Xiaomi launched its first smart TV in India back in 2018. Since then, it has been an interesting journey for the company in the segment, with Xiaomi not only launching a number of follow-up products but also becoming one of the biggest names in the smart TV space in the country.
Now, in 2022, the company is attempting to spread its wings with the launch of its most premium smart TV to date for the Indian market — the Xiaomi OLED Vision. As the name suggests, it is a TV that flaunts an OLED panel and brings with it pretty much all the bells and whistles that you'd expect from a flagship television.
We recently sat down with Sudeep Sahu, who is a Senior Product Manager at Xiaomi India. As the man behind the Xiaomi OLED Vision, Sudeep gave us an interesting insight into what the company wants to achieve with its first OLED television for the Indian market and also the idea behind it.
Sudeep Sahu, Senior Product Manager, Xiaomi India (left)
Q: Let's start with the basics, what is the vision behind Xiaomi's OLED Vision TV?
A: The team has been working on this, and I have been working on this for quite some time now. Finally, this year we are launching our first-ever OLED TV in India. This, for us, is the pinnacle of cutting-edge technology in the television segment. We don't want to use the word flagship for this TV. Instead, I'd say this TV exists because there are enthusiasts who want to invest in the best picture, sound and performance.
Q: This must be an exciting moment for everyone at Xiaomi India. Give us an idea about how much time it took you guys to create this TV?
A: So, before we even think about bringing a new product, the first thing we do is check what is the market for the product. At the end of the day, we wanted to build a product with a popular screen size, and one that's loaded with technologies that our buyers want. While I can't tell you exactly how long it took us to build this, I can tell that the Xiaomi OLED Vision has been in the pipeline for quite some time now.
The primary reason it took us so long to bring this television to India is that we wanted to bring the best picture quality possible to the end-user. For this, we invested a lot of time in tuning the TV. Very put, you can slap any hardware together and create a TV, but how it performs at the end of the day depends on how well it is tuned.
For this, we have a setup process that involves certain videos, that are not your regular test videos. These videos are not some videos that you get specifically made to demo. These videos are primarily clips from YouTube, Hotstar and other streaming platforms that people watch and thus when we tune the TVs using these clips, the results are more in line with what our consumers want.
Q: This looks like a very good TV, but it does lack 120Hz support. What was the idea behind this decision?
A: So that's a great question. I think when I say the word flagship or when people think of flagship they obviously want the best. While that is true, we like to bring things to the segment that our consumers actually want. We look at our TG, how many people actually own supporting hardware and consoles to play 120Hz content on TVs right now.
For us, that's a very niche segment. For now, we want to bring a product that caters to a larger crowd and is tuned to handle great cinematic content. While support for 120Hz is great, 60Hz is going to be more than enough for most users. Once again, I'll stress, that this is a very good TV and it is fine-tuned to bring great cinematic experiences — something that most OLED TV buyers are looking for.
Q: How important is sound for TVs? What can we expect from the OLED Vision in terms of sound?
A: I'm very glad you asked me this question. For us, providing users with great sound is as important as providing them with a great picture. For the Xiaomi Vision OLED, we have revamped the speaker box. This is our TV with the largest speaker cavity for deeper bass, and rich sound plus you get four active speakers with this one, which is the most impressive thing for me. There's also support for some interesting technologies such as Dolby Atmos and DTS X. Trust me when you listen to this, you'll be blown away by the results.