There are currently transparent televisions on display at the CES in Las Vegas. (Image: LG)
For years, TV manufacturers have been trying to make their devices sexy for the living room. Pretty stands, screen savers or disguised as a picture like Samsung’s The Frame: the ideas are varied.
Now the televisions are simply made invisible.
Both Samsung and LG are presenting their transparent TVs at CES in Las Vegas – with different screen technologies.
Samsung: Micro LED makes it possible
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At first glance, the TV looks like a pane of glass – and that’s intentionally the case. Just like with OLED pixels, the micro-LEDs are simply switched off. According to the manufacturer, light refractions are eliminated, making the shade transparent.
At the moment, however, such displays would only be of interest to business customers, because the prices for micro-LED are (still) exorbitantly high and are in the six-figure range.
Incidentally, the transparent TV is not a first for Samsung. The South Koreans showed such a prototype back in 2016, at that time still with OLED.
Anno 2016: Eight years ago Samsung showed transparent TVs. (Image: Samsung)
Another novelty: Samsung’s invisible television is modular like The Wall. This means that the device can be offered in different sizes and shapes when it is ready for the market.
LG: Signature OLED T
Visually, Samsung’s and LG’s models may look identical, but the Signature OLED T – as the name suggests – is a television with organic pixels.
Micro-LED is a thing of the future, but LG is talking about a release possibly in the second half of 2024 (without mentioning a price, which is probably outside of almost everyone’s budget).
We’ve never been any closer to transparent televisions, even though there have already been a few prototypes on display at trade fairs.
Described in a hands-on Digitaltrends the Signature OLED T in a paragraph as follows:
We’ve seen the Signature OLED T in action, and it’s stunning. To put it simply, it is a transparent OLED panel on the front with a translucent film (LG calls it a contrast screen) that can unfold behind the image, providing a conventional television image. If you pull back the contrast screen, you have a transparent OLED television.
The TV can also only be partially switched to transparent. At the bottom there is the T-bar, which you can use to display information such as the weather or the time.
The colleagues at Digitaltrends are certainly enthusiastic about the Signature OLED T.
LG also does away with cables
In keeping with the transparent display, the Signature OLED T will use a Zero Connect Box to transmit all signals to the screen.
This comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. By the way, the box is “borrowed” from the M3 OLED series, which we have already reported on.
Expert assessment
Max Schwind: I was able to examine a transparent television from Panasonic at IFA 2016. No question: this is impressive! People are simply used to the black wall in the living room by now.
As part of the prototype, the Japanese showed how the screen was embedded in a wall unit with a flower vase or books behind it.
Will transparent televisions set a precedent? I could at least imagine it as an additional offer to conventional TVs. After all, they are something like the final form of The Frame.
However, I also see problems. How high is the light output? How do televisions behave when exposed to light? Does the image quality suffer from the gimmick? And, yes, that too: Is it more than a gimmick?
Have you noticed? In almost all of the pictures you can see the transparent televisions in front of dark walls. How a Signature OLED T fares against woodchip remains to be seen. However, I am cautiously positive.
When we think about OLED and QLED, don’t you ask yourself which one is better? I have compared the techniques.
Samsung and LG both introduce transparent televisions. Such prototypes have been haunting the industry for years. How do you feel about the devices? Do you think the future will look like this and televisions will be made invisible? Or will we continue to look at black walls? Feel free to share your opinion in the comments.
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