Yet another curved 105-inch TV, this one from Samsung

CNET Editors' Take

December 19, 2013 7:27 AM PST

(Credit: Samsung)

This town is apparently big enough for two 105-inch curved 4K (UHD) LED LCD TVs.

Perennial insane duelists Samsung and LG just traded "biggest" press releases weeks in advance of the Las Vegas CES in January, announcing at-first-blush-identical mammoth TVs.

The LG 105UB9 announcement shot first, and Samsung's counterstrike is so far known only as the "105-inch Curved UHD TV". It doesn't have a model number and, shockingly, it doesn't even have an extra inch over its mortal adversary.

Apparently desperate to differentiate its huge TV from LG's equally huge TV, Samsung's press release only manages the descriptor "most curved."

Curved TV screens first appeared this year on LG and Samsung OLED TVs, but the enormous Samsung uses standard LED LCD, not OLED, technology. The only other curved LED LCD on the market is the 65-inch Sony KDL-65S990A, and it has standard 1080p resolution (Samsung did show 55- and 65-inch curved 4K TVs at IFA, but they never shipped).

The titanic Samsung has a screen with a 21:9 aspect ratio, a closer match to ultra-wide-screen movies than to standard 16:9 HDTV shows. The 58-inch Vizio XVT3D580CM from 2012 is the only other 21:9 TV to hit the U.S. market.

As a result of its wider shape, the screen also has a higher native resolution than most 4K/UHD TVs: 5,120x2,160. That's 11 million pixels and change.

Like LG, Samsung hasn't revealed a price. Pipsqueak 84- and 85-inch 4K sets range from $16K to $40K, so I'm guessing the monumental Samsung will cost at least $80,000.

Samsung will debut its elephantine TV at the Consumer Electronics Show, which begins January 7.

http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-tvs/105-inch-curved-uhd/4505-6482_7-35833746.html