LG’s see-through TV leads the pack in wow factor at tech show

The CES technology show in Las Vegas has kicked off with the unveiling of a raft of new TVs, highlighted by LG’s Signature OLED T, a transparent and wireless panel designed to blend into any room.

The OLED T appears more or less see-through when it’s turned off, and semi-transparent when it’s in use. This means it can be placed in the middle of a room, and LG plans to sell it with optional bespoke floating shelves to help it become a functional room divider. It also has a motorised backplate which can be raised so that it appears opaque, like a traditional TV, for when you want to concentrate on watching.

LG’s Signature OLED T is see-through and cable-free, besides its power cable which is conspicuously absent from promotional pictures.

The TV uses a separate processor box to house its electronics, ports and connectivity tech, which beams a signal wirelessly to the panel, meaning you don’t need to keep your disc players, set-top boxes or game consoles near the TV. This also means no wires snaking around the panel that could ruin the see-through effect.

LG claims the 77-inch panel can run content at up to 4K and 120Hz with no latency or dropped frames, as long as the processor box is within around 8 metres and has a direct line of sight to the TV. It has shown this technology to be capable, with its current OLED M series. LG has not yet announced pricing or availability for the device, but previous TVs in its signature series have tended to go for tens of thousands of dollars.

Samsung’s big innovation in the consumer TV space for the show may be a bit more practical, with its S95D boasting a glare-free display that the company said all but eliminates reflections on the screen. While anti-glare treatments are nothing new, Samsung said this was a freshly developed hard coating layer and pattern which reduced reflections more than before, with no impact on colour or brightness. In fact, this third generation of Samsung OLEDs is its brightest yet.

Samsung claims its S95D greatly reduces glare and reflections.

The TV supports up to 4K and 144Hz, and like LG’s transparent TV (and previous Samsungs including the S95C) it also stores all its guts in a separate processor box. But this one isn’t wireless; it connects to the TV with a single cable.

Both companies made a big deal of the improved AI capabilities of their TVs. Samsung said the new chip in its 2024 Neo QLED 8K was twice as good at generating sharp images from lower-resolution content, which is especially handy given the lack of native 8K content. LG – which at its pre-show press conference redefined its approach to AI as “affectionate intelligence”, to cringes from the audience – said its high-end OLED M4 and G4 have a new chip providing four times the AI power of last year’s models. It’s used to upscale, dynamically apply colour tones and separate audio tracks to create a 15-channel mix.

And in case you were worried that the days of CES featuring impractically enormous TVs were over, TCL and Hisense both showed up with models exceeding 100 inches (2.5 metres) diagonally. More impressively, some of the models are claimed to reach peak brightness of more than 5000 nits, more than doubling the brightness of the most vibrant TVs currently on the market.

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