SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 2) by VLM on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:57PM (2 children)
I'd rather see transparent gowns and brightly colored TVs, but whatever.
My guess is you stack like 30 displays on top of each other and burn 30 times the bandwidth for real true 30 pixel deep pr0n^H^H^H^H I mean valuable politically correct 3d video content.
The gown thing is kinda funny to think seriously about... in COVID-era womens clothes stores the changing rooms are closed down, so my wife claims, so you line up woman, transparent TV projecting an image of her proposed new clothes, and a mirror, and have her twirl around in front of the live action spy cam that updates the image of the clothes to match her reflected eye height and so forth as she wiggles. The problem is you could do this with a desktop, fancy video card, and webcam today, and not need the woman-size see thru TV technology. Still, it gives brick and mortar a slight reason to stay in business a little bit longer. Isn't going to save J C Penny in time, but it'll help some stores, probably Target. I would imagine given the clientele, setting a TV on the sales floor at a walmart would get it stolen or smashed, so yeah Target is probs minimal demographic for this tech.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday August 16 2020, @04:40PM (1 child)
n COVID-era womens clothes stores the changing rooms are closed down, so my wife claims, so you line up woman, transparent TV projecting an image of her proposed new clothes, and a mirror, and have her twirl around in front of the live action spy cam that updates the image of the clothes to match her reflected eye height and so forth as she wiggles.
This doesn't help you determine how well the clothes fit or feel. Maybe if they had some ultra-accurate measurements of your entire body, and of the clothing too (there can be a lot of variation in clothing; the sizes printed are just a general guideline and things vary a lot from company to company and item to item). The solution to this should be simple: just order what you want online, try it on, send back the stuff you don't like. But this only works for some very large retailers that can get good shipping deals.
Isn't going to save J C Penny in time
Nothing can save JCPenney; it's been doomed for a long time, just like Sears. America has had too much retail for a long time now, and online retailers have been killing off the dinosaurs like these two. The entire concept of the "department store" has been outdated in America for 1-2 decades at this point, and it's amazing they've held on as long as they have. Macy's will be next. Lord and Taylor just declared bankruptcy. Macy's will be the last one for a while, before it finally goes under, taking a lot of malls with it. Some of them will probably be revived as Amazon shipping centers.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday August 18 2020, @01:20PM
Yes the department store idea died a long time ago, I haven't been to a JCP in years but I understand they gave up on appliances and electronics. Most former dept stores seem to be womens clothing stores, dept in name only.
I was surprised the biggest variation in clothing size is asian vs usa, asian 3XL is like usa medium. Resellers usually don't bother to translate sizes, just whatever is on the tag goes on the amazon page. Generally in country and especially in-company things are more consistent. I can wear any new balance 10.5 shoe very comfortably and have bought them from amazon for many years. Strange how the main force of vendor lockin for me is incompetent clothing sizes.
AFAIK one of the bidders for JCP's carcass was Amazon to make delivery centers.