Flat-to-curved screens have an identity crisis | Hacker News Reader

Flat-to-curved screens have an identity crisis

arstechnica.com

181 pointsrbanffy208 comments

"In what room do such large, bendable screens belong? If the answer is not immediately clear, perhaps they don't belong in many people's homes at all."

Love this title. Maybe people will start to catch on. You cannot have what you ask for, even if it is possible to make it,^1 but you can have more gadgets that surveil your life without alerting you to the surveillance. This means these products are always useful, not as much to you, the consumer, as to the sellers and their business partners who will continue to collect data from you long after purchase.

Like the internet-connected "smart speaker" with an always-on microphone, these "belong" everywhere. No one asked for this, but it is "the latest technology", so just get it.

Whether it improves your life is irrelevant. As with the bendable "smart" TVs, the answer to that question is assumed to be "yes". What's relevant is that it will improve surveillance and data collection for someone else.

The price will keep dropping and the surveillance and ads will keep increasing. The "tech" industry calls free websites and mobile apps "products". The price is ostensibly zero. No need to ask for these "products". Surveillance only requires that you pay your internet service bill. Otherwise, it's free.

1. This is a great forum for reading about what people really want, but cannot have. Some will state what they want. Others will state they already have it and/or praise what they call "progress" and criticise the past. However none of these folks asked for what they got and that's why I like this title.

> You cannot have what you ask for, even if it is possible to make it,^1 but you can have more gadgets that surveil your life without alerting you to the surveillance.

What does this have to do with bendable displays?

There's no mention of surveillance tech, there's no technical reason cloud connectivity needs to be involved (unlike, say, a "smart speaker"), and there's no reason to believe these displays will only be available on the market in a "cloud connection required or it won't function" way.

> Like the internet-connected "smart speaker" with an always-on microphone, these "belong" everywhere.

I don't follow. Are you saying bendable displays will be pushed "everywhere" in the way "smart TVs" are -- eg, to the point there is no such thing as a non-bendable display? Or that these will all be cloud-connected and in such high demand that it's a way to push surveillance tech?

Why wouldn't these follow the path that looks something like 3D TVs, curved TVs, or curved monitors? (The latter of which is the only that really survived, but in a niche market).

The answer is super clear:

These large bendable screens belong on desks where you may both do work up close at high pixel count (4K-5K, not 1440p) and game at 4K 60hz, 120hz, or 240hz, and sometimes watch TV from across the room.

Note: Most ultrawide or curved panels are not work resolutions, they are 1440p so cheaper gaming cards can drive them at reasonable framerates. But for PS5 and XSX and PC w/ RTX 3090, you want the 4K, and that cuts your options down.

There were only a couple panels on the market available before this announcement that were the pixels and color and game capabilities to do a reasonable blend of all 3 activities, both were LG, and this article incidentally are also LG.

For a Mac user with Thunderbolt / USB-C ports only, consider LG 40WP95C-W 40” UltraWide Curved WUHD (5120 x 2160) 5K2K Nano IPS Display, DCI-P3 98% (Typ.) with HDR10, Thunderbolt 4 with 96W PD, 3-Side Virtually Borderless Design Tilt/Height/Swivel Stand. It essentially has a $400 TB4 dock built in.

For folks with HDMI (newest Macs, Windows), consider the LG C2 42” if will mostly be TV only sometimes work or gaming. But if working and gaming at the desk, consider these, as 40” is too big to sit close to and work or game unless curved, while from across a (small) room you want it flat to e.g. have the news on.

> No one asked for this, but it is "the latest technology", so just get it.

I for one asked for "smart speakers", bought two and the RPi kit that came from Google.

You seem to be arguing that providing monetizable data to the service provider is hidden and the most relevant part of the exchange. I'd disagree on both fronts: it's not all black or white and actually improving someone's life matters, a lot.

It's way more relevant that a small kid can orally ask what's a "gold fish" and get an explaination than the consequence that aquarium stuff get suggested in the youtube results.

It's always a tradeoff, and overly focusing on the monetized part on a day to day basis only leads to madness.

Maybe it'd be better if that small kid asked you what a goldfish is and you could answer them. I do not want my child to be educated by computers. Asking my dad things about nature, the world and history as a small kid have resulted in conversations that I still cherish to this day. And no formulaic robot response can ever do that justice. In my memories the best responses were when he nudged me to find the answer with questions in return.

Everyone has different opinions about education. I want my kid to know how to look for things, and not be bound by asking an adult for every question that pops in mind. Knowing what kind of answers come the different tools they have and what to rely on is also valuable.

We still got dozens of questions a day if that’s where you fear lies.

> The price is ostensibly zero.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but while much of your post is agreeable, but the products behind Patreon, Thumbtack, or whatever aren't "free," despite the $0 app download. They offer services to which their apps are merely gateways. Meanwhile, for the last twenty years, venture-backed startups have deferred revenue and given away free services in pursuit of growth.

Your complaint is equivalent to accusing bakeries of giving away smells and glass windows. There are serious surveillance issues endemic to the internet, but this isn't the smoking gun.

>Whether it improves your life is irrelevant.

I mean it does, you can buy a smart speaker but if it doesn't provide value then it goes into a box eventually. Then no data and no advertising. So people do find value in them as they keep getting sold. Maybe you don't.

At some point it will become difficult to buy speakers without smart features, as it has already with TVs. Sometimes you can avoid activating those features but sometimes you have to turn them on in order to use the device. This is a net loss for consumers imo.

These replies were hilarious. Not suprisingly, someone caused the HN title to be changed. The original HN title matched the one provided by the Ars editor(s): "Here comes the bendable TVs and monitors that no one asked for."

If this inspire more affordable products like this[0] that would let me store the TV away easily, I'd be very interested.

