Samsung Continues 8K Development at CES 2025
At the CES 2025 show, Samsung continued to support and promote 8K as a great solution for large screen TVs. The company showed a new 8K QN990F Neo QLED (miniLED) TV which features the latest version of the company’s 8K upscaling technology, 8K AI Upscaling Pro. This technology is really important in helping to get over the ‘chicken and egg’ problem that all new video formats encounter. The technology makes 4K content look significantly better on an 8K display and we interviewed Dr. Tien Bau, who is a specialist on this topic at Samsung Research a few months ago.
The QN990F uses Samsung’s NQ8 AI Gen3 processor which boosts performance in HDR Remastering and supplying Adaptive Audio as well as improving the upscaling. Pricing and availability for the set have not yet been announced but it impressed many of those who saw it at the show. QN990F will be available in sizes up to 98 inches and has an enhanced anti-glare treatment. The QN900F New QLED range will also continue this year.
RGB Backlights Make a Come Back
Another intriguing development that was just shown as a ‘prototype’ rather than as a finished product, was a 98″ 8K TV that used RGB microLEDs in the backlight rather than blue (with Quantum Dots for red and green) or white miniLEDs. Samsung is reported to have said that it plans shipping product based on the technology later in this year.
The demonstration is said to have ‘at least three times’ as many LEDs according to reports. The use of discrete red, green and blue LEDs is said to boost color volume as well as increasing the number of dimming zones and improving energy efficiency.
Not a New Idea
The writer of this article has been in the display business a long time and remembers when the first LED backlights were used with LCDs. Up to that time, the backlights in LCDs were provided by cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs). The expectation from LCD makers at the time was that the period of using white LEDs (usually a combination of blue LEDs with YAG phosphor) would only last a couple of years before the arrival of RGB backlights, as shown by Samsung at this year’s CES. Sony’s Qualia 005 TV, introduced in 2004 used RGB LEDs. It was very power hungry, big and expensive, so did not sell well, but proved the concept.
Unfortunately, there was a significant technical hurdle to RGB backlights. Blue LEDs typically use a different semiconductor technology from the red and green devices, so driving them needed a alternative circuitry. Further, LEDs tend to change color with wide production variations, under different driving conditions and with age. This made it extremely challenging to make the images very uniform and keep them uniform over the product lifetime, so the idea of RGB backlights was ‘put onto the back burner’.
Technology Moves On
With the development of discrete RGB microLEDs for use in direct LED displays, including the exotically priced microLED TVs in the market, these problems have been resolved, so the idea of putting RGB in the backlight has emerged again. The technology has the advantage that the LEDs can be tuned to deliver color with better selectivity, allowing for less aggressive colour filters. (a further development of this concept uses frame-sequential color to sequence the red, green and blue images and eliminates the filter altogether, although it has never been commericalized in large LCDs and seems less likely to arrive with the increasing interest in higher frame rates).
TCL and Hisense also showed large prototype sets at CES with RGB LED backlights, although these were 4K sets and based on miniLED rather than microLEDs (although the difference is sometimes just semantic – editor!). The Hisense set may be closer to production as it had a model number, the 116UX and is a 116″ diagonal unit.
Even Bigger Images….
The Samsung Premiere 8K projector was previewed in 2023 and 2024 at CES and also at IFA in Berlin. Now the projector has become the first unit to receive certification by the 8K Association to its new 8K Projector and it impressed those that saw it. We’re eagerly awaiting details of pricing and availability on this exciting new product.
