Smart TVs have become a mainstay in the Indian market, and more often than not, you’ll find one positioned in the living room of every household. That said, the chipsets enabling the features on some smart TVs are seldom powerful and consequently, buyers have to contend with jittery navigation speeds, sub-par displays among other things. That’s partly why MediaTek — the foremost authority and the number one TV chip provider in the world — has announced the MediaTek MT9638. Suffice it to say, the chipset comes at an opportune time, and with its advanced array of features, this new SoC aims to give a tremendous boost to the smart TV market and will greatly mitigate buyer’s remorse. Clearly, MediaTek is propelling an even wider array of excellent smart TVs to enter the market so, in this article, let’s take a closer look at why the MT9638 will become a gamechanger for TVs.
Advanced display capabilities
Ultra HD or 4K streaming has become commonplace and most, if not all, OTT services offer high-resolution UHD plans to subscribers. Furthermore, seeing how the pandemic has left most of us cooped indoors, it’s vital that your next smart TV also comes with 4K resolution, and that’s where the MediaTek MT9638 comes into the picture, which allows TVs to have a maximum resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels. Along with the higher resolution, the MediaTek MT9638 chipset also comes with support for a variety of HDR protocols, including HDR 10, HDR 10+, as well as Dolby Vision HDR. Consequently, the SoC empowers more pleasing visuals with brighter whites, deeper blacks, more vivid colours, and a superior contrast ratio. On the flip side, a TV with SDR output will pale in comparison to the capabilities offered by a set that
is backed by the MediaTek 9638.
Excellent audio capabilities
The MediaTek MT9638 is a treasure trove of audio features as the SoC comes with support for Dolby Atmos technology which delivers crystal clear sound quality and an immersive soundstage. The immersion levels are given a huge boost, moreover, by the presence of DTS Virtual X sound support that makes use of special audio processing techniques to create a spacious 3D sound. With these audio features onboard, watching movies and TV shows is, no doubt, going to be a truly cinematic experience on smart TVs backed by the MediaTek MT9638 chipset.
Strong performance
Smart TVs do a lot more than just render visuals and audio, which is why it’s important for their chipsets to have ample processing power. Thankfully, the MediaTek MT9638 has hit the ball out of the ballpark here too as it ships with a cluster of four Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 1.5GHz. Correspondingly, be it streaming 4K content on your favourite app or running a variety of Android apps and games, the MT9638 can do it all. What’s more, thanks to its support for up to 3GB of RAM, TV manufacturers will also be able to offer enough headroom for multi-tasking or using several features of the smart TV at once.
Diverse connectivity features
The MediaTek MT9638 has all its bases covered in the connectivity department too. To connect to the internet, the chipset adopts the latest Wi-Fi 6 standard, which promises fast and reliable connections. Furthermore, this chipset also grabs support for HDMI 2.1, which enables true 4K resolution visuals at 60fps. And then there’s VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) support for TVs to match the frame rates of movies or console games and avoid instances of screen tearing. There’s even support for apps powered by AI voice recognition and AI-enabled video calls, which opens up newer ways for you to interact with smart TVs and connect with your family and friends.
AI and voice integration
The MediaTek MT9638 has a dedicated APU meant for AI tasks that greatly enhance the user experience. The chip is capable of using up to four far-field microphones to offer enough room coverage for voice assistants. There’s even support for technologies like AI-SR (super resolution), AI-PQ (picture quality), and AI-AQ (audio quality) that make the most of the integrated APU to automatically upscale and improve images and audio quality in real-time video. They also work towards minimising jaggy elements, reducing noise, and upscaling visuals to the display’s native resolution.
The MediaTek MT9638 seems to have been aimed at allowing TV manufacturers to come up with premium features for their offerings while keeping the prices competitive. The SoC offers a plethora of features and its launch spells big news for the 4K TV industry.
