Techcom Launches HD TV Tuner for Just Rs 1,295

External TV Tuner boxes have been a big hit in India, especially since you don’t need a computer or a TV, but any PC monitor would do making it a very cheap and feasible solution. Now that LCD monitors go for throw away prices, the older Tuner boxes aren’t able to scale beyond a fixed resolution which didn’t matter much on a CRT but on an LCD, the quality isn’t too great. Techcom has recently launched their Ultra HD TV Tuner – SSD TV 725 which supports a resolution up to 2048x1152 for just Rs.1295 INR and a one year warranty. No more blurry video The HD Tuner supports Full channel scan for PAL-DK/1, PAL-BG/1 and  NTSC system of cable TV & air TV. It supports all popular monitor resolutions and different aspect ratios as well, like 4:3, 16:9 and 16:10. It also supports PIP (Picture In Picture) functions. The following are the requirements for the TV Tuner Receivable channel: DS1-57 CH, Z1-38CH(470MHz full TV Channel) Frame Frequency: 60Hz/75Hz Line Frequency: 31KHz-80KHz Antenna: 75 Unbalanced mode Note that the picture quality will still be limited by your cable operator, although the box should upscale the picture to fit your monitor’s native resolution. So, the overall picture would be slightly better than using a regular TV Tuner box.

Samsung HT-D555 Home Theatre System - 34,900

The trend is setting in where many people are opting in for a home theatre system rather than assembling their own surround sound system. Manufacturers are unveiling stylish home theatre systems with a wide array of features as compared to earlier budget friendly models.

Home entertainment in a budget

Samsung has launched the HT D555 HTS which is a 5.1 channel DVD home theatre system that features four tall boy speakers. Let's take a closer look to see if it is a hit or miss.

Design and Build Quality
The Samsung HT-D555 is a stylish looking home theatre system and has a glossy black finish. The player itself has a built-in amplifier and a single tray for loading DVDs. The glossy black front panel features the touch sensitive controls and the single disk DVD tray. When ejected, the DVD tray slides out easily however the response time is a bit slow for it to activate. There are touch-sensitive keys along the right side of the tray on the front panel for eject, function, stop, play/pause, on/off and volume.

Pretty, plain and simple

These keys are very responsive and have a blue LED lighting. On the bottom right of the player are the ports for mics, AUX and a bay that houses a USB port. This bay is concealed by a plastic flap, giving the player an all round clean, stylish, simplistic and sturdy look and feel. The player has all the connectivity options at the back with colour coded plugs for speakers, digital audio in, HDMI out, composite AUX in, component out and an FM antenna.

These tall boy speakers on the D555 have a height of 4.27 feet and feature three drivers that are exposed. They are two mid-range drivers and one tweeter. The tall boy speakers are finished with the same glossy black as seen on the player. The smaller centre channel speaker also features the same three drivers giving all the speakers a sort of uniformity. The sub woofer stands 1.28 feet tall and like the rest of this system, it too is stylish and sturdy in design. The bundled up remote control that came along with the player is very similar in design and layout to the Samsung Series 8 UA55D8000 television we saw recently. The remote control has a solid build and the buttons are nicely spaced out. However one issue we noticed was that when a button was pressed, the whole panel of buttons seemed to get depressed as well. This was not a major issue and was noticed only upon close inspection.

Features
The home theatre comes with a DVD player. The player supports upscaling of standard definition videos to high definition and the ability to play various formats. The player can’t handle high-definition videos though. Karaoke is also supported. The 5.1 channel speakers are another interesting and stylish feature of this player.

The interface of the player is simple in design with options for video, music, photos and settings. The interface looks pretty awful on a large TV due to quality of the artwork used - the text and icons have jagged edges. While navigating through each menu, all content can be seen in a grid manner.

Feature packed remote, similar to other Samsung devices

This makes it easier to scroll through different content to access what you want. The Settings menu is pretty straight forward with options to tweak the display, audio, system and language. The aspect ratio is locked to 16:9 in the display menu so no tweaking can be done to change the ratio. We were pleasantly surprised to see that the player could read portable hard drives; usually these players can support USB flash drives up to a maximum of 8GB.

Samsung claims that this player is able to read a wide variety of media formats such as DivX, XVid, MP3, WMA, WMV and JPG. We noticed that formats such as MKV could not be played.