0 - https://www.lg.com/global/lg-signature/rollable-oled-tv-r

Interesting, although before buying it would be advisable to check how many rolls/unrolls it is guaranteed for.

this was my first thought. Bendable technology doesn't just mean curved viewing, it has some really cool pratical uses like this roll-y up thing. You could also imagine one from the ceiling like a garage door. No more wall mounted TVs plz

Like a retractable screen+projector, but no need for a projector. Sound nice.

Sounds like a lot of expense, work and fragility for very little benefit to me.

not having extremely hot bulbs and still mediocre brightness, plus probably a couple orders of magnitude less power at higher resolution, and less ghosting at faster response time?

plenty of benefits, imo. projectors universally suck, in my experience.

I was comparing against a normal TV.

Ceiling version is an interesting idea, thought impractical: it will need some additional mechanics to achieve a non-neck-bending view angle even for low ceilings.

I love the idea, you could put the TV in front of a large window and just roll it up in the evening without having daylight obstructed.

Not to mention moving between apartments, it would be so much easier.

Not shown on that page: the price tag. MSRP is $100,000.

To be fair, it used to cost more than $10k to get a basic 86 inch TV. Now they can be had for a little more than $1k.

$10k -> $1k seems a lot more achievable than $100k -> $1k

Even if it remained a luxury item I still think there would be a market for this. It has the immediate “take my money” factor

Then do $100k -> $10k. Yes, maybe too expensive for an average consumer but not out of the realm of possibility.

I was really surprised that all the cellphone manufacturers went with flip phones, rather than roll-out phones like a miniaturized version of this.

I’d honestly love a slap bracelet phone that I could wear on my wrist.

This seems doable but you're going to lose like half of the viewable screen area just to view angle geometry.

Apple watch seems to be the best solution here most likely

Right but that's assuming you'd be consuming content while the device is rolled up. I like the idea simply for portability - I don't have a large phone primarily because it's awkward to stick it in my pockets.

Rolling your wrist to scroll and just accepting the poor visibility on part on the screen could still be pretty good.

Not the same thing but the Apple Watch has an LTE model that can allow you to leave our phone at home.

I think they're still struggling with durability. I think it's likely we'll see rollable phone screens of sorts within a few years though. A rollable screen could just be an extension screen that could be pulled out when needing more screenspace

I'm trying to think of where I've seen this in TV and movies. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (IIRC) and there was a TV show where some Asian man had a plasma gun embedded in his wrist or something. Aliens were involved, and their cell phones all had roll up screens.

That's basically an extension of how current bendable screens work, right? Just with the whole thing bending instead of just the middle.

Rollable means there's less space for other components like battery, SoC, antenna, and camera. Currently foldable is the only viable option to have a tablet on my pocket until space is not matter. Oppo have a concept model. https://www.oppo.com/en/smartphones/oppo-x-2021/

Less bending overall results in less failures?

Also it would be hard to talk on a floppy phone

Make it so it has no speaker or microphone, and then you don't have that problem and can sell more wireless earbuds.

Tangentially, you also solve a security/privacy concern.

Heck, make the band a wireless display and solar/kinetic charger and you can mind the guts to a wirelessly connected device that never leaves your pocket.

> Tangentially, you also solve a security/privacy concern.

You also introduce/force a security/privacy concern. Bluetooth can get your device remotely hacked and it's routinely used to track you, your location, and nearby devices. It's one reason I always use phones with headphone jacks, I never have a need to enable bluetooth.

There's "more bending" in some sense because the whole thing has to bend, but it avoids the seam problem.

This would solve a lot of issues with interior design aesthetics. A lot of rooms just don't have a good spot for a TV. They end up above a fire place, or in front of a window. or in an awkward viewing spot. They make lift systems that put the TV down into a cabinet but you still have the full size TV to store away.

When we were looking at homes, I was surprised how many had TVs mounted (and angled downward) from above the fireplace. I get not wanting to take out the fireplace, and I get wanting to have a TV in a communal room. But boy would it be much nicer if you could unroll a screen at an appropriate height (e.g., not all the way down from the ceiling) on a temporary basis.

Yeah it's terrible. I would just drywall over that fireplace if that was my only option.

Eventually it will just be wallpaper.

Obligatory:

> The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.

> The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.

- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949

Prescient, but the one thing Orwell missed was that in some cases, people will wait overnight in the cold and rain just to be able to purchase the latest model telescreen. Would probably have been too unbelievable for the book.

Doesn't seem like it addresses the problem of awkward wall spaces at all, vs a stow-away screen of some type.

If the price difference between making it bendable instead of always curved is neglible, you might as well cater to both flat-screen and curved-screen buyers with one product.

If flat OLED screens are significantly cheaper, then bendable screens will evolve into always curved models down the line.

> If the price difference between making it bendable instead of always curved is neglible, you might as well cater to both flat-screen and curved-screen buyers with one product.

I agree.

In my case I bought years ago a curved LG OLED display even if I was quite against it because it was 1000.- CHF cheaper than its identical but flat twin (2500.-) => I relocated last October and the only place I could put the TV in the new flat was in front of the fireplace, which is in the livingroom's corner cutting the 2 walls by 45 degrees => the curved TV fits better than a flat TV to show the image towards the viewer sitting on the couch in the square room.

Therefore, if the price diff is not too high, then why not - maybe you won't need that feature or not immediately, but you never know; it does give you more "options" and I'm always in favour of that, as well when coding, managing a project, etc - having more options decreases risk, makes you more able to adapt, etc :)

Not only flat vs curved buyers but it can add flexibility in usage too. Maybe I want to put the monitor on a table and use it as a TV for a while (maybe a friend's kids are over and I want to put a TV in the corner). This way the same device can switch between a single-person curved display or a wider-viewing-angle flat display in seconds.

Sure, it is a niche use case, but why not?

Owning a curved ultrawide as my main PC monitor, I've definitely hit cases where it might be nice to briefly flatten it. I keep my main PC in my bedroom and don't have a TV in the bedroom. You can watch TV/videos that are centered in the display pretty well from the bed, but if you wanted to watch two things side by side or if there was a market for videos in "2K" ultrawide aspect ratios it would be tougher to watch things.

