LAS VEGAS—For a TV, 65- and 85-inch sets are considered very big. Here at CES, though, Samsung unveiled a massive display: the 4K, 146-inch MicroLED Wall.
Yes, it's actually called The Wall by Samsung, and it's by far the largest TV to be announced for consumer release.
The cost of manufacturing LCD and OLED panels, the two primary TV technologies, becomes much higher the larger you scale each panel past a certain point. That's why a jump from 42 to 55 to 65 inches for TVs can be a few hundred dollars for each step, but moving from 65 inches to 75 inches tacks several thousand dollars onto the price. An 85-inch TV can cost as much as a car, and you won't likely see any LCD or OLED larger than that. The manufacturing process for a panel that size is simply unfeasible for a consumer product.
Instead of LCD or OLED, The Wall uses MicroLED. Colored light-emitting diodes—which are effectively very tiny, self-contained light bulbs—combine to form each pixel on the MicroLED array. Each pixel emits light on its own, making the MicroLED array function closer to an OLED panel or a plasma TV than a conventional LCD TV that requires a backlight to illuminate the image formed by the liquid crystal layer.
You've probably seen this technology before, in less micro a format. Very large video billboards and displays are often constructed out of similar LED arrays. They form a big, moving picture you can recognize from across the street, but when you get up close you can see each cluster of LED "bulbs" brightening and dimming to form the picture.
The MicroLED array on The Wall isn't quite as obvious as the huge arrays of LEDs on these larger commercial signs. Each pixel on the 146-inch screen is just over 0.8 millimeters, or small enough that you won't be able to see them individually unless you're a foot or two away (which isn't recommended for a TV that's over 11 feet across, diagonally). I couldn't see the pixels of the TV from about six feet away, which is probably the closest comfortable watching distance.
Samsung has not announced pricing or availability for The Wall, and those details won't likely be revealed until March. However, the company has confirmed that The Wall is a consumer product, not a prototype or proof-of-concept model (which is a much more common sight among huge TVs at CES). The 146-inch TV will still probably cost as much as a modest car, but it will be available for purchase at some point this year.
Samsung also showed off two 8K TVs, which are proof-of-concept models. The new 85-inch 8K LCD TV, the Q9S, demonstrated a new upconversion engine that can take SD (720 by 480), HD (1,920 by 1,080), or 4K (3,840 by 2,160) video and process it to appear crisp at 8K (7,680 by 4,320) resolution. The other model on display, a 65-inch TV, showed off native 8K content, which displays four times the pixels of 4K video.
Don't fret about these 8K TV, though. 8K video is still a largely theoretical format with no significant studio, distributor, or manufacturer adoption for consumer use. Your 4K TV isn't obsolete, and won't be for a while.