Rob Sabin

The accompanying OLED stories mark our first up-close look at a display technology that goes by an acronym best pronounced as “Oh-lead,” and one that stands for the future of television. That’s a bold statement, and the time line should perhaps be qualified as “near-future” inasmuch as anything can happen in the developing world of display technology, and taken in its entirety, the future is known to be a very, very long time. But I dare say we’ve waited a long time to this point just to see OLED’s promise, and having now witnessed it firsthand, I’m having a hard time guessing what could better it short of a holographic display with equal image quality or something that does just what OLED does for a whole lot cheaper.

Two close-together and closely aligned recent announcements about the flat-panel TV business really got me reflecting on how much that world has changed…and is changing again.

Panasonic has officially entered the 4K Ultra HDTV fray with a single model, the 65-inch TC-L65WT600, an edge-lit LCD priced at $5999 and available later this month at Magnolia stores and the Shop.Panasonic.com Web site.

Notably, the set is the first to offer a DisplayPort connection, making it the only available Ultra HDTV today able to handle 4K content at 60 frames per second from computers or other sources. The set’s HDMI inputs are also HDMI 2.0 compliant. Other Ultra HDTVs are currently limited to 4K/30p.