I've often also thought about the durability of the monitor if I need to move it to another home. Right now the only packing material I think is safe to use due to the curve is the packing material it came in that was molded to its curve. Movers are used to flat screens these days, but I can't imagine they'd have an easy time with this curved ultrawide.

I'm in a similar spot as you. I've also taken to holding on to the original packaging of this thing as a bit of an albatross, but so long as there's the slightest chance of needing to move this thing, I need the original styrofoam and cardboard. I've already gotten use out of it a few times.

the problem is that bendable OLEDs will ultimately never be quite the shape you want. especially if you want it flat - there will always be a small bit that bulges out, and it won't be a uniform curve, it'll actually be a crease or a localized bulge; and it'll be that tiny bit annoying to where people won't want to have them, especially with clear rather than matte displays, because of the inevitable annoying reflections which move as your head moves.

bendability is clearly a great thing for advertisements, and I see a lot of those things showing up in buses and trains (curved banners at the top, like on the London tube), tradeshows (curved artsy-fartsy installations), car dashboards, etc. but before any of that can happen, oled longevity in presence of static images needs to be fixed... which might never happen.

All of what you're saying only applies to bending a screen in half, right?

I'm not seeing why a monitor like we're discussing would automatically have bulges or creases.

No, it's essentially slightly flexible plastic, it's not going to have a perfect curve. Look at some reviews, they already note that it's kind of annoying. I forgot where I saw those comments, I think the whole idea is bonkers so don't keep it around in my head.

I’ve been using OLED displays for years on my phone and TV and never run into any issues with burn-in (not made any effort to prevent it either).

My current phone isn't OLED, but on a previous one after two years or so of usage the status bar area at the top was somewhat discernible if you looked for it.

do you display the exact same static image on your oled tv for weeks, like an ad banner would?

I think every input source on the TV has a software solution to move the UI elements around, because the developers know burn-in exists. The TV displays a screensaver if the input cuts out. I do have an old receiver that wants to display a constant blue screen when it loses input so I took steps to make sure my setup is configured to prevent that (use the TV as an HDMI switch and it sends audio to the receiver).

I know burn-in was a big deal back in the plasma TV days, but on the current generation of OLEDs I don’t think it’s as common. Every OLED I’ve seen in real life looked amazing.

They will, ultimately, be significantly cheaper, for one reason - freight. TVs ship in big boxes, full of styrofoam - you’re limited on how many you can fit in a standard container, and they’re expensive and fragile to ship the last leg to the consumer. They take up warehouse space, and are often a two-man lift for larger models.

Being able to ship a TV rolled up in a tube will be revolutionary.

See also: mattresses.

Is this true? Flat rectangles pack more efficiently than tubes. With mattresses, afaik, the big difference was vacuum-packing reducing overall volume, not shape.

Seems true, because about 80% of the volume of a tv or monitor box is padding. Padding scales with surface area, not volume, so it could be reduced by a ton.

The total cost to ship a TV is like $20. Cost to add curves is like $500. Not even close to mattering.

The total cost to ship it where? From Korea to the end user in the US? Or from New Jersey to New York? Much more of the cost of goods is transport than you might realise, and you pay per TEU, not per kg - so a container mostly filled with air is an expensive proposition.

You also assume that the technical cost will be constant - it rarely is, and I see these products as a tooling step towards making thin film displays that can be packed with vastly improved density.

That's about right for a 40" TV for domestic ground shipping, maybe a bit low. It's more than that to ship it from China to California, and larger sizes will hit breakpoints that significantly increase shipping cost.

Shipping from China can be cheaper than shipping from California to NY.

I'm curious if there are any videogames that render specifically for curved monitors? (And then if the level of curve is adjustable, like it's adjustable for these?)

Because projecting an image onto a plane vs. onto a cylinder becomes radically different the further you get from the center of your field of view -- flat photo mode vs panorama mode.

I'm vaguely aware that the commonly wider aspect ratio of curved monitors often isn't supported by games, because in multiplayer mode the greater field of view gives an unfair advantage... but maybe there's some subset of games that design for this?

the 3D to 2D projections happening in realtime engines don't 'curve' anything the way a real lens does. A fisheye lens in real life will turn some straight lines into curves, you'd never see that in a video game (unless it's a post processing effect that fakes it). So I suspect that there aren't really any games that have the ability to do a 1:1 projection that perfectly matches the curve of a monitor, although there are probably some fast approximations.

I'm not sure how the math works for 3D games, but I would think that for 2D games, a curved monitor actually reduces distortion.

In a flat monitor centered in front of your head, the distance between your eyes and different pixels on the screen varies depending on how close they are to the edge, thus distorting the sizes of the rendered sprites. Curving the edges reduces this effect (depending of course on the exact curvature and distance to the monitor).

I guess the key question for 3D is whether the rendering engine already attempts to compensate for this effect. It seems difficult for it to do so, since monitor sizes and distances vary so much, but I suppose that's what settings like field-of-view are for.

> In a flat monitor centered in front of your head, the distance between your eyes and different pixels on the screen varies depending on how close they are to the edge, thus distorting the sizes of the rendered sprites. Curving the edges reduces this effect (depending of course on the exact curvature and distance to the monitor).

That’s the same distortion that we encounter for all real-world objects all the time, and process automatically. We can’t turn that off, so I’m not sure it makes sense to try and compensate for it.

For 3D games, we’re trying to trick ourselves that we’re looking into a window. Curving the screen gives us a bigger window without a bigger monitor.

But 2D games are usually representing a flat surface intentionally.

EG: Mario runs to the right. Rendering it to a curved screen without correction suggests that he’s instead running clockwise around the viewer. For big enough stages, it brings into question why he doesn’t loop back on himself.

Correcting for that would mean shrinking things on the sides of the screen – effectively rendering to a flat surface behind the curved monitor.

