LG and Samsung are making TV screens disappear
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What happens? I get a popup every few times I turn on the TV telling me that I can enable Alexa support by connecting it to the internet. It's an ad. For itself.
I connected it to the internet. Now I get other ads in that way instead.
LG is no savior in the anti-ad race.
FWIW - on most LG TVs, you can 'revoke' your acceptance of the EULA, which essentially returns the TV to non-smart status. Most of the tiles will disappear from the home screen, as will the ads. Depending on the model you might need to futz with the settings to make sure that the TV defaults to the hdmi input instead of the homescreen when you turn it on.
With the development time and money saved they could afford to implement a few thoughtful touches like a physical master on/off switch. If that switch is on, then the TV is on whenever power is present. This allows it to be controlled with a simple home automation power plug. A soft on/off control can still exist downstream of the physical switch.
Is full of ads due to Android TV mandating it.
No, I don't need to learn about this new show you have on some service I don't have a subscription to. No I don't want this app to setup an applet on the homepage.
All I want is a list of apps, a settings button and a shut down one. On a plain black background with no moving part.
Android TV has an "Apps only" mode that does exactly that: https://support.google.com/googletv/answer/10070784?hl=en
The downside (which some might consider an upside) is that that mode also breaks voice control.
The only drawback is the lack of HDMI passthrough for Plex. I have an Nvidia shield just for this use case.
Projectivity launcher
It does push paid content (as in rented/purchased movies/tv shows); I don't consider these to be adverts, per se, but obviously you might.
There is a popular guide for downgrading to v8 somewhere online as that is/was one of the more stable versions of the OS.
Then someone replies, "I connected it to the internet. Now I get ads ..."
It's like commenters submitting replies just skip over certain sentences like they do not matter.
What I am curious about is what happens if one gives the TV an internet connection but no DNS. I am assuming it gets its DNS server IPs from DHCP, TV owner controls DHCP and sets up a local authoritative DNS server with wildcard RR pointing every domain to nowhere.
> I get a popup every few times I turn on the TV telling me that I can enable Alexa support by connecting it to the internet. It's an ad. For itself.
The decision whether to let the TV have an internet connection still rests with the TV owner, i.e., the internet subscriber.
The one who pays the internet bill decides when internet connections are made. Software developers might believe someone else's bandwidth is theirs to use as they please. They might employ dark patterns to get "permission" or "consent".
But neither developers nor advertisers are paying for the victim's internet connection. It is not their choice to make.
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Had to buy an AppleTV (box), factory reset the TV, and use the AppleTV to stream to my TV over HDMI.
TV worked fine when I first got it, but after updates and internet it just became completely useless if left to it's own.
I recently started using Projectivy Launcher, which is a different home app for android tvs.
It has a 42" FHD panel and two hdmi input. It's got ZERO smart features. For ~250 euros.
I love it. I'll keep it around as much as possible.
Who doesn't do that today, however? Consumer brands and models all fall into this category. Short of buying a signage display or a big monitor, both being a lot more expensive than a Smart TV also because of their better build quality, I don't see how one could protect themselves from that crap just by using consumer products.
There are even some "smart" ones now with (presumably more hackable) Android built in, if you want a little more than a dumb TV.
Example video of installing one in a Samsung (not English - unsurprisingly, most of these videos are from the Orient): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB08gp2dIjk
Old detailed review of one: http://web.archive.org/web/20190511065920/http://redlightgre...
and its discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24877363
I blocked every Samsung domain that I possible could in a fit of rage.
Now, instead of getting some random jarring channels when I turn on the TV (or.. random times), at worst it's a black screen that says "something went wrong" and I open the thing I want. The TV just slams the pihole with failed DNS requests over and over.
Perhaps combining a transparent display with a pure black gives better blacks for displays but until there's better color control this would result in a much worse television.
Samsung and LG have the problem of how to to create the next desirable product.
A Terrace can do 1500+ nits, and it's about the best you can get for full-screen brightness, though for 50%-of-screen brightness rtings lists some TCL models as beating it and some several other models as being close.
