Blurry Leaked Images Depict Alleged 'Apple OLED TV' in Testing Facility [Updated]

[robbietop]

Oh, look....it's the new Mac Pro!

That's a soundproof volume testing facility. Notice the circle is cut out?
It's on a track to spin the TV to test sound from all angles and distances.

 

[HarryWild]

Back then OLED were expensive for a 50" model! Now 65" is reasonable price at only $3-5K. In 2018, I see it drop to $2-3K!

 

[dannys1]

6

You really think apple's OLED will be close to LG's OLED price? It will double the price for sure......

I'm not sure about that, LG's new screens are always a premium - I paid £4500 for the 65" when it first came out, but goes down to £3000 within 5 months. The TV market has an odd way of pricing things. Apple on the other hand would start more likely at the £3000 but never move from it.

Also their monitor prices have always been reasonable, I mean you get a 27" 5K monitor in the cheapest iMac for barely more than the cost of a normal 5k monitor.
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Considering this is years away, I'd buy the LG. I have the C7 it's excellent.

I had the B7 for a few months when it first came out, i'll be getting the C7 eventually I think. It's a joy to use and I can't be doing with the Android system the Sony uses.
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OLED's patents expire in just a few months. Prices are going to fall dramatically.

Unlikely - they don't know what will happen - either way LG still has about a decade ahead of everyone else regardless.

https://www.oled-info.com/tags/patents

 

[mmm1345]

I'm not sure about that, LG's new screens are always a premium - I paid £4500 for the 65" when it first came out, but goes down to £3000 within 5 months. The TV market has an odd way of pricing things. Apple on the other hand would start more likely at the £3000 but never move from it.

Also their monitor prices have always been reasonable, I mean you get a 27" 5K monitor in the cheapest iMac for barely more than the cost of a normal 5k monitor.
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I had the B7 for a few months when it first came out, i'll be getting the C7 eventually I think. It's a joy to use and I can't be doing with the Android system the Sony uses.
[doublepost=1502984102][/doublepost]

Unlikely - they don't know what will happen - either way LG still has about a decade ahead of everyone else regardless.

https://www.oled-info.com/tags/patents

I had the Sony 900e. I coudn't deal with AndroidTV and Xfinity doesn't support AndroidTV either.

 

[tipoo]

Possibly just their 8K display. It says 60 inches, but that could well just be a bad guess.


https://www.macrumors.com/2017/04/06/apple-8k-display-larger-mac-mini-rumor/

I like the design though, and I might like them making a full stack TV. I like how the hinge goes up into that rear bulge, it's better than some high end designs

.



My other thought was what if the rear console was removable and upgradable, so your 10,000 dollar 8K OLED TV isn't obsolete in the same 4 years as the SoC inside

 

[toke lahti]

If you sacrifice 0.65 cm of window on either side of the TV, you can get a 49" Sony X900E, which clocks in at 109.3 cm wide. It's an upper midrange or lower high-end TV, depending on your viewpoint, and has local dimming.

Edge-lit with local dimming, well...
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8k is worthless for anything less than like 120"+. It's simply too high pixel density for a TV that sits on average 8-10ft+ from viewers.

Maybe the thing about tv's that Jobs "cracked" was that you can watch it closer?

 

[vipergts2207]

Edge-lit with local dimming, well...

It's not edge-lit. It's FALD.

 

[inkswamp]

Oh God... Now they are getting into TV? Can't think of why they would get themselves into such a saturated market.

Yeah, that's been said of just about every market Apple has ever entered. Literally, including computers.

Regardless, TVs are a mess currently. The UIs for all these "smart TVs" are just a disaster and the keyboard-sized remotes are ridiculous. On top of that, nobody has tried to standardize anything, thus the five thousand ports and connectors and adapters and cables needed to integrate a "modern" TV in your home system. It's horrific. Imagine what kind of scaling down, simplification and improvements Apple could bring if they walked in with the attitude they bring to a given market. Imagine a company in the TV market who didn't give a rip what ports had been on the back of TVs since 1974 and wanted to really push forward.

The real question is why Apple hasn't already taken on this market. It's practically begging for it.

 

[aliensporebomb]

Not 4k. 8k.

 

[macs4nw]

OPINION I never understood wall-mounting a TV.
Usually they are mounted waaay too high. Above the fireplace, in particular, is a terrible angle for viewing.....

Not a fan of that either, the stiff-neck angle that is.

Additionally, fireplaces generate heat and heat rises..... right up to the delicate electronics inside your flat screen tv. An excellent way to significantly shorten the lifespan of your equipment.