No, the standard is to project against a flat plane, regular rasterization is not suited for rendering to anything else, however in theory you could fake it with a post processing distortion filter

With full raytracing it might be possible to correctly render to a curved view plane, but right now even games that support raytracing tend to be a mix of rasterization and raytracing

I believe some driving sims support extra wide field of view so that you see the sides of the car interior. I’ve seen that with a multi monitor “curved” set up but I’m not sure if a true curved monitor is curved enough for that illusion. Mine is pretty subtle, maybe 15-20 degrees total

it's not just the aspect ratio - the perspective is different on curved monitors, because the surface is pointing in a different direction at every point. you have to simulate this with an effect related to the fish-eye lens.

That's been my experience for the few games I've played with that had field of view settings with some semblance for curved monitors: things towards the far edges balloon larger like with a fish-eye lens, which turns out about what you need to best activate peripheral vision too.

When I game on my 3440x1440 curved monitor, I usually nudge my FOV 10 to 20 degrees higher. This gives me a very generous 'flat' zone in the middle for when (and where) I need precision, and the edges of the screen have a small bit of 'zoom' to help watch my corners.

Sometimes I try to game that a bit when looking at something distant: I'll wiggle the object's position between the edge and center of the camera, to get slightly different perspectives on it.

peripheries bulge out because of a flattened perspective. Think about what you'd see on a perfectly flat screen that takes up the same /horizontal angle/ across your vision. Note that by necessity, it would be physically longer than a curved display that takes up the same horizontal angle.

One degree if vision is pretty narrow in the center of that, but much wider on the far sides.

Those games are not correcting the projection for curved monitors at all. The widening on the sides is just an artifact of projecting onto a flat plane, which then gets wrapped around the curved monitor in a simple manner.

Many modern video slots have dramatically curved vertical screens. That form factor would be great for a workstation.

Bendable? No thanks.

Where is the kindle style monitor (no backlight)?

Staring at an LED panel all day for decades isn’t great. I’d love to see improvements to non-backlit monitor tech but it seems the demand for that is low, and somehow lower than the demand for a bendable monitor.

I resisted ebook readers since the day they came out, out of an irrational sense of betraying "real" books which I love. I recently got one (Kobo Libra 2) and mannn these eink displays are SO nice to look at compared to my LED display. Literally night and day.

I had a similar experience. I love real books and hate locked-down corporate ecosystems. But... at my sweetie's suggestion, I bought a Kobo Libra for a trip where I had no space for books, and I have to admit that it is nice. It weighs nothing, pages turn effortlessly, it remembers my place, the battery lasts forever, and the screen is really sharp. You can resize the text, and the device just magically reworks the layout, as if it came from the press that way. Beyond that, it syncs with my library account - I don't even use the Kobo store!

I've actually been using it to read with my ten-year-old. We take turns, alternating chapters. "Snuggling up on the couch with a child and an e-reader" does not have the same romantic ring, but the stories are just as engaging and I think the e-reader with its push-button page-flip is actually better for smaller, less-dextrous hands.

> the battery lasts forever

That is true. I recharge my E-ink reader multiple times … per year.

as someone who's spent ages reading books before ebooks were a thing and before LCD technology became popular, I'm quite the opposite - I can't be happy enough about LCD technolgy being around, especially if compared to an old yellowed book that's been printed off the same plates for 20 years and which you're reading in an only moderately well lit room. although LED technology again helps here because all that books-before-LCD experience comes from the days of incandescent light bulbs and nascent "energy saving" fluorescent compacts with edison screw.

Yeah. I've been an avid / voracious reader for over 40 years, and will always love "real" books, but I've developed a strong preference for reading on my Kindle Oasis, for several reasons:

  - portability  
  - dictionary & wikipedia lookup  
  - highlights -> readwise*  
  - continuity (phone, kindle, audiobook via WhisperSync), I can listen while driving, continue reading when home  
  - preview the next book in a series and/or buy it on the spot and keep reading

* Readwise in turn syncs to my Obsidian vault where I can do useful things with them like progressive summarization...

In contrast, paper books are heavy and fragile, and I've always resisted annotating / highlighting physicap books bc its permament and feels like defacement / vandalism.

TLDR, I love my personal library, my house is full of bookshelves, but my reading preferences have evolved, and I get absurdly high value from my Oasis.

I think the reading UI per se of paper books is still better overall, but god damn, the space-savings advantage of ereaders is hard to ignore.

Thanks for sharing. Do you have one of those that you shared? If you do what is your experience like?

You know I've never considered this, but that's probably one of the only pain points with monitors now. If they can find some way to not make it feel like I'm been staring at light bulb during the night time I would really be interested in paying premium prices. Screens definitely mess with my circadian rhythm. Otherwise at this point all I'm interested in is a basic monitor

It's not a cure-all, but third-party tools like f.lux can change the colors of the monitor at early morning/late night to drastically reduce the problem.

I used to have incredibly sore eyes from late-night sessions, and now that problem is completely gone. Been using it for years and will never go back.

It does take a little while to get used to at first, but it quickly becomes natural.

Windows also has a built-in tool to do the same thing, but it's not as robust/customizable iirc.

If you combine an accurate ambient light sensor with a regular old LCD you can do that pretty well, because you don't need to vary the brightness across the screen to simulate diffuse reflections from an uneven light source to get the effect you want. Also check out those programs that redshift your monitor. Finally, try turning down your monitor's brightness.

Just adding a reasonable control on the brightness is already enough to solve this. Make the monitor's bottom some not too bright white, and it's solved for outside usage too.

Liquid crystal displays can actually adapt to almost any circumstance. It's the manufacturer's fault that they force it into "store-bright" and won't let you change.

The long-overdue move away from inverse color schemes (dark text on a white background) has certainly helped.

Blue-light blocking glasses have helped me with this.

