What are important things to look for when shopping for a new TV? 

Size, picture quality, price, processing...wait...processing?

Yes!

Just as everything in our lives has gotten easier, in part due to better and more powerful processing. From computers to cars to cell phones, the ever-evolving processors make everything from banking, to navigating, to social media easier. 

One legendary example of how far we have come is the fact that the Apollo 11 computer had a processor which ran at 0.043 MHz. TCL’s latest phone has a processor that runs at 2200 MHz.  This means the processor in our new phone is over 51,000 times the processing power of the computer that landed man on the moon.

So, what does that mean to my TV and how can it make my movie night better?

To understand that and understand how TCL is pushing the envelope in processing technology, let’s look at a few (only a few, I promise!) of the things a TV processor—or the brain of your TV—does.

What exactly is AI picture quality?

The resolution of a modern 4K TV is roughly 8 million pixels. But when watching content that is regular HD (1080p often), that content only about 2 million pixels.  This means that if the processor didn’t do anything, the incoming signal would only take up 25% of your screen. The processor must “fill in the blanks” once the image is blown up to fill the screen.

Now imagine in the original image, one pixel is black, and the adjacent one is white. To fill the screen completely, the processor recognized this transition and can create a grey pixel between the back and the white ones to complete the image on you 4K screen.

Now picture this: when watching 1080p content on a 4K TV, the TV must create, out of thin air, over 6 million pixels.

Oh, and it must do this up to 120 times each second.

That’s 720,000,000 things the processor needs to do…. just to get a picture to your screen in a process called upconversion. That’s just one thing our processors need to do.

In addition to that, they need to handle “picture processing.”  Want the grass a little greener when watching the ball game? When you click “color” up a notch or 2, the TV needs to ensure that the color gets more saturated, but still looks great. 

Even stuff we take for granted—hitting the “Netflix” button on the remote, connecting your Xbox to HDMI 1, turning up and down the volume—need to be handled in some way by the processor.

For 2024, TCL saw a way to make our users’ lives easier, as we say, "through the thoughtful implementation of technology." Enter our all-new family of AiPQ Processors.

Picture, perfected by AI

Knowing all the stuff that processors need to do, we wanted to have ones that could handle these tasks easily, plus do even more in our more advanced models.

We hear about AI every day. In the world of TVs, we don’t use our AI to prevent Skynet from taking over, we implement it to make your picture, your sound, and your experience better.

One of the TCL’s calling cards is offering incredible value at any given performance level. This year, we are proud to offer our AiPQ Processor not just in our flagship TV, and not through only one or two steps down.

This year we realized that our most accessible 4K UHD TV could benefit from AI processing too, delivering the benefits of things like AI Color, AI Contrast, AI Clarity. 

Our S5 Series has our new AiPQ Processor to handle all these things, plus upconversion to deliver a level of picture we haven’t seen at this level before.

Brainpower Meets Brightness

Stepping up to new QD-Mini LED TVs, these are models that are putting the industry on notice! However, new levels of picture performance require a new level of processing.

For great HDR performance, you need to control the brightness created by our amazing backlight technology. To do that we use our new AiPQ Pro Processor.  The power of this processor can control that backlight with over 65,000 levels of brightness.

This precise control not only gives brilliant highlights, but also maintains fantastic shadow detail, for when you are rewatching that infamous super dark episode of Game of Thrones: The Long Night. You’ll see many things you missed the first time! 

In addition, our AiPQ Processor works with the brightness sensor in the TV to automatically adjust the brightness of the TV to ensure it looks great both at night with all the lights off and during the day, with the sun out and all the blinds open.

Of special note is the ability of this processor, through a variety of motion enhancing technologies, to deliver clear fast action, so your favorite sports, action movies, and video games look their best. 

Our QM7 and QM8 Series TVs really deliver class-leading performance thanks in large part to our AiPQ Processor for better AI Clarity, AI Color, AI Contrast, and AI Motion.

But what do you need to deliver an amazing picture on the biggest and baddest TV of 2024?

Our unprecedented 115” QM89 deserves and unprecedented processor. The AiPQ Ultra processor has the horsepower to handle the 20,000 zones of local dimming to give both searingly impactful highlights, and deep rich blacks on screen at the same time.

Let that sink in…twenty thousand zones…with 65,000 levels of brightness…and doing it 120 times per second…

Yeah, that’s an amazing processor! For 2024, better processing makes for a better picture with TCL.