 

[Mac 128]

There are no VESA mount holes on the back of this thing. Who would buy a 60" TV and not want to mount it on the wall (or at least have the option)?

Seems weird to me... though I suppose a prototype may lack such amenities. But the overall construction of this device does not seem like it would lend itself to adding VESA mount holes as the depth seems to shallow (and placing them in the thicker component area at the base would be awkwardly offset).

Stranger (and dumber) things have happened, but this looks more like something designed to be a computer monitor, size aside; though I'd still expect to see VESA mount holes on a monitor.

I'm intrigued, but skeptical.

The iMac doesn't have VESA mount holes either, yet there is a VESA mount kit that can be purchased from Apple for them. I'm sure this is absolutely no different. Apple is designing this to sit on a cabinet, and if the customer wants to wall mount, they will sell an accessory specifically for that purpose.

OPINION

I never understood wall-mounting a TV.

Usually they are mounted waaay too high. Above the fireplace, in particular, is a terrible angle for viewing.

And you still need a cabinet for various other equipment: cable boxes, streaming boxes, DVD/BR players, game consoles, etc.

Wall-mounting a TV can be purely for aesthetic purposes. My TV is wall mounted, with the wires running through a conduit to a cabinet on a side wall, better suited for its placement and accessing the equipment. The TV is centered on the wall, with nothing else on it, no furniture, no wires, just a clean smooth wall. It looks fantastic. It's mounted at the perfect height for the seating in the room, which would have otherwise required the purchase of a custom piece of furniture to put the TV on a stand at the correct height -- a piece of furniture which would have had to be replaced if the next TV didn't have the exact same dimensions and stand height.

Also, the heat above a fireplace, usually is blocked from going directly up to the TV by the mantle. And the height can be perfectly acceptable depending on the seating arrangement. The TV in my bedroom is wall mounted much higher on the wall due to the fact that it is being viewed mostly lying on the back with the natural gaze of the eyes centered on the TV at a much higher angle. That mounting also works out much better when standing, getting dressed in the morning etc. Indeed, there are fireplace mounts which allow the TV merely to be stored above the fireplace, and pulled down for viewing. This works out well in many homes where fireplaces are mostly decorative, including gas fireplaces, which have very little heat output to begin with.

And finally, there's space concerns. Mounting any monitor on the wall allows full use of the space. At work, my monitor is suspended from the wall, allowing me to use the entire desk space under it. The same thing could be true of a home TV, even if an equipment cabinet is under it. Certainly that's true of my bedroom TV, which allows me to lay out clothing, accessories, wallets, etc. on the dresser below without worrying about fiting it on the space around the base of the TV. My Main TV has nothing else on the wall because it would push too far into the seating area eliminating comfortable walking space, and putting the closest seats too close.

Not sure why any of this escapes your comprehension ...

 

[vipergts2207]

The iMac doesn't have VESA mount holes either, yet there is a VESA mount kit that can be purchased from Apple for them. I'm sure this is absolutely no different. Apple is designing this to sit on a cabinet, and if the customer wants to wall mount, they will sell an accessory specifically for that purpose.



Wall-mounting a TV can be purely for aesthetic purposes. My TV is wall mounted, with the wires running through a conduit to a cabinet on a side wall, better suited for its placement and accessing the equipment. The TV is centered on the wall, with nothing else on it, no furniture, no wires, just a clean smooth wall. It looks fantastic. It's mounted at the perfect height for the seating in the room, which would have otherwise required the purchase of a custom piece of furniture to put the TV on a stand at the correct height -- a piece of furniture which would have had to be replaced if the next TV didn't have the exact same dimensions and stand height.

Also, the heat above a fireplace, usually is blocked from going directly up to the TV by the mantle. And the height can be perfectly acceptable depending on the seating arrangement. The TV in my bedroom is wall mounted much higher on the wall due to the fact that it is being viewed mostly lying on the back with the natural gaze of the eyes centered on the TV at a much higher angle. That mounting also works out much better when standing, getting dressed in the morning etc. Indeed, there are fireplace mounts which allow the TV merely to be stored above the fireplace, and pulled down for viewing. This works out well in many homes where fireplaces are mostly decorative, including gas fireplaces, which have very little heat output to begin with.

And finally, there's space concerns. Mounting any monitor on the wall allows full use of the space. At work, my monitor is suspended from the wall, allowing me to use the entire desk space under it. The same thing could be true of a home TV, even if an equipment cabinet is under it. Certainly that's true of my bedroom TV, which allows me to lay out clothing, accessories, wallets, etc. on the dresser below without worrying about fiting it on the space around the base of the TV. My Main TV has nothing else on the wall because it would push too far into the seating area eliminating comfortable walking space, and putting the closest seats too close.