Performance
We tested this home theatre system by playing back a variety of music genres and movies with different formats. The video playback of the Samsung HT D555 was overall pleasing. Video playback rendered well however, only the aforementioned formats were readible. Formats not specified on the spec sheet like MKV or MP4 were not visible on the screen to be played.

Proprietary but easy to figure connects for speakers

We played a variety of genres on this player and we were impressed with the audio quality of it. The speakers have a total power of RMS 1000 Watts and were way more impressive than the ones we saw with the Sony BDV-E870. The front speakers performed very well and a lot of definition was noticeable where the tones were soft from instruments like cymbals. However, we did notice that after cranking the volume to 70 per cent, a jarring of sound was heard. The woofer on the other hand was quite soft. Audio tracks with a lot of bass lacked the amount of thump expected.

The remote control is very responsive and there was no need to point it directly at the player for a function to be activated. We also did not like the screensaver too much and noticed that it was pixelated, giving it a somewhat cheap feel. Overall the performance of this home theatre system was good where audio and video playback was concerned.

Verdict
The Samsung HT D555 HTS sells for a maximum retail price of Rs. 34,900. We feel that though this could be a nice buy, the company could have added a Blu-ray player to the mix instead of the standard DVD player.

Neat design and decent performance to go with it

For a price of Rs. 5,000 more, the Sony BDV-E870 offers all these features as well as the ability to play back 3D content. We feel that since Blu-rays are becoming the norm these days, that would have been an interesting feature to add to the vastly populated home theatre system market.

Philips 6000 Series 55-inch LED TV

The last TV that Philips sent me was the Cinema 21:9, and while it had its kinks, I liked it a lot. Philips also sent me the 55-inch 6000 series. After reviewing a TV like the Cinema 21:9, I was pretty hopeful about this one. So lets see how it did.

Nice and slim design, but that's about it

Design and Features

This TV looks pretty decent and is quite thin, although the border is quite thick. While setting it up, we realised that there was a screw missing for the stand, but the TV was surprisingly stable even with the missing link. After properly setting it up, I tried putting it on, but it just wouldn’t happen. I was quite puzzled, and kept trying until I found out that the remote had to be pointed to the left of the TV, and not where the feather-touch menu buttons were. That’s when I started having my doubts about this TV.

I decided to stop complaining about the narrow reach of the remote and go about checking other stuff out. Next up, I tried connecting a Bose 2.1 home theatre system and found that the HDMI cable’s input jack was a little too thick, and Philips hasn’t left enough place at the back for this to be connected to the HDMI input; another fail. Still, I was sure the rest would be A-OK, so I plodded along.

HDMI cables with thicker jacks have a tough time squeezing in

HDMI The Philips 6000 series has all the regular connections any Full HD LED TV would such as 3 HDMI ports, a USB port that plays movies, music and shows you images and the rest of the regular stuff; I’m talking about component, composite, etc. 

Performance

After a rather disappointing encounter with the design and features, I was sure that the 6000 series would deliver. Again, I was wrong. I first tried it out with our test disc, played back from the Philips BDP2700/12 Blu-ray player, and it the picture was quite harsh. The colours seemed saturated, the contrast was terrible and there was a lot of motion blur even in slow moving scenes. I double-checked the TV as well as the Blu-ray player, but it all seemed fine.

The screen actually looks like a cloudy sky!

Even when there was no picture, the blank screen looked really patchy and the viewing angle wasn’t impressive either. And like I mentioned before, operating the remote can be a big pain, especially if you don’t know that you have to point it to the bottom left of the TV.

