transparent, wireless and ever-larger TVs

The 2024 edition of CES, the global innovation show, closed its doors on Friday January 12. In Las Vegas, there was a lot of talk about artificial intelligence, robotics and the cars of tomorrow, but also about TVs and flat screens with three major trends.

The first trend, on the screen side, is transparency. It has been several years since Samsung and LG presented prototypes here more intended for store windows. This year, the big news is that transparency is coming to our televisions.

This transparency is not total at LG with its 77-inch OLED T screen, which is not fixed to the wall, but embedded between the uprights of a black metal shelf, made to sit in the middle of the living room. You can see clearly through it, but without the feeling of glass. Pressing a button on the remote control triggers the unfolding of an opaque film behind the screen, to block out the light and switch to traditional TV mode.

Completely transparent and frameless

For its part, Samsung is going for total transparency, this time, with its transparent Micro LED, even brighter, which does not even have a frame, like a rectangle of glass. Of the two, only LG’s OLED T is promised for a commercial arrival this year, and more precisely this summer, but its price remains, for the moment, a mystery.

Second trend: the disappearance of cables! Wireless, our dream, especially when one or more unsightly black cables run along a white wall. This is LG’s other promise with its OLED T: a transparent and wireless screen. All audio and video connections, connection to your box, to a games console, to an Apple TV type interface, are done via a box that can be hidden in a piece of furniture, at the other end of the room.

Wireless screens with rechargeable batteries

Speaking of truly wireless screens, the American Displace caused a sensation last year, with its affordable battery-powered televisions that can be charged and swapped. A screen that you literally stick to the wall, without the need for any support. The new models have reinforced suction cups, and they allow teleshopping by simply bringing your smartphone close to the screen, like a contactless payment terminal.

Finally, we are not stopping the increase in the diagonal of flat screens. And in this cat and mouse game, the match of the week did not pit Samsung against LG, but Hisense against TCL. TCL with its immense 115-inch microLED, announced for the equivalent of €20,000; and Hisense which tilts with five inches less diagonally, or a little less than 13 centimeters: 110 inches instead of 115 but this 110UX is twice as bright as its competitor from TCL, itself already twice as bright brighter than traditional OLED screens. Smaller therefore, but probably not cheaper.