The 2 screens on the top left in this image (https://mediaim.expedia.com/destination/1/7b3980b3f80540d120...) have no trouble displaying bright white or other colors in the midday sun. (note: that photo itself looks edited, over saturated, high contrast) but those displays look great in person.
The media calling these "Transparent TVs" instead of "Transparent Displays" is inaccurate and doing a disservice to both their readers and the devices.
Honestly I am a bit impressed, I am not sure I could have designed a clock face that is simultaneously too dark on a dark background and too light on a light background.
"I can hear something but I don't see anything." Luke squinted up at the twin suns. "3PO, help me get this little R2 unit inside where it's dark. Maybe I'll be able to see the hologram in there."
They went out of their way to say this is NOT because the televisions are inexpensive. It is a design decision. Samsung response was basically a non answer. These companies don’t care about the longevity of their products. They will happily sell whatever sells the best.
And if televisions break every three years, that’s good for business I guess?
So I'm not quite sure about the comment that "it is not because the televisions are inexpensive".
The problem seems to be heat, and edge-lit concentrates heat along the (small) light source. Better materials, bigger heatsinks etc. can combat this but since cost was the driving factor that negates the entire existence of the edge-lit display.
And I'm not sure about thin bezels? They are talking about thickness, no?
The screen has had lines for a while, annoying, but not critical. Now there’s a power issue where it powers off in a few minutes
Now, this is out of warranty, and, it turns out, the 2 LG repair locations in the Seattle area no longer do TVs
LG know this is a problem - they are currently sending parts, and there’s a West Coast LG repair guy who will come and fix it when the parts arrive
A 4K $4k TV that isn’t that old and is almost un repairable is crazy
Anything with some exotic screen is going to cost more money and be harder to fix - pay for the extended warranty!
Note - my credit card has automatic extended warranty, but I need a quote for fixing the item, and there are absolutely no authorized repair people within 500 miles of Seattle to even get that!
I paid extra for an extended warranty.
After a couple of years the power supply started to fail, and the company that sold me the warranty had gone bankrupt.
You're not describing a new problem, I don't think.
(Next, can we talk about the reliability of exotic cars?)
I want a bigger TV but I can't justify throwing this perfectly functioning television out.
Sucks to be me.
Meanwhile another Insignia TV I bought more recently started getting dead pixels a couple days after the warranty expired...
Voila, you need a new TV.
To consume as directed you need to enjoy the most luxurious product you can get for your top-dollar, if you can afford it, with confidence that the features are at least on par with the modern bargain alternatives. That's a fairly definite bar when it comes to disposability/non-repairability, but engineering-to-specifications can adapt by being informed from experience with lesser models.
Don't worry, they really are intended to last as long as the cheapest crummiest models on the average.
What is shit concept. As tech becomes more varied repairs will become more of a project instead of a process. I mean repairs will be more expensive and less likely to succeed (I think this will be offset by decreasing prices and wider parts availability).
Think about how many fields are already screwed over to the point of demanding legal protections for repairing their own stuff. Somehow Nebraska farmers and New York smartphone repair companies teamed up to push right to repair.
Somehow we need to bake this decentralized model of repair into our culture. If you can find "authorized repair people" in Seattle, then I certainly won't find them in Omaha. If parts are available I would certainly try repairs on my own. I recently fixed a kindle, and replaced a few phone screens, I built a 3d printer from parts, maybe I could fix a TV if the manufacturer doesn't actively stand in the way.
Only if consumers have a preference for TVs with short lifespans, which they don't.
I realize my very small social bubble is not remotely large enough for an actual population sample, but I feel like it's just common sense. Things like Temu exist because this is a very common way of thinking.
But things are better. Sure televisions have a shorter life span. They are also absurdly cheaper than they have ever been. To not ack that the lower cost options are, at large, what we are complaining about hits me the wrong way.
Are they cheaper or just larger?
I would be interested in knowing how much harder it is to recycle these new panels. And what the environmental impact of producing them is. I would not be at all shocked to know that the effort that goes into making them lowers both of those metrics. I would be shocked if it is dramatic.
