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NY Times

Yes, 4K TV Sets Are Getting a Lot of Buzz at CES, But The NY Times’ Personal Tech Columnist Says You May Want to Wait a While to Buy One

Jan 6, 2016  •  Post A Comment

In a report on the state of ultra high-definition 4K television technology in The New York Times‘ Personal Tech section, Brian X. Chen is advising consumers to “wait at least another year or two before buying it — the hype and the TV sets themselves.”

The report comes as manufacturers including Sony, Samsung and Panasonic are going all out to pitch the new technology at CES in Las Vegas. Along with drones, virtual reality devices and new smartphones, 4K is one of the spotlight technologies at this year’s event.

“After interviewing several technology companies and testing a premium Samsung 4K TV for more than a week, I was less than convinced that 2016 would be a good year to buy one of the sets,” Chen writes. “Televisions with the 4K feature remain expensive, ranging from $1,000 to tens of thousands of dollars. More important, the content available in the new 4K video resolution is sparse. And while images encoded in 4K do look better than normal high-definition ones, the differences aren’t jaw-dropping.”

We encourage readers to click on the link near the top of this story to read Chen’s full report.

4k-ultra-hd

3 Comments

  1. And, supposedly, they REALLY suck electricity.

  2. They certainly do not suck electricity. They are all LED or OLED,
    and use a fraction of the electricity of our older LCD HD set.
    I’ve had 1 just 2 months, and can easily see the difference in electric use.

    And Mr. Chen can’t have actually been to a retail store lately.. It’s getting almost impossible to
    find TV’s that are NOT 4k capable. Our local BestBuy had easily 80% 4k sets, and a pittance of regular HD sets available.

  3. Just because that is all the stores carry doesn’t mean you need a new TV this year. If you don’t need a new TV, wait. There is a long way to go before 4K is worth buying. It is still in the development stage art this time.

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