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Photo: Tim Moyinhan/WIRED

When it comes out in the second half of this year, Samsung’s whopping 105-inch Ultra HD TV won’t be the first television set with a 21:9 aspect ratio. It also won’t be the first 105-inch Ultra HD set — or the first curved TV with those specs.

None of this will make the massive set any less of a stunner though. It packs more than 11 million pixels into its concave curved display, which stretches about 8 feet wide and 3.5 feet tall. With those dimensions, the curved screen actually does make a difference when it comes to “immersion.” It’s a full-array LED-backlit set with local-dimming features, and it’s built for watching movies.

“This is targeted toward movie buffs who don’t want to put a projector in their home,” says Samsung’s Mike Wood, director of the company’s AV testing. “They may not care as much about how television programs look, but they want movies to look as big as possible.”

The terms “Ultra HD” and “4K” are usually interchangeable, but that’s not the case with this TV. It has a resolution of 5120 x 2160, so it’s actually higher-resolution than 4K on one axis. But while a 21:9 display combined with a sharp picture and a concave screen should create a more cinematic experience, the problem is finding content that’s a direct match for this TV’s resolution and aspect ratio.

Samsung says that the new TV can scale 16:9 4K movies to fill the screen — with some loss of resolution — to eliminate the black letterbox bars that appear when you watch widescreen content on 16:9 TVs. There will also be other options for viewing 16:9 content on the wider, slimmer screen: At native 16:9 ratio with pillarboxing on both sides of the picture, or with the 16:9 video pushed to one side of the screen, as smart-TV features or a web browser appears on the other side.

Those scenarios involve either artificially modifying the picture by stretching the picture or using only a portion of the super-wide screen. That said, with 4K source footage and an Ultra HD panel, you won’t notice the distortion as much as you would with standard-definition content on an HD screen. Samsung says that it is working with studio partners like 20th Century Fox and Paramount to provide streaming and hard-drive-based Ultra HD content shot in 21:9 to get the most out of the set.

“You could play LaserDiscs shot in (CinemaScope) on this screen, and it would fill it,” said Wood. “I don’t know how that would look because of LaserDisc’s resolution, but you could do it.”

No pricing has been set for the Samsung 105-inch set just yet, but seeing as LG’s own curved 105-inch Ultra HD set costs around $70,000, expect this Samsung’s tag to be up in the same astronomical price range.

Today at CES, Samsung officially announced its U9500 105-inch curved Ultra HD television’s availability dates, as well as that of the smaller, yet no less stunning, U9B 85-inch bendable Ultra … Continue reading