Holy crap! LG has made HDTV as thin as wallpaper

By

The future is looking bright.
The future of television is crazy thin.
Photo: LG Display

Short on room space? LG has just busted through the thinness limit on massive screened television sets and unveiled its proof of concept HDTV that’s as thin as paper.

Sure, it’s not in production yet, and will likely cost way too much for the average person to buy at first, but a press-on wallpaper television set is pretty high on our list of wants.

The LG television is a 55-inch organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display that only weighs 1.9 kilograms and is less than one millimeter thin. You’ll mount a magnetic mat to your wall, and then stick the TV on top of that. Need to move your TV to another room? Simply peel it off the wall and stick it on any other magnet mat you’ve got up.

Magic!

LG Display is focusing on OLED tech, according to the head of LG Display’s business unit, Sang-Deog Yeo. “OLED represents a groundbreaking technology,” he said in a press release, one that will affect not only his company but the industry itself.

OLED technology adds an organic component to the already widely-used LED technology in most current-generation HDTVs, allowing the displays to be curved, and eliminating the need for any backlight. That’s how LG is pushing to thinner and thinner monitors like the one it’s showing off at the Korean press event.

Currently, a non-super thin OLED display like the LG 65-inch 4K TV will run you $9,000, so don’t plan on seeing anything this impossibly thin at anything approaching an affordable price anytime soon. Even the “father of OLED,” Ching W. Tang of the University of Rochester in New York says that OLED will only become ubiquitous in another five to ten years.

Still, LG Display expects to sell 600,000 OLED TVs this year, ramping up to 1.5 million next. It’s a brave new world, and it can only get better with sweet tech like this.

Source: CNET

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.