Macroeconomic conditions and geopolitical headwinds spurred a “dramatic slowdown” in second-quarter growth for the advanced TV market, reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Tuesday. DSCC defines advanced TVs as sets with an advanced display technology feature, including all OLED TVs, 8K LCD TVs and all LCD TVs with quantum dots. Q2 advanced TV shipments increased 7% year over year to 4.7 million units, the first time on record that quarterly growth was less double digits. “It appears clear” that the war in Ukraine is harming shipments in Europe, said DSCC. Q2 unit shipments to Western Europe decreased 12% year on year and revenue fell 14%, it said. Unit shipments to Eastern Europe declined 33% and revenue fell 27%, it said. Outside of Europe, global advanced TV shipments in Q2 remained in “growth mode,” with units increasing 21% and revenue growing 14%, it said.

LG launched a non-fungible token platform dubbed LG Art Lab for its smart TVs. U.S. customers with LG TVs running webOS 5.0 can buy, sell and view digital artwork from their TV’s home screen, the company said Tuesday. The platform includes the LG Art Lab Drops feature, which profiles artists and previews works coming to the platform. A real-time “Live Drops” countdown alerts users to “just dropped” NFTs, it said. LG's new platform, based on the Hedera network, uses onscreen QR codes that let users complete transactions via Wallypto, LG’s cryptocurrency wallet for smartphones. Once purchased, an NFT can be traded on LG Art Lab Marketplace, where users can view transaction history. They can see their owned artwork in the My Collection section of Art Lab. The first NFT, from sculptor Barry X Ball, will be available via the platform's LG Art Lab Drops feature in coming weeks, with others to be added monthly, LG said.

TCL announced pricing and availability for its 2022 6-Series and 5-Series QLED TVs with mini-LED backlights. The 6-Series has a gaming focus, with TCL’s fastest-ever variable refresh rate of up to 144Hz, plus AMD FreeSync and TCL’s Game StudioPro, which builds on the company’s Auto Game Mode for low input latency. The TVs have an HDMI 2.1 port for game play, plus a separate enhanced audio return channel port, it said. The brushed metal design of the TVs is said to appeal to gamers. Both series have TCL's HDR Pro Pack with Dolby Vision and Vision IQ, which uses the TV's automatic brightness ambient light sensor to set picture brightness and enhance viewing based on environmental light conditions, the company said. They support HDR10, HDR10+ and hybrid log gamma HDR, plus Dolby Atmos sound. The Series-6 TVs have up to 350 Contrast Control Zones that are said to maximize detail, depth and dimension. The series’ AiPQ Engine technology uses machine learning to intelligently enhance color, contrast and clarity, the company said. The TVs’ pedestals have two height options -- for gaming and home theater -- with wire management to hide cables. The Roku TV remotes have voice control and are compatible with popular voice assistants, TCL said. The accompanying free Roku mobile app offers voice control and a private listening option for headphone listening. 6-Series models include the 55-inch 55R655 ($699), 65-inch 65R655 ($999) and 75-inch 75R655 ($1,499). TCL’s 5-Series TVs range 50-75 inches, starting at $429.

Hisense grabbed 12.1% global TV unit share for Q2 behind Samsung, said the brand’s Chinese parent company Tuesday, citing Omdia data. While Q2 global TV unit shipments declined 11% quarter on quarter, Hisense TV shipments increased 5%, said the company. Hisense expects its global TV shipments to exceed 20 million sets in 2022, and that 35% of that will be for the China market, it said.

LCD TV panel prices reached all-time lows in August, and are expected to continue declining in September, reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. The firm forecasts “no recovery at all” in LCD panel prices before 2023, and “the only question is how low prices will go before they flatten out,” it said. Feeding the plunge in LCD panel prices is the “perfect storm of a continued oversupply, near-universally weak demand and excessive inventory throughout the supply chain,” and no screen size is being spared, it said. Though fab utilization slowed sharply starting in July, “we do not see any signal to suggest that prices can increase any time soon,” said DSCC.

