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LG Introduces Rollable OLED TV (arstechnica.com) 90

Posted by BeauHD from the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't dept.
One of the 2019 TV models LG outlined at its CES press conference today was the LG Signature OLED TV R (65R9), which has a display that can roll up and disappear into its base when you're not using it. "LG calls the TV 'a revolutionary innovation that helps address the very human need for an aesthetically pleasing environment' and says it is 'redefining space' to offer unprecedented levels of 'immersion' and 'a new level of space integration,'" reports Ars Technica. From the report: LG says to expect picture quality on par with its just-announced 2019 4K OLED lineup. That means 120Hz and AI image processing using LG's new Alpha 9 Gen 2 CPU. The TV's base -- the same one it rolls into -- houses a 4.2-channel, 100-watt soundbar with Dolby Atmos support. Additionally, the TV doesn't have to scroll all the way in. As seen in one of the images at the start of this article, it can fold down to what LG calls "Line View." This has five modes: music, clock, frame, mood, and home dashboard. Music offers an interface for playing music from the base. Clock shows the time, date, and weather. Frame displays a scrolling line of photos streamed from your smartphone, which is the mode in the photo above. The mood mode is for aesthetics, and home dashboard will allow access to some of LG's usual TV software features. No price has been announced yet, but TechCrunch reports that it could cost more than the 8K TV LG announced last week, which will compete directly with Samsung's $15,000 8K offering. LG says the Signature OLED TV R will be available for purchase in the second half of the year.
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LG Introduces Rollable OLED TV More

LG Introduces Rollable OLED TV

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  • What, again? (Score:3)

    by pablo_max ( 626328 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @02:05AM (#57922762)

    They showed the same thing last year. They also said it will be released in 2019. So, why is it really "news"?
    https://www.theverge.com/2018/... [theverge.com]

    • Re:What, again? (Score:4, Informative)

      by PhunkySchtuff ( 208108 ) <kai&automatica,com,au> on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @02:11AM (#57922782) Homepage

      From TFA:

      OK, so it's just a TV. And the R is not even a totally new concept; I saw an earlier prototype of a rollable OLED display back at CES 2009. But that display was 13-inches, had major limitations, and did not yet look like a consumer product. This time, we're looking at a full-featured, 65-inch TV that's actually coming to market this year.

      • Re:What, again? (Score:4, Funny)

        by mapkinase ( 958129 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @05:43AM (#57923244) Homepage Journal

        >This time, we're looking at a full-featured, 65-inch TV that's actually coming to market this year.

        Now all the billions of people who had watch their movies on plastic roll-up screens with their ancient projectors can jump in to the new exciting inventions.

      • I'm more interested in the microLED panels with zero edge thickness. Those won't roll but they probably can be folded perfectly along the boundaries making a widescreen flip-phone possible. Samsung is making modular living room panels with these in small quantities right now.

    • Re:What, again? (Score:4, Funny)

      by jrumney ( 197329 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @03:29AM (#57922928)
      The innovation this time around is that they now have a screensaver of Banksy's Girl with Red Balloon that displays as it rolls up, so you can pretend you are in an auction house, in case you get sick of pretending you are at the end of an upside down 1970's slide show.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by d0rp ( 888607 )
      Looks like the biggest difference is that the "new" one has a sounbdbar built into the base that it rolls up into.

  • For all practical purposes, standard flat screen TVs take up no living space when wall-mounted. From the looks of it, this thing takes up a bit of floor space, and you can't even put anything on top of it, unless you wanted the stuff knocked on the floor every time you turn on your "boner TV". It truly is a missed opportunity if LG doesn't have it play this sound effect when it finishes extending [youtube.com].

    Furthermore, the whole rollable/disappearing TV concept already exists in a products that have been available

    • It's the perfect height for tripping over in the middle of the night

      • If you walk next to your walls, yeah.

        Actually, though rollable screens make putting the TV in the middle of the room practical. Lets the coffee table off the hook for your bleeding shin.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mashiki ( 184564 )

      Yeah don't see a point with TV's, but I can really see it being the hot-shit thing with laptops and fast.

