LG envisions a bed with a hidden look-through OLED TV set

LG Display has continued its trend of re-imagining the future of screens at CES 2021 with the new Transparent TV. The panel is a 55-inch OLED, but its transparent design allows you to see it as you turn it on and display the image.

LG Display says that the screen achieves 100% transparency, which is an improvement over the company’s transparent LCD in the past, which claims that the company has achieved only 10% transparency.

LG envisions a screen sitting under the bed, where it can be partially or completely raised to show information or videos while maintaining a view of the other side of the screen. The panel that was designed now has built-in speakers in the form of LG Display’s Cinematic Sound OLED (CSO) technology, which uses the vibrations of the screen to create the Dio. This is the same audio Dio system found on LG’s other OLED prototype that was unveiled at CES this year, a bendable gaming monitor that can turn from flat to curve.

LG says the transparent OLED set can also be moved around the house if you want to put it elsewhere (if it were something you could actually buy, something you can’t do right now).

Image: LG Display

The company sees this as both a smart home device and one that could one day be used in restaurants and public transport in public settings.

“Transparent OELD is a technology that maximizes the benefits of OLED and can be used in everything from stores, shopping malls and architectural interiors to autonomous vehicles, subway trains and aircraft,” said Jong-Sun Park, L.G. Display’s senior vice president and head of commercial business, said in a statement. “It will grow into the next pay generation display that can replace existing display patterns.”

Image: LG Display

This is not the first transparent demonstration to debut at CES; We’ve seen Samsung’s transparent OLED screens before, and Panasonic showed off a prototype transparent display in 2016 (although it was only HD). And it’s not even LG’s first transparent OLED – the company announced last month that it has begun developing OELD sliding doors for office fee buildings and commercial spaces. LG also created a 77-inch curved transparent OLED in 2017 that is envisioned to be used for signature or advertising.

But this is the first screen of that kind of LG display that has been built as rigidly as a TV, which can really go into someone’s home, and not just something you’ll see in a future shopping center or any other business location.

This is just one of many in the long line of LG display experimental prototypes, some of which actually become real products you buy. The company has made waves in previous CES performances with various iterations of its rollable OLED technology, while the commercial version of the TV using the tech finally sold for an 3,000 in South Korea in October last year.

Unfortunately, there is no indication right now that LG’s new transparent OLED TV will become a real product at some point in the future or how much it will cost.