A Look at Samsung's First Impressions from CES 2018

This year's CES has been a long time coming, and it's just another step to that with a little bit more processing horsepower. I want to talk a little bit about Q LED, which is as you said, getting commercialized this year. We're going to see it on the market, and we've had some people working on Culet. Hewlett first came out with a new version of what had been Super HD before Hewlett took it and made some small incremental improvements.

The next year after that was not quite what I was hoping for, but I have seen the future of Q LED and I'm really impressed. You guys have made some improvements there. Tonight we're really talking about the future and our vision for TV, but we're also going to share a little bit of how we've improved Q LED. A couple of the key picture quality improvements we've addressed some of the areas that we needed to work on from prior years, namely we've added full array local dimming technology to some of our Culet LED lineup.

We've improved our anti-glare film to improve black levels and our off-angle viewing is tremendously improved. So all that means better picture quality improvements. I'm going to vouch for that having seen it myself. The off-angle viewing is significantly improved, and I think people are going to be stunned by the black levels they're getting from a more conventional LED LCD TV which right now is the bread and butter of the business. We got to move on a little bit because so much stuff you guys are making some big moves in the Smart Home space.

Before we had an app for the washer and dryer, we had an app for the fridge, we had an app for the TV, maybe you could fold in your locks and your lights and stuff like that. What changed this year for us is Samsung is talking about at CES 2018 not only at this first look event for TVs but for all of our product portfolio, the promise of mde or a multi-device experience, to answer your question in 2018 we're integrating Bixby voice control onto our TVs.

We also are unifying as you said what used to be a myriad of different Samsung Apps into a single Samsung SmartThings app and through that app you're able to connect and control all of your IOT devices not only in the Samsung ecosystem but because this is SmartThings driven it's hundreds of other third-party devices. All through that single app, Samsung Smart Hub can integrate Nest, Ecobee, Philips Hue like you name it, you can fold all these things into one convenient app and control it all with one app. I feel like this is something that's been missing from the smart home world for a while.

So that's kind of a big deal. Last thing we're moving fast, I was really happy to hear you guys kind of embracing gamers at this particular event. I mean in a very direct and significant way if I have an Xbox one X what will I get out of the experience playing on a Samsung TV? Coming out in 2018, you get the best 4k HDR gaming experience. In 2017 Microsoft and Samsung struck a partnership and that was a bit of marketing and some unique content but in 2018 we've taken that to the next level.

Our engineers worked with Microsoft engineers to develop automatic recognition of game console being connected like Xbox one X, performance improvements on the TV itself to reduce input lag and to improve frame rate so that TV the Samsung TV automatically recognizes an Xbox one X and delivers the ultimate 4k HDR gaming experience. It's just automatic kind of like the improvements that you've made to your Smart TV interface, the setups are automatic. You pull it out of the box, you log in using the Samsung smartThings app.

You're no longer going through and trying and punching in your username and password on a traditional remote so no more with Samsung's easy setup. Thank you for being with us today, we really appreciate it. This is Caleb Dennison for Digital Trends at the Samsung First Look at CES 2018 be sure to check out digitaltrends.com/ces for all of our CES coverage

