From bulky cathode ray tubes to sexy-slim displays, the humble idiot box has come a long way, and TV makers are throwing us another curve-ball, curved TVs. After spending years in the ‘prototypes wing’ of tech shows, curved TVs have exploded onto the mainstream this year with the promise of an immersive IMAX-like experience in your
living room. Question: Are these pricier, curvier TVs ahead of the curve, or is buying a curvy TV today a warped decision?

The yays

Immersive viewing: You don’t see the real world as a flat screen, do you? Thanks to peripheral vision, our eyes discern the world to wrap around us, on both sides. By curving the edges of the picture towards you, curved TVs try to replicate that ‘immersed in’ feeling and give you a wider field of view and increased depth perception.

Richer contrast performance: Curved screens focus the light from the screen more directly towards the eyes, much like a concave mirror, instead of scattering it around like a regular TV does — combined with the super ‘contrasty’ OLED screens seen on some of the curved TVs on the market, you get significantly better contrast than regular flat screens. Oh, and viewing angles are significantly wider than LCDs as well, with colours and contrast tapering off further off at the edges.

The nays

Seating sweet spots: While viewing angles are wider, if you want the most out of the immersion and depth elements of the curved TV, you have to be seated in a fairly specific sweet spot, though some manufacturers are addressing this issue by using a gentler degree of curvature, like that used on some of Sony’s new curved TVs. Even so, seating the whole family into that viewing sweet spot may be tight.

Awkward when wall-mounted: While curved TVs look pretty cool on their stands, they’re pretty awkward when wall-mounted, sticking out a fair bit from the walls at the ends. It takes away from the wall-hugging flat-screen experience we’ve loved all these years.

Exaggerated reflections: My biggest complaint with curved TVs is that they handle reflections badly. Any bright light source has its reflection stretched and distorted across a wider area than would be the case with a flat TV.

And the options

Samsung’s recently introduced its Ultra-HD (3840 x 2160pixel) Curved TVs, starting at 55-in (Rs 3.14 lakh), which are powered by Samsung’s Tizen platform, while VU TVs power their 65-in Ultra-HD curved TVs (Rs 2.5 lakh) with Android. LG’s curved TV (55EC930T, Rs 3.34 lakh) sports a lower Full-HD resolution but packs in a contrast-rich OLED display.

Verdict

Curved screens largely remain a cosmetic choice, one that only subtly enhances the viewing experience, at a significant premium over regular LED TVs. At the moment, your cash is better spent getting a bigger TV than chasing those dangerous curves.

Windows shopping

With the sub-10k market heating up and increasingly competitive Android offerings landing up every day, Microsoft has its work cut out if Windows Phone is to be taken seriously — at least till Windows 10 rolls out on phones later this year. Microsoft’s latest Lumia 540 offers a range of colour options and excellent material and construction quality. It’s powered by a low-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 quad-core chip with 1GB of memory and 8GB of built-in storage, placing it squarely in budget territory. The 5-in 720x1280-pixel screen and the 8-megapixel rear/5-megapixel front camera is par for the course too.

Performance-wise, the 540 is adequate for everyday use, but the hardware shows its weakness when loading some apps and playing high-res video, which detracts badly from the usually slick Windows Phone experience. The camera is a real surprise on the 540, pushing out pretty great results in daylight and dimly-lit situations. That said, the phone can only record video in 480p resolution. Just feels like Microsoft has shortchanged the 540, since most Android phones in this price segment (and lower) offer full-HD 1080p video recording.

Pick up the 540 if style and Windows Phone are critical — sadly, while it’s not a bad device, it just doesn’t hold a candle to the far superior Android offerings.

• Rating: 7/10
• Price: Rs 10,199
• URL: http://bit.ly/TT-Lumia540

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