BEC CREW 11 AUG 2015
Facebook Icon29.6k Twitter Icon
LG has shown off its new bendable, paper-thin TV panels, and it’s got us looking forward to a future with no cords, TV cabinets, and rickety stands. The South Korean company revealed a new 18-inch panel at a press show last week, plus two smaller iterations - one version that’s entirely transparent, and another that can be rolled up like a newspaper to a radius of just 3 centimetres.
According to LG, their new organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays are not only flexible enough to curve around the walls and corners of your home or office, they’re virtually impossible to break, and are thinner and lighter than any LCD screen currently on the market. You just need to attach a thin, magnetic base to your wall, and the ‘wallpaper’ screen can be placed on and peeled off at your leisure.
The company has been able to achieve a 4-mm thickness thanks to the OLED technology - because the display produces its own light, no backlight is required to bulk up the design. The screen also offers a brighter, clearer picture than current LCD screens, with a high-definition resolution of 1,200 x 810. "The new transparent OLED panel is said to have a 30 percent transmittance, or clarity, which is far more than the usual 10 percent transmittance of existing transparent LCD panels, according to LG," Dara Kerr reports for CNET.
And the company says it’s only going to get better. "We are confident that by 2017, we will successfully develop an Ultra HD flexible and transparent OLED panel of more than 60 inches, which will have transmittance of more than 40 percent and a curvature radius of 100R, thereby leading the future display market," In-Byung Kang, LG Display's senior vice president and head of the R&D Centre, said in a press statement.
At CEATEC 2015 in Japan recently, Panasonic introduced a new 4K UHD HDR TV that is essentially a prototype for the next generation of HDR for the company. Previously in early 2015, Panasonic already released another 4K model for the consumer market, called the CX850U, which came with HDR but without the technology being called by its name in the model. Now, the new prototype at CEATAC 2015 is showing off what seems to be a further improved version of this contrast enhancing spec, according to a press release from Panasonic.
The new technology, whose acronym stands for high dynamic range features an expanded depth of black accompanies by a heightened brightness of white light on a TV screen, thus producing a wider in-between range of dark and light levels. Furthermore, HDR, at least in order to work properly and at its best in a 4K TV, has to be accompanied by a very precise capacity for local dimming behind the screen.
That said, the three major manufacturers of genuine HDR TVs have to date been Sony, Samsung and LG with its exquisite OLED TVs and their pixel-perfect capacity for lighting and dimming, as well as their ability to create perfect black tones with complete light omission.
Furthermore, HDR technology is a virtually guaranteed part of the future of 4K UHD TV mechanics since the new display spec creates such an immediately obvious improvement over conventional standard dynamic range (SDR) in conventional LED/LCD 4K or HD TVs. Unlike 4K resolution itself, which is hard to distinguish from Full HD at large distances on a smaller screen, HDR is visible right off the bat on almost any screen size at any normal viewing distance.
