Samsung has unveiled a Micro-LED version of a see-through TV that it says offers a brighter display with more vivid colours than LCD and even OLED version. Yet it retains its transparency.
A transparent TV is somewhat of a double act. The TV becomes a pane of glass when switched off. That’s useful for shop windows and in a new-age home where you might utilise a transparent TV as an internal window. Having one as an external window will be more difficult due to lighting challenges.
It certainly has the wow factor, but that doesn’t mean the case for transparent TVs has been made. Samsung released its first transparent TV based on LCD technology in 2011, and 13 years later, they haven’t exactly taken off.
But this time the tech giant hopes things will be different with a much enhanced picture quality the leading factor.
Samsung also sees extended reality as providing a new use case for transparent TVs, where content from the screen and surrounding environment are mixed together, but we’re yet to see how this will play out in practice. It says the TV is the product of “six years of tireless research and development”.
From the initial reports, the Transparent Micro-LED TV does offer brighter and more vivid colours compared to the earlier LCD and OLED versions.
LG has also unveiled a new transparent TV with an OLED panel that looks more like a glass feature case than a regular set. It will look good in your loungeroom if that is what you want.
Xiaomi blitzed the market in 2020 with a transparent TV called the Mi TV LUX, an OLED set that did away with the need for backlighting, which markedly improved the image quality.