    • It's gonna be great for easy transportation. Now we can bring our own OLED screen to a lan party.

    • Re:The TV no one asked for (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rickb928 ( 945187 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @09:39AM (#57923990) Homepage Journal

      Projection isn't yet as wonderful to view as OLED screens.

      OLED screens that simply 'go away' have huge appeal. First, they let you have that wall back. For other things. Second, it's practical to deliver a rollable 200 inch screen, while a fixed 200 inch screen might not fit through your door, and would be pretty fragile. I know, nobody needs a 200 inch screen. Nobody needs an 80 inch screen either. And the minimized mode is excellent.

      No one asked for Walkman cassette players. OR CDs. DVDs. Nope. Especially Walkman players, that was a market Sony created. There were maybe 100 skaters like me that strapped an underdash cassette player to a bundle of NiCd batteries, put on those Pro-4AA cans to isolate us from the real world, and limped around like we were cool. Sony figured something out that really didn't exist, and it was 'damn, i need that'. Out of nowhere. Rollable screens will be the same thing. Just not Sony.

      • I like the idea, especially against a wall - the TV could cover pictures, windows, shelves, anything you don't need access to while watching TV. And just getting that big black rectangle out of the room is nice.

        • Yeah, my 4 yr old told me that when he even sees the tv it makes him think about how he wants to watch it. He's not wrong.

    • You don't get it. It's for hipsters, not practical purposes.

  • LG 64.5inch OLED is under $2400. NON-OLED 65in 4k TVs show as low as $530.

    I'm still not sold on OLED, I remember there were issues with the displays degrading over time.

    I'd be concerned with mechanical failures too. Either the mechanism to roll the screen, or the fact the screen is being rolled make me leery.

    When are we going to have rollable tablets like in the movie Red Planet? http://www.flashfilmworks.com/... [flashfilmworks.com]

    • They *DO* have degradation problems. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They literally consume the pixel material to emit light. Not very fast, but a lifetime more similar to a CRT than to a TFT, which other than some extra stuck pixels may last you for decades with no further degradation. (I have one TFT in semi-active operation that is almost 20 years old now! CRTs too, but they were not used 24/7 for most of their life, unlike the TFT.)

      Really the only problems TFTs seem to have is getting cracked when they don't have a protective plexiglass or polycarbonate sheet over their

      • >They literally consume the pixel material to emit light.

        Umm - no. The organic material degrades with use a lot faster than silicon, but it is not "consumed to emit light". A candle is consumed to emit light. A OLED, like CRT phosphors, just wear out with use. A molecule breaks here, another breaks there, eventually enough are broken that it becomes obvious.

        If you could prevent the molecular breakage it would work perfectly, indefinitely. The breakage is not important to the process, unlike in a can

      • TFT backlights wear out as well. The cold cathode tubes dim over time. But until you've got the brightness at 100% for normal viewing it doesn't matter, and in practice capacitor failure will likely have taken the set out first.

  • How often can i be rolled? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by prefec2 ( 875483 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @03:22AM (#57922916)

    If it can be rolled without breaking for 1000 times, it will last only little more than two years, maybe three when you can limit it to one view per day. I want to use devices for at least 10 years.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Don't worry, the feeling is mutual. Not only is that not the TV you want, but you are not the customer that LG wants.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Calydor ( 739835 )

      And pray you don't have teenagers that just want to watch something for five minutes, go do something else, come back to watch something else ...

      • And pray you don't have teenagers that just want to watch something for five minutes, go do something else, come back to watch something else ...

        You seriously think they will bother to roll it up? In my experience they don't even bother to switch off.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Calydor ( 739835 )

          No, but then you go in the living room and roll it up (or down, or whichever it is) by turning it off, and ten minutes later, there's your teen.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by TAz00 ( 1060066 )
      You can have my living room tv, I fire it up once a year to watch the queens new years speech. This would last me 1000 years, perfect.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I mean, she's doing good...but I don't think the queen is going to make it quite that long.

    • That screen's never gonna let you down.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pergamon ( 4359 )

      If it can be rolled without breaking for 1000 times, it will last only little more than two years, maybe