From what I know, e-ink tech is and has been very feasible, but is on hold since it's under patent. The company that holds the patent is notoriously slow to reach any licensing deals in a timely fashion to bring a product to market. Not to mention their exorbitant licensing fees. The end product turns out to be to expensive to market.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink

> From what I know, e-ink tech is and has been very feasible, but is on hold since it's under patent. The company that holds the patent is notoriously slow to reach any licensing deals in a timely fashion to bring a product to market. Not to mention their exorbitant licensing fees. The end product turns out to be to expensive to market.

"From what I know". Could you clarify? This is first hand knowledge based on industry experience?

Could you please cite which specific patent you're referring to and what you mean by "e-ink tech" and "has been very feasible"? I'm assuming you actually have detailed knowledge of the display technology. Could you also please cite some evidence for the "notoriously slow to reach any licensing deals"? I'm assuming you actually have detailed knowledge of these licensing deals you're referring to. Hopefully your citation will be something other than a HN post by a throwaway account and blogs that cite that specific HN post and other HN posts that infinite loop circle back on those blog posts. Hopefully you'll give the rest of us first hand evidence and a reply based on actual experience that you personally have from years working in the electrophoretic display industry where you were held back under E-Ink's titanium and carbon coated jack boot and patent-waterboarded with high viscosity electrophoretic solvent? :-D That's the evidence the rest of us have been eagerly seeking to see and hear. I look forward with bated breath. Thank you.

I ask this, perhaps a little comically disingenously since I work in the display industry (not for E Ink) and I've asked the exact same question so many times on HN and have never gotten even a remotely satisfying answer which makes me think your extremely confident claim in your post, like the many before it are just Dunning Kruger in effect. But I'll still keep a sliver of a slightly open mind so that I can be convinced. Otherwise, I would recommend everyone treat your type of comment as equivalent to someone in the farming industry alleging that a good solid operating system has been very feasible but IBM is holding back the software industry with their patents and is notoriously slow to reach any licensing deals.

The way forward isn’t monitors and tvs at all, but 4k ultra short throw laser projectors like Samsung Premiere and Optoma P2. They’re like something out of Star Wars, don’t even need the curtains closed to use them. They’re starting to come down in price as well to around the £1500-£2000 mark, won’t be long before they break the £1000 mark. Can’t wait to get one of these for my home office in a few months.

I’ve had projectors ever since I was 14 years old but there’s no getting around the fact that the darkest their black level can get is however dark the screen is.

Dark screens help but until we can project on something that’s essentially black they won’t be great for daytime viewing.

Looking at the marketing pages for the two projectors mentioned is hilarious. They show images projected onto brightly-lit white walls with areas that are significantly darker than the wall, which is of course impossible.

Unless/until some material comes along that is tuned somehow to only reflect light that comes from the projector, they'll have to remain limited to dark rooms.

Have a look at this, looks pretty visible to me:

https://youtu.be/nu2OZq8A-AI

That video demonstrates the problem exactly. The "before" shot shows a clip from Lightyear which takes place in the black of space, and the screen is filled with high-contrast bright colors on a completely-black background. The "after" shot is of a bright sunny day where a car (low contrast despite the bright red color, to my eyes) drives through a desert. You could hardly ask for more directly opposite videos. For a real comparison, I'd have liked to see the same Lightyear clip on both setups.

I wasn't talking about visibility. I was referring to the marketing pictures showing the projectors essentially "projecting darkness" which is impossible. No part of a projected image can possibly be darker than the surface it's being projected onto.

Ready for a rabbit hole: https://projectorscreen.com

I have an ALR screen, but they only go so far. You're fighting physics pretty hard one way or the other.

I guess the tech is further along than I thought!

Have you seen these in action? I am skeptical of all "don't need curtains" claims for projectors unless they are based on actual experience, every shitty $100 pocket projector says you "don't need curtains" which is barely even technically true in most cases.

I was sceptical at first but then I saw some photos and YouTube videos of people using them. Have a look at this, it’s not an ultra short throw one but it is a 4k laser one. The guy is using it outside in broad daylight to watch Netflix: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nebula-Polaris-Pro-Projector-Black-...

That says it has a brightness of 2400 ISO Lumens, which roughly translates to about 600 nits according to this site[1], (although my back of the napkin math of 3.426 nits to lumens would give a worse 408 nit rating, but I think this page probably did a better job, so we'll go with that). This seems pretty low compared to even OLED TVs, which are of course worse than LCD TVs. I may be comparing peak brightness to average brightness though, hard to get a clear idea here. But, if my understanding is correct, with a project you'll also miss out on true blacks, right?

1. https://cybershack.com.au/cybershack/nebula-cosmos-laser-4k-...

It claims 2400 lumens - I have a couple of flashlights in excess of 6000 and yeah, the light beam is visible in daylight but I can't see any way you'd project something with decent contrast even with that.

You mean the promotional videos?

You don't get to make black over a white surface in daylight.

No I mean the user posted video and photo reviews on Amazon and also the odd YouTuber.

And yes, it is not going to be as good as a TV outside in broad daylight. But they are almost definitely good enough to use inside with the curtains open. And if the light isn’t directly in your eyes like a monitor, do you even have to code in dark mode anymore?

Yes these are great. I have one from VAVA, and got a special screen to display it on that also helps prevent other light from affecting the lasers from the UST lens. It’s great for TV. Sure, black levels aren’t perfect, but I’ll give that up for a 10 foot screen. Not sure I’d use it for my office. I feel like an array of monitors or a really nice 8k would be better.

How long before we can replace monitors with virtual monitors via AR? I feel like we take for granted that we have TVs taking up huge chunks of our living rooms and monitors of our offices. Obviously resolution is a (huge) issue. Another, for TV at least, is the communal aspect (synchronized virtual TVs, anyone?) but it seems like the future is on without physical monitors/TVs. I wonder how distant a future that is...

> How long before we can replace monitors with virtual monitors via AR?

