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With pomp embodied by New York City’s famous art deco Edison Ballroom, NBC autosports commentator Leigh Diffey as master of ceremonies, actors dressed as moving sculptures, an urban artist-in-residence creating a canvas for the occasion, and a confetti canon being fired off, China’s largest TV maker Hisense ushered in its new generation ULED Ultra HDTVs this week.

And all that hoopla might be justified. The curved 65-inch model 65H10 announced last night (a 55-inch version will follow) packs some serious technology and will be of interest to the enthusiast community. Hisense executives described a significant R&D effort dating back to 2012 to create an affordable yet high-performing platform to stand up to the likes of not only today’s best LCD sets, but even the OLED technology now being promoted today solely by LG.

A demo stand at the event showed a 65H10 running 4K test clips and competing favorably, albeit in press conference conditions, with a flanking “OLED” (manufacturer unidentified but presumably LG) and an “SUHD” (presumably Samsung). With its attractive $3,000 price point (available for now exclusively through Amazon), the set would only need to come close to the performance of those sets in controlled conditions to represent a great value.

The short list of tech built-into the TV is in keeping with what we’ve seen in the better models from more dominant brands. Critically, it boasts a 240-zone full-array, local-dimming LED backlight and what Hisense is calling “smart peaking” technology and dark-field image enhancement to give it exceptional contrast and allow it to boost the brightness of highlights to up to 875-nits in individual zones. That’s HDR territory, though no claims are being made that the set will recognize or decode HDR-encoded UHD content that’s starting to come down the pike this year.

Additionally, Hisense is using 3M’s quantum dot nanocrystal film technology to achieve a wide color gamut that’s said to offer 141% of the colors available in the current Rec. 709 HDTV standard, 108% of the NTSC gamut, and 91% of the Rec. 2020 gamut that’s considered a distant target for Ultra HDTV. The company has partnered with dbx-TV on the design of the internal sound system.

More information is available at Hisense-usa.com/uled, and the set is available for preorder on Amazon as of today.