I actually had a hard time finding a place to actually take my last LCD TV for recycling. It was 55", but the local recycler only took LCDs up to 50" in size. They suggested going to Best Buy or other places as they took TVs up to I think 70" or something. But the people at the Best Buy nearby didn't understand me wanting to recycle the TV, they kept asking why I didn't just throw it in the trash. They ultimately wanted to charge me something like $40 to take the TV for recycling.
The article also fails to mention transparent LCD, which is a closely related cousin with inverse properties: where transparent OLED is emissive and is transparent where it receives black signal, transparent LCD is non-emissive (needs a backlight) and is transparent where the signal is white and opaque to a greater or lesser degree where the signal is black.
Are these displays capable of only emitting light in one direction?
I would think that the light would bleed out both sides.
Also, there are plenty of existing teleprompter solutions using angled glass instead of a transparent led panel.
A high-rez version is used for what stage people call "holograms". They're not really holograms, just flat projections on a mesh scrim. The projectors operate at a sharp angle and are placed above or below, and close to, the scrim.[2] That way, the excess light goes into the floor or the ceiling, rather than illuminating what's behind the scrim, which spoils the effect. This works in settings where you have total control over staging, lighting and backdrops. Like this.[3]
[1] https://youtu.be/u16kKribb_4?t=390
[2] https://www.showtex.com/en/blog/buyers-guide-fabrics/making-...
Projectors have limitations to begin with. And this idea takes all of those limitations, and adds even more inefficiency to them.
A major hurdle in projection that still remains today is brightness.
A projection screen that offers 50% optical transparency throws away at least 50% of the light energy that hits it: Of all the light being directed towards that screen to produce an image, no more than half of it can be reflected.
And furthermore, a screen with 50% transparency doesn't look very transparent at all. A hypothetical frosted screen that is suitable for projection with 50% reflection and 50% transmission might not look even a tiny bit like a window.
In short-term visual effects for stagecraft and amusements, that's not a big deal. "Oh, we lose fifty or sixty or ninety percent of the light we project for this effect? No worries; we'll just use a bigger, brighter projector until the effect works. Call Andy over at the rental house and see what he can get for us."
But in long-term use, that kind of built-in inefficiency is mostly a non-starter: It's inefficient to over-build the equipment in this way, and it's inefficient to burn (waste) the energy to keep it going.
Maybe with some massive improvements in material science we can have a semi-transparent screen that concurrently reflects and transmits light over-unity, but we're not there yet. But to hazard a guess, it's probably easier to accelerate a mass beyond the speed of light than to pull off that particular trick.
(Meanwhile, see-through/transparent LED-based displays with decent-ish optical transmission? Whether good or bad, that technology seems to be right around the corner.)
So TV < laser < bulb. The short throw design doesn't seem to change the numbers much.
I can see attractions in restaurants, shops, theme parks, airports, museums, etc but does it matter to consumers other than fancy picture frames/screen savers and showing the weather?
What if the image or text I’m looking at blends in with the color or texture of the real background? That wouldn’t matter commercially where displayed media is more controlled by the owner, but in a house you’re viewing casually.
For transparent TVs, I don't see how those are useful at all, except as a novelty or for retail advertising or the like. If they could be transparent when turned off, and then when powered on show an image that looks as good as a normal TV, then I could see the appeal, but (AFAICT) that's not how they work.
If your place has horrible views I suggest to move to a better one, not create some alternative dystopian reality for yourself. But maybe I am just getting old.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Still an enthusiasts device though really and your point stands I just found those short throw devices quite interesting.
A lot of people might not use them very much but I've never been in a house without one.
The content preference isn't really relevant to whether you use a TV or a projector.
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 ;)
Per 1984, for the daily rage.
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 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.
Passthrough is the lazy solution for now, but requires an insane amount of over-engineering. Something always feels off, even with the overkill hardware of the Apple vision pro.