Hopefully never. People who don't wear glasses don't need something on their face to watch TV, people who do need glasses don't need to worry about AR googles meaning they have to choose between seeing a screen clearly or everything else and nobody has to worry about the AR goggle company watching and logging everything you see and plastering everything in your line of sight with ads.

I don't think physical screens are going anywhere anytime soon. I wouldn't mind having every wall in my home capable of being a screen though. Screen-as-wallpaper would be very nice since you could create smaller virtual screens on any wall wherever you needed one and it would mean you could change your wallpaper/color on a whim.

There’s the nreal air glasses that you can buy today for £400 and some Lenovo glasses that were posted on hn recently that are coming next year. The future is already here:

https://youtu.be/bj8hMtWeTUg

My "TV" is a projector, but I don't consider it practical for computer work.

When 100" micro-LED panels come out, the projector is going away for good.

Or the opposite, when glasses can have built in 1440p "augmented reality" oleds, each viewer can have as big of a display, with black pixels, as they want.

My VR headset is 1400p per eye and GARBAGE for looking at text on a virtual screen. Any display tech that expects you to focus at a virtual plane for long periods of time will really hurt your eyes, and be basically unusable for many people. If you struggle in nice 3D movies to feel like your eyes are comfortable, you will have that same feeling in a VR or AR glasses situation.

Basically, any system that requires your eyes to focus on a physical screen that isn't the same distance as virtual objects will piss off your brain, because it knows something is going on, and hates being tricked without consent. Some people I think can ignore this effect to some extent, others cannot. It also strains your eyes more than focusing on an actual 2D screen so increases eye fatigue compared.

If that's your idea of a fun viewing party, go for it. I'll stick with the big-screen experience.

You will have to paint your walls in (vanta) black.

I know you're joking, but that would just result in a pretty-much black screen, no matter how much white was thrown at it :)

On the other hand, the contrast ratio would be really good. :)

How would it?

One photon in bright areas is infinite contrast ratio to zero photons in black areas

I'm hoping that we see more reflective LCD displays in the future. There's a 32 inch 1080p panel by Sun Vision that seems pretty remarkable, but I'm holding out hope for more pixel density, etc.

If you haven't seen it, there's a very well done review at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQms-iHX9RQ

Right here! https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1683182-REG/boox_opc0...

$1800 for a 25" monochrome E-ink monitor. The resolution is 3200 x 1800, but remember to consider that resolution in the context of E-ink rather than LCD.

Here is a video comparing two that are on the market.

[1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fycfiWPypkY

https://www.sunvisiondisplay.com/reflective-lcd-monitor

Has e-ink been shown to be better for eyes. I was under the impression that most of the damage comes from focusing your eyes on screen all day ( vs backlight )

Maybe bendable screens are a valley we have to go through to get the transparent, nearly expendable phones from the Expanse?

I agree with you, but the refresh rate on E-paper is so hideous. And the panels are expensive as hell.

I, personally, did want something exactly like this. I have used a 55" OLED as a main monitor for several years and find that sitting close to it as I do, it would be excellent to have something a bit smaller which also has the option to be curved. The author just is not the target audience. I watched the HDTVTest video [1] on one of these a few days ago and just thought, "wow, perfect!" LTT has a recent video showcasing a 42" OLED as a main monitor, which gives a good impression of the experience [2].

  1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDHzz7syM_E
  2: https://youtu.be/4mgePWWCAmA?t=949

What I'm really waiting for is foldable monitors that stow easily, something like the Zenbook 17 Fold, sans computer.

The utility of a nonmobile monitor that bends slightly is pretty questionable in my opinion.

A portable ultra wide that I can roll up and put in my carry-on sounds useful

Agree. I'm about to be on the road for a bit over a month and am not looking forward to working just on a laptop screen.

I couldn't find any 17-21" portable monitors last time I wanted one. They seem like a no-brainer to me, but apparently there is no market for them? It's either 13 inch and overpriced or full fledged desktop monitor...

Its usefulness in art displays, theater and cosplay will be considerable, though!

I came here to comment this exact sentiment

I'd actually pay good money for this. As my vision gets worse and worse, I've had to go to smaller monitors so that I could see the whole thing in focus at once. If I could get a large, curved monitor that I could adjust so every portion was an equal distance from my eyes, that'd be a big win.

It it could bend backwards, I kind of miss my Trinitron CRTs...

That is easy, even with the two horizontal mask lines.

I want a non-Trinitron AMOLED faux CRT with a good centimetre of glass at the front and a simulated hi pitch whine, with heating element on the top for the comfort requirements of a cat.

The two way curve, now that would be a real challenge. Market sales for said TV? A few movies where they need to portray the 21st century, that is about it.

> The two way curve, now that would be a real challenge

Aren't OLEDs more or less printed? Other option would be to cover the back with RGB quantum dots and excite them with three scanning lasers tuned to their characteristics.

... and we just invented the ORT, or "Optical Ray Tube"

NEC 6FG MultiSync FTW.

The problem with this whole concept is I just plain don't trust the robustness.

I remember the demo version of a Samsung foldable phone with a row of dead pixels right where you'd expect on the crease line.

Meh, I'm asking for color e-ink display suitable for vim and terminal usage. Doesn't even have to be a lot of colors.

If we're dreaming, how about an e-ink with black default for coding / terminals? Real, deep black.

16 colours will do for syntax highlighting.

But it has to refresh much faster than current e-ink. Can't scroll through code at the speed a Kindle refreshes.

Do you need deep black/dark mode if the display isn’t projecting the light into your eyes? I feel like I could be fine going back to light mode on eInk or a projector. I can’t say that when I’m using my kindle that I miss there not being a dark mode because the reason I’m using dark mode on the other devices in the first place is no longer an issue with the kindle.

I started with text mode IDEs/editors 3 million years ago. On CRTs. Black background. I still think that's optimal. Probably just too used to it.

I also miss my pet dinosaur.

Besides, isn't it sad that there are only two display technologies that have black black nowadays? One is dead (CRTs) and one still has growing pains (OLED). There should be more.

