Panasonic GZW2004 oled Preview – The first TV with Atmos through the ceiling
At CES 2019, Panasonic was about the only remaining manufacturer that had not yet announced an 8k television. Nevertheless, the Japanese brand had an interesting announcement in the form of a new OLED top model with a 4k OLED panel. Panasonic’s latest OLED topper, which is called GZ2000 in the United States, will be sold with us as the GZW2004.
The new TV was unveiled at an event in a very dark club in Las Vegas. Due to the low ambient light, the HDR images, shown in the new HLG photo mode, looked impressive. Although HDR was used in photography many years before it was used on televisions, until recently there was never a format with which HDR photos could actually be displayed on a screen with a large dynamic range.
In addition to HDR photos, the GZW2004 naturally also supports the necessary HDR video formats. Panasonic even has a first in this area, because this television is the first HDR TV to support both HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. Both formats use dynamic metadata, which allows brightness to be adjusted on a shot-by-shot basis. Until now, consumers have been forced to choose between one format or the other and have had to choose sides in a format war that no one wanted. Except for these two formats, the GZW2004 offers support for hdr10, so with static metadata, and hlg, which does not use metadata.
The speaker system is tuned by Technics and supports Dolby Atmos sound. There are more televisions that can reproduce Atmos sound, but that is usually a meager implementation that offers little added value over ordinary stereo sound. With a real Atmos system, sound does not only come from the front, but sound can be heard all around and even from above. A large number of loudspeakers are used for this.
Of course it is impossible to accommodate all channels of a good surround system in a television, but the GZW2004 still offers sound from above, because speakers are placed at the back that radiate sound in the direction of the ceiling. We were able to listen to it briefly during the presentation and the first impressions were positive. A separate audio system can certainly perform better, but if you are not waiting for separate speakers and extra cables, this is a neat solution.
During the presentation, Panasonic said that the display is more accurate than ever, thanks to the new HCX PRO Intelligent Processor. Hardware adjustments are also said to have been made to the OLED panel supplied by LG Display, so that it can be controlled with more precision. The GZW2004 now has a built-in test pattern generator that can be used with CalMAN software. This also enables automatic calibration. In addition, Panasonic would have improved the brightness of the panel. During the presentation, we did not have the idea that the screen was clearly brighter than that of other OLED televisions. We will therefore have to wait for a review copy to be able to measure whether Panasonic manages to squeeze more brightness out of the screen than other manufacturers.
The operating system chosen is the former Firefox OS, which is now maintained by Panasonic itself and is called My Home Screen 4.0. This version can be used with Amazon and Google voice assistants. The GZW2004 will be available in sizes 55 and 65 inches. When that will be exactly, we don’t know yet. No prices have been announced yet.