We love companies that think outside the box, especially boxes that have been built around what people expect the box to look like. In this instance, TV, the beloved portal into the world of entertainment, drama, history and anything other programs.
For the good part of the past two decades, companies have looked at the TV and thought; “maybe if we make it a little thinner, people will love it”, display and functionality has also been changed, but we have always looked at the TV the same way. No designer, in our minds, has really challenged what a TV should look like.
Samsung Electronics may be preparing to completely change the idea at CES in a few weeks, with their teaser on a transparent portrait TV. Oddly enough, this isn’t the first odd idea to come from Samsung, shown off at CES and then thrown in the trash shortly afterwards.
As we already know, Samsung are preparing to show off the new line of flexible screens that have been under development for a few years. Within this range is a flexible TV. Samsung will also be showing off their OLED and 4K TVs at CES 2013 as well.
The teaser shows a portrait image, behind a seemingly dull background. Both the portrait and the background have a grey hue and the whole idea seems to revolve around the transparency between the image and the background and also the idea of a portrait TV.
TV in portrait, while an interesting idea, seems quite dumb. The only justifying reason for this change is that the TV can automatically move into landscape when a program goes on, and is in portrait when scrolling through channels.
Exciting times await as more companies show the new and exciting technologies they will be bringing to this conference. As we know from previous CES conferences, tech companies like to show their “experiments”, to see if the general view is good or bad.