Panasonic HZ2000 OLED TV Preview – Also a good HDR display during the day

Panasonic unveiled the GZ2000 OLED television at CES last year. This was sold to us as the GZW2004. This top model was the first TV that could display HDR in both HDR10 + and Dolby Vision, so that all HDR content provided with dynamic metadata could be displayed. This model was also equipped with upward-firing speakers for the reproduction of Dolby Atmos sound, including height channels. At CES this year, Panasonic unveiled a successor in the form of the HZ2000. A TV that resembles its predecessor in many ways, but also brings a few useful improvements.

The appearance has remained exactly the same. A soundbar is still visible under the 4k OLED screen and the foot is still finished with dark brushed metal. The loudspeaker system is also the same and therefore designed by Technics engineers. Although the My Homescreen operating system has been upgraded from version 4 to version 5, the changes are minimal. Some recommendations are now visible on YouTube and Netflix, in addition to some other minor interface improvements.

According to Panasonic, so few things have changed because there was not much wrong with last year’s model. We found the lack of HDMI 2.1 last year to be a downside, but unfortunately the HZ2000 also has to do without this feature. As a result, 4k images can still not be displayed at high frame rates. However, this will not be such a big problem for the target group that Panasonic is aiming for, fans of films and series, since they are almost always recorded at 24fps.

So what has been improved on the new top model? As far as we are concerned, the most important improvement is the new option to adjust the HDR display to the ambient light in your viewing room. One of the main problems at the moment when viewing HDR is that you have to sit in as dark a room as possible for the best effect. If you look during the day or with a lot of lighting, then not only the highlights are disappointing. Dark scenes are often too dark, so that many details in the image are lost.

During the presentation of the new device, Panasonic mentioned the many complaints that viewers of the third episode of the eighth season of the Game of Thrones series had. This episode took place completely in the dark and many people could not properly follow the action that was shown because they watched with a relatively high amount of ambient light. It is of course technically very simple to simply make the image a bit lighter, but that can also negatively affect the viewing experience. After all, the creators of the scene in question had deliberately made it dark in order to evoke a certain atmosphere or tension in the viewer.

To ensure that the creative intentions of the film or series makers are not violated, Panasonic says it has carried out many tests in different amounts of ambient light. They worked with a whole bunch of Hollywood bigwigs to ensure that the images looked exactly as they were intended with a little more ambient light. This eventually resulted in a feature that has been given the marketing name Intelligent Sensing .

If you turn on this feature, the ambient light sensor is used to adjust the image to the environment. The image is not simply made lighter and darker, but the electro-optical transfer function is adjusted. This is the function that, just like the gamma correction for SD images, determines how much light should come out of the screen at a certain signal value. As far as we are concerned, a good initiative that will make HDR images stand out better under less than ideal circumstances. The HZ2000 also features Dolby Vision IQ , a feature that serves the exact same purpose but was developed by Dolby to match Dolby Vision images to the ambient light.

Last year, Panasonic announced that it would implement the Filmmaker Mode and the HZ2000 has a button on the remote control especially for this purpose. LG’s new OLEDs also have this mode, but to turn it on or off you have to use the menus. In Filmmaker Mode, all image enhancers are disabled, but the Intelligent Sensing option can still be used.