I don’t know, I don’t really remember being blown away by CRT monitors back in the day or miss them in any way and I’ve not had an OLED device yet. I have dark mode on everything but can’t say I feel upset about what the blacks look like. Maybe ignorance is bliss.

It’s hard for me to take work seriously on a lighter screen. Black just looks way more expensive.

Low powered color e-ink and portable is the way to go (readers, code stations). I think the hype (if there is even any) over rollable displays is vapor.

100 dpi right now. Hopefully 300 dpi in a few years.

I also want this tech to improve, and for the same reasons.

When I bought my TV it was a curved smart TV. I wanted neither curved nor smart, but it was forced upon me by the requirements OLED and 4K.

It also has support for 3D. Don't care about that either.

It is increasing hard to get away from smart, but since OLED and 4k launched together, I think there have always been flat options available.

You used to be able to get away from the smart "features" by going with a commercial display, but that is increasingly less true. Hopefully the smarts on smart commercial displays don't involve spying on you are showing ads though.

> I think there have always been flat options available.

It's been a few years. Maybe it was a temporary state, or the stores didn't have flat available. Or they were only in specific sizes.

In any case I've not connected it to my network, and it's happy to act as a dumb screen.

I bought the 65 inch version of this TV a few years ago. https://www.lg.com/us/tvs/lg-OLED77W9PUA-signature-oled-4k-t...

They aren’t making them anymore, manufacturing issues and issues with the proprietary cable, but I must admit it’s like a magic portal and I love it for no other reason than it’s flatter than a #2 pencil. Lol Favorite thing I’ve ever bought.

It’s very bendy. You can roll it up loosely. I tried it once, but freaked me out too much.

Someone tell Ars Technica no-one asked for TVs in the first place.

The idea of someone's likeness being broadcast on some kind of screen has been in sci-fi for a long time. More like facetime - but still. The idea is not new. And people wanted it.

For how long?

This is close to my thoughts based on the title alone. It reminded me of Dvorak's "There is no evidence that people want to use these things." line.

Of course they did.

Shh. We're supposed to pretend that no one wanted tvs, just like we pretend that what people wanted were faster horses, rather than to be relieved of the effort of caring for a horse. Get it? The users are dumb.

You don't need to pretend. Who wanted TVs before they were invented?

Anyone that had seen a film? The reaction to early TVs was not "nobody is asking for this":

http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/first_television_broadcas...

The first reaction is after TVs were invented. Who was asking for them before they were invented?

I'd love see it draped uncannily over a table edge, displaying one of those Salvador Dali paintings of melting clocks.

> Here come the bendable TVs and monitors that no one asked for

Great title. Tells you exactly what you're gonna get. Throws in some humor.

The title made me think of the iPhone, which also nobody asked for.

That said, I am not at all convinced about bendable TVs as being introduced right now.

I've been using a curved Samsung 65" for about 7 years now and it's pretty great. It's a fantastic experience if you are within about 4m of the screen.

Until I can roll or fold it up to a size no bigger than a 13" laptop and cart it away in my backpack I could care less.

couldn't care less is the phrasing that invokes an expression of maximum indifference

> couldn't care less is the phrasing that invokes an expression of maximum indifference

Merriam-Webster asserts both phrasings are equivalent since at least the 1800s.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/could-couldnt-...

Say you had a list of items, sorted by how much you care about them...

If you could not care less about an item on that list, that means that it's literally the last thing you would put on list of things you care about. Nothing can be cared about less than this item. Though you could have multiple things at the bottom of your care list, that you don't care about equally. So you can not care less about multiple items on that list.

If you can care less about an item, then there are things on the list that are lower that you do care less about. Making this item not the thing you care about the least. In fact, the item you care about the most... you could care less than that.

I'm not sure if that's what it says. The way I read it "could care less" was used in the 1800s but with the negation in another part of the sentence. Modern usage simply omits it.

That's what the article says, but I can't see negation in the 1865 example:

> His bearing towards male acquaintances, of whom he knew little or nothing and could care less, was marked by an affectation of gushing friendliness, which overdid itself.

I use a 55" 4k curved TV as my monitor. It was cheaper and taller than any widescreen monitor then or now.

I also use it as a TV now, but curve is dumb for that. Being able to switch based on use might have a little value. However being able to bend a TV to use as monitor is IMHO a big deal since curved TVs have disappeared.

There was this time span few years ago when all TVs were "3D"... so much electronic waste was produced...

There was a time when the 3D TV people infested HN worse than the Bitcoin people later did. 100 times a day, somebody was called a cynic for saying that people weren't going to wear special glasses to watch TV. Since half the new high-end TVs were 3D, we also got to constantly hear that the market had already chosen 3D.

Smart TVs were the boon everyone was looking for; they could reorganize and raise the profit margins of the TV manufacturing industry but didn't even have to add any expensive new technology, just crappy apps and ads.

IMO 3D movement around 2010 was hyped but now is too underrated. It's unlikely to wear glasses every time watching TV, but not too bad to wear it once per month for watching a movie. Finally it lacks better contents.

Pointless indeed

The only scenario I can think of where I'd probably like flat more is a screen in portrait orientation

I'm still looking forward to the UI revolution due to touch screens on computers becoming mainstream. Too bad the big PixelSense screens never took off in the mass market.

But bendable screens... meh. I wanted a flat screen, only got a curved screen. And still never felt the urge to unbend it.

That's not going to happen, because touchscreens on computers suck. Waving your arms around in front of you all day is a shitty way to work, and takes up way more space than a mousepad.

Not to mention: Why would you want your hands and arms blocking your view of the stuff you're trying to manipulate on-screen?

Entire companies have already come and gone because the "Minority Report" UI has no legitimate use case.

I think that's a misconception. For context: I have a strong preference for keyboard use, mouse is only an optional accessory that's sometimes useful.

