV with 5G Modem at IFA
Source: Samsung
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dudedud - Friday, January 10, 2020 - link
That's hard to believe tbh.Does your manual specifically says that it can only play AVI? How old is your OLED?
Because even low to mid range tvs support H265 in some of it's flavors.
Alistair - Thursday, January 9, 2020 - link
Looks like oxide bezels have finally arrived in the TV industry. I remember LG showing this off 6 years ago can't remember where like this:http://blog.gsmarena.com/lg-unveils-5-inch-hd-oxid...
I believe an LG monitor was already announced to arrive this year with the same tech. Exiting to finally get rid of the two stage bezel (or does my monitor already use an oxide one? the LG gl850 has a VERY tiny bezel). Too bad it isn't available in cheaper sets though.
zakkdawe - Thursday, February 25, 2021 - link
Great, with this TV, you can comfortably watch anime movies by crunchyroll app, free download right now at https://techtodown.com/crunchyroll-mod-apk/Santoval - Thursday, January 9, 2020 - link
If AV1 turns out to offer a mere ~25% better compression rate than H.265/AVC, as I hear it does, will the much higher encoding complexity and times, along with the higher decoding complexity, be really worth it? The fact that it requires no licensing fees is certainly quite attractive (though still not fully guaranteed). H.265 ended up with no less than three patent pools, which is frankly a licensing disaster.Nevertheless, I believe its creators learnt their lesson and will not repeat the same fiasco with H.266/VVC. If H.266 has a single patent pool, the fees are reasonable, and it manages to reach a 40 - 50% higher compression rate over H.265, it might just win the next round of "codec wars". AV1 is unfortunately limited to encoding techniques that are not employed by the H.26x family of codecs and other proprietary codecs. H.266 will have no such limitation and will also be able to employ techniques used by the "free" codecs if desired. So it will have an edge.
Santoval - Thursday, January 9, 2020 - link
correction : It is "H.265/HEVC" rather than H.265/AVC. "AVC" is another name for the older H.264 codec.ksec - Thursday, January 9, 2020 - link
We should have more VVC news this year. Many companies are putting AV1 testing support in non-mobile area. I read that as basically Industry is saying we are ready, make VVC works or we will leave.GreenReaper - Friday, January 10, 2020 - link
Depends on the usage. For video files you expect to be downloaded thousands of times? Probably. But maybe not for the average YouTube upload. Given how the cost of CPU cores has been tumbling, and the performance of the encoder improving, it should be far more viable once hardware is in people's hands.oRAirwolf - Thursday, January 9, 2020 - link
So do these TV's come with HDMI 2.1? How does one even play 8K content on them unless you use the built in players like YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, etc?khanikun - Friday, January 10, 2020 - link
HDMI 2.0 supports 8k @ 24 or 30 fpsbeisat - Friday, January 10, 2020 - link
As far as I've read, Samsungs TVs this year come with HDMI 2.1, but do not support eARC...Probably could be added via fw update in theory, but wouldn't bet on that. Dead on arrival in my opinion.