By Aimee Chanthadavong
While LG may have been the first to unveil its curved OLED TV to the Australian market (with the help of Ewan McGregor no less), Samsung has gone one step further with the announcement that its first 55-inch curved OLED TV will be available for sale from midday today at its Samsung Experience Stores.
LG has not set a firm date for release, but a statement from the company today said it would arrive in stores in September.
Australia will be the fourth country in the world to receive Samsung's KN55S9C curved OLED TV. At RRP $10,999, the Australian price is below the 15 million Korean Won price (then equivalent to just over AUD $14,000) that was first set when the product was unveiled in Korea in late June.
It is the first Samsung TV to feature MultiView capability, a feature which allows two people to simultaneously watch two different sources at full screen in full HD with the same audio and screen control using the Samsung Active glasses. It also incorporates Samsung Smart TV features such as the Smart Hub interface and S-Recommendation.
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Brad Wright, Samsung Electronics Australia audio visual director, described the introduction of Samsung’s OLED TVs as “leading edge kind of stuff”.
“OLED is the future of display technology and the lucky few customers who acquire these statement pieces will be able to say they were the first to own it and the first to experience in their homes everything that OLED has to offer,” he said.
Picture quality remains to be the biggest deciding factor for consumers according to Wright, who said the KN55S9C has been designed with this in mind.
“With OLED whatever you’re watching looks better than ever because there’s life in every pixel,” he said. “Each pixel is its own light source, delivering colours, contrast and speed like nothing you’ve seen before. Our panels consist of self-emitting sub-pixels that are laid directly on the colour display so no colour filter is required.
“These pixels express richer, brighter images with pure blacks and pure whites boasting a contrast ratio many time shaper than current TV technology. This is because with every pixel being its own light source, every pixel can turn itself off.”
Samsung has also added two new models to its F9000 Ultra High-Definition (UHD) TV range – a 55-inch model (RRP $4,999) and a 65-inch model (RRP $6,999) – both of which will be available from early September.
In other OLED news, LG’s Curved OLED (55EA9800) is due to hit shelves in September with Lambro Skropidis, LG Australia marketing general manager, saying it will be a “masterpiece of technology and design that will mark the beginning of a new chapter in home electronics history”.
Samsung showed off its new curved OLED TV (RRP $10,999) before it hit Samsung Experience Stores today.
A shot taken through Samsung's Active glasses showing the MultiView capability of the curved OLED TV.