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LG and Samsung are making TV screens disappear
- elzbardico 2y agoWhat is the point of that? just another useless gymnick like foldable phone displays.
- transfire 2y agoWill be very useful for dual led/eink displays. Stack a transparent led display on top of an eink display and you have the best of both worlds.
- GaggiX 2y agoThey have a very sci-fi look.
- wmeredith 2y agoI'd like one of these for my wall mounted TV in the living room. It would be much nicer without the "black mirror" effect in what is an otherwise bright and colorful space.
- simondotau 2y agoA much cheaper solution would be to have an array of accurate ambient light/colour sensors and have the TV mimic the colour of your wall. So long as the TV had near-perfect viewing angles, the result would be very reasonable.
- wlesieutre 2y agoJust don't try to hide the cables behind it. Samsung's The Frame TVs might be up your alley if you don't mind wasting some electricity.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> don't try to hide the cables behind it I assume anyone deploying these in the next decade would be running cabling behind the drywall.
- wlesieutre 2y agoI bet the better way to install one of these is suspending it from ceiling joists instead of trying to land the mounting hardware on wall studs in the 1/2" strip where you can't see it. Or redesign your living room to include a glass wall like it's a fancy shower, and you can glue the TV to it.
- bigstrat2003 2y agoAs someone with a Frame TV, don't get one. I have one because my wife really wanted it (and still wants to keep it), but I hate it. The software is designed with this weird "must keep content going at all times" mentality where it will switch inputs (usually to the antenna) if you turn off whatever is connected to the current input. The TV turns itself on and starts playing content for no reason sometimes. The remote doesn't work half the time. And it has the advertising on the home screen everyone knows and hates from Samsung. It is the worst TV I have ever owned, by a large margin. One of these days I'm probably going to stab it from sheer frustration. The only reason it hasn't long since been replaced is because my wife likes it.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> would be much nicer without the "black mirror" effect in what is an otherwise bright and colorful space Oh, you could put art behind it!
- pgreenwood 2y agoYou could put your old TV behind it !
- crtasm 2y agoA piece of fabric with a nice pattern is my preferred solution for this.
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoCannot wait to see whatever the combination between these and Vision Pro is in a few years.
- brk 2y agoIt's neat tech, I wonder what the adoption curve will look like and what the price premium will be. TVs are so predominant in our lives that room layouts and furniture are often designed around their presence. For example, the main TV in our house sits in a sort of built-in entertainment center/cabinetry. Making it transparent would be of no benefit. Also, many times people are hiding set-top boxes or media servers (and cables) behind the TV. Now those things need an aesthetically pleasing place to live, and cable management becomes 100x more important. I can see applications for these, but it is going to require designing around them for maximum benefit. That will slow the adoption curve, which slows the price drops, perhaps keeping them in a niche segment for a long time.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mdanger007 2y agoWhat if we could just put these displays were our windows are?
- wlesieutre 2y agoIf you only want to watch TV at nighttime or maybe when it's overcast, and don't mind your neighbors watching your TV
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoIn-window shade.
- wlesieutre 2y agoEven with a blackout shade behind it for TV mode, I have to wonder how long it would take for the sunlight to cook the panel
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
- pipeline_peak 2y agoCall me cynical but I never once looked at a tv and went “I wish I could see through this”. I can see attractions in restaurants, shops, theme parks, airports, museums, etc but does it matter to consumers other than fancy picture frames/screen savers and showing the weather? What if the image or text I’m looking at blends in with the color or texture of the real background? That wouldn’t matter commercially where displayed media is more controlled by the owner, but in a house you’re viewing casually.
- uxp100 2y agoSee through it? Nah, but wish it wasn’t there? All the time. Always hated how TVs ruin a room. However, I don’t think this really solves the problem, for all the reasons others in this thread mention.
- shiroiushi 2y agoIf they could build them into the wall, this should mostly eliminate the issue I think. Then you could show an image of whatever you want on them when you're not watching anything: a view of the outside, an image that just looks like the rest of the wall, etc.
- diggernet 2y agoAll of those can be done today, because none of them benefit from the TV being transparent.
- shiroiushi 2y agoWell yeah, I wasn't talking about transparent TVs here, just the complaint that contemporary TVs ruin the look of a room. For transparent TVs, I don't see how those are useful at all, except as a novelty or for retail advertising or the like. If they could be transparent when turned off, and then when powered on show an image that looks as good as a normal TV, then I could see the appeal, but (AFAICT) that's not how they work.
- 2y ago
- jkestner 2y agoWith a screen that looks the same on or off, I'm looking forward to always-on ads.
