Talk about a learning curve!

FOR A “mere” Bt80,000 you can get into show business. That’s the price of the new 55-inch SUHD 4K Curved TV KS9000 Series 9 from Samsung, and it will turn your living room into a cinema, possibly with the neighbours queued up at the door.
That concave 55 inches is just over 93mm thick and presented in an elegant design, but of course it’s the hi-res image quality that’s most impressive.
The KS9000 is also pretty lightweight for a television set this size – just under 18 kilograms, with the stand adding another two.
The slyly slim design is based on moving all the connection ports – HDMI, antenna-in and USB – to a “One Connect” box that’s cable-connected to the TV set.
You get 4K resolution of 3,840x2,160 pixels and several technologies to enhance picture colour, crispness and precision, including Quantum Dot and HDR1000.
Quantum Dot is said to deliver a billion different colours, a |colour range 64 times that of a regular TV, and so “precisely” that you’re seeing real-world hues. It brings out 10 times more detail in both the darkest shadows and whitest scenes.
HDR1000 (that’s High Dynamic Range) enables peak brightness of 1,000 nits and thus every textural detail in even dark images. You might not notice the full difference in regular programming, but when viewing HDR-format movies it’s outstanding.
Then there are Ultra Black technology, which absorbs light hitting the set from outside while letting the light of the TV picture through, and Supreme UHD Dimming to analyse colour blocks and optimise colour and contrast.
Samsung says its Supreme UHD Dimming allows “Precision Black” – reproducing real-life imagery by dimming the parts of the screen that ought to be dark and keeping the bright areas realistically bright.
Few TV shows are broadcast in 4K resolution, of course, but the KS9000 has a “re-mastering engine” that spots the difference and revamps non-SUHD content to boost its quality to the highest level possible.

The 55-inch curved screen isn’t really big enough to create the genuinely immersive experience that Samsung boasts about, but the concave display does have several useful features.
First, it’s easier on the eyes, warding off the fatigue that come with prolonged viewing. The distance from eye to screen over the entire field of view feels more uniform and thus more comfortable than a flat screen. Samsung quotes no less than Harvard Medical School as saying curved TV sets produce less eyestrain than their flat cousins do.
The curvature also enhances the depth of the pictures for added realism.
The set’s Smart TV function is simple to use thanks to the truly wondrous Smart Hub technology. Smart Hub lets you easily switch between programme sources – from those connected, like a satellite TV on one HDMI port, to a digital TV channel from the set’s own digital tuner.
You see a two-tier bar at the top of the screen that allows content to keep playing even while you’re changing sources. The lower row is like a main menu, while the upper displays submenus.
Smart Hub allows you to watch IPTV services such as Netflix, YouTube, Hulu and Amazon TV and also to install games and downloaded apps for use on the TV (once you’ve opened an account with Samsung).
Smart Hub’s auto-detection function tells you what’s connected to which HDMI port – a Blu-ray player, an A/V receiver or a game console.

Samsung phones with Smart View can be linked in as well to share content straight from phone or tablet to the TV.
There’s also Samsung One Remote with a virtual keypad that adds to the enjoyment of using the set’s smart features.
The built-in 802.11ac wireless LAN is really fast. I was able to easily connect to my Linksys EA8500 to stream music and videos from my notebook.
It was amazing how the TV enhanced the picture quality coming in from TrueVision’s satellite receiver. Even a non-HD channel like Fox Thai looked far better than usual.
I was lucky enough to get to try seven different high-definition channels from TrueVisions and basically sat there stunned the whole time. I was watching movies and hit series on Warner TV and Sony Channel HD the same day they were being beamed across America.
(Warner’s “Arrow”, “Gotham” and “The Big Bang Theory” and Sony’s “How to Get Away with Murder” and “Jane the Virgin” were particularly entertaining.)
On Paramount Pictures’ HD Channel, the picture quality of the blockbuster films from that studio and Dreamworks was often breathtaking. Fox Action Movies HD served up its fast-paced thrillers in startlingly sharp resolution.
Best of all was watching 4K HDR video clips from YouTube, with every imaginable detail there to admire in awesome texture, from the light reflections glistening on the water to the city lights at night.
And, beyond the foreign content, Thailand’s HD digital TV channels like PPTV, Thairath TV and Channel 7 are no slouches either at producing high-quality eye candy.
So there’s all that to enjoy too on the Samsung 55-inch SUHD 4K Curved TV KS9000, which is retailing for around Bt79,990.

Key Specs
- Screen size: 55 inches
- Resolution: 3,840x2,160 pixels
- Picture engine: SUHD Remastering
- Motion rate: Supreme MR 200
- Contrast ration: Mega-contrast
- Micro-dimming: Supreme UHD Dimming
- Audio: 4.1-channel (down firing, front firing), Dolby Digital Plus, DTS codec
- Smart TV: Apps, Web browser, Samsung Smart TV
- Tuner: DVB-T2, analogue
- Connectivity: Four HDMI, three USB, one Component-in, one Composite-in, one LAN, one digital audio out (optical), one RF-in, Wireless LAN
- Power consumption: 215w maximum, 0.3w standby
- Dimensions: 1,226x713x93.3mm or 376mm with stand
- Weight: 20kg, 17.9kg without stand