The menu of the TV was pretty standard, as most other TVs are. But like its big brother, the Cinema 21:9, the 6000 series is not really intuitive. It doesn’t know when you’ve plugged in something, and you have to go and select the input option yourself. A lot of other TVs have a function where all you have to do is plug in your cables and play, without the need for making further adjustments. I know it isn’t a huge argument, but there is a little fight in it. The screen looks even more cloudy at an angle I also tried it out with our legendary Alienware Aurora ALX rig, and it was almost the same story. The colours were almost as bad as when I tested it with the Blu-ray player, but there was not much latency in movements when I checked out a few games. As for the audio, that is bad too. The sound is extremely thin and has no body to it at all. Seems like there’s absolutely no bass; only treble and high mid frequencies. Next up was the DisplayMate test, where the 6000 series failed to impress. It did do really well in some of the tests such as the Video Bandwidth, Focus Matrix and Defocusing, Blooming and Halos, but didn’t do too well in the rest. It was especially bad with tests like Vertical and Horizontal Colour Registration, Fine Line Moire Patterns and the Flicker test. All in all, the Philips 6000 series LED TV was quite a let down with an average DisplayMate score of 40%. Looks decent enough Verdict This is definitely not a TV I’d recommend to anyone, as there are so many better ones out there. At a market price of Rs. 1,49,000, this one’s a definite lemon. I don’t even know why companies as big as Philips bother releasing such products, when they are obviously capable of so much more. If you’ve read this review properly and looked at some of the photos, you will clearly see that this TV doesn’t have much to offer. I give this TV 1 ½ stars, and I think even that’s a little lenient. It has all the features of a regular TV and looks nice and slim too, but there’s a barrage of complaints about it. The contrast ratio and black levels are bad and the colour reproduction is not worth writing home about. Even when I played a Blu-ray disc, there was tons of noise and motion blur. It’s also way too expensive for the quality it offers. I would expect a TV of this caliber to perform a lot better for it to get a higher rating. I reiterate – I do not advise anyone to buy this TV, as there are plenty of better ones available. I would actually rather go in for a smaller TV with better performance and features such as the LG 47LX9500, whose big brother we’ve reviewed here.

Philips 221P3LPYE - Brilliance is Just the Name

When one hears the name Philips it is usually associated with audio-visual products like televisions and stereo systems. Their reach also extends to household products, lighting products, etc. The brand is not as well known for their computer components and peripherals, but they do manufacturer mice, keyboards, storage devices and monitors.

The easily enabled rotation feature

Computer displays are usually associated with brands such as BenQ, ViewSonic and Samsung. Philips also have released a few monitors of their own with their focus on three segments with LCD monitors for home, office and TV monitors.

From their office segment of LCD monitors they have announced the Philips 221P3LPYE display from the Brilliance series. Today we take a look at this 22-inch TN panel monitor that was designed primarily for office use.

Sturdy and stylish stand

Features

The Philips 221P3LPYE is a feature rich monitor. It is a 21.5-inch LED-backlit, LCD panel display with a native display resolution of 1920x1080. Philips like other manufacturers claims that this sort of backlighting uses less power and produces a brighter image and that the response time of the 221P3LPYE is 5 ms. Connectivity options on this display are DVI, D-Sub and surprisingly, a DisplayPort. A 3.5mm audio and a USB port are also available. However, even though there are more than a sufficient amount of connectivity options, Philips have not added an HDMI port on this monitor - they've added a DisplayPort instead which we feel is good but HDMI is a more common connectivity solution these days. There are front facing speakers on this monitor and it has a 90 degree rotation feature which can be useful for presentations etc.

Stylish

The Philips P3 LPYE has a touch sensitive panel at the bottom of the screen for controlling the menu and the various other settings of this monitor like brightness, contrast, etc. The interface of this display is very simple to use and navigating through it is a lot easier because the touch sensitive keys light up. There are various display presets for content viewing on this monitor. The display has a feature called PowerSensor, which is basically a power saving mode. It adjusts the brightness of the screen based on various factors. While testing this monitor, we turned the feature off due to fluctuations in brightness levels. Overall, the touch sensitive keys are the best feature we found on this monitor.

Design and Build Quality

The Philips 221P3LPYE monitor on the whole is sturdy and stylish in design. The monitor looks decent with its black screen and silver stand. The base of the stand is not that large which is a very good thing and it supports the monitor well. The touch panel control keys are very sensitive and there is a white light where the menu controls are which helps in locating where the menu keys are in a dimly lit room. There are built-in speakers located at the bottom of the monitor, two USB ports located at the bottom left side of the monitor and two USB ports on the rear end. The 3.5 mm port is located near the power connector at the rear as are all other connectivity options like DVI, D-Sub and DisplayPort.

USB connectors at the side

The stand is made of hard plastic with a rotation of 90 degrees. Moving the monitor into either a portrait or landscape view is simple and does not offer much resistance. The base of the stand has a swivel feature. This design of the swivel is interesting however it is quite sensitive and moves too easily. Hence even a slight touch will turn the monitor. Philips says the monitor can swivel minus or plus 60 degrees. It's not common to see such a setup on monitors in this price bracket. The Philips 221P3LPYE is a nice looking monitor and quite sturdy and we had absolutely no qualms with the design and build quality of it.

