Panasonic teases transparent OLED display ahead of global December launch
Now, Panasonic has announced a competitor to the Mi TV Lux, and it will be available globally. Called the Transparent OLED Display Module or the TP-55ZT100 and TP-55ZT110 to go by its model numbers, Panasonic's attempt will also cost about US$7,200.
It seems that Panasonic has used the same 55-inch screen present on the Mi TV Lux, too. This means that the TP-55ZT100 and TP-55ZT110 will only be 1080p TVs. Additionally, they will only have a single HDMI 1.4 port and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. Hence, Panasonic has done away with an integrated TV tuner or any smart TV features - effectively making the TP-55ZT100 and TP-55ZT110 mere monitors, rather than TVs.
Panasonic's attempt is not only exciting for its global availability, though. The TP-55ZT110 also has a dimming unit, which Panasonic claims:
reduces the light transmittance to decrease the amount of light passing through the panel from the rear side, thus making the displayed image highly visible even in an environment brightly lit by outside lights. The background is not transparent, so the displayed image is highly visible, with high contrast and deep black levels and without disturbing reflections or glares.
In short, the dimming unit in the TP-55ZT110 can make it seem as though the display is not transparent. The inclusion of a dimming unit adds 6 kg to the device's weight compared to the TP-55ZT100, though.
Previously: Xiaomi Launches a Nearly Useless Transparent OLED TV
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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: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23 2020, @01:10AM (3 children)
Fianllly a compnay understanding. TV are NOT self units any more. TV is a display, a component to entertainment system, period any of sentence and thought.
ROKU, FIRE, APPLETV are the the TVs now. Pick the one that works best for your household. (ROKU here).
Sound is independant too! So you pick the sound system of your choice. Again they are nothing more than the AMP and SPEAKERS (if not built in to one another). No tuner, no device switcher, just the damn sound!
Then if you want over the air or cable... get HDhomerun. APP runs on ROKU. PLEX (my DVR selection) can also record form HDhomerun. It comes with 2, 3, 4 tuners built in. Hence one antenna one box, multiple uses like 3 games at the same time!
y front room has ROKU TV and ROKU connected projrector. Share sound system with a push of a chep selector. Can use the projector during daylight hours wall is washed out.
But yes... All I need is monitor no on/off, no tunrer, no second, third, forth remote.
(Score: 4, Informative) by EvilSS on Monday November 23 2020, @01:20AM (1 child)
Ah, no. The company understands that this isn't a consumer device, it's a commercial display, thus the lack of smart features. The vast majority of consumers won't want a transparent, $7K+ 1080p TV for their homes, and the ones that do will be quickly dispelled of that if they fork out the money for one. The market for transparent displays is in the commercial sector, mainly for eye-catching signage. The article even points this out:
The commercial market is full of "non-smart" display for these purposes. Consumers, like it or not, are what drives the smart TV market. Way too many people just use the smart TV functions and forgo a 3rd party streaming box. We think it's dumb, but we are not the majority in this case.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23 2020, @03:50AM
My sister bought 4K smart TVs for her home “the are the best”. I dented a ROKU She took “100 button” remote and tossed in drawers after setting the tv to used hdmi1. Now only use the simple ROKU remote.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday November 23 2020, @03:46PM
What exactly are you complaining about?
Are you really so hard up that you object to the price of a TV being raised by maybe $5 so that it's useful even without any extra hardware?
I don't think I've ever seen a TV without audio out, aside from some ultra-budget CRT models back in the day. I don't begrudge the $1 backup speakers incorporated into them for people who don't have decent speakers hooked up. I even use them occasionally in situations where better speakers would just be unecessary clutter (e.g. as speakers for my office computer) and without the integrated D-to-A audio converter (which allows you to use cheap analog speakers and amplifiers) you'd need an expensive external digital unit with variable time delay that you would have to adjust to compensate for the digital signal decoding delay within the TV.
The tuner is dirt cheap as well as a solder-on component, and without it TVs would be far less useful for most people since they could no longer get local broadcast channels. And external tuners are far more expensive and less convenient, not to mention adding extra clutter. I know I don't want to deal with a separate remote control for changing channels, or having to buy an extra programmable remote. Especially as people ditch cable for streaming services, convenient access to local broadcast channels is becoming important again.
As for the "Smart" TV features - those are basically free on a per-unit basis (unless licensed from a third party). Since they're working with digital signals, modern TV's need considerable CPU power for "dumb" features like image tuning and re-scaling of video signals at non-native resolutions. The "smart" features just use that same CPU power while the "dumb" features aren't in use.
If all you want is a monitor, go buy a monitor - it's not like there's any shortage of them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23 2020, @04:32AM
TFA didn't even mention the surveillance cameras positioned behind the display.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23 2020, @01:30PM (1 child)
It seems to me this is going to be a horrific flop simply from the standpoint of viewability. Trying to watch content on a screen that has something behind it showing through, creating visible dissonance, would be an exercise, definitely not an enjoyable experience. I don't see any advantage to seeing the wall behind my TV as I'm watching TV, and I'm not painting my wall black.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday November 23 2020, @03:54PM
Good point, except for two huge details:
1) The screen also incorporates programmable opacity (they call it dimming), so you could conceivably do things like put it in front of a window so you can see outside while the TV is off, and "turn off the window" while watching TV. (though really, dimming enough to block daylight would probably be a challenge)
2) The screen is almost certainly not being designed for watching TV, but instead for transparent signage and other commercial usage. Think mall windows in, instead of displaying static painted-on or peel-and-stick vinyl teasers, displayed animated ones that could move around the window while only obstructing the view immediately behind them. Or airport flight information displayed as opaque text floating on a big sheet of transparent glass.