Not sure why any of this escapes your comprehension ...

Almost every TV I've seen mounted over the fire place is too high, unless it's mounted with a mantle mount. The only exception would be if viewing is done almost exclusively from a recliner. Ideal height is for your eyes to be the same height as the bottom third of the screen. Like you, my bedroom TV is wall mounted to save space and is mounted much higher than what would normally be considered ideal because viewing is done while laying down.

 

[Mac 128]

Almost every TV I've seen mounted over the fire place is too high, unless it's mounted with a mantle mount. The only exception would be if viewing is done almost exclusively from a recliner. Ideal height is for your eyes to be the same height as the bottom third of the screen. Like you, my bedroom TV is wall mounted to save space and is mounted much higher than what would normally be considered ideal because viewing is done while laying down.

I wouldn't disagree that many TVs mounted over a fireplace are too high for many situations. However, my moms TV is mounted over her fireplace, angled down, and the primary seating are recliners which put the angle of her head and eyes, exactly dead center of the screen. I have a good friend who has his TV mounted over the fireplace. His primary seating area is a couch sectional, in which his family watches laying down on the couch with their head and eye's angled perfectly aligned with the center of the screen.

So just mounting it over the fireplace alone is no guarantee its placed incorrectly. Even my sister has a TV mounted over a fireplace in her dining room, with no real way to recline on any of the furniture, but that TV is not used for watching movies. It's usually on in the BG with the morning news, or to entertain the kids while eating, or to share family photos. My sister-in-law insisted on having the TV over the fireplace, but due to the size of the room, with the angled screen, viewers are far enough back that even seated upright in a rather formal room, the head angle is not so great as to be unreasonable, and most slouch down on the furniture so that the head is at the perfect angle. But again, I don't disagree many people do it wrong. But that doesn't mean it can't be done correctly.

 

[Jetsetter787]

Build the New AppleTV (4K/5K UHD) into the Television....no seperate Box...make it upgradeable as possible, allow seamless connection from Desktop Mac computer/Macbook.....multiple HDMI inputs, Facetime Camera, and we have a product people will want.

 

[lec0rsaire]

I wouldn't describe any version of the Apple TV as having a "super-fast UI", so I wouldn't really expect an Apple TV to have it either (although it would likely be better than any other tv's built in UI anyway).

Also, if it's not OLED or microLED, it's a non-starter for me.

But I think this rumor is probably rubbish anyway so it doesn't really matter.
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$6K-$7K, are you out of your mind? LG has spectacular 65" OLED TVs that retail for $3,500 and sell for ~$3,000-3,200. Even the high-end Sony (essentially the "Apple of TVs") versions at 65" sell for $4,500. Apple TVs would most likely not be discounted (almost none of their products are more than a few dollars). So good luck with marking up 30%-50% over the most expensive models on the market (at 5" smaller size), I don't think that would be a big seller at all, I can't see how it would be worth it for Apple to produce it. It would be more like the Apple Lisa than iPhone/iPad.

Sorry for the late reply. The latest LG sets are always $6k. Yes, prices on great LG B and C series sets have dropped but they're really last year's models. Also Apple would probably ship their sets calibrated well enough that a pro calibration wouldn't be necessary for all but the most demanding individuals. They do a great job already on all of their screens. I still have a 1080p non-smart tv Samsung from '07 that was high end at the time and while its image quality has held up really well, it just can't compare to the colors and contrast on both my '16 MacBook Pro and iPhone 7 plus. I honestly don't think Apple would price a high quality 65" OLED set lower than $5k. I doubt they will enter the tv market anytime soon but anything is possible. Apple has the resources to do whatever they want at this point. More than at any time in their entire history really.
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Build the New AppleTV (4K/5K UHD) into the Television....no seperate Box...make it upgradeable as possible, allow seamless connection from Desktop Mac computer/Macbook.....multiple HDMI inputs, Facetime Camera, and we have a product people will want.

That's what I was saying. A "65 Apple TV with an integrated ATV 5 (4K HDR) properly calibrated would be a killer product. If they added a quality FaceTime camera I think it would be a killer feature. Most likely it would be a 1080p cam upscaled since I doubt 4K FaceTime is feasible right now and because of viewing distances it wouldn't look bad upscaled.

 

[Weaselboy]

The latest LG sets are always $6k. Yes, prices on great LG B and C series sets have dropped but they're really last year's models.

