Hooray for that, common sense prevails at last....
....By way about a week ago I saw the new Samsung 55" curved oled screen at John Lewis in Brent Cross shopping centre north London. I was there picking up an item up for number one daughter who is at university as I was on my way home from work in my taxi. So I thought let's have a gander in the telly department whilst i'm here.
Ok, it looks really cool there's no denying that,
but an "Imax" experience at home....er I don't think so. First of all you are not going to get (and i'm talking about the curved screen here) that "Imax" experience on a 55" display. Secondly the frame around the screen (which I don't like...at all) has more of a curvature to it than the screen itself, and i'm guessing this was done to give the screen a more curved look than was the actual case. In fact a few yards away was a "Panasonic" VT60, I think it was a 65" plasma display, and that was more far more "Imaxy" than the Samsung because of its sheer size.
As far as the picture was concerned, and remember this was in a "shop" environment, was pretty good but when you went off axis er....not so good surprise, surprise. There is also a matter of the price....£7k. This will erode away as time passes and the law of increased production and the public take up of oled takes over from other display types. The same situation was the case with plasma some years ago.
So all in all a curved screen looks great, but from an immersive point of view and a practical level it just doesn't work. In the older days of cinema one's local (then single) screen theatre had curved screens (putting aside various 70mm screens and Cinerama etc, etc) but this was more to do with the projection systems of those times.
As much as I liked the look of the curved oled, it is stylish, at the moment it simply doesn't work anywhere near good enough. Also at 7k there are better options such as a projection setup if you can house one, or as stated above a nice big 60" /65" flat screen plasma which costs a darn sight less and looked (sigh) fab.
Makes my Panny VT30 50" almost small by comparison.
Anyway that's my tuppenceworth, over to you.