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Comment by unklefolk | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if this will evolve into large flat screen tvs (50 inch plus) folding down when not in use (just like a portable projector screen). That would be a nice feature for those who don't like having a huge TV on display.

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If you want a huge TV on the wall, but you don't want to look at it when it's off, you have a few existing choices:

- put on a screensaver of art that you like

- close the doors of a cabinet around it

- roll down a screen in front of it

- roll it into a closet

> put on a screensaver of art that you like

That's a great idea, although I wonder what the typical power consumption is of a big screen TV and how much it would cost to leave it on 16 hrs/day.

This commercial LG LED[1], suitable to be on 24/7 has a power reduction mode at 100 watt. Let's assume that works when it is in screensaver/art mode and it would use 2.4 kWh/day.

A Tesla model S can get 240 wh/km, so the energy use of the display would power an electric car for 10 km. so for a year then it would be the equivalent of moving an electric car 3650 km. I don't drive that much, but it is actually about half of my yearly driving averaged over the last 10 years. Personally I rather turn that screen off and power my next car with it.

Edit: just saw you said 16 hours. Well you can do the math. :)

[1] http://www.lg.com/uk/commercial-display/lg-55XF2B

[2] https://my.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/tracking-lowest-kwhk...

There are also TV's mounted in 2-way mirrors, so that when you turn off your TV, it's still a functional piece of furniture.

The glare on those is pretty bad unless you want to only watch TV in the dark.

LG also intended to make a 55-inch flexible display which can be sticked to the walls by magnets. I'm not sure if they have released any latest news about that, but they are planning to make it possible. Here's a post about LG's 55-inch flexible ultra thin display. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/05/20/lgs-wallpaper-con...

The big issue with those types of displays is that the rest of the electronics can't fit in that package.

Big screen TV's require quite a bit of processing power especially for all those neat 4K 3D 120hz 1000hz "image processing" uber smart interwebs TV's people insist on buying ;)

So while I don't doubt that LG can make a 55" flexible display I don't see them being able to make a 55" flexible 1mm TV in the next decade, the hardware package which is required to drive those things is quite insane and with Samsung/Sony one uping each other with 8K and 12K TV's all the time that's only going to get bigger. A 1080 non smart TV with maybe basic DLNA support could possibly be doable, but 4K with all the smart TV features people expect no way...

The big issue with those types of displays is that the rest of the electronics can't fit in that package.

If you make it like a roll up projector screen then you could fit the electronics in the top 'bar' that the screen rolls into. You could also add the speakers into the same bar, making for a fairly compact package.

That's quite possible but it's not the form factor from LG's TV concept I just don't see them fitting a full TV under 5mm like in their concept, not in the next 10 years or so.

OK, how about a plug behind the TV and a wire that runs along/behind the wall to a big back box stashed in a closet somewhere. I mean it's going to need power, so you can't completely get rid of all the wires.

10 years is quite a long time.

Today 10 years ago we didn't yet have Twitter, for example. BlueRay was only a year old. I imagine many folks were still looking at CRT televisions as something to buy for their family.

Look at the TTM for OLED screens or flexible screens for that matter... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_display POC to product is 10-15 year Prototype/Concept to product is usually 5-8 years.

Philips had a roller display demoing in 2005 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollable_display But we are still not close to it being a product.

I wrote a few college research papers on commercial OLED tech back in 2004... that one never got enough love, though the price fixing and profiteering the big display makers were doing in the 00's makes me think that it's possible they squashed some of that advancement to try and milk their LCD profits as much as possible.

What's the thinnest tablet?

Can't much off the electronics be off-board? Given I could buy a Fire, Apple, Roku etc. I've always wondered whether there is a market for just a panel with a single HDMI input.

Not sure if you can drive 4K and above with 3D with 1mm thick screen like LG showed. They've "cheated" on the demo's the screens were fed with through a flex connector and had only a few still images on them, even the LCD driver is something that would require a bigger package than what you can put on flex today, and those solid state components aren't flexible...

>I've always wondered whether there is a market for just a panel with a single HDMI input.

Checkout the Korean white label TV's and monitors Ebay they use LG and Samsung panels usually come with the most basic features (the vast majority of them don't have a tuner cheaper, and avoids hideous import taxes for most the world) but then again you get a 65" 4K TV for less than 2000$.... e.g. http://stores.ebay.com/Dream-Seller/UHD-3840-x-2160-/_i.html...

> They've "cheated" on the demo's the screens were fed with through a flex connector and had only a few still images on them

How is that cheating? Display technology goes through a bunch of stages before being ready for mass consumption and the first stage after getting 'off the drawing board' would be to feed it data and to see what it looks like with stills. Still images are much harder to get right than motion in display technology because you have just about forever to determine what it looks like. With moving images the eye is much more forgiving.

Display calibration is always done with stills.

Hence the quotation marks "cheated" isn't in a bad way, just pointing that the driving part of the display isn't on a nice thin flex package, and we've yet to seen these displays produce high refresh rate images there's a reason why prototypes always show stills things go funky once you have to start turning 8 million odd pixels on and off....

What about that pony?

Really, this is a huge step for display tech and it seems a bit much to demand systems integration at that same level right away as well. This is not a product, it's a technology demo.

Which is exactly what I'm saying, were quite a few years away from this being really commercial judging by the current track record of display tech probably about 10 years until its some what widely available in fully integrated systems.

Which pony?

Exactly what i have in mind for a long time. The TV, should just be a Panel with one connection. The electronics will live in another box.

They could probably get away with putting everything except the speakers into a huge power brick. I don't think many people care about poorly implemented smart TV features and instead will plug a Chromecast or whatever into HDMI slot.

Surprise! Much of CES news is vaporware asymptotically approaching the market. The Verge even says "We've seen this before, but it's still super cool" - so then it's not news.

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