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey there Caleb Dennison with Digital Trends where Samsung's first look event at CES 2018 I am standing here with Dave DAWs we get to do this every year and I love it every time because you guys end up bringing a whole lot of really interesting tech to the show but this year at least in my recollection is one of the most significant and we have a lot to talk about so I just want to jump right into it first of all let's address the monster or in this case the wall in the room what is right behind us right now so Caleb right behind us is the 146 inch micro LED display that we're affectionately calling the wall this is truly groundbreaking technology because it is self emissive yet it also has 2,000 it's a brightness so you get the deepest blacks and those brightest whites you know I mean let's be honest you're the senior vice president of Samsung Electronics your talking points are to communicate how awesome this is right as a journalist I'm going to stand here and agree with you 100% this is indeed awesome and I want to kind of drill down into that self emissive thing right now because conventional LED televisions aren't really LED televisions right because it's an LED backlight shining through an LCD panel and those come with some issues this are if I'm not mistaken our individual tiny little LEDs that are making their own light is that correct exactly these are red green and blue LEDs on a pixel level as you said self emitting their own light so that eliminates the need for a color filter or any of the things that you might have in a traditional LCD TV and as I mentioned this is groundbreaking technology which doesn't have some of the deficiencies of existing technologies in other words there's no longevity issues there's no potential burnin issues so this really is the future of TV that Samsung is going to bring to market in 2018 you're talking about perfect black levels you're talking about excellent color mixing excellent processing of course it is a legitimate competition to OLED it but it's not organic and I think that's one of the points that we should make here it's also modular can you explain what means because I know that you have a modular cinema display that's massive 30-foot while this is a great TV but let's be honest it's a little big for most people's homes is this gonna maybe get scaled down at some point to work for smaller homes so this is absolutely scalable Caleb and you mentioned it is similar technology to that cinema LED commercial display that we have but this is modular and designed for consumers homes so it's absolutely scalable but the beauty of this is that we've made it truly edgeless so it's virtually impossible to see any seams in this TV yeah it's pretty incredible I don't want to gush on this too much because there's so much amazing stuff we're gonna need to sort of make a transition because you're talking about 8k a I and I know that the first thing that people think is first of all I just bought a 4k TV why are you already talking about 8k second is there's no 8k content out there what is the point of pushing 8k out there right now I think the answer actually among anybody who's really looked at a gigantic display up close knows but I mean what's the deal what's the deal with 8k right now you hit the nail on the head actually consumers especially in the u.s. are buying larger and larger screen sizes traditionally 55inch 65inch was kind of a sweet spot now you know it's 75 inch 82-inch even larger than that and as the screen sizes get bigger resolution is much more critical so as you said what is the benefit of having an 8k TV if there isn't any native content out there that's the beauty and that is the critically important part of having 8k artificial intelligence in our Samsung premium TVs so as I mentioned we are commercializing this in 2018 and it upscales any content whether it's standard definition or full HD or even 4k no matter the source so you could be streaming content at low bandwidth and the TV is actually able to upscale to 8k we've had 4k upscaling for a long time this is just another step to that with a little bit more processing horsepower I want to talk a little bit about cue LED there's as you said there's a lot of stuff that's getting commercialized this year we're gonna see it on the market you guys have been working on culet a little bit hewlett first came out it was a new version of what had been su HD before Hewlett took made some small incremental improvements the next year after that not quite what I was hoping for I have seen the future of Q LED and I'm really impressed you guys made some improvements there didn't you absolutely so tonight we're really talking about the future and our vision for TV but we're also going to share a little bit of how we've improved Q LED a couple of the key picture quality improvements we've addressed some of the areas that we needed to work on from prior years namely we've added full array local dimming technology to some of our cue LED lineup we've improved our anti-glare film to improve black levels and our off angle viewing is tremendously improved so all that means better picture quality improvements I'm going to I'm gonna vouch for that having seen it myself the off angle viewing is significantly improved and I think people are going to be stunned by the black levels that they're getting from a more conventional LED LCD TV which right now is the bread and butter of the business right we got to move on a little bit because so much stuff you guys are making some big moves in the Smart Home space before we had an app for the washer and dryer we had an app for the fridge we had an app for the TV maybe you could fold in your locks and your lights and stuff like that what changed this year for you guys so Samsung is talking