Why did you develop the SV70/7?
• What's the purpose of the "Tuned in India" project? How did it start?
Saurabh:
We set up a special project team in India in order to understand the latest trends and lifestyles of local Indians for our “Tuned in India” models. It's been about five years since we began our TV project, and by conducting an annual large-scale consumer survey of Indian consumers, we were able to extract their needs..
Sanjay:
Our in-house surveys clearly indicate that Indian customers are changing.
It was in the past that just brightness and loudness appealed to the Indian public. The rapid exposure to better quality products over the last few years has reshaped, or rather refined, the Indian mindset towards picture and sound quality. When I joined the tuning session, my focus was on reconfiguring the sound and picture for a more educated audience in these fields. And that is exactly what we have achieved through this activity.
• What type of lifestyle did you have in mind when creating this product?
Ashish:
Consumers watch programmes with major sound effects. More so, Indian consumers watch a lot of music channels and movies. Cricket is popular as a sporting activity which consumers can enjoy in a theatre-like atmosphere with this series.
That's why we pursued the highest quality image and sound quality to provide the best possible viewing experience.
What's your target in developing the SV70/7?
• What kind of image and sound quality did you aim to develop?
Saurabh:
Picture: Brightness is a huge selling point in the market. However, manufacturers often tune the colour scheme to be slightly green-inclined in order to give the false appearance of a higher brightness. Through our recent tuning sessions, we've attempted to fix this by setting a more natural and true-to-life colour scheme.
Bollywood movies are known for their vibrant colours, so we worked to develop the highest quality colours possible.
Zaileena:
This was done not only by listening to local members' feedback but also by understanding the logic of their requests.
If there was a need to beautifully reproduce a colourful scene from a Bollywood film, we used the logic of thinking about how to portray colours while retaining the proper texture in order to accurately adjust clashing colours.
Ashish:
I realised it was a challenging task to find the logic and satisfy the requirements of such a discerning customer base. For the picture, we had to pay close attention to accurately depicting details in the content, and replicating different shades and the vividness of each colour to create a natural feel and display smooth grey shades, with the aid of our AI function, to project a sense of depth and brightness.
What's your target in developing the SV70/7 regarding sound?
Ashish:
During our interaction with quite a few people in India it quickly became evident that the average Indian was a true connoisseur of good pictures and sound. Their senses pick up on the slightest image and audio nuances.
Sanjay:
Sound: TVs sold so far in India were usually configured with amplification curves that boost the bass to make the output ‘louder'. Little did anyone realise that not only does this do injustice to the true sound, but such amplified bass is ‘loose' and distorts the midrange.
Like I said when I was talking about our target customers, Indians are big on music content. In that case, simply blasting the bass doesn't enable you to reproduce clear sounds. Midrange sounds have to be balanced to get satisfactory music through a TV.
What were some of the problems you ran into during the tuning process, and how did you meet the customers' needs?
• What kind of problems did you have in the tuning process?
Zaileena:
We held on to the main point of this model's project -- which was to evaluate and finalize the picture and sound quality based on the concept of local fitting. Our members went to India and together with local members evaluated and studied to improve the picture and sound quality according to the taste of Indian customers.
Like I mentioned earlier, Indians are very particular about ambient sounds.
We thought about what was the best way to develop the ambient sounds for the content that's viewed the most by Indians, such as the subtle sounds of a cricket match.
We also tuned the TV to make the colours of the grass on the cricket pitch look as clear and natural as possible.
Our biggest struggle came when emphasizing texture instead of just portraying the colour as it was.
• What kind of customers do you want to have viewing this product?
Ashish:
We consider all Indians to be target customers. We take great pride in providing a satisfying experience to them all.
It'd be nice to see many film fans viewing it too!