The B7 and C7 are both current (2017) year models. You might be thinking of last years B6 and C6. You can buy the current 65" C7 for $3,197 on Amazon (less if you look around).

 

[Mac 128]

That's what I was saying. A "65 Apple TV with an integrated ATV 5 (4K HDR) properly calibrated would be a killer product. If they added a quality FaceTime camera I think it would be a killer feature. Most likely it would be a 1080p cam upscaled since I doubt 4K FaceTime is feasible right now and because of viewing distances it wouldn't look bad upscaled.

It's those distances which would probably dictate a 4K camera, just like Nest came out with a 4K camera, but streams and plays back at 1080p. It's the ability to zoom in on a quadrant and still have 1080p resolution.

 

[lec0rsaire]

The B7 and C7 are both current (2017) year models. You might be thinking of last years B6 and C6. You can buy the current 65" C7 for $3,197 on Amazon (less if you look around).

My mistake! Still they are the "entry level" of the high-end. I was talking more about their E,G and W models. Yes for double the price they are offering only a marginally better sets but people are willing to pay for the best. We're talking about Apple here. The company that actually made disposable 18kt smartwatches. A lot of fools who aren't watch enthusiasts or wearers and really couldn't afford them bought them. They would've been better off spending that $10k-18k on a GMT II, SS Daytona, SS Royal Oak or pre-owned gold sports Rolex like the 16618 submariner or 16528 Daytona and not have lost much if anything. For the wealthy which was the target market it was a different story. Dropping $18k on a disposable item is not a big deal for them.

 

[Weaselboy]

My mistake! Still they are the "entry level" of the high-end. I was talking more about their E,G and W models. Yes for double the price they are offering only a marginally better sets but people are willing to pay for the best.

The whole LG OLED line is kind of confusing. All models from the B7 up to the G and W have the exact same picture quality, the only differences are in sound systems, bezels, and screen mounting. For example the E series has the OLED mounted to glass, so there is no bezel... but the picture is the same.

I just bought a C7, so spent a lot of time on AVSForums and elsewhere researching until my head about exploded, so I'm pretty familiar.

 

[lec0rsaire]

The whole LG OLED line is kind of confusing. All models from the B7 up to the G and W have the exact same picture quality, the only differences are in sound systems, bezels, and screen mounting. For example the E series has the OLED mounted to glass, so there is no bezel... but the picture is the same.

I just bought a C7, so spent a lot of time on AVSForums and elsewhere researching until my head about exploded, so I'm pretty familiar.

I'm familiar with the marketing game. AVS is a great forum! They helped me choose the right set last time I bought a tv. Better integrated sound shouldn't matter much since most people buying these sets would not settle for anything less than a quality receiver and speakers. I need at least true 5.1 sound not simulated surround no matter how decent it is.
I remember the legendary Pioneer Kuros not coming with attached speakers since Pioneer knew that most customers buying that kind of set would only use it as a display.

 

[gnomeisland]

Yeah, that's been said of just about every market Apple has ever entered. Literally, including computers.

The real question is why Apple hasn't already taken on this market. It's practically begging for it.

I believe what held Apple back was the licensing nightmare that is only getting worse as streaming services mature. They probably did develop a hardware TV solution but making the software work with all the different streaming vendors cable companies didn't pan out. Sure there's a LOT of room for improvement but even if they manage to pull all the threads together improving the AppleTV device is probably a much better solution (with maybe even better margins!).

 

[L :-)]

Introducing the new Apple Cinema Display. Again.

Indeed, however this time OLED? and would not be surprised if it contains the apple tv module with 3d sensors on the front for recognition and remoteless control + Siri voice control.

 

[fmalloy]

A beautifully designed Apple television with a super-fast UI and quality internals would be lovely, but I bet they'd still ruin it by not including any HDMI ports or some such nonsense. I hope they prove me wrong. If this is even real.

I'm sure they'd be happy to sell you a $69 HDMI dongle.

 

[Mac 128]

A beautifully designed Apple television with a super-fast UI and quality internals would be lovely, but I bet they'd still ruin it by not including any HDMI ports or some such nonsense. I hope they prove me wrong. If this is even real.

I'm sure they'd be happy to sell you a $69 HDMI dongle.

Since USB-C supports HDMI natively, I would expect Apple to include only one USB-C port. You'll need an adapter, or a new cable, but most likely a USB-C hub that switches between HDMI sources via the TV remote, and/or new cables or adapters for all your old equipment. Apple's all about one port/one cable, and unlike a computer, it makes little else sense to run a bunch of cables seperately into a TV. I can see Apple easily getting behind USB-C to replace HDMI.