about at CES 2018 not only at this first look event for TVs but for all of our product portfolio the promise of mde or a multi device experience so to answer your question in 2018 we're integrating bixby voice control onto our TVs we also are unifying as you said what used to be a myriad of different Samsung Apps into a single Samsung smartthings app and through that app you're able to connect and control all of your IOT devices not only in the Samsung ecosystem but because this is smart things driven it's hundreds of other third-party devices all through that single app Samsung Smart Hub can integrate nest ecobee Philips hue like you name it you can fold all the and I've seen it work and you can fold all these things into one convenient app and control it all with one app I feel like this is something that's been missing from the smart home world for a while so that's kind of a big deal last thing we're moving fast I was really happy to hear you guys kind of embrace gamers at this particular event I mean in a very direct and significant way if I have an Xbox one X what will I get out of the experience playing on a Samsung TV they coming out in 2018 you get the best 4k HDR gaming experience so in 2017 Microsoft and Samsung struck a partnership and that was a bit of marketing a bit of promotions and some unique content but in 2018 we've taken that to the next level our engineers worked with Microsoft engineers to develop automatic recognition of game console being connected like Xbox one X and performance improvements on the TV itself to reduce input lag and to improve frame rate so that TV the Samsung TV automatically recognizes an Xbox one X and delivers the ultimate and 4k HDR gaming experience it's just automatic kind of like the improvements that you've made to your Smart TV interface the setups automatic you pull it out of the box you your app says I see a new Smart TV and the next thing you know it's logging you into Netflix for you is that right no more usernames and passwords absolutely one of the biggest pain points when I would get a new TV is having to go through and try and punch in my username and password on a traditional remote so no more with Samsung's easy setup and Kinect as you said the TV pops onto the Wi-Fi and through your mobile phone using the Samsung smartthings app you can decide what apps you want to push on to that TV already being logged in well listen Dave I do this for a living and I'm having trouble you know wrapping my head around all of it so thank you for explaining how it works the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna go around here we're gonna take a look at each individual element that we just talked about and actually see it in action Dave Johns thank you for being with us today we really appreciate it this is Caleb Dennison for digital trends at the Samsung first look at CES 2018 be sure to check out digital Transcom slash CES for all of our CES coveragehey there Caleb Dennison with Digital Trends where Samsung's first look event at CES 2018 I am standing here with Dave DAWs we get to do this every year and I love it every time because you guys end up bringing a whole lot of really interesting tech to the show but this year at least in my recollection is one of the most significant and we have a lot to talk about so I just want to jump right into it first of all let's address the monster or in this case the wall in the room what is right behind us right now so Caleb right behind us is the 146 inch micro LED display that we're affectionately calling the wall this is truly groundbreaking technology because it is self emissive yet it also has 2,000 it's a brightness so you get the deepest blacks and those brightest whites you know I mean let's be honest you're the senior vice president of Samsung Electronics your talking points are to communicate how awesome this is right as a journalist I'm going to stand here and agree with you 100% this is indeed awesome and I want to kind of drill down into that self emissive thing right now because conventional LED televisions aren't really LED televisions right because it's an LED backlight shining through an LCD panel and those come with some issues this are if I'm not mistaken our individual tiny little LEDs that are making their own light is that correct exactly these are red green and blue LEDs on a pixel level as you said self emitting their own light so that eliminates the need for a color filter or any of the things that you might have in a traditional LCD TV and as I mentioned this is groundbreaking technology which doesn't have some of the deficiencies of existing technologies in other words there's no longevity issues there's no potential burnin issues so this really is the future of TV that Samsung is going to bring to market in 2018 you're talking about perfect black levels you're talking about excellent color mixing excellent processing of course it is a legitimate competition to OLED it but it's not organic and I think that's one of the points that we should make here it's also modular can you explain what means because I know that you have a modular cinema display that's massive 30-foot while this is a great TV but let's be honest it's a little big for most people's homes is this gonna maybe get scaled down at some point to work for smaller homes so this is absolutely scalable Caleb and you mentioned it is similar technology to that cinema LED commercial display that we have but this is modular and designed for consumers homes so it's absolutely scalable but the beauty of this is that we've made it truly edgeless so it's virtually impossible to see any seams in this TV yeah it's pretty incredible I don't want to gush on this too much because there's so much amazing stuff we're gonna need to sort of make a transition because you're talking about 8k a I and I know