- shiroiushi 2y agoI'm looking forward to reading other HN users complaining about always-on ads that are easily blocked with an ad-blocker, and then when I ask them why they don't use an ad-blocker, they give me a lecture about how it's evil and immoral to block ads.
- TheRealPomax 2y agoYou'll have to explain how you installed an ad-blocker on your TV (not "in the browser that you're using because you're using this as a computer monitor", on the actual TV, being used as a modern smart TV)
- thanksgiving 2y agortings just posted a video today about how LCD televisions with thin bezels WILL develop problems. They went out of their way to say this is NOT because the televisions are inexpensive. It is a design decision. Samsung response was basically a non answer. These companies don’t care about the longevity of their products. They will happily sell whatever sells the best. And if televisions break every three years, that’s good for business I guess? https://youtu.be/wiO4b37RsIk?si=tci4FpUQDX_-qe38 https://youtu.be/wiO4b37RsIk?si=tci4FpUQDX_-qe38
- taeric 2y agoI'm torn. Yes, this should be focused on. Ideally, things get better. But things are better. Sure televisions have a shorter life span. They are also absurdly cheaper than they have ever been. To not ack that the lower cost options are, at large, what we are complaining about hits me the wrong way.
- fortylove 2y agoThe environmental impact of producing a product that needs frequent replacement should not be ignored. Especially when it's proven to be avoidable.
- BobAliceInATree 2y ago
- moribvndvs 2y agoTransparent TVs are high on my list of problems I urgently don’t need solved. R&D team must be freebasing whatever modern sci-fi VFX designers are on.
- zaviermiller 2y agoWhen I was a child I was convinced the future would contain transparent monitors. I loved the way they looked in VGHS. The day I found out they can only get as dark as the surface behind them destroyed me...
- nightfly 2y agoAn LCD-like layer could solve that
- JKCalhoun 2y ago"...Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope." "I can hear something but I don't see anything." Luke squinted up at the twin suns. "3PO, help me get this little R2 unit inside where it's dark. Maybe I'll be able to see the hologram in there."
- somat 2y agoI have a transparent clock I inherited from the previous tenet, Looks great, completely unreadable on whatever surface I put it on. I suspect I will leave it for the next tenant. Honestly I am a bit impressed, I am not sure I could have designed a clock face that is simultaneously too dark on a dark background and too light on a light background.
- cchi_co 2y ago[dead]
- tlogan 2y agoThe issue I really want to see addressed is the development of TVs that perform well in bright rooms or outdoor environments. While the Samsung Terrace reportedly does a good job, its price is prohibitively high. Is creating such TVs a particularly difficult challenge?
- EricE 2y agoUse over windows? Seems an obvious application.
- doe_eyes 2y agoSomething like a window that displays an unobtrusive temperature or forecast could be nice. But I can't imagine the market for that is huge compared to the market for TVs. Plus, windows put in place stay in place for decades, so it's a support nightmare, no chance to sell upgrades, etc. Another option would be bathroom mirrors displaying news / forecast, which is something hobbyists already implement with one-way mirrors and normal LCD displays hidden behind. At least conceptually, mirrors could become a piece of tech you "upgrade" every 2-5 years. But again, how big is that market? It could be an alternative to automotive displays. That's a big market, and it would probably look and work better than these "mirror" HUDs you can find in some vehicles today.
- nine_k 2y agoShow a sunset, or whatever weather, at any time.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y agoI like my views and I can't imagine a scenario in which I'd want any windows covered by TV screens.
- abdulmuhaimin 2y agoLets put it this way. Now you have an extra viewing window when your not turning on the tv
- theultdev 2y agoIt's not extra, you'd be replacing the existing window you already look out of. Either way, windows are not generally the focal point of the room, you'd have an awkward viewing position. Most likely the sun would be an issue too, the TV picture would only really be visible during dusk/dawn/night. Also do you have shutters behind the window so outsiders don't see your screen or...? I don't see any sort of practicality.
- pyinstallwoes 2y agoMan that’s crazy from the perspective of wires and transistors. The Expanse sci fi series television show always had pretty good demonstrations of tech to me, and this is queuing up those gadgets, cool!
- WatchDog 2y agoThe article mentions using these displays, with a camera behind them for zoom calls. Are these displays capable of only emitting light in one direction? I would think that the light would bleed out both sides. Also, there are plenty of existing teleprompter solutions using angled glass instead of a transparent led panel.
- sand500 2y agoMaybe the screens only emit polarized light which can easily be filtered out?
- lancesells 2y agoCongrats to the author for teaching me a lot about display technology. What a well-writen article.
