There’s big news out of the IFA electronics show in Berlin today. How big? Well, 65 inches, to be exact. That’s the screen size of Panasonic’s just-unveiled VIERA WT600 TV. According to the company, it is “the first 4K Ultra HD TV in the world with a 4K 50/60p input designed based on HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.2a specifications.”
Besides offering 4K resolution at up to 60 fps, the metal-and-glass bodied WT600 also features 2,000 Hz Back Light Scanning, which reportedly “provides incredibly high motion sharpness, even in fast action scenes.”
Its image quality is further helped out by 4K Intelligent Frame Creation frame rate conversion technology; the ability to visually optimize each object in a scene independently, regardless of the direction of movement; a “virtually infinite contrast ratio”; Local Dimming Pro circuit and the unique Gamma Area Control, which together allow for more details to be visible in bright or dark areas of the overall picture; and, compatibility with CalMAN calibration software, which is designed for perfect color neutrality.
Additionally, the look of sub-4K video is boosted by the TV’s 4K Hexa-Processing Engine. This feature reproduces data missing from the lower-resolution signal, apparently bringing it closer in quality to that of Ultra HD.
This being a modern television, however, it’s designed for doing more than displaying content from your local cable company's set-top box. For starters, it has its own built-in HTML5 web browser, allowing it to display 4K web pages. It also features an “industry-first” 4K H.264 (MPEG4) decoder, which lets it play back 4K video files via USB, SD card, or directly from the internet.
Individual users within the same household can access their own personalized pre-set Home Screens, which are designed to provide “quick and easy” access to content from their favorite providers – both broadcast and internet. While the WT600 will come with this feature pre-installed, it will also be available as a download to other VIERA sets as of October 8th.
It also has built-in LAN, which lets users access multimedia content from the TV throughout the house, on other devices. Additionally, its twin HD tuners allows users to record one program while watching another one live, or to view two programs at once – one on the TV, and one transmitted via LAN to a tablet or other device.
Finally, just to up its gee-whiz factor, users can control the WT600 by voice. This is done through a microphone on the TV’s touchpad controller, or via the Panasonic TV Remote 2 App on a mobile device.
Pricing and availability details have yet to be announced.
Source: Panasonic