that the first thing that people think is first of all I just bought a 4k TV why are you already talking about 8k second is there's no 8k content out there what is the point of pushing 8k out there right now I think the answer actually among anybody who's really looked at a gigantic display up close knows but I mean what's the deal what's the deal with 8k right now you hit the nail on the head actually consumers especially in the u.s. are buying larger and larger screen sizes traditionally 55inch 65inch was kind of a sweet spot now you know it's 75 inch 82-inch even larger than that and as the screen sizes get bigger resolution is much more critical so as you said what is the benefit of having an 8k TV if there isn't any native content out there that's the beauty and that is the critically important part of having 8k artificial intelligence in our Samsung premium TVs so as I mentioned we are commercializing this in 2018 and it upscales any content whether it's standard definition or full HD or even 4k no matter the source so you could be streaming content at low bandwidth and the TV is actually able to upscale to 8k we've had 4k upscaling for a long time this is just another step to that with a little bit more processing horsepower I want to talk a little bit about cue LED there's as you said there's a lot of stuff that's getting commercialized this year we're gonna see it on the market you guys have been working on culet a little bit hewlett first came out it was a new version of what had been su HD before Hewlett took made some small incremental improvements the next year after that not quite what I was hoping for I have seen the future of Q LED and I'm really impressed you guys made some improvements there didn't you absolutely so tonight we're really talking about the future and our vision for TV but we're also going to share a little bit of how we've improved Q LED a couple of the key picture quality improvements we've addressed some of the areas that we needed to work on from prior years namely we've added full array local dimming technology to some of our cue LED lineup we've improved our anti-glare film to improve black levels and our off angle viewing is tremendously improved so all that means better picture quality improvements I'm going to I'm gonna vouch for that having seen it myself the off angle viewing is significantly improved and I think people are going to be stunned by the black levels that they're getting from a more conventional LED LCD TV which right now is the bread and butter of the business right we got to move on a little bit because so much stuff you guys are making some big moves in the Smart Home space before we had an app for the washer and dryer we had an app for the fridge we had an app for the TV maybe you could fold in your locks and your lights and stuff like that what changed this year for you guys so Samsung is talking about at CES 2018 not only at this first look event for TVs but for all of our product portfolio the promise of mde or a multi device experience so to answer your question in 2018 we're integrating bixby voice control onto our TVs we also are unifying as you said what used to be a myriad of different Samsung Apps into a single Samsung smartthings app and through that app you're able to connect and control all of your IOT devices not only in the Samsung ecosystem but because this is smart things driven it's hundreds of other third-party devices all through that single app Samsung Smart Hub can integrate nest ecobee Philips hue like you name it you can fold all the and I've seen it work and you can fold all these things into one convenient app and control it all with one app I feel like this is something that's been missing from the smart home world for a while so that's kind of a big deal last thing we're moving fast I was really happy to hear you guys kind of embrace gamers at this particular event I mean in a very direct and significant way if I have an Xbox one X what will I get out of the experience playing on a Samsung TV they coming out in 2018 you get the best 4k HDR gaming experience so in 2017 Microsoft and Samsung struck a partnership and that was a bit of marketing a bit of promotions and some unique content but in 2018 we've taken that to the next level our engineers worked with Microsoft engineers to develop automatic recognition of game console being connected like Xbox one X and performance improvements on the TV itself to reduce input lag and to improve frame rate so that TV the Samsung TV automatically recognizes an Xbox one X and delivers the ultimate and 4k HDR gaming experience it's just automatic kind of like the improvements that you've made to your Smart TV interface the setups automatic you pull it out of the box you your app says I see a new Smart TV and the next thing you know it's logging you into Netflix for you is that right no more usernames and passwords absolutely one of the biggest pain points when I would get a new TV is having to go through and try and punch in my username and password on a traditional remote so no more with Samsung's easy setup and Kinect as you said the TV pops onto the Wi-Fi and through your mobile phone using the Samsung smartthings app you can decide what apps you want to push on to that TV already being logged in well listen Dave I do this for a living and I'm having trouble you know wrapping my head around all of it so thank you for explaining how it works the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna go around here we're gonna take a look at each individual element that we just talked about and actually see it in action Dave Johns thank you for being with us today we really appreciate it this is Caleb Dennison for digital trends at the Samsung first look at CES 2018 be sure to check out digital Transcom slash CES for all of our CES coverage\n"