Why a 4K LG OLED TV is the perfect choice for your next living room upgrade

Here’s how cutting-edge TV tech makes your movies more spectacular, and your sport more lifelike

If you want your games, movies and sports to look their absolute best, you need the best TV technology around, and that’s OLED. It stands for ‘organic light-emitting diodes’, and is a revelation compared to LCD LED screens, because it makes everything look much more lifelike.

Dark areas get truly black, instead of the way they glow faintly on LCD TVs. Similarly, colours look vibrant and realistic. This makes OLED TVs the best way to enjoy HDR (high dynamic range) video, which uses a wider colour gamut and bigger contrast range to make movies look more like the way the eye sees them than regular video.

LG is the world's number one OLED TV brand, and the LG B8 (available in 55-inch or 65-inch models) brings all the advantages of OLED at an unbeatable price.

The reason everything looks more real with OLED is that every pixel emits its own light, unlike LCD screens, which use a white LED backlight behind the pixels, which filter the light so you see different colours. This means that LCD screens struggle to show black, because they can try to stop the backlight shining, but it tends to bleed through.

But because OLED pixels  create their own light, each can be individually dimmed to the exact level needed (or even totally black), with perfect precision. This also means the light bleed isn’t interfering with the colours each pixel is producing. You see the movie the way the director intended, without the TV panel getting in the way.

This pairs perfectly with HDR, because HDR movies and TV can show images that reach both brighter and darker than regular video – much closer to real life. It also supports more colours, adding extra punch and vibrancy to whatever you’re watching. This means it makes stylised films and games look more beautiful than ever, but it also makes something like football really feel like you’re right in the stadium.

The LG B8 supports all the current major HDR formats too: HDR10 (the most common type), HLG (used for live broadcasts shown in HDR), and Dolby Vision, which is the most advanced option. Dolby Vision enables the B8 to recalibrate its maximum brightness and darkness on a scene-by-scene basis, so even in movies that switch from moody moments to bright action, it looks absolutely perfect. 

The B8 has an Ultra HD screen, naturally, so you can watch in 4K from lots of sources and get the full effect, whether that’s playing a PlayStation 4 Pro or Xbox One, streaming from online services, watching a 4K Blu-ray, or getting Ultra HD sport from Sky and BT.

The TV also supports Dolby Atmos, which creates truly 3D audio, by letting surround sound system not just around you, but above you too. There are big speaker systems and soundbars that can achieve this, and the B8 is ready for them.

Plus, as well as being the ultimate entertainment centre, the B8 is also your living room AI helper: it has Google Assistant built-in, meaning you can ask it questions, and control your smart home tech using it. And, the TV can actually be controlled by Google Assistant too, so you could ask your Google Home in the kitchen to pause the football while you grab a snack (or even just to change the channel if the kids have hidden the remote).

It all makes the LG B8, and its OLED screen, the most immersive TV experience possible – however big an upgrade you think it is from an LCD TV, it’s even bigger.

To find out more about the LG B8 and AO.com’s stellar service, visit AO.com here.

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