Performance The Philips 221P3LPYE uses a TN panel, which is common for most 22-inch displays these days, though we did notice some backlighting issues. To test the actual performance of this monitor we ran DisplayMate and calibrated the screen for optimum results. Touch sensitive controls While running DisplayMate, we noticed that in the colour gradient test, blacks on either ends of the spectrum appeared slightly green and red. However, all blocks were distinguishable. While running through some other tests, we noticed that with complex patterns, there was no flickering whatsoever. Patterns can be seen clearly and crisply and all colours are natural with the exception of red, green and yellow. Reds and greens looked brighter than natural and yellow seemed a bit pale. In the colour scales test, we noticed colour bleeding in blue. All other colours are easily visible and no bleeding was noticed. In the background interference tests, one could see the lines clearly which is a good thing. No glare or reflection was noticed in the dark screen check. A problem which we noticed from the time of turning on this monitor was the viewing angles. They are really bad and some waves were noticed which originated at the top of the screen to the centre. The speaker volume on the monitor was really low even with the volume set to maximum. Having front facing speakers, we expected a bit more output from them. The unique addition of a DisplayPort Out of the box colours are bright while watching movies. Testing video playback with settings calibrated after DisplayMate, we noticed video quality to be slightly faded and  images looked dull. Oddly enough, we did notice that while using the video presets, the video playback was rendered a lot better in office mode than in movie mode. TN panel on this 21.5-inch monitor Verdict The Philips 221P3LPYE is priced at a maximum retail price of Rs. 12,999, which is expensive for a 22-inch monitor. It has a TN panel, DisplayPort connectivity and  somewhat unique touch sensitive controls, which are usually found on high end televisions. We feel that one would do better with a 24-inch display. The Philips 221P3LPYE is not a bad monitor and fared rather well when it came to performance, features and design. Alternatives in this price range might have limited features in comparison to this.

Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV - Slow and Sluggish

The Indian market has seen a lot of HD media players being launched recently with manufacturers fitting the best possible features in the most compact sizes. We recently reviewed the TViX SlimS1 HD, iXtreamer, which were some of the higher end models with some pretty nifty features. Seagate, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of hard drives have launched two home entertainment solutions in the form of the GoFlex TV and the FreeAgent Theatre. The GoFlex TV is a more compact solution and offers users the option to attach an internal drive in the player. Today, we’re looking at the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV. Design and Build Quality The Seagate GoFlex TV is small and compact in design. It’s smaller than the FreeAgent theater player and roughly the same size as some of the WD media players. Finished in a glossy, as well as textured black finish, this is a decent looking device that you can place in your living room next to your television set. Small and compact in design There’s a bay at the front of the player that allows you to plug in a Seagate GoFlex hard drive or any other 2.5-inch drive. We tried fitting a compatible GoFlex portable drive with it and it fit perfectly. However, as it is designed in such a way; it is possible to fit Seagate GoFlex portable hard drives or drives that are smaller in size. Vents for cooling the player To the right of the media player is a USB 2.0 port and a reset button. At the back of the device are the ports for the power cable, composite, component, optical, HDMI, LAN and a USB 2.0 port. On the bottom and the sides of the media player there are many vents which help in cooling. The bundled remote is smaller than most of the standard TV remotes. The controls are minimal and easy to use. Wireless connectivity is possible using an optional USB dongle. Features In terms of connectivity features, the GoFlex TV has two USB ports to connect drives. There are various connectivity options available of this HD media player with there being ports for USB, HDMI, a bay for housing a portable hard drive and a LAN cable. The home screen of the GoFlex  TV features five widgets for Movies, Pictures, Music, Internet and an option to Browse the contents of a portable hard drive that may be attached to it. Below them are links on the home screen which are for websites such as YouTube, MediaFly, vTuner, Picasa, Flickr and other Internet services. Quite a few connectivity options The user interface of the GoFlex TV player is similar to previous Seagate players. The main interface has segmentation for the different types of media. There’s also a Browse option which lets you browse through the media like a file explorer. The player also supports online media streaming services including YouTube, Flickr and a couple of other media services. There’s also weather reports and an RSS reader feature. Updating of the firmware can be done over the internet connection itself. Performance The performance of the player while playing all sorts of media is great. We used our usual 1920x1080 resolution, 60 fps video on the player and it performed flawlessly. We noticed almost no synchronization issues while playing back audio and video. Fast forwarding of the movies is also quick. Almost all of the formats we tried worked flawlessly. We had some problems with some subtitles not showing up on some movies. A simple, minimalistic remote control The player keeps indexing all attached storage devices and that tends to slow down the device further, from time to time. One of the biggest annoying flaws of the player is that it is painfully slow through the menus. The remote itself doesn’t work very well, unless you’re accurately pointing it at the player. We faced some hanging and locking up issues as well where we had to reset the product entirely. Verdict The Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV is an extremely slow device. There are some stability issues as well, which should hopefully be fixed with some firmware updates. Priced at an MRP of Rs. 8,750, it’s not a very expensive player. If it was faster and a little more stable, we would have recommended it. We recommend you consider the older Seagate FreeAgent Theater, which was a more stable product that had a similar set of features as the GoFlex TV.

