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LG Builds 325″ Direct View TV Set

Would you pay $1.7 million for a TV set? Well, on the off chance you were dying to part with such a large sum, LG wants to help you do it.

LG Launching 325 Inch TV That Costs A Staggering Amount Of Money

On September 14, the South Korean electronics giant announced the release of a 325″ ( 27 feet and 1 inch) direct view 8K TV set. It shatters the previous record of 171 inches.

LG’s behemoth somewhat resembles Sony’s Crystal TV and Samsung’s The Wall. Like them, LG’s new offering features a gargantuan screen with millions of LEDs. The LG set, with 33 million LEDs, is a component of its Extreme Home Cinema line.

Unlike The Wall, LG’s new set is not modular. It is a single screen, not a combination of of screens configured to display a single image. Also, it differs from most other giant sets in its direct view format- the same one you’d find in most homes. Most giant sets rely on rear projection.

LG’s giant set weighs more than a ton. Merely installing the beast requires specialized training.

LG says its new TV set is rated for a half-life of 100,000 hours, which means it’s good for at least ten years of standard use. And if you buy one, LG technicians will visit your house twice a year to check on it.

Direct View LED (DVLED) technology has seen fairly common use in commercial signage in the last few years. However, it has seen almost no residential use.

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Wall Luxury TV Set by Samsung Measures a Full 292 Inches!

Do your friends brag about the size of their TV sets? Are you jealous of a neighbor with a 65-inch screen on the wall in his living room?

Samsung announced the 292 inch large format modular display at ISE 2019 in Amsterdam
Samsung’s 292-inch Screen

Rejoice, then! Within a few months, you’ll have a chance to buy a TV set that outclasses all others in your neighborhood- IF you have the budget and the room for it. A few days ago, Samsung Electronics demonstrated a TV set, called The Wall Luxury, that measures a whopping 292 diagonal inches. That’s over 24 feet. For all of its monumental dimensions, though, it’s only 30 millimeters thick- slightly over an inch.

In addition to extreme size, Samsung’s new video display boasts a record-setting refresh rate of a blistering 120 Hz and a brightness level of 2000 nits. Most TV sets manage only 60 Hz and 250 to 500 nits. A few HDR-capable screens can be as bright as 1000 nits.

How much does it cost?

“So”, you might be asking, “how much do I have to pay for this amazing new TV set?” Well, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. Samsung has not revealed its suggested retail price for The Wall Luxury. But its closest competitor, dubbed simply ‘The Wall’, a now-outclassed and utterly humiliated 146-inch model, sells for $100,000.

If this is still too much for you, Sony sells a 98-inch screen for a mere $70,000. Of course, you’d have to accept the embarrassment of knowing that you’ve settled for the third place finisher.

Is size all that counts?

As impressive as Samsung’s Wall is, it might not be right for you. In fact, if you’re going to pay a premium price for a TV set, we recommend thinking less about size or even resolution, and more about factors more directly and more dramatically affecting the quality of the picture and sound. These other factors are display format and HDR.

Once you have a screen measuring at least 55 inches diagonally, adding more size is unlikely to add much to your enjoyment of the picture. And while HD was a massive and obvious improvement over SD in picture quality, upgrading from HD to 4K, 5K, or 8K will do little for you unless you’re sitting within six feet of the screen.

If you’re willing to pay the price for quality, we recommend buying a good OLED set with HDR capability. For now, OLED is the best available display technology, with the darkest blacks and most intense color gamuts. HDR (high dynamic range) provides the widest available color range, and the most accuracy and subtlety in mid-range and shadows. Is your vision normal? Do you watch TV from more than three feet away from the screen? Then HDR is likely to do more for your enjoyment of the picture than 4K or higher resolution will.

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Does Your ‘Smart TV’ Know Too Much About You?

Is your TV invading your privacy? As ‘smart TV‘ becomes ever more popular, government and private parties try ever harder to exploit it to spy on viewers. If you;re not careful, your privacy could be at risk.

