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Comment by brk | Hacker News Reader

It's neat tech, I wonder what the adoption curve will look like and what the price premium will be.

TVs are so predominant in our lives that room layouts and furniture are often designed around their presence. For example, the main TV in our house sits in a sort of built-in entertainment center/cabinetry. Making it transparent would be of no benefit. Also, many times people are hiding set-top boxes or media servers (and cables) behind the TV. Now those things need an aesthetically pleasing place to live, and cable management becomes 100x more important.

I can see applications for these, but it is going to require designing around them for maximum benefit. That will slow the adoption curve, which slows the price drops, perhaps keeping them in a niche segment for a long time.

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How old are you? I’m in mid 30s and half of my friends do not own TVs. I’m in Europe.

I’ve been using home cinema projector, I don’t see a point in having a TV as late millennial. I want to control what I’m watching and as dumb as the internet got in the last years tv is 100 times dumber. 15 years ago we at last had Discovery Channel or MTV.

Maybe you're an outlier with your projector.

A projector is more fiddly than a TV to set up. You need both a smooth, blank light wall and also a place to perch your projector which is just the right distance away from said wall (based on the projector's throw) and at the correct height and ideally centered to the viewing area - and with power within reach.

> which is just the right distance away from said wall (based on the projector's throw) and at the correct height and ideally centered to the viewing area

I bought a relatively cheap one around a decade ago, and this is adjustable on the projector itself. It's not nearly as difficult as you make it sound.

Setting up a projector is easy. Getting to look good... That can be an interesting trick with many of them.

As long as you aren't particularly OCD about getting it to look perfect, keystoning, zoom, etc all work together to make it pretty flexible. We throw it on a variety of walls around the house (helps that white is the default wall color for home sales nowadays).

Have you looked into short throw projectors? Some of those are very noob friendly and positioning is no longer an issue.

Still an enthusiasts device though really and your point stands I just found those short throw devices quite interesting.

I'm in 20s and don't know anyone _without_ a TV.

A lot of people might not use them very much but I've never been in a house without one.

I have a TV, but it's just an HDMI display for a Roku.

Yeah I'll agree that anecdotally I know plenty of people without cable or the like, but they still have a TV for streaming/pirated media/games.

TV is a big screen you watch Netflix on.

> I want to control what I’m watching and as dumb as the internet got in the last years tv is 100 times dumber.

The content preference isn't really relevant to whether you use a TV or a projector.

Same, a lot of my friends don't have tvs. But the houses are still often designed to have one. Probably 3/4s of my friends live in furnished rentals and those usually do have tvs, however.

I have a TV which I use as a dumb display. I don't know anyone with a projector nor would I want one due to the limited contrast.

Good laser projectors w/ appropriate screens have great contrast. But they are not cheap. E.G. https://epson.com/epiqvision-ultra-laser-projection-tv

The projector is irrelevant unless you can rule out all ambient light - and you can't because the screen/projector themselves will contribute to it. This is an inherent problem because the screen needs to be reflective otherwise it won't show your projected image but if it is reflective then the base black level will also be far from zero. Emissive displays don't have this problem because you can increase the emissive brightness without raising the black level and even LCD screens do better because you can increase the ratio between the two with better LCD tech.

> This is an inherent problem because the screen needs to be reflective otherwise it won't show your projected image but if it is reflective then the base black level will also be far from zero.

Screens (ALR) for these projectors only reflect from a single direction (down) and are less reflection than a standard TV screen (which are generally gloss screens) from other directions. That is, both in personal experience and in reviews, they are generally considered equal to high quality LCDs in contrast and in color. Their main detraction from using as a display is that they are big and are generally paired with large (>100") screens.

223 million units are sold in 2023.

But what do you plug your playstations into?

> TVs are so predominant in our lives that room layouts and furniture are often designed around their presence.

It's an altar, or less cynically a fireplace.

> Also, many times people are hiding set-top boxes or media servers (and cables) behind the TV.

Just have the TV in "off" mode show an image of the wall behind the TV - but without the junk ;)

> It's an altar

Per 1984, for the daily rage.

It's called Fox News now.

Manufacturers do that to some degree with their frame/gallery TVs, and I don't see those taking a lot of market share.

If they can get the price below or close to normal LEDs, I could see it, but if they're high priced I think they'll stay in a niche.

I can't imagine this catching on for personal use. It's a flashy toy for a marketing screen. If they try to convince home users that it's the next big thing they're going to have another 3D TV on their hands.

I think it will be huge in advertising, for window displays and such.

Exactly, so many homes are designed with at least one room in the house to be tv-centric. Maybe new constructions can taken better advantage of these tvs. It would be fascinating if the same device that caused designs to center around itself then, now shift that design to something else.

What if we could just put these displays were our windows are?

If you only want to watch TV at nighttime or maybe when it's overcast, and don't mind your neighbors watching your TV

Watching the show backwards?!

I do that all the time. When I'm in the kitchen the only way I can see the TV is via the mirror in the breakfast room.

As long as you don't watch cheesy TV Detective dramas while you cook: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheKillerWasLeft...

In-window shade.

Even with a blackout shade behind it for TV mode, I have to wonder how long it would take for the sunlight to cook the panel

I can see it working for glass houses that need to occasionally need a TV (think really rich people with overzealous architects). The cooking problem is situational and not always an issue for every window.

I would instead love E-shades to be a thing instead, I'm still waiting to press a button to make my windows go dark.

> would instead love E-shades to be a thing instead, I'm still waiting to press a button to make my windows go dark

These exist. I’m considering putting smart film on my bathroom and home office windows.

I’ve only seen samples for sale, and any sort of large scale installation is “contact us, we might have something.” I’ll just stick with Lutron until suppliers get their act together.

I’m surprised Hunter Douglas hasn’t gotten into the game.

Any brand name to kick off a search?

> Any brand name to kick off a search?

I’m still doing the research. Searching smart film or tint gets me lots of options.

If it's part of a window shade, then what advantage does transparency have?

Flickering tvs in windows would make being outside in a place with buildings become like being on a webpage full of video ads.

Then you'd have ZERO natural lighting in your house. Far more realistic is using them in lieu of traditional "paintings" though outside of Samsung Frame - most of them have poor viewing angles and are glossy which destroys the illusion.

> TVs are so predominant in our lives that room layouts and furniture are often designed around their presence

I hate this and had to fight my designer about hiding the TV. (We compromised on hiding cabling behind the wall, flush mounting and putting it in the basement.)

That said, I don’t see it having a mass market.

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