CES 2019 speculation & the facts

[ray0414]

Originally Posted by alexanderg823

Hmmm...

I can't help but feel really let down by CES this year.

Samsung - Showing off a MicroLED that may or may not be released to consumers this year, and even if they are, will be priced at like $20K at the cheapest. Their mainstream TVs are the 8K QLEDs are the same ones that were released last year, with a few additional sizes, with performance that is essentially the same as those shown at last year's CES. QD OLED is MIA.

LG - 2019 oleds on the whole are boring and the epitome of incremental upgrade. The only thing they have is a rollable OLED which is more of a gimmick than anything, and will also be priced out of the stratosphere.

Sony - Primarily junk disposable LCDs, no real improvement from last year - low zone count, some might even say worse now that they've switched to the wide angle so they're all essentially IPS screens. Z9G is huge and going to be priced out for most. 2019 OLED has marginal if any improvement over the A9F released late last year.

Vizio - Quantum dots and zones, they're essentially the same exact thing as Samsung's 2018 QLEDs, even down to the zone count, just priced a whole lot better. Still, no real innovation.

TCL/Hisense - Seems like some pretty decent innovation at low prices with MiniLED and the dual layer, but they're junk TVs so they probably won't work as well as advertised.



Just overall very disappointing. LEDs had quite a bit of momentum in recent years to finally overcome some inherent PQ problems and leap ahead, but have stalled out in 2019 in favor of regression in a race to the bottom - or in the case of Hisense, just straight up snake oil fantasies. No one seems to be using the miniLEDs that were hyped up last year except TCL.

OLED seems to have totally stagnated and is now resorting to gimmicks like rollable over panel PQ improvements. Samsung's QD OLED is totally missing in action despite rumors over the past few months. And MicroLED is an extremely expensive, ridiculously unaffordable proof of concept with some major issues with its "seams".

Overall 2019 is a total disappointment and seems like the industry just lost a lot of steam and gave up on the innovation in hopes that Samsung and LG will do all the R&D in the next 5 years for LCD replacement technology and license out the resulting tech.

Samsung's regular lineup wont be announced til March. There was no lineup announcement at ces last year either. They only had a secret Q9FN hidden in a private room but zero details about the specs or lineup. Also, those QD Oleds were never expected to be there at ces, the rumor is that Samsung won't begin experimenting until 2nd half 2019. So there might be a prototype at one of the events later this year at the absolute earliest. Today is the 1st open day of show floor, so wait and see what everyone has on the floor or any possible private demo rooms like last year.

Overall, this ces is nearly exactly the same as last year. All the se complaints about last year being a let down too.