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| Visitors take a look at LG Electronics' 8K NanoCell TV and Samsung Electronics' QLED 8K TV at the LG booth during the IFA trade fair in Berlin, Saturday. / Korea Times photo by Baek Byung-yeul |
By Baek Byung-yeul
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| Park Hyoung-sei, executive vice president of the TV Business Operation Center at LG Electronics, speaks during a press conference at the IFA trade fair in Berlin, Saturday. / Courtesy of LG Electronics |
At the tech fair, which will run through Wednesday, the company has been conducting a side-by-side comparison, putting its 8K NanoCell TV and Samsung's QLED 8K TV together to show visitors the difference.
LG said Samsung was misleading consumers by selling "nonstandard" 8K TV, adding that manufacturers were obligated to present clear information about their products.
"Many TV makers are selling 8K TVs, and I think consumers deserve to know whether the high-priced product they are purchasing correctly complies with international standards," Park Hyoung-sei, executive vice president of the company's TV Business Operation Center, told reporters.
LG has been fiercely competing with its archrival Samsung, the No.1 TV maker, for leadership in 8K TVs, which deliver a much-enhanced image quality ― four times the resolution of 4K TV.
With Chinese makers aggressively expanding their market share in the budget TV segment, winning technological hegemony in the high-priced fiels has become a life and death issue for the two Korean giants.
"The International Committee for Display Metrology (ICDM) has set the standard of what the ultra-high definition TV has to be in order to be called 8K, and Samsung's 8K TVs don't meet this requirement," Park said.
"When we talk about the resolution of 4K or 8K, the displays should have more pixels and more than a 50 percent contrast modulation (CM) value, according to the ICDM. While our 8K TVs have 90 percent of the CM value, Samsung's has only 12 percent."
Samsung dismissed the claims, saying LG was trying to damage the leader's credibility and that it did not understand "on what basis" LG was making the claim.
"I feel sad to hear that, because Samsung is setting the standards for 8K TV and leading the market," Han Jong-hee, president of Samsung's display business, told reporters Thursday. "As you know, it is human nature to try to imitate and speak ill of the leader. I will see it if there's anything wrong."
LG stepped up its criticism, saying both Samsung and LG had agreed when the ICDM set the standard for measuring 8K display performances in 2016.
"The ICDM is an organization that decides the standards of display performance measurement," said S. P. Baik, director of LG's TV product strategy team. "The International Organization for Standardization (ISO), an international standard-setting body, also cites the criteria set by the ICDM and so does the Korean Standards Association.
"Dolby, Apple, Microsoft and other display organizations have their memberships and the core membership congregants are LG and Samsung. When the ICDM decided the standard for 8K displays in 2016, Samsung and LG agreed with the criteria."
Besides conducting the side-by-side comparison in Berlin, LG is also strengthening its promotional efforts at home. Beginning Saturday, it started to air a TV commercial, showing and claiming that its OLED TVs were the only display technology with self-emitting light and operating without backlights.
"We will hold a press conference at our headquarters in Seoul on September 17 to give more details," Park said. "There, we will try to answer any technical question people may have."
