LG announces new 8K OLED TVs with smart upscaling and AirPlay 2

TVs with 8K resolution have been around for years, but buying them made little sense since 8K content was so very scarce. This hasn’t changed much, but the technology to make it less painful is evolving, and if you’re looking to get a future-proof TV, LG’s new 8K OLEDs might fit the bill. 

The company announced its entire lineup of 8K OLEDs on Friday, days before CES, and it consists of two Signature models (with 77- and 88-inch panels) as well as six NanoCell-branded TVs. 

You may remember that, at last year’s CES, LG also launched an 88-inch OLED 8K TV, so what’s different this time around? First, the new TVs offer “Real 8K,” which means their picture is up to the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) standard for contrast modulation. It might not mean that much to the average user, but it gives LG bragging rights to claim it has the first Real 8K TVs on the market. 

Perhaps more important is LG’s new Alpha 9 Gen 3 AI processor, which uses deep learning to upscale content to 8K resolution. This is important, as most of the time you’ll be watching lower-resolution content on these TVs, and a good upscaling engine can make a big difference. LG says its AI engine can recognize faces and text on screen to produce more natural skin tones and more readable text. 

If you can find actual 8K content, you will be able to feed it to the TVs through HDMI and USB inputs, with support for HEVC, VP9 and AV1 codecs. LG says all of its new TVs support 8K at 60p, which can be delivered over HDMI. 

Apple users will be happy to know that the new TVs support Apple AirPlay 2 and HomeKit. Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa are also supported. 

LG will showcase the new TVs at CES, which kicks off on Jan. 7.