The running is extremely tight this year for which TV will be crowned the best of 2015. Panasonic’s hat is most certainly in the ring, thanks to the CX850, a 4K UHD TV with enhanced color output and brightness, that was announced at the CES 2015 press day. You can see the TV in action in our video below.
Unfortunately, all demonstrations of High Dynamic Range (HDR) functionality were simulated, as HDR content isn’t readily available (unless your company’s name is Samsung and you get Ridley Scott to master some for you). Still, the simulation served Panasonic’s purpose well in the demonstration, showing that its televisions are certainly capable of the types of high brightness HDR can demand.
We were also able to confirm with Panasonic that its CX850 is designed to process HDR metadata from content sources. In other words, once 4K Blu-ray discs come around to delver HDR content with expanded 10-bit color depth, the CX850 will be ready to handle the workload.
Speaking of 4K Blu-ray players, we were a little disappointed to find to that the “prototype” on display is not a functional player. At this point, the box is really just a promise. However, since Panasonic has always been a major player in Blu-ray disc development, we feel it is a safe bet that the company will deliver on its promise to bring a functioning player to market soon, ideally by the end of this year, or in the first quarter of 2016. In fact, it’s likely that this time next year, we’ll be looking at a functioning player on the CES 2016 show floor.