Netgear NeoTV 550 - Geared to Entertain

Netgear is an established brand when it comes to networking solutions. They’ve been exploring into other avenues out of which, HD media player is one. This is a product segment that’s been mostly dominated by large data storage solution companies and many smaller, lesser known brands. While products from the larger companies are more refined, it’s the smaller brands that have products that are closer to the hearts of movie enthusiasts. Netgear makes its entry into the Indian market with their NeoTV 550 player.

Features
The NeoTV 550 comes with a wide variety of connectivity options. Apart from the two USB 2.0 drives, there’s also an eSATA port that can be used to attach hard drives to it. There’s also an SD memory card reader at the front along with the power on button. Ethernet connectivity is also available. In terms of connectivity, it’s got most of the features covered. HDMI, Component and an AV port are available. Built-in wireless connectivity would have been pretty neat as well.

Memory card reader at the front

The NeoTV 550 supports the standard set of formats that we’re used to. There’s even support for formats such as FLAC, which till sometime back was available only to a few media players.

Most media players have a compact remote control but the NeoTV 550's is a full-fledged one that has a ton of controls that work well with the interface of the player. The remote has the standard controls and it also lets you make text entries with ease like you would with a non-QWERTY mobile phone. There are quick access buttons for the different kinds of media, as well and buttons to switch audio sources and tweak subtitle settings. The primary playback buttons are isolated and placed at the bottom half of the remote control.

Complete in terms of connectivity

The Netgear NeoTV has one of the best looking interfaces around. It’s simple, but the colours used and the menu layouts are really quite impressive. There is an easy-to-use setup wizard which can get the player up and running in a minute or two.

The interface like all other media players has menus to switch between different types of media as well as be able to browse the storage drives freely. Internet content is also supported. There’s support for Youtube, which works rather well as well as Flickr, RSS feeds and video streams. A Shoutcast directory is also available. Using the remote control to enter search keywords is also really easy. It’s a more efficient way of typing than having to move the cursor on an on-screen keyboard.

There are plenty of neat features while watching movies and listening to music. For example, fast forwarding and skipping is really simple. The remote lets you quickly slide anywhere in the movie within seconds without having to press the fast forward button multiple times. While streaming videos, you also see an indicator that displays the status of the caching of the video. Tweaking of the look and position of the subtitles is also possible. There are also some advanced features which may not be needed. You can for example, view details about a video’s format and codecs

Design and Build Quality
The player is larger than most players in the market. The build quality of the player is decent and it comes with a stand so you can place it either vertically or leave it sitting horizontally. There’s even provision for wall mounting the player. You could set it up on a wall right next your PC.

Provision for wall mounting the player

The product is light weight and has a large vent at the center of the player. Netgear could have shrunk down the player by a bit. The remote control has the right weight and feel to it and it performs really well with the player.

Performance
The NeoTV 550 works well with all video and audio formats that we used. We only faced a problem with the 1080 60fps video file. There was some fine stuttering motion that was visible with this video clip. We had no problems running this video on all previous media players that we tested. You’re unlikely to be playing 60 fps as almost all movies today are recorded in the 24 fps or 30 fps format.

Browsing through the menus and listing of files in large folders and drives is also easy.  Response is instantaneous and scrolling is also smooth. The player was stable all throughout except for once, where it hung and had to be reset.

Verdict
We were thoroughly impressed by the Netgear NeoTV 550. It’s a solid player that handles media very well. The very elegantly designed interface is also a thing to look at. Netgear has priced the NeoTV 550 at Rs.14,649, which is a lot of money.

