If your goal is top-class Ultra HD at any price, Samsung's jaw-dropping S9 Ultra HD telly might just help you achieve it. Looking like it's suspended between goalposts â€" albeit exquisitely designed ones â€" this 85-inch product's 'out there' won't be to everyone's taste.
Which makes Samsung's designation of the S9 as featuring a 'Timeless Design' seem a tad positive, though there's no arguing about this 85-inch LED TV's ambition.
Those goalposts are actually speakers (they pump out 120W from the sides and, oddly, the top), which can be moved up and down so the S9 can be mounted on a wall in several different arrays. Whichever you opt for it's likely to look best in a very large loft-type space, though it looks its best when left easel-like on the floor.
Strapped with a pair of active shutter glasses, the 3D on the S9 looks good, with plenty of depth on show, but because the panel is so big and bright it we did notice a lot of flicker. That's no surprise under the harsh lights of the Las Vegas Convention Center, though we were viewing it in a shadowed area with no dimmed lighting.
A slow-moving camera pan across a desert complete with night sky features loads of depth and contrast, but close-up images of a woman in red against a bright white background was almost unwatchable because of that flicker. A close-up on a tiger, although featuring plenty of detail, wasn't quite as powerful as the 2D images nearby.
There is, of course, a huge problem with the whole Ultra HD concept; there's nothing to watch. "Content is coming, but it's similar to HD â€" go back a few years and there wasn't that much HD content around, but now we've got so many channels, so many options," Dilen Thakrar, TV Product Manager at Samsung UK, told TechRadar.
"Ultra HD will get there but until that happens you've got to have fantastic upscaling built into the TV, and that's our real focus here â€" how do you take HD content, upscale it, and keep it looking crisp. That's where the S9 comes into its own."
It needs to have some pretty special processing. Precision Black Pro optimises the backlight and Micro Dimming is here, too, but it's the Quad-Detail Enhancement tech that's most crucial. "When you take a 1080p image and start to upscale it you;re going to get some holes, some missing pixels, so this circuitry looks at previous pixels and fills in the gaps," said Thakrar. "That's the real key to the engine that drives the S9." Smart Hub, active shutter 3D, and all other bells and whistles are also on board.
The S9 was shown-off near to Samsung's curved OLED 55-inch TV, but could we see the S9 updated in future to combine OLED and Ultra HD â€" as we've seen on both the Panasonic and Sony stands at this year's CES? "It's a possibility," says Thakrar. "With all of this technology there are eventual crossovers out there, but we're really happy with the OLED and Ultra HD products we have."
Samsung's certainly confident about the S9 since it also showed-off a much weightier, thicker 110-inch version of the S9 that for now is just a concept product. The S9, however, is most certainly coming our way. "We'll be launching it this year, definitely," said Thakrar. "We'll concentrate on the 85-inch right now and see what to do with the 100-inch later."
The 55-inch S9 Ultra HD LED TV release date is late 2013.
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