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Last year, a malware app called ‘Weeping Angel” targeted Samsung smart TV sets with a ‘fake off’ mode. To their owners, the TVs appeared to be off, but they were actually listening to users and recording their conversations.

With their embedded computers and microphones, these advanced TV sets are effective spy tools, so much so that the CIA has created and deployed means for transforming them into listening posts. And Wikileaks, Julian Assange’s platform for publication of stolen documents, has published detailed descriptions of viruses designed for hacking of such TV sets. MI5, Britain’s internal intelligence service, is even alleged to have helped  in designing some of the viruses.

Should you be worried about this?

Experts in cyber-security say most people don’t need to worry about hacking of their TV sets.

Most forms of malware are meant for mass surveillance. The tools designed for hacking TV sets, though, are too difficult to use to be of much value to the casual hacker. Hence, they are typically reserved for targeting individuals. Unless you suspect that you have attracted the attention of professional spies, then, you probably don’t need to worry that your TV set will be used against you.

How can you protect yourself?

If you’re still worried that your smart TV set or other devices could be used against you, a few precautions will help.

First, avoid buying electronic devices from manufacturers known to be casual about online security. And if you don’t really need networked features, avoid buying devices which include them.

Alas, protecting your privacy may require sacrificing certain conveniences. These may include voice activation, or even your TV’s web connection. You can usually find these features on your device’s ‘settings’ menu.

To be absolutely sure the device can’t spy on you, you’ll need to disconnect it from the electrical grid. If the device is battery-powered, you may need to remove the batteries.

Should you avoid ‘smart TV’ altogether?

Be realistic about this. No matter how careful you are, privacy protection in a smart TV will never be absolute. The methods we’ve mentioned here can keep your electronic devices from recording or transmitting your conversations, but your smart TV could still track your viewing history. Advertisers pay heavily for this data, and ability to collect it is built into the device’s software.

For this, the only known solution is not to buy a smart TV in the first place..

 

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CONNECTED DEVICES & PRIVACY

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Can you keep a secret? No, you can’t, at least not for long. With ever more of your electronic devices, appliances, utility meters, fitness trackers, and home security systems connected to the internet, it’s nearly certain that at least one of them will rat on you sooner or later.

Could Your Devices Be Subpoenaed?

Allison Berman, writing for Singularity Hub, warned that the connected devices in your home could be subpoenaed as witnesses against you. She cited a 2015 murder case, for which police asked Amazon to turn over cloud-based data sent by an Alexa-enabled Echo device in the home of James Andrew Bates, in whose hot tub detectives had found the body of his colleague, Victor Collins. On the night of the murder, the device had been used for streaming music. The Echo device, equipped with seven mikes, listens constantly for the ‘wake word’ that will activate it, making it receptive to commands. Just before and after sensing the wake word, Echo begins recording sound and transmitting it to Amazon’s cloud.

Police believe the Echo device may have recorded audio germane to their investigation.

In the near future, police may solve crimes by interrogating refrigerators, thermostats, TV sets, stereos, phones, tablets, and security systems. With multiple electronic witnesses, they can obtain fairly accurate and comprehensive pictures of the crimes, as they seek to do by interviewing multiple witnesses to an auto accident.

Privacy laws regarding connected devices are very weak. Because the information is stored in the cloud, the owner or user of the devices doesn’t own the data they transmit. It’s not protected to the same degree that documents in his house are.

Could Your Connected Devices Be Hacked?

Of course, any connected device can be hacked. If Alexa is hacked, could a hostile party listen to everything you say in your home? And if you have twenty connected devices in your home, a hacker might obtain eerily accurate and complete information about what you do all day. Could he use it to blackmail you? What could a stalker do if he knows where you’ll be, when, and for what reason?

Hackers could also hijack your devices to spread false information about you. Patrick Frey, who blogs as ‘Patterico’, suffered a ’SWATting’ attack in 2011 after a hacker ‘spoofed’ his cellphone number to place a midnight 911 call. Pretending to be Frey, the caller said he had shot his wife.