A somewhat bulky, but effective home entertainment solution

There are players that offer more features, but the Netgear offers the features that matter the most and it runs those really well. If you’re looking for a no-frills HD media player for your home and are willing to spend that extra bit, you won’t go wrong with the Netgear NeoTV 550.

TV Content Now Viewable on Samsung Galaxy S II

Samsung Galaxy S II just got smarter! If you own the latest heartthrob, and a Samsung Smart TV, then you can now enrich your TV viewing experience.

Now, access to content wherever you go..

The latest app to have hit the Android market from Samsung, called Smart View App can make the Samsung Galaxy S II exhibit the properties of a remote control beginning with controlling your TV. The app also lets you stream content into your phone. Users can use the Smart View App from the Android market and view photos from their TV on their smartphones. The app, by this way, lets you catch every bit of your favorite show or that crucial match right on the comforts of your Samsung Galaxy S II. This free app offers something for the gamers, too. The app can be used as a game controller, owing to the inbuilt gyroscope.

However, both the smartphone and the TV will have to be connected to the same Wi-Fi router to be able to utilize the app.

A Hands-On of LG's Cinema FPR 3D TV

3D is back and it’s bigger than ever before. This is not the first time the world has witnessed the wonders of 3D. In the earlier half of this decade, graphics card manufacturers started bundling 3d glasses to be used with their graphics cards and monitors. Things weren’t impressive and the hype quickly died out. 3D Cinema Zone at the LG Headquarters Now, close to a decade later, things have been heating up again. Watching movies in 3D at cinemas is a common thing. At home however, things are somewhat different. TVs are still pretty expensive and the technology hasn’t matured as yet. LG invited us to their headquarters in the heart of Seoul, South Korea to get our hands on the technology itself. The demonstration at their Cinema 3D Experience Zone was to highlight the weaknesses of the shutter glass and the advantages of using passive glasses. The scene so far 3D TVs are still expensive and the content isn’t available yet. Quite a lot of people seem to get headaches after watching 3D content for more than 15 minutes or so. There are a few issues with the current active shutter glasses that are used by most manufacturers other the obvious headache issues. The 3D glasses being used are somewhat heavy because of the batteries and the circuitry required in the glasses themselves. Wearing them for long periods of time can get a little tiring. Active shutter glasses turning dark when placed sideways There are some other issues as well. The polarized glasses also block out a lot of the light which means that the TV needs to be even brighter. There’s also the problem of flicker which causes the headaches. Crosstalk is another issue where the two images being rendered leak into one another, which causes a kind of blurring which can be really annoying as well. LG's new 3D FPR Technology LG has designed a new technology to counter the problems being faced by early adopters of 3D. It’s called FPR (Film-type Patterned Retarder). LG has chosen to go with a somewhat simpler approach where passive 3D glasses are used. There isn’t a need for batteries anymore and there are electronics in the glasses themselves. Most of the work is done by the display itself. Because of the way the FPR technology functions, brightness levels are a lot better than expected. LG's FPR display with passive glasses still work when placed sideways The TVs based on the new technology will be tagged as Cinema 3D TVs. There hasn’t been an official date for the launch of the TVs in India or any sort of pricing, but we can only hope to see it here within the next six months or so.

Sharp shows off 85-inch LCD HDTV with 16 times resolution of 1080p

Remember how 1080p used to be the “next big thing”? Well tomorrow’s HDTV is going to make 1080p look like a fuzzy UHF signal. No, I’m not even talking about 4k, which hasn’t reached the marketplace and promises double the horizontal resolution of 1080p. Instead, Sharp and Japan’s NHK broadcasting company are leaping ahead to Super Hi-Vision, which promises 16 times the resolution of your current high-def set.

This week, Sharp unveiled the first direct-view display that could handle Super Hi-Vision in its 103 pixels-per-inch glory (compare to 36ppi for a 1080p big screen), an 85-inch LCD that boasts a staggering resolution of 7,680×4,320. It also features 10-bit color depth, though only a 60Hz refresh rate. Of course, NHK won’t be showing any trial broadcasts in Super Hi-Vision until 2020, so there’s more than just a little time to perfect this display technology further.

Those lucky enough to be in Tokyo between May 26 and May 29 will be able to see the Sharp set in action at NHK’s Science & Technology Research Laboratories. The rest of us will have to settle for watchingthis video clip and imagine what HDTVs will be like in the next decade.