Which TV screen is better — curved or flat?

Start­ing around 2014–2015, more and more video equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers are releas­ing curved TVs. And this is not just a way to slight­ly increase the price of equip­ment. Curved screens — slight­ly con­cave, as opposed to con­vex “Cinescopes” — pro­vide a whole new visu­al expe­ri­ence.

We will fig­ure out whether it is worth over­pay­ing for cin­e­matog­ra­phy and which TV screen is bet­ter — curved or flat.

Comparison of curved and flat screen TVs

We will com­pare curved and flat screens accord­ing to the fol­low­ing para­me­ters:

1. Immer­sion effect;

2. Con­trast and view­ing angles;

3. Num­ber of reflec­tions;

4. Visu­al area of ​​the screen;

5. The amount of opti­cal dis­tor­tion.

Actu­al­ly, it is these para­me­ters that are indi­cat­ed by sell­ers and man­u­fac­tur­ers of curved TVs as key ones. There­fore, we will con­sid­er them.

Immersion effect

Most often, curved screen TVs are com­pared to IMAX. Say, both there and there the dis­play is con­cave, the “pic­ture” seems to be from all sides and the view­er seems to be in the film. This is true, but only in part.

The opti­cal laws that work on a 22×16 meter can­vas don’t work very well on a 55-inch matrix. That is, there is an immer­sion effect, yes. But for this you need to sit right in front of the TV at a dis­tance of up to 1.5–2 meters. More­over, if you sit down from the dis­play by 2–3 meters — this is the place rec­om­mend­ed by doc­tors for view­ing — then visu­al­ly all this cur­va­ture will dis­ap­pear, and the TV screen will seem flat.

How­ev­er, the effect of immer­sion still man­i­fests itself — if you take a curved TV with a diag­o­nal larg­er than 55 inch­es. For exam­ple, 65-inch dis­plays retain their radius of cur­va­ture if you sit 2.5–3 meters away from them. There are not very many such mod­els, but they are in the lines of Haier, Sam­sung, and oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers.

Thus, con­cave TV screens retain their immer­sive effect in two ways:

1. If you sit close enough to them (1.5–2 meters);

2. If they are large enough (60–65 inch­es).

In oth­er cas­es, there is lit­tle point in over­pay­ing — unless, of course, you use them as a mon­i­tor.

Contrast enhancement

The sec­ond advan­tage of curved TVs over “smooth” ones, accord­ing to man­u­fac­tur­ers, is an increase in con­trast at the edges of the image. And, sur­pris­ing­ly, it’s com­plete­ly true. LCD matri­ces do lose image con­trast at the edges — and with a light field from a con­cave dis­play, they are quite capa­ble of restor­ing it.

How­ev­er, this effect is notice­able only if you sit direct­ly in front of the TV screen. As well as the very noto­ri­ous “immer­sion effect”. It is worth sit­ting down a lit­tle to the side — as the loss of con­trast, on the con­trary, increas­es many times over.

And being right in front of the screen in the con­di­tions of a large fam­i­ly is a “prob­lem with an aster­isk”. There­fore, it is bet­ter to buy such a TV for 1–2 view­ers.

Viewing angles

But this fea­ture of con­cave matri­ces is usu­al­ly not adver­tised by tele­vi­sion equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers, because this is the main draw­back of a curved dis­play. What does it con­sist of:

1. Flat screens, depend­ing on the matrix pro­duc­tion tech­nol­o­gy, have a view­ing angle of 150–178 degrees hor­i­zon­tal­ly. This means that they can be seen from any cor­ner of the room;

2. Con­cave screens, in turn, phys­i­cal­ly do not reach the view­ing angle of at least 150 degrees. In addi­tion, the high­er it is rel­a­tive to the ver­ti­cal cen­ter, the more the image is visu­al­ly dis­tort­ed.

Thus, a TV with a con­cave dis­play must be placed so that the sofa from which it is planned to watch them is direct­ly oppo­site.

Number of reflections

And now — the absolute advan­tage of curved matri­ces over “smooth” ones.

Flat matri­ces glare, and glare is very strong. They reflect any light source, be it the sun from a win­dow, a lamp from the ceil­ing, or some­thing white in the inte­ri­or of the room. As a result, it even hap­pens that it becomes impos­si­ble to watch TV or movies dur­ing the day — bright reflec­tions from the win­dow are reflect­ed on the dis­play and block the “pic­ture”.

Curved matri­ces also seem to glare, but reflect light in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion than flat ones. That is why, if you watch TV while sit­ting in front of it — well, or at a small angle from the cen­ter — there is no glare.