Of course, if Android TVs with user-loaded apps go away and everyone has a locked-down Apple TV, it'll be more difficult and you'd have to block ads at the router level, but for now I'm not too worried about it. Google obviously likes the Android TV approach or else they wouldn't be supporting it as they do, and after all this time they don't seem interested in trying to lock it down the way iOS is.
The ads are coming for all of us. Apple is starting to insert their promos in Apple TV too. There’s no premium option that won’t eventually succumb to the need for moar revenue.
I think the big thing here is also allows for transparency with objects and can be great for way finding or augmentation and disappear when not needed.
Some thoughts after using them extensively.
Why do we need anything transparent for this? Just a normal screen under the countertop would suffice, no?
They've been like five years away for five-to-ten years now, and that fact is very sad.
From TFA.
Another option would be bathroom mirrors displaying news / forecast, which is something hobbyists already implement with one-way mirrors and normal LCD displays hidden behind. At least conceptually, mirrors could become a piece of tech you "upgrade" every 2-5 years. But again, how big is that market?
It could be an alternative to automotive displays. That's a big market, and it would probably look and work better than these "mirror" HUDs you can find in some vehicles today.
Either way, windows are not generally the focal point of the room, you'd have an awkward viewing position.
Most likely the sun would be an issue too, the TV picture would only really be visible during dusk/dawn/night.
Also do you have shutters behind the window so outsiders don't see your screen or...?
I don't see any sort of practicality.
https://www.luxurychicagoapartments.com/blog/luxury-design-e...
If you could turn the window dark with an exterior black out shade, you could have a TV on-demand without completely ruining your view.
It is a very niche use case though, but one I've thought of before when looking at some newer luxury housing that goes for big windows on all sides.
Enter the ad-subsidized rental.
You can now afford a one-bedroom shoebox in a gleaming post-modernist glass tower downtown in exchange for being exposed to streaming ads on all your windows 24 hours a day. These condos have a lot of windows.
Housing crisis solved, and the market of poors is constantly exapanding so even if margins are slim it can be made up for in volume. Win-win.
Oh, you could put art behind it!
Samsung's The Frame TVs might be up your alley if you don't mind wasting some electricity.
It is the worst TV I have ever owned, by a large margin. One of these days I'm probably going to stab it from sheer frustration. The only reason it hasn't long since been replaced is because my wife likes it.
I assume anyone deploying these in the next decade would be running cabling behind the drywall.
Or redesign your living room to include a glass wall like it's a fancy shower, and you can glue the TV to it.
No need for cameras outside to report what's going on to you inside, you can see through.
HUD (E.G: for cars), augmented reality on phones, monitoring for things like patients, babies...
If they manage to deal with the ambient luminosity problem, it can even change the architecture of your room. No more big screens, just windows letting light in, that you can switch to displays when you like.
Even for class room it's better: students will be visible behind their screens to the teacher.
In Canada and other northern latitudes the sun rises and sets during your commuting times, that kind of tech could save lives.
The use-cases presented are:
* Teleprompter-like screen with a camera behind it allowing presenter to look straight into the camera while still seeing the screen.
* Windows in public areas (subway cars, elevators) that display advertisements or animations.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/11/can-cities-ki...
[2]: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret...
It got to the point that, when I visited New York, I got angry at the full-on sensorial assault. My mood was always nasty there.
If this is done responsibly, and used to extend architecture in ways it wouldn't be feasible before, I don't have many reasons to be concerned. OTOH, in places where visual pollution is unregulated, oh boy, it'll be bad.
No, that is just the New York state of mind.
Seems obvious but I've met many who dont see it as sort of brain cancer and consider them harmless.
That is exactly what I said [1] when Apple reportedly killed MicroLED and people say MicroLED has no future. Quoting myself:
>Once I saw the Fully transparent MicroLED on Display in this year's CES , it is only a matter of time before it comes to market. I can immediately see luxury Retail shop paying the premium to get it.
Transparent OLED has slight colour shift and yellow tint to it. While Transparent MicroLED is really, fully transparent. The actual cost or price for these "Windows" compared to the additional space in premium Retail location are tiny. Once you have luxury started ordering and they reach a mass production scale cost will come down within a few years. ( ~2030 ).
