Say Hi to 4KUHD

Of the idiot box, we are not even left with ca­bles. The new TVs are not only beau­ti­ful (and in some cases dis­crete), but also have gained a level of in­tel­li­gence that al­lows you to enjoy au­dio­vi­sual con­tent as never be­fore. This was made clear at last year's Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show in Las Vegas.

CES is a key event be­cause man­u­fac­tur­ers show their new prod­ucts for next sea­son and we get an over­all idea of what the lat­est tech­nolo­gies hold in store for us. In the case of tele­vi­sion, it seems clear that the new stan­dard will be 4K in HD and not 3D which made a very dis­crete ap­pear­ance. As well, Sam­sung showed off their new tech­nol­ogy that sup­pos­edly pro­vides im­ages more faith­ful to re­al­ity.

So, the top man­u­fac­tur­ers have shown their pref­er­ence for f in­creas­ing res­o­lu­tion of the screens to stan­dard­ise Ultra HD, also known as 4K UHD. After years of er­ratic sales, they now want to win over con­sumers with the promise of greater im­mer­sion and in­ter­ac­tiv­ity from screens with in­creas­ingly re­al­is­tic im­ages. UHD, which ex­ploded in the 2014 edi­tion has ap­prox­i­mately four times higher res­o­lu­tion than the cur­rent Full HD, and dis­plays splen­didly on the new curved for­mats. These mod­els are being in­tro­duced grad­u­ally with the idea of ex­pand­ing the op­tions avail­able to view­ers, giv­ing them the feel­ing that there is al­ways some­thing new.

How­ever, while the 4K for­mat is ac­cepted un­ques­tion­ably (al­though the pos­si­bil­ity of solv­ing this con­tent is cur­rently very lim­ited), where there is lit­tle agree­ment, if none at all, is choos­ing what op­er­at­ing sys­tem should be used in these in­tel­li­gent screens. There is a wide va­ri­ety: WebOS (LG), An­droid (Philips, Sony and Sharp), Tizen (Sam­sung) and Fire­fox OS (Pana­sonic). Each has its ad­van­tages and dis­ad­van­tages, but all have in com­mon, thanks to hook­ing up with the In­ter­net, ap­pli­ca­tions and con­tent on de­mand.

Amaz­ingly, the new gen­er­a­tion of TVs are able to iden­tify for them­selves which user is view­ing at a par­tic­u­lar time and to offer sug­ges­tions based on view­ing his­tory, usage and pref­er­ences. They can be con­trolled eas­ily -as sim­ple as talk­ing to them or with a hand move­ment, great for when the re­mote mys­te­ri­ously dis­ap­pears- but they also have a plethora of set­tings and pro­grams for more ad­vanced users.

South Ko­rean com­pany LG showed off its line of 4K res­o­lu­tion TVs con­sist­ing of a flat curve line which is slightly flex­i­ble in mod­els up to 77 inches

Sony in­tro­duced sev­eral mod­els, with one even thin­ner than a mo­bile phone. With a thick­ness of only 4.9 mm, the Bravia X900C im­ages seem as if they are di­rectly on the wall. Feared rival Sam­sung, showed an in­no­v­a­tive sys­tem with new ma­te­ri­als that will pro­vide even higher de­f­i­n­i­tion than 4K.

The is­land of Mal­lorca [www.​con​sell​dema​llor​ca. net] will fol­low on from Cat­alo­nia's com­mem­o­ra­tion of the tri­cen­te­nary with its own com­mem­o­ra­tion of the end­ing of the War of Suc­ces­sion of the Span­ish throne, in 1715. [1714.​mhcat.​cat]. After the fall f the king­dom of Va­len­cia in 1707 and the prin­ci­pal­ity of Cat­alo­nia in 1714 [tri­cen­te­nari.cat], the is­land fell to Bor­bon forces in 1715 and was gov­erned by the De­cret de Nova Planta [ca.​wikipedia.​org/ wiki/De­cret­s_de_No­va_­Planta], the new or­di­nance de­creed from Madrid. The or­gan­is­ing com­mis­sion of the com­mem­o­ra­tion [www.​171​5tri​cent​enar​i201​5.​cat] has cho­sen to focus on the fu­ture, choos­ing as the theme of the com­mem­o­ra­tion: “Del De­cret de Nova Planta al dret de de­cidir.” (“From the Nova Panta De­cree, to the Right To De­cide”) Troops loyal to King Felip en­tered the city on July 11, 1715, com­plet­ing the con­quest of the is­land, the Pitiüses had sur­ren­dered just one week ear­lier. From 1708, Mi­norca was con­trolled by the Eng­lish until it be­came part of the King­dom of Spain in 1802 [cime. es/Con­tin ut.​aspx?IdPub=1246]. The tri­cen­te­nary or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee with im­por­tant help from the Obra Cul­tural Balear [www.​ocb.​cat], wishes to pro­mote “the knowl­edge of events which caused great tur­moil in the life of the is­lands and the in­hab­i­tants and the his­tory of Mal­lorca”, and of which, lit­tle is known. For this rea­son they are or­gan­is­ing a num­ber which will help peo­ple learn about the War of Suc­ces­sion and its con­se­quences for the is­lands, es­pe­cially in Mal­lorca. Mem­bers of the com­mit­tee in­clude well known pub­lic fig­ures and aca­d­e­mics and is open to pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion.