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Is Xiaomi's transparent TV the biggest design fail ever? (archive)
Many strange things have happened in 2020, so it's probably the perfect year for Chinese tech company Xiaomi to announce the world's first completely transparent TV. And if you're wondering that the point of it is, we're here to tell you that you're not alone.
Available in China from from 16 August, the snappily named Xiaomi Mi TV LUX OLED Transparent Edition will cost ¥49,999 ($7,200/£5,500), offering "an ultra-immersive viewing experience" in which "images seem to be suspended in the air". That is, we assume, as long as your TV isn't positioned against a wall.
[...] In a blog post on its website (adorned with several images of women in extravagant ballgowns standing behind transparent TVs, because why not?), Xiaomi calls the TV "a new way to consume visual content previously only seen in science fiction films". Unlike traditional TVs, the Mi TV LUX Transparent Edition "creatively embeds all the processing units in its base stand". The TV sports a 55-inch OLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate and 150000:1 static contrast ratio.
Get your transparent APNGs ready.
Also at The Verge.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by EEMac on Sunday August 16 2020, @01:59PM (7 children)
My rating: VERY cool.
This kind of technology has a TON of applications, most of which we haven't thought of yet.
How long have movies been showing us transparent screens with information on them? They look cool. They also make it easy to share graphical information with a large group, without losing half a wall to a large opaque screen. You can layer information with multiple screens.
In about 15 years this will be old hat. OF COURSE your freezer has a display layer that shows you what's inside before you open the door. Why wouldn't it? Shop window ads are an easy sell - others have already mentioned this. What about "smart" home windows? With this, your TV could become a window. Or every window could become a viewscreen . . . tired of seeing a dreary winter outside? Replace it with an animated summer scene.
Even just using it for lighting: if it's dark out and you want light indoors, set the viewscreen to a solid color that approximates the type and brightness of light you want. I read about this in "The Humanoids" by Jack Williamson a few weeks ago and thought it was a brilliant idea. Today it's possible.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 16 2020, @03:39PM (6 children)
Thermal insulation efficiency. Cheaper, easier, better to put a camera inside, flat screen on the outside and keep several inches of high efficiency foam in the door and walls of the freezer. Personally, I'd buy a fridge/freezer with this feature long before one that connects to the internet.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday August 18 2020, @01:50PM (5 children)
Absolutely!
Except...You'd need *lots* of cameras, and some pretty intensive image-stitching software - there's no point on the door that can actually see all of the freezer. Not unless you keep your freezer almost empty.*
Or, I suppose a camera out on the handle edge of the door, that photographs the freezer while you're closing the door and then crops and perspective corrects it to display as a static image.
*don't do that - it puts a horrible load on a cooling system which expects a large amount of thermal mass in the form of frozen foods. If your freezer (or fridge) would be mostly empty, put a bunch of gallon jugs of water at the back for thermal mass.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 18 2020, @04:48PM (4 children)
Now you're thinking... but it's just a picture of how things looked when you closed the door, before the beer bottle exploded...
As for cameras all over... cameras are getting so damn cheap to make, the bigger problem with cameras all over is the cost/complexity of wiring to connect them which could be higher than the cost of a dozen "adequate" near field cameras. Since you don't need a fast refresh rate, one wire serial comms might be the way to go. Probably do want the wires to be able to carry enough current to run a defrost cycle on the lenses, even if it's just one at a time.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday August 19 2020, @12:24AM (3 children)
True - but are you really going to care that it exploded before opening the freezer? Beside, that's a whole lot of added complexity to handle a pretty rare corner case. For the most part things are extremely inert in the freezer. And for myself at least, packed in to the point that even just looking at what's visible through a glass door wouldn't actually be terribly informative.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 19 2020, @01:05AM (2 children)
Which is why UPC codes should all be RFID, instant inventory...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday August 19 2020, @02:07AM (1 child)
Now _that_ could be handy - forget the "transparent" door.
Of course, it'd be useless for about half the stuff in my freezer - no codes for butchered meat, produce, or frozen leftovers. But still, it'd be great to have a reminder of that X that got shoved behind everything else.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 19 2020, @12:16PM
I'm thinking disruptive tech: make an RFID printer that's approaching ordinary label printer costs per label.
It would be especially valuable on things like butchered meat and produce since it could carry date codes...
Now, if you're my wife who takes everything out of the store packaging and re-packages it before putting it in the fridge, well... her fancy little reusable containers could read the RFID off of the store packaging and then re-transmit that info to the inventory scanner. Come to think of it, if you've got reusable containers, your phone could scan an ink-on-paper QR code and zap it into the container.
🌻🌻 [google.com]