Window to the World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFKFnkP_sLQ

The TV revolutionized the world. It is a pastime, an escape, a perfect medium for visual communication. First we started with the box TV and then designers came up with the aesthetic evolution: the flat screen. The technologies of television have continued to be revised for whatever competitor can make the screen the thinnest, the highest resolution, the "brightest colors" and the "darkest blacks".

A new forerunner in technology is OLED which will provide color clarity as has never been before possible in the industry. On the question of size, "too thin" is arbitrary. The manufacturers push the screen as flat as possible while still fitting all of the necessary components inside: audio, HDMI ports, power slots, etc.

LG has released a new product line called the 4K OLED Wallpaper TV. And as you might assume the goal of this product is to blend seamlessly with the wall in your home. At a mere 0.23 inch depth the screen appears as a window into another world, a piece of art, rather than a hunk of metal and pixels. How did LG manage this? They have broken the design box which the competition has until now refused to push. LG has taken all of the components, outlets, and speakers and put them into an external sound bar. This frees the screen itself to be as thin as just the OLED display. Such advances in technology do have a cost however, as these TV's (more artpieces) run for a retail price of $7,000 for a 65" screen and a mind boggling $15,000 for the 77" version.

The design convention of putting all the components in the screen has been broken. Will television technological advances ever hit a wall? Will there ever be a minimum thinness? Studies have already shown that at a certain resolution, the human eye cannot tell a difference in greater detail. These questions will continue to evolve as this technology always does, all we can do is keep breaking the box.