Jumbo TV fans had better get their gold credit cards warmed up well in advance of the latest high-definition set due to depart Korean shores from Samsung later this year - the company's new 70-inch LCD is far from cheap, at 58 million won (£31,612).
Aside from costing the Earth, the LN70F91BD , which is already on sale in Korea, is notable for being the largest commercially available full (1080p) high-definition LCD TV and for sporting some pretty new technology besides, including an LED backlight.
Deepest black
First up is a Samsung-only method for boosting the contrast known as local dimming. This uses those LEDs to increase the blackness of black parts of an image by simply switching off all backlighting in those areas.
Normal LCD displays use a fluorescent lamp to provide backlighting and this can't be micromanaged in the same way as can hundreds of tiny LEDs. The result is a whopping 500,000:1 contrast ratio and - as a side effect - a cut in power consumption of up to 50 per cent.
On top of that, the LEDs are also employed in a technique called LED scanning to eliminate image ghosting. This is achieved by rapidly switching backlighting off in waves as an image traverses the screen. Although we've yet to see any of this expensive technology in the flesh, it certainly sounds impressive.
