Why your next display should be 4K

October 03, 2014


With the announcement of the GoPro Hero 4 family this week things got real for adventurers. 4K is a seriously stunning resolution for adrenaline junkies: it captures detail in a way that was previously impossible, and it brings real life to the screen in a remarkably accurate way. The new GoPro Hero 4 Black doubles the frame-rate of the older Hero 3+ Black from 15 frames per second to 30 frames per second, giving you TV-like smoothness to this amazing level of detail.

And that rounds things out for 4K lovers with 4K panels: now you can watch the latest blockbusters in 4K for under $200 with the right Blu-ray player, and you can create your own high-res 4K content for under $500. So the question is: why don’t you have 4K yet?

More than just 4K

For the elite home theatre market the benefits of enjoying the latest in high resolution tech isn’t just detail; along with the best display quality you usually get other bells and whistles too. One of our most popular models right now is the Samsung HU9000, a 78” Curved UHD or “Ultra High Definition” (Samsung’s trade name for their 4K models).

The HU9000 gives you a new type of display; it’s curved to offer better viewing angles to everyone in the room, and the gentle forward bend in the display feels like it’s reaching out and pulling you into the picture. In addition to the high resolution, the HU9000 does 4K upscaling of SD, HD, and Full HD content, bringing them up to par for your 4K display, along with some incredible colour accuracy tech. This particular model features Samsung’s PurColor technology that offers optimal colour for red, green and blue, but goes further to integrate smarter colour logic for Magenta, Cyan, and Yellow as well. We saw this originally when Sharp added a fourth pixel–yellow–to the typical three-pixel setup; Samsung is aiming to achieve the same results through image processing and software, and from what we’re hearing from Pure Image customers, they’re succeeding. Samsung has also seen fit to equip this display with the capability of expressing a wider colour gamut, offering richer colours even from older, non-HD material.

With 4K everything about your display has to be a cut above, simply because the resolution is so high that every cut corner or flaw would be noticeable. That means that panels such as the HU9000 need better quality panel lighting control–which the HU9000 has thanks to Precision Black Local Dimming. This local dimming cuts the power to the LED grid behind dark areas in a scene–it does this dynamically and in real time–so that you always get the darkest black levels and the brightest white levels.

Getting the best of tomorrow and enjoying it now

There will be more 4K displays as time rolls on, but as we’ve seen through the last three generations of displays, as technology becomes commoditized the extra features that make a display exceptional are usually withheld. If you’re making a decision today, your next display should be 4K, without question.

Love the idea of 4K and want to know more about how you can integrate it into your home entertainment centre? Contact us directly with our Contact Form or email us at sales@pureimage.ca

Drew Galvin
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