LG is bowing its first curved OLED gaming monitor, the 45-inch UltraGear 45GR95QE, at IFA 2022. The WQHD monitor has a 21:9 aspect ratio, 240Hz refresh rate, 0.1-millesecond gray-to-gray response time, HDR10, HDMI 2.1 support, variable refresh rate, DisplayPort 1.4, and covers 98.5% of the DCI-P3 color space, LG said. The monitor’s 800R curvature is said to boost users’ sense of immersion. LG is also showing the UltraFine Display Ergo AI monitor, which automatically adjusts position for ergonomic comfort, the company said. The 32UQ890 uses a built-in AI camera to continuously analyze the user’s posture to prevent them from remaining in a single position for too long or falling into poor posture over time, the company said. Its AI Motion feature tracks the user’s eye level and adjusts height and tilt when a change is detected. IFA 2022 opens Sept. 2 at the Messe Berlin fairgrounds.

A new “quality metric,” called the clear motion ratio (CMR), for numerically grading motion blur in digital displays was released Monday by the Video Electronics Standards Association as part of its ClearMR compliance test specification. The CMR renders a "clear numerical value" based on the ratio of clear pixels in a screen to blurry pixels, which enables consumers to easily compare the amount of motion blur from display to display, it said. VESA is giving the electronics industry “an open standard that gives consumers the confidence in knowing that they are purchasing a TV, notebook or monitor that meets the most well-defined set of blur criteria,” said Dale Stolitzka, senior principal researcher at Samsung Display’s America R&D Lab and “lead contributor” to the new spec. The ClearMR spec and certification logo program can be used with HDR displays, but the current version of the spec requires products to be tested in standard dynamic range mode for certification, said the association: "VESA is currently working on an update to ClearMR that will enable testing in HDR mode, which will be released in the future."

First-half revenue at TCL Electronics declined 3.6% year over year to 33.68 billion Hong Kong dollars ($4.29 billion), said the company in interim results released Friday. Global TV sales volume “was under pressure” in the first half, due to “intensifying geopolitical tensions” and repeated COVID-19 outbreaks, said TCL. Industry TV shipments worldwide fell 4.3% year on year in the first quarter to 49.07 million sets, it said, citing Omdia data. It gave no TV sales breakout for Q2. Global sales volume of TCL smart screens reached 10.15 million TVs in the first half, including 36.9% year-over-year growth in screens 65 inches and larger to 1.53 million sets, it said.

Industry OLED panel revenue increased 12% year over year in Q2, despite a 3% unit decline, due to “form factor mix changes” for smartphones and growth for automotive, gaming, notebook PC, monitor and tablet applications, reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. It estimates second-quarter OLED panel shipments for game platforms increased 314% year over year in units and 302% in revenue, and OLED shipments for monitors jumped 354% in units and 142% in revenue. Smartphones remained the largest OLED application in Q2 with a 76% unit and revenue share, down from 78% and 80%, respectively, in Q1.

Several negative “macro level factors” combined to create “significant headwinds” for the Himax Technologies business in Q2, said CEO Jordan Wu on a Thursday earnings call. Himax supplies display-driver chips to the major panel makers and is viewed as an accurate bellwether of display industry conditions. Q2 revenue of $312.6 million was down 14.4% year over year and was 24.3% lower than Q1. High inflation, rapidly rising interest rates, the war in Ukraine and the potential for more Chinese COVID lockdowns “caused widespread disruption to demand,” said Wu. “Faced with frozen demand, tied-up inventory and eroding panel prices, brands are downsizing their panel procurement plans,” he said. “Consequently, panel makers initiated downward and extended fab utilization adjustments along with rigorous IC inventory cuts. The sudden halt in demand together with the rise of our production lead time has led to elevated inventory levels for Q3.” Himax is “naturally cutting back on new orders with our suppliers,” said Wu. “However, the contracts that we entered with foundries and back-end suppliers when the industry experienced unprecedented demand in 2021 may incur charges if the minimum purchase orders are not fulfilled.”