While MicroLED may never end up in Smartphone or Tablet. I still think they have great potential elsewhere.
Be amazing in public
Next gen public displays will follow you as you walk across the square with messaging targeted to you .. as the same is done in parallel to hundred others.
This is dystopic.
As if we needed any more of that... do not want.
There's plenty of discussions on how touchscreens in cars are awful, but those who design these abominations are so out of touch with reality that they don't seem to realise that. I suspect the same applies here.
And I'm usually not wearing gloves inside a skid steer/mini ex, unless the heater isn't working.
As a side note... It's interesting how "more advertising opportunity" is a well that never runs dry.
You would think this tops out at some point. That advertiser's won't just spend more and more forever. Turns out, they will.
Imo, this is related in a complex way to etherealization of many modern sectors. Outsourcing, specialization, the proverbial 4-hr workweek... and it's more pertinent SME instantiation.
If your business model is subscription condiments, you probably have the condiments made with your label and perhaps outsource the shipping.
The value add of the consumer facing firm is all marketing. There are no investments or long term improvements to production. You have blunt tools to affect product. It's unsurprising that marketing specialists are big consumers of advertising services.
Meanwhile, modern pay-per-performance advertising represents the down-scalable starting point for nascent businesses. That shapes these firms.
Anyway... There are so many sectors where paying >20% of gross on advertising is normal. It's not obvious what the upper threshold is... especially with digital products.
Personally I think that would be a great idea. But from my (non expert) perspective, for eye contact in video calls, I'd have thought a single camera behind a transparent 30" monitor would be little better than a single camera ontop of a 30" monitor, given that you may have multiple faces on screen and have those faces in different places on screen. Maybe a matrix of cameras behind a transparent screen, with gaze detection and eye tracking to determine which to activate at any time?
A camera so situated would also capture the contents of the display, not just the display user’s face. Others on the call would see the transparent display user’s face occluded by the display’s output.
I remember thinking it was a massive waste of computing power. And they wanted to put it on a phone.
Wait until you hear about filters. Making people look better on their phone camera must employ buildings full of engineers.
I would say this is even more distressing, they are literally trying to invade every damn steradian of your field of view. Soon you won't be able to look out of a train window without ads.
This was Apple’s goal for under and between screen cameras two decades ago [1]. The killer app is video conferencing.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/08/03/26/apples_patent_for...
In any case, a camera behind the screen doesn't completely solve the problem anyway, because the screen can have multiple people. For this application you need either a camera per person, or the pupil re-aiming postprocessing, to give the illusion of presence.
Many people follow CES as it often shows off products that will be available (intended?) for consumer purchase.
It’s confusing if these are being shown at CES, but are actually meant to be used for commercial purposes.
Maybe they can upgrade this to a dynamic e-ink backdrop that's transparent where the camera is, along with an x,y motorized camera that can follow the position of the video window on the screen.
I feel it's something that can be explored better in architecture settings - with this, windows can be used for lighting and decoration. It opens up a lot of interesting possibilities in both commercial and residential settings.
Thanks, I hate it. I like the window looking like window.
This smells the latest in series of increasingly desperate moves. We've had curved screens, 3D screens, 8K screens, etc. already. Who needs those things? Why buy an 8K TV when there's no 8K content whatsoever.
Most people put their TV in front of a wall. That's because they are kind of big and expensive and you don't want to bump into all the time. Which with an invisible by design thing would be a thing. The value of seeing the wall through the TV is very limited. On the other hand, the value of not seeing the wall when you are watching something is pretty high.
See through screens would be great for AR but AR TVs don't sound like they are going to be a thing. This makes more sense in some kind of AR goggles. I could see some limited role for them for advertising like the article suggests but beyond that not really. That would work with normal screens as well of course and would have for the last few decades. But it's still not that common.
My bathroom mirror probably cost something like 10$; I honestly don't care about seeing anything else in it than myself. That's why I have it.