- simoncion 2y agoOh, MicroLEDs! Because of the real-world problems with PC-monitor-sized-and-density OLED screens I've been waiting for PC monitors with these pixels to become available for mere mortals to purchase for a long while now. They've been like five years away for five-to-ten years now, and that fact is very sad.
- bloggie 2y agoEverything i'm going to say here is conjecture, but I don't believe that market pressures have allowed for much innovation in the high-quality PC monitor space. In the last 5-8 years we have seen the disappearance of small economical 4k high-quality monitors for example, because gamers are buying low-quality but fast refresh monitors on the high end, and pretty much everything else is a race to the bottom when it comes to cost - office computers. The price of 24" 4k and up non-gaming monitors (with decent backlights) has gone up, 27" is now the smallest you can expect to find, and there is no market for high-quality workstation monitors outside of Apple's products. See also the disappearance of 12-13" 4k laptops.
- 10u152 2y agoI think 4k in a 12 inch screen at 1m or so is just wasting GPU power.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jt2190 2y agoCommenters here are really hung up on the "transparent TV in my living room" use case, but the article goes out of its way to point out that's not really what these displays are for, especially given the prices. The use-cases presented are: * Teleprompter-like screen with a camera behind it allowing presenter to look straight into the camera while still seeing the screen. * Windows in public areas (subway cars, elevators) that display advertisements or animations.
- golergka 2y agoAlso, making an excavator look like fighter jet cockpit: https://news.lgdisplay.com/en/2022/01/rising-potential-of-transparent-oled/ https://news.lgdisplay.com/en/2022/01/rising-potential-of-tr...
- doe_eyes 2y agoA touchscreen-operated excavator. They really underscore that...
- userbinator 2y agoZero tactile feedback, expensive and difficult-to-repair controls on a machine operated in a dirty environment where people usually wear gloves? I wonder how many of the people who designed that have actually used an excavator or talked to someone who does, or even just visited a construction site to experience the environment. There's plenty of discussions on how touchscreens in cars are awful, but those who design these abominations are so out of touch with reality that they don't seem to realise that. I suspect the same applies here.
- ChoGGi 2y agoTouchscreen for settings. I see "joystick fine control", and other such. Being able to setup for speed or accuracy is a good thing for me at least (custom profiles at the top of the screen). And I'm usually not wearing gloves inside a skid steer/mini ex, unless the heater isn't working.
- guhcampos 2y agoNaive question here: would not it be possible, and immensely cheaper, to achieve the same effect by having a horizontal screen that projects light at an angle over a vertical frame? Kind of like the good old slide projectors? With powerful LEDs like we have today and the right geometry it kind of sounds achievable to me.
- viraptor 2y agoLike this? https://www.nexigo.com/products/aurora-pro-4k-triple-color-ust-laser-projector https://www.nexigo.com/products/aurora-pro-4k-triple-color-u...
- guhcampos 2y agoExactly like that! Isn't that cheaper and more convenient to produce than massive improvements in material science?
- ssl-3 2y agoNo. Projectors have limitations to begin with. And this idea takes all of those limitations, and adds even more inefficiency to them. A major hurdle in projection that still remains today is brightness. A projection screen that offers 50% optical transparency throws away at least 50% of the light energy that hits it: Of all the light being directed towards that screen to produce an image, no more than half of it can be reflected. And furthermore, a screen with 50% transparency doesn't look very transparent at all. A hypothetical frosted screen that is suitable for projection with 50% reflection and 50% transmission might not look even a tiny bit like a window. In short-term visual effects for stagecraft and amusements, that's not a big deal. "Oh, we lose fifty or sixty or ninety percent of the light we project for this effect? No worries; we'll just use a bigger, brighter projector until the effect works. Call Andy over at the rental house and see what he can get for us." But in long-term use, that kind of built-in inefficiency is mostly a non-starter: It's inefficient to over-build the equipment in this way, and it's inefficient to burn (waste) the energy to keep it going. Maybe with some massive improvements in material science we can have a semi-transparent screen that concurrently reflects and transmits light over-unity, but we're not there yet. But to hazard a guess, it's probably easier to accelerate a mass beyond the speed of light than to pull off that particular trick. (Meanwhile, see-through/transparent LED-based displays with decent-ish optical transmission? Whether good or bad, that technology seems to be right around the corner.)
- harry8 2y agoGreat now can we "layer" a bunch of these to make a fishtank sized thing that you sit around perched on your coffee table to watch sports in 3D without all that glasses nonsense? More like sitting in the best seats in the stand.
