If you ever wondered how TV sets are produced, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this video.
Last week I traveled to Poland to visit TCL’s production site where around 3 million TVs
are produced each year. It was very educational and this was the first time that I saw how
TVs are assembled and tested.
TCL Operations Poland takes care of the assembly process - panels, electronics, and plastic
components are not produced here but are coming from factories in China. In fact, TV sets
are already preassembled and packed in the original box when they arrive here. All components
are tested before they leave China, but also when they arrive in the plant to make sure
everything is working properly before going on the assembly line.
For each TV, there is a black box with all the components that need to be assembled.
Everything from the box needs to be used - if something remains in the box at the end of
the line, that means that the unit was not assembled correctly and needs to be pulled
to the side and checked.
The TV that we saw being assembled was EP640 series with 65” 4K UHD screen.
The first step on the assembly line is the removal of the back cover to get access to
the area where electronics and speakers will be installed. This is followed by several
operators that will place the components in the correct position, tighten them with screws,
route cables and mate the connectors. We were told that the aim is to have a similar assembly
process for every TV - from entry-level to high end.
And very soon, the back cover is closed and the conveyor system is bringing TVs to the
testing area. The plant has its own broadcasting station so that built-in tuners can be checked
if they are working properly. Wi-Fi, HDCP, CI, speakers and so on will be tested as well.
There is also a “hammer test” where the operator is hitting the backside with a rubber
hammer and observing if the results are OK. This is to check if all connectors are firmly
mated because when some test is not passing, in 80% of cases it is because the connection
is loose.
The next step was very interesting to me as it involved a custom colorimeter that was
measuring colors on the screen and adjusting the parameters. Specifically, gamma is adjusted
so that electronics are matched properly with the panel and as a result, values for one
picture preset are created. For other picture presets and for HDR values will be calculated
by the chipset. There are only around 25 seconds for the TV to be on the testing station, so
all this needs to be done really quickly.
Are all TVs calibrated - yes except for the low-end ones where values are copied from
one unit to the other, without doing the actual measurements on each of them.
After this step, TVs are lifted and packed inside the box. This was done so smoothly
that I would love to have this equipment at home, to help me pack TVs that I get for a
review. To make sure that everything is inside, the weight is being checked - if it is not
within the tolerance range, the system would mark the unit as not OK and it needs to be
rechecked.
All TVs are checked on the assembly line, but there are also additional checks that
a certain percentage of TVs must pass. The first one is so-called out of the box check.
This applies to 3.5% of produced TVs, meaning that 35 out of 1000 produced will be taken
to the testing area where they are taken out of the box so that all of their inputs are
checked, remote control and also the reception of the live TV signal, so not only the one
that is being broadcasted inside the factory. The other one is called “complete user test”
and this one applies to 1% of the produced TVs, so 10 in 1000. This is a more complex
test as multimedia, Netflix, YouTube, HDR, Dolby Vision, HDMI ARC, DLNA, Wi-Fi and all
digital reception options are tested. For both tests, if everything is working correctly,
TVs are packed back in the box, placed on the pallet and being transported in the warehouse.
The plant also has the equipment necessary to do some special tests such as reliability
check where inside the chamber TV sets are stressed with elevated temperature and special
power sequences. Usually, this is meant for new models. There is also a chamber that exposes
TVs to different temperature and humidity cycles in order to check if water condensation
would appear inside the panel. Drop test, vibrations and some other tests can also be
done if needed even though the main tests are performed in China during the development.
There are a total of 6 production lines capable of producing TVs up to 75-inches. In the case
of bigger screen sizes, they can be produced using so-called nests. Depending on the season,
up to 500 people work in the plant. Our host mentioned that last September they set a new
record with 310000 (three hundred ten thousand) TVs produced, so more than 10 000 every day.
After the tour, we were invited to a special room in which we were able to test TCL’s
X10 TV with mini LED technology and compare it directly with Samsung Q90R and LG C9. X10
is TCL’s high-end LCD TV with a sophisticated backlight called mini-LED for improved contrast,
quantum dot technology for wider color gamut and native UHD 4K 120 Hz screen for sharp
images.
The operating system for TCL TVs in Europe is Android TV, currently in version 9. We
were presented with results of measurements using CalMAN calibration software for all
three TVs and given time to test whatever we wanted.
I watched some content and evaluated picture using Spears and Munsil UHD Benchmark and
FPD Benchmark discs. Based on what I saw, I can conclude that this is definitely the
best TCL’s TV I’ve seen and I’m glad to see they are making progress and improving
picture quality. 768 dimming zones ensure very good contrast with little blooming in
actual content. Dimming in dark scenes is not as strong as on Q90R and Samsung TVs in
general, so you end up seeing more details on TCL’s X10. Clearly, OLED has the best
contrast as demonstrated by this starfield sequence. Motion resolution is also good and
the dirty screen effect was very subtle. HDR content was also impressive thanks to almost
1900 nits of peak brightness, effective local dimming and around 96% of DCI-P3 coverage.
Viewing angles are not one of the strengths of X10 as it doesn’t have a special layer
on the LCD panel like Samsung Q90R and OLED is clearly the best here. Though X10 does
a good upscaling, I did notice that in some difficult scenes, such as this hammock sequence,
there are more artifacts visible than on Samsung and LG. I saw more noise during color upsampling
tests as well.
Overall, I was really impressed with what I saw and I appreciate a lot the approach
where the actual measurements and objective tests are more important than marketing talk.
Our hosts were willing to answer every question and I see they are really dedicated to improving
their products. I’m really excited to see Vidrian TV - TCL’s second-generation mini
LED with over 5000 local dimming zones - this for sure has the potential of stirring up
high-end TV segment.
Big thanks to TCL for making this trip possible and I hope we will meet again soon. If you
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Thanks for watching!