Sheriff’s deputies pounded on Frey’s door and rang his doorbell. When he opened the door, they pointed their guns at him and told him to put his hands up. The deputies handcuffed Frey and placed him in a squad car. Then they awakened his wife, led her downstairs, and frisked her. After ascertaining that the children were safe, the police finally left.

The incident could easily have cost Frey his life. Cops are likely to be nervous in confronting a man they believe to be armed and to have just committed a murder.

Can You Trust Browsers and Social Media?

Loss of privacy need not require either hacking or law enforcement inquiry. Certain browsers, such as Google, and social media, such as Facebook, offer overly complicated terms of service– as long as 30,000 words. Few, if any, users read them. The rules are nearly inscrutable for a reason. They’re meant to protect providers from liability, not to protect your privacy.

Since you don’t pay for Google and Facebook services, you are their product. They earn their money through sale of advertising, so they want as much data about you as possible. Their advertisers demand it.

Two years ago, Facebook faced a media firestorm after the discovery that it had been manipulating the emotional states of thousands of users. Facebook had learned that the emotional impact of the images it showed users would affect the character of their posts. With this information, it could reinforce advertising messages.

You reveal far more through social media than you’d guess. MIT’s ‘Gaydar’ project confirmed that one could reliably infer that a particular subject was gay, based solely on his social media posts, even if he had never admitted it openly, and even if he was trying strenuously to keep it hidden. Another MIT project, called ‘Psychopath’, tracked social media posts to determine presence or absence of schizophrenia.

Can You Trust Your Smart TV Set?

On Monday, February 6, Vizio settled a lawsuit over claims that it had violated consumer privacy. The plaintiffs had alleged that Vizio’s connected ‘smart’ TV sets had been tracking ‘second by second’ data about customer viewing habits. To this, Vizio had allegedly added specific demographic information: age, sex, marital status, size of household, income, home ownership, and household value. The company is alleged to have sold this information to third parties. The third parties would use it to enable targeted advertising.

LG and Samsung have also been accused of collecting viewer data through their connected TV sets.

What Can You Do?

What can you do to protect yourself? Update your passwords often. Encrypt what you can. Always stay aware of when your connected devices are switched on.

It may help to assume that everything you do will become public- and live accordingly.

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TOP TRENDS IN NEW TV SETS

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With the annual Consumer Electronics Show about to end, we’ve gotten a glimpse of the near future in the market for video displays. In years past, LED and LCD displays with High Definition (HD) resolution were all the rage. They work well, but they’ve been around long enough that they almost seem passe’. Manufacturers are now producing flexible screens, OLED and QLED technology, and 4K or Ultra High Definition (UHD) resolution.

If you want your TV set to offer the best possible picture and sound, investigate displays with the following features:

4k and Ultra HD

As their names imply, 4K and Ultra HD (UHD) screens display four times the number of pixels in an HD screen. Only a few content providers offer their programming in 4K or UHD format, but more are adopting it every month.  Within two years, 4K will be standard.

High Dynamic Range (HDR)

One of the top trends in TV innovation is High Dynamic Range (HDR). Unlike 4K or UHD, which are brute-force approaches to picture sharpness, HDR does not entail simply stuffing more pixels into the display.

HDR is a new technology altogether. It offers much brighter highlights, deeper shadows, more detail and subtlety in the midrange, and a wider color gamut than conventional TV. Most observers say it improves the picture more than 4K does.

OLED and QLED

Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) and Quantum Light-Emitting Diode (QLED) displays are at the top in picture quality. They offer far better contrast and color saturation than LED, LCD, or plasma screens.

OLED screens have been far more expensive than competing types, but this is changing. Samsung and LG have learned mass-manufacturing techniques that are making their prices much more competitive.

Both LED and QLED look impressive. There may be subtle differences in picture quality, but they are so small, most of us wouldn’t notice them. Both are clearly superior to everything else.

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