EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW PHILIPS PUTS ITS FAITH IN THE OLED “PLUS” FACTOR OLED+ TV offers superior picture and sound quality Danny Tack Director of Product Strategy and Planning for TP Vision P5 CONVERTS THE VAST MAJORITY OF SDR CONTENT YOU WATCH TO HDR QUALITY IN REAL TIME Most people today have heard about OLED technology, but what exactly is Philips OLED+? We put this question to Danny Tack, Director of Product Strategy and Planning for TP Vision. The OLED+ range is resetting the TV performance landscape by offering a combination of picture and sound quality previously unavailable in the market - a fact already recognised by the OLED+ TV winning the prestigious EISA Award for Best Home Theatre TV in 2018 and 2019. The superior sound quality is designed by Bowers & Wilkins and is combined with Philips’ exclusive P5 Picture Quality Engine. What is different with the new P5? With the third generation P5 Perfect Picture Processing Engine, Philips is creating outstanding and differentiating picture quality on top of the high-quality OLED panels used. The picture processing is doubled by adding one more exclusive Philips picture processor. Three of the five pillars of P5: Source Perfection, Perfect Sharpness and Perfect Contrast, are brought to the next performance level. Thanks to the improved DNR (Digital Noise Reduction), low-quality sources look clean and sharp. The improved Detail Enhancer means the sharpness of the picture is more refined with finer lines, greater and deeper details, creating more depth impression resulting in pin-sharp pictures. And last but not least, the 3rd Generation P5 includes the improved Perfect Natural Reality contrast enhancing technology which uses a new advanced intelligent contrast algorithm in combination with the P5’s existing local and global contrast enhancement systems. No need to wait for the real HDR sources, with Perfect Natural Reality, P5 converts the vast majority of all the SDR content you watch to HDR quality in real time. Why did you bring Bowers & Wilkins speakers into the equation? The partnership enhances both companies’ long-lasting tradition for developing all of their own bespoke technologies in-house, with total quality control over all stages of product development and production. Philips TV has worked tirelessly to ensure that its TV sets consistently lead the market in terms of picture quality (including its P5 processing chip), European design and via its Ambilight technology. Bowers & Wilkins has a proven longterm commitment to in-house research and development, in order to achieve the truly best sound quality possible, whatever the format. For far too long, as an industry, we have allowed sound quality to be the poor relation when considering TV performance; a challenge that has been further exaggerated by the outstanding quality of our OLED sets. So, I’m delighted that we have been able to partner with the world’s best audio company Bowers & Wilkins to ensure that in future our Philips High End TV sound will offer a uniquely premium experience. How does Ambilight add value? Ambilight is good for your eyes when watching TV, but it also brings a different experience in viewing your favourite movie, series or sports programme. With Ambilight, the picture is enlarged from the screen to the wall and gives the viewer an extended viewing experience. The colours continually change to precisely match the on-screen content, effectively extending the images beyond the boundaries of the set to create the impression of a much larger image and to provide a more overall immersive and enjoyable viewing experience 20
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW LG THINQ HAS EXPANDED (…) TO PROVIDING AN INTEGRATED HOME SOLUTION. I.P. Park President and CTO, LG Electronics LG CTO I.P. PARK URGES OPEN APPROACH TO AI Korean company’s ThinQ brand has AI at its heart as it seeks to deliver “even better life” to consumers I.P. Park, President and CTO, LG Electronics is an industry visionary whose annual insights are one of the highlights of IFA Berlin. He spoke to IFA International about LG’s roadmap for the future. LG has been thinking about homebased products for 60 years. Our goal is to use technology and innovation to upgrade to the next home experience. We have always used the term Innovation for a Better Life to describe this, but now with AI we talk about an even better life. We think there is a lot of value to consumers around AI and connectivity. We are even looking at how to bring the home to consumers wherever they go, including when they are in the car or at the office. How is LG approaching AI? We have a brand, LG ThinQ, that features products that are equipped with AI technology. At IFA, for example, our highlight was LG ThinQ Home, which imitated six distinct actual living spaces. LG ThinQ has expanded from its initial offerings focused on delivering AI capabilities of individual products to providing an integrated home solution. What is the philosophy behind ThinQ and how is it applied? There are three elements to our AI approach – evolve, connect and open. Evolve is all about delivering a more personalised product experience. We create products that use AI to analyse consumer patterns and learn. They then adapt to fit the user’s lifestyle, meaning they become more productive over time. An example might be a robot vacuum cleaner that learns how to clean a difficult corner. Connect is all about how AI can be used to support consumer touchpoints and interfaces in a seamless way based on context. The user’s car, for example, might find out if there is food in the fridge and alert them to stop on the way home. Connect isn’t just about voice interaction, because there are times when using Amazon Alexa and Google Assistance can be annoying. So we are looking at how visual intelligence, based on cameras, can be used in consumer’s lives. One future application LG is exploring is a smart mirror, which can scan the user’s body and face and calculate their measurements when dressed. The data can decide the size of clothes the user should be wearing and give them an option to purchase online. As for open, one company can’t do everything on its own because it is too complex and connected. An open system provides the best solution to create a coordinated ecosystem rather than an alphabet soup. That is why LG ThinQ has an open approach. We want to work with other players to serve customers in a seamless way. How does 5G fit into your overall strategy? 5G is a major game changer on several fronts. We are seeing the rollout of phones in markets like Korea and the US, which provide more bandwidth and lower latency than LTE or 4G, thus allowing consumers access to more immersive content. 5G will also transform automotive. The car industry needs a bigger pipe to help with things like safety alerts. 5G also means more content delivery into autonomous vehicles. The car cabin can be a professional or entertainment space, streaming everything from video conferencing to movies www.ifa-international.org IFA International • Monday 23 September 2019 21