I already use touch on my XPS 13 and it's just another nice accessory, which I often prefer over a mouse (especially for mobile use). If I move from keyboard to mouse to click a button, I can also just touch it. Or lazily scroll a page. But it's a mistake to assume it should replace all other input methods instead of augmenting them; forcing that on a user sucks, yes.

Edit: Oh, and I just played "Root" on a 43" touch screen sitting on a table. Works well, except that I need to integrate it into the table.

> Entire companies have already come and gone because the "Minority Report" UI has no legitimate use case.

Guess you’re talking about Leap Motion? I reckon they might have been 7 years too early to market. I could see this kind of thing picking up traction when AR/VR really becomes mainstream, maybe not as the main input source but I could see it for less commonly used actions.

Yeah, I think that was it. I respect that they tried, but I can't even see these things being used for air traffic control. 3-D? For sure. But big transparent panels?

and yet millions of people place their orderd at McDonalds or self-check out their groceries with this every day.

If your work's complexity is equivalent to placing a fast-food order, it might be appropriate, but even then, you will likely get tired if you had to do this all day.

What fantasyland do you live in?

You want to use your TV as a touch screen? We used to have physical buttons on the TV that we used to change channels and control volume. Getting up to interact with the TV was a giant pain in the ass.

> We used to have physical buttons on the TV that we used to change channels and control volume.

And I'm annoyed at the current trend of removing these buttons. It's not rare for the remote control batteries to be empty, or the remote control to be broken (with some buttons not responding to presses), or even the remote control to be lost somewhere in the house (to be found only days later). Having a fallback way to control the TV, at least power/channel/volume/input and preferentially also full access to the configuration menus (using the channel/volume/etc buttons as arrows and confirm/cancel), is essential. Ideally with capacitive buttons, which in my experience do not get broken as easily as normal physical buttons.

I never said I wanted to do that ;) I was just really into the NUI/TUI hype back in the early 2010s. (I still like proper buttons, especially in my car)

I wouldn't hang a screen like that on a wall, but put it in/on a table.

Just came back from playing the "Root" tutorial on a 43" touchscreen, btw. Quite nice, looking forward to see how it fares with when playing with friends or using it as a virtual tabletop for pen&paper RPGs. Still need to integrate it into a table, and I think it needs a tilt mechanic for better ergonomics when playing alone.

> but put it in/on a table.

Microsoft tried that. It didn't go great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY

Finally watched it with sound. Oh well, it's kind of funny, and probably was really funny back then. But think of the time: This video predates Android 1.0 by over one year. Touchscreens were certainly not mainstream back then. Even today people on HN assume that "touchscreen" means "replace everything with touch" (like in automotive - a trend I despise) instead of thinking how touch could augment existing interfaces. Especially the PixelSense tech is still amazing. Normal capacitive sensing is limited in the number of simultaneous touches (e.g. 20 for a 85" screen), but with PixelSense you get an image of the reflections seen by the screen. This not only allows for a huge amount of simultaneous touches, but the really awesome ability is to detect objects and do proper TUI: If you put a unique black/white label under your object (e.g. RPG figurine or disc) you can detect the object, it's location and orientation. So you can move around your character by moving the figure. Or to adjust some setting, just turn that dial.

IMHO this is a chicken&egg problem: There is little software that use these abilities, because with no-one having these screens there is no-one to sell it to. And OTOH why would you get an expensive screen when there are only a few techdemos that makes use of that feature. For comparison: Sales of VR headsets in 2021 were 11M (vs. 19M PS5 or 240M iPhones). And we're still only seeing a moderate ecosystem of games, content and productivity stuff. Now imagine the situation if there was no pr0n and the Valve-fueled hype didn't happen: We'd be stuck with crappy DIY stuff or expensive special purpose solutions; and even if you could get your hands on a proper VR headset, in that scenario you're stuck with a few tech demos and wouldn't get a lot of utility out of it. I think that's the situation with touchscreens on the desktop, or even in the desk.

Don't have sound right now, sorry. But that thing cost about 10kUS$ (and even more early on), that's nearly 14kUS$ inflation corrected. Might be the reason people didn't buy them for home use ;)

ahahah i remember having 4 buttons on a drawer that pulled out to display 4 tiny plastic potentiometers that you had to turn if you wanted to check out any of the other channels once there were any - and yeah, you're right. god no

but i guess it's nice for laptops and stuff

I normally shy away from jokes on this website, but I can't not compare this to Micheal Scott's plasma TV bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHP2Ep73Fk4

At point is the image distorted when you bend it? I always had an issue with that with curved monitors. Is there such a thing as bending calibration? Am I looking at an accurate image if I bend it?

Because the screen is flat while the celestial sphere is round, you are only looking at an accurate image if you bend it. :-) From the perspective of your eye or a pinhole camera, the sides of your screen look shorter than the center because they are farther away, which does not happen if it is bent.

for 3d images, this highly depends on how the 3d engine renders things - curved monitors can be less accurate than flat displays due to simply using the wrong 3d projection.

That is a good point, I was only thinking about images taken with a camera.

Only if you're way too close.

Usually, curved monitors are very long.

I think they are mostly used for things like games, where this is less of a big deal.

Nope. They ruined TVs with rubbish "smart" functions. Now they seem to be coming after monitors. I couldn't think of anything I'd want less than a smart TV, until this.

I can see the value. A curved screen is very cool for gaming but I found it beyond unusable for literally everything else like browsing or productivity.

Can't wait to roll up my TV

there's definitely a case for curved monitors. i have a ultra-wide and my eyes get fatigued when looking at the edges. a curved screen alleviates that.

This feels like the 3D TV redux. A feature nobody asked for cooked up in some industry board room by executives desperate to find a way to make tvs have a premium feature set so they can increase margins.

Polymer thick film FLEXIBLE circuits.

The more likely direction is in the future AR/VR will be good enough no one will need physical screens.

Perfect title.

Refreshing to see "tech press" not mindlessly gawking at some hyped up new tech for a change.

Agreed!

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