Miniaturized chips are one of the main ingredients driving the advancement of consumer electronics. Their size is constantly decreasing. And because of that, the size of screens people buy for their homes can continue to grow.
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At CES 2024 in Las Vegas the pavilions were once again packed with screens, cell phones and lots of gadgets. This year, of course, with the ubiquitous “powered by artificial intelligence” label.
Large screens will (not) hide
When it comes to “big” news being introduced, giant TVs are certainly ahead of the curve, both in terms of size and the number of articles generated since their introduction. This, of course, is the purpose of these exhibitions. Companies will not only show production lines, which will come directly into stores and then into living rooms.
It’s also an opportunity to showcase various concepts that might seem impractical, but at first glance are breathtaking. Like a magic show: you like watching it, maybe even clapping, but you probably wouldn’t want to live with a magician in your living room.
In this category I include all previous attempts at transparent television. Have you noticed how often transparent displays are used in futuristic films? I see it as a simple attempt to represent futurism. But in practice, in my opinion, transparent displays are extremely impractical.
But this year, apparently, this technology is entering the market. Samsung has been presenting different types of transparent displays for several years and this year it also boasted large panels based on the Transparent Micro LED principle. In the end, South Korean rival LG Corp also managed to make it with its 77-inch television based on OLED T technology.
Transparent LG TV presented at CES 2024Video: Jan Marek, AP
“I immediately knew where it would be used,” laughs Nilay Patel, editor in chief of The Verge. “It will be the place for an aquarium in the waiting rooms of luxury clinics in private medical practices.” And certainly in various exhibitions, museums and other places where such a transparent screen will have added value and improve the viewing experience.
Paradoxically, however, a transparent screen will certainly attract more attention, at least in the first few years, than a large black rectangle hanging on the wall. And those who want to show off an unusual and extremely expensive piece of furniture will purchase it.
But transparent or foldable screens are more attractive. Let’s take a look at what actually makes it into living rooms. Surprisingly, the TV first introduced seven years ago still scores points here: the Samsung Frame.
Photo: Samsung
“The Frame” TV tries to look like a picture frame.
The idea is simple: the TV should appear like a picture hanging on the wall and only when it is turned on does it become an appliance. In the end, such blending works better than if the TV were transparent, and it’s a cost-effective and surprisingly popular solution. There isn’t much to improve on and it is the most popular type of television in the United States.
Apparently, the pandemic helped them too: “Without a doubt the most popular lifestyle TV, Samsung’s The Frame, has probably saved more than one marriage,” says CNN journalist Tobey Grumet. ‘Because, especially during the pandemic, we often had to choose between decoration and function. So Samsung asked, why not make the TV a decoration?’
And if anything can be deduced from the graph of prices and sizes of screens sold, it is undoubtedly that the size of the diagonal is constantly increasing. While this is not exponential growth, it is still relatively persistent.
So this is an absolutely expected direction of development: year after year, people buy larger screens. As the price of OLED displays decreases (and the quality of “ordinary” LCDs increases), manufacturers begin to offer really large TVs for less than a thousand dollars (about 22 thousand crowns). Surely you have noticed this too: not only large manufacturers, but also lesser-known brands are already able to produce really large televisions with sufficient resolution and for the average user with absolutely sufficient display quality.
Do you put the screen on your face?
But there is a second trend, at first sight exactly opposite, which goes against this direction. The popularity of large screens is declining. Not necessarily in absolute numbers, but certainly in relative terms. People are spending more and more time in front of small cell phone screens. By the way, they are getting bigger too, but their limit is set by our palms and pockets, where we (hopefully) won’t see any further growth.
Young people in particular are accustomed to mobile devices as the main screen in their lives. And since they usually don’t have a living room of their own, they don’t even feel the need to buy a large television. Precisely for these customers, increasingly interesting alternatives are starting to appear in the form of augmented reality glasses.
No, I’m not referring to Apple’s expensive Vision Pro glasses, which will hit the market in early February. The competition, perhaps encouraged by Apple’s vision, will have ten times cheaper alternatives on the market. It is no longer just about concepts, but about real products that mix the real and virtual worlds.
In this mixed virtual world, we can then create an arbitrarily large screen and place it anywhere in space. My favorite example involves an additional second (and third, and fourth) computer monitor. For example, you simply sit at your laptop at the airport, put on your glasses, and connect them with a cable to your computer’s USB-C port. Suddenly, other screens appear around the laptop, on which you can work, edit videos or read news. It goes without saying that only you will see these screens, not the people around you.
“The Xreal Air 2 Ultra looks like a pair of clunky sunglasses and weighs about 90 grams,” describes Lisa Eadicicc, journalist for CNET magazine. “I was surprised by the sharpness of the image. You can fit different screens and menus into the space and control them with your thumb and forefinger, similar to the Vision Pro. The success of these glasses will depend on the software customized for them.” In any case, you can create as many screens as you want in your apartment (or the subway).
Photo: Xreal.com
A visualization of what it looks like with mixed reality glasses.
In other words, the size of your apartment is no longer the limit for screen size. And the producers have thus found another channel through which to provide you with their content (and advertising). It is logical that they will succeed: the financial motivation is enormous and the consumer temptation is great. We laughed at Zuckerberg and his vision of the metaverse, but we’re probably heading there in a roundabout way.
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2024-01-18 09:15:47
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