- userbinator 2y agoLCDs without a backlight can already achieve a similar effect.
- userbinator 2y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shp5JhOqdKI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shp5JhOqdKI
- zombiwoof 2y agoThis is the future I was promised :)
- jbverschoor 2y agoDear Samsung, I will never ever buy one of your tvs again after you injected ads in my tv
- nixass 2y agoGot new LG OLED. Also got Nvidia Shield TV Pro. LG has no connection to the internet, Shield's home page is the only thing I see when TV turns on. No ads, no hassle, one remote for all, fully customer controlled environment
- GaryNumanVevo 2y agoDoesn't the Shield TV Pro have ads now?
- compsciphd 2y agoonly in certain countries it seems. When I'm VPNd into the US for an extended period of times ads pop up, but when I disable it, they relatively quickly go away.
- vetinari 2y agoThis seems to be changing; I'm getting the two rows with shows I don't care about and cannot be disabled in Europe too.
- coremoff 2y agoI've never seen one on mine - behind a pihole though. It does push paid content (as in rented/purchased movies/tv shows); I don't consider these to be adverts, per se, but obviously you might.
- nickthegreek 2y agoChanging the default launcher allows you to solve this.
- knolan 2y ago
- ggm 2y agoI'm more likely to get a Samsung Art series than this. I was in an AirBnB which had one and it really did take me 30min to appreciate I was looking at a display, because the schtick of a pictureframe and subconsciously assuming it's a rather vivid print of the great wave .. until you double-take because now it's a van gogh picture.
- FrostKiwi 2y agoSuper excited on what this means for Mixed Reality tech by extension. Right now Optical see-through AR glasses can show information via a mirror / transparent screen. It's additive so, similar to a projector cannot show things darker than the background. Display See-through can and can thus achieve photorealism, but screen infront of face is a usability hurdle. Hope to see this tech combine the strengths of both by allowin a switch between optical see through and video see through.
- Animats 2y agoIt's going to be popular with executives who want their screen to disappear when someone is in front of them.
- renewiltord 2y agoHoly shit, this is such cool technology! To be honest, the progress in display tech in the last twenty years is mind-boggling. Stuff I never dreamed of is now common place. So far the most amazing thing was curved screens and bendable displays. Now transparent displays!
- snickerer 2y agoTransparent touch screens are a big thing in many sci-fi tv shows. The set designers have no clue about usability. Seeing the background through my monitor would be the worst thing ever (is this the button? Oh no, it's my dog).
- its-summertime 2y agoa LCD shutter + an LED screen really solves that well enough doesn't it?
- Etheryte 2y agoBut on the other hand, it would be by far the best button I've ever seen.
- timthelion 2y agoOne usecase that occures to me, is a very larhe transparent screen in front of a stage at a conference with the presenter standing behind their presentation...
- Shorel 2y agoI can surely appreciate this tech to put a small HUD in a car windscreen =)
- phkahler 2y agoThose already exist. They build it into the dash and reflect it off the window which puts it out in front so you don't have to shift your focus so close to see it.
- Kiro 2y agoI've never seen anyone be so pessimistic toward new technology as the HN crowd. I can think of a million cool use cases for transparent screens.
- manmal 2y agoI thought relatively recent video codecs like HEVC don’t support transparency (alpha channels), but turns out I was wrong: https://larryjordan.com/articles/include-transparency-alpha-channels-in-hevc-video/ https://larryjordan.com/articles/include-transparency-alpha-...
- account42 2y agoDoes that matter? These displays don't seem to be able to control the transparency but instead only the light emitted. So black ends up as "transparent" and everything else ends up as transparent but with a bright light in front.
- cchi_co 2y ago[dead]
- vanderZwan 2y agoSo Hiroshi Ishii's "Clearboard" can finally become a real thing outside of the original prototype? https://vimeo.com/44544588 https://vimeo.com/44544588
- Ekaros 2y agoRetail space seems like most obvious use case. Your malls and even street level shops could show advertising, sale prices and so on... Not possibly most horrid or offensive use...
- doctorhandshake 2y agoI find the ‘future tech’ framing of this confusing. These have been available as commercial displays for at least 8 years, albeit with some availability issues on and off as the mfrs retool and reconsider the packaging. I just worked on a project that uses these as the windows of an augmented reality bus tour. The article also fails to mention transparent LCD, which is a closely related cousin with inverse properties: where transparent OLED is emissive and is transparent where it receives black signal, transparent LCD is non-emissive (needs a backlight) and is transparent where the signal is white and opaque to a greater or lesser degree where the signal is black.
