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Comment by persedes | Hacker News Reader

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

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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 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

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

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.

Less bending overall results in less failures?

Also it would be hard to talk on a floppy phone

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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/

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.

Eventually it will just be wallpaper.

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

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.

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.

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