Thus, if you plan to install a TV in a bright room, with many win­dows or lamps, then it is bet­ter to take a con­cave one, with a stan­dard cur­va­ture of 1800. Watch­ing some­thing from a flat dis­play in such con­di­tions will be one sheer “plea­sure”.

Visual screen area

Anoth­er advan­tage that is real­ly an advan­tage and not just a mar­ket­ing gim­mick. Curved screens, if you sit right in front of them, real­ly seem to be more “straight” with the same diag­o­nal.

The matrix seems larg­er due to the fact that the brain, accus­tomed to “direct” screens, “com­pletes” the image. So, with an actu­al diag­o­nal of 140 cen­time­ters, a per­son who sits in front of him at a dis­tance of 2–2.5 meters will feel him as 1.5 meters. The advan­tage is small, of course, but still the “wow effect” is observed.

In addi­tion, the so-called “visu­al effec­tive” area increas­es. With eye com­fort, a per­son using a flat screen TV can only look at one point at a time, plus a rel­a­tive­ly small field of view. The edges of the image lit­er­al­ly fall out of it.

The con­cave matrix does not have this dis­ad­van­tage. The field of view of a per­son sit­ting in front of such a TV screen is some­what wider — and you can look at objects from dif­fer­ent angles with­out strain­ing your eyes.

Reduce optical distortion

It would seem that this is quite fair. Each dot on a flat dis­play is locat­ed rel­a­tive to the eye at an angle that increas­es with dis­tance from the cen­ter. For curved matri­ces, the angle also increas­es, but not so much.

But! First, films are shot on a flat sen­sor. Sec­ond­ly, the brain (as it is clear from the sec­tion above) itself com­pletes the curved image to a flat one. And final­ly, when you try to look at the matrix at an angle — from the side, for exam­ple — the objects on it are “stretched”.

As a result, the amount of opti­cal dis­tor­tion only increas­es.

Comparison table of flat and curved TVs

Thus, we can sum­ma­rize the advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages of all these types of matri­ces into one large table:

Pecu­liar­i­ty	On flat TVs	On curved TVs
Immer­sion effect	Only if the movie is so inter­est­ing that you for­get about the TV hang­ing on the wall	Only if you sit right in front of the TV screen at a fair­ly short dis­tance
edge con­trast	Small, even for matri­ces with Direct LED	Thanks to the light field, it increas­es sig­nif­i­cant­ly
View­ing angles	Up to 178 degrees for IPS TVs	Up to 150 degrees, strong dis­tor­tion when viewed from the side
Reflec­tions and glare	Lots of	Hard­ly ever
visu­al area	Less actu­al	More actu­al
Opti­cal dis­tor­tion	May be col­ored when viewed from a high angle (side)	There are visu­al ones (will take some get­ting used to, then become invis­i­ble), and phys­i­cal ones when viewed from an angle

When Should You Buy a Curved TV?

Buy­ing a curved screen TV is worth it in the fol­low­ing cas­es:

1. It is planned to watch it from a close dis­tance;

2. There are many lumi­nous and glare objects in the room;

3. I want the largest pos­si­ble TV;

4. It is planned to buy a small TV and use it as a mon­i­tor.

In oth­er cas­es, it will be an exces­sive over­pay­ment. And for view­ing with a large fam­i­ly or with friends, it is not at all suit­able. Not only will none of the view­ers be at the so-called focal point (the ide­al place for com­fort­able view­ing), but also a very dis­tort­ed image will be shown to peo­ple sit­ting on the edge.

Sim­i­lar­ly, a con­cave TV screen is not the best solu­tion for the kitchen. Kitchen TV devices are usu­al­ly set some­where on the refrig­er­a­tor away from the table, at an angle to view the news dur­ing break­fast. It is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine the lev­el of dis­com­fort when using a con­cave screen in such con­di­tions.

On the oth­er hand, man­u­fac­tur­ers often make top mod­els of their tele­vi­sion devices con­cave. For exam­ple, Sam­sung in many mod­els install QLED-matrix with pure spec­tral col­or and close to absolute black, which main­tains excel­lent vis­i­bil­i­ty when viewed from an angle. LG, in turn, uses an active OLED-matrix with absolute black and infi­nite con­trast, which fur­ther enhances the image qual­i­ty when viewed side­ways.

So if you take a curved TV for view­ing by a com­pa­ny, then QLED or OLED. They pro­vide excel­lent image qual­i­ty. And for inde­pen­dent use, any oth­er is suit­able.