- jillesvangurp 2y agoDisclaimer, I don't actually own a TV as of 15 years or so. I consume most of my media on laptops instead (Netflix, Youtube, etc.) This smells the latest in series of increasingly desperate moves. We've had curved screens, 3D screens, 8K screens, etc. already. Who needs those things? Why buy an 8K TV when there's no 8K content whatsoever. Most people put their TV in front of a wall. That's because they are kind of big and expensive and you don't want to bump into all the time. Which with an invisible by design thing would be a thing. The value of seeing the wall through the TV is very limited. On the other hand, the value of not seeing the wall when you are watching something is pretty high. See through screens would be great for AR but AR TVs don't sound like they are going to be a thing. This makes more sense in some kind of AR goggles. I could see some limited role for them for advertising like the article suggests but beyond that not really. That would work with normal screens as well of course and would have for the last few decades. But it's still not that common.
- pnut 2y agoThe article mentions touchscreen huds for heavy machinery and cars, this feels like a real value proposition and not a gimmick. Also, why not have them in your home? In your bathroom mirror, everywhere?
- evandrofisico 2y agoFor the bathroom mirror there are already DIY designs called "magic mirrors" using half reflective mirrors in front of a tv screen, which are immensely more cost effective than transparent screens.
- jillesvangurp 2y agoWould you pay a lot for that though? You might buy that stuff if it basically costs nothing. This is being pitched as a very premium expensive thing instead. Not surprising because it probably is going to cost a lot to build the factories that produce those things. My bathroom mirror probably cost something like 10$; I honestly don't care about seeing anything else in it than myself. That's why I have it.
- neom 2y agoI found the microLED stuff at the end pretty interesting and went rabbitholing. If you're curious to learn more: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2631-7990/ac92ee/meta https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2631-7990/ac92ee/...
- BiteCode_dev 2y agoThat's going to be amazing for VR. No need for cameras outside to report what's going on to you inside, you can see through. HUD (E.G: for cars), augmented reality on phones, monitoring for things like patients, babies... If they manage to deal with the ambient luminosity problem, it can even change the architecture of your room. No more big screens, just windows letting light in, that you can switch to displays when you like. Even for class room it's better: students will be visible behind their screens to the teacher.
- data-ottawa 2y agoI have always wanted a car windshield with this kind of tech to simply follow the sun intelligently blocking it from your eyes. In Canada and other northern latitudes the sun rises and sets during your commuting times, that kind of tech could save lives.
- mgrund 2y agoTransparent screens doesn’t make much sense for consumer TVs (I know the article indeed points to other use-cases). You still need a black background to facilitate display of black content.
- Aloha 2y agoCouldnt you just add an LCD layer that turns on when you turn the TV on, to act as a black substrate?
- dredmorbius 2y ago[W]ho wants to see their bookshelves showing through in the background while they’re watching Dune? That’s why the transparent OLED TV LG demonstrated at CES 2024 included a “contrast layer”—basically, a black cloth—that unrolls and covers the back of the display on demand. From TFA.
- theGnuMe 2y agoDoesn't the screen just go black as needed?
- h1fra 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- eschneider 2y agoYou know how you get nice augmented reality? This is how you get nice augmented reality. This gets interesting when you look at building it into windshields/visors/lenses/etc.
- arnaudsm 2y agoHaving opaque pixels would be awesome though. Current waveguide displays like the hololens and magic leap can only display light, not darkness, which is a deal breaker for most content. Passthrough is the lazy solution for now, but requires an insane amount of over-engineering. Something always feels off, even with the overkill hardware of the Apple vision pro.
- lawlessone 2y agoIf they are transparent can they stack different colour pixel on top of on another instead of side by side?
- gkimmerling 2y agoMy company tested these transparent OLEDS or TOLEDS to deploy in our venues. It may seem like this is a gimmick, but it's transformative in digital interaction. Let me share a thought experiment. Have you ever been to a sports bar where there are TVs just everywhere and it's great when there's a big game but a huge distraction otherwise? TOLEDS do an incredible job at solving this and allow for some super awesome integration. For example, what if your bar counter had a glass top that could also double as a screen for you to use (Yes they can be touchscreen as well and only accept inputs from designated areas if needed). I think the big thing here is also allows for transparency with objects and can be great for way finding or augmentation and disappear when not needed. Some thoughts after using them extensively.
- MaxikCZ 2y ago> bar counter had a glass top that could also double as a screen Why do we need anything transparent for this? Just a normal screen under the countertop would suffice, no?
- lacoolj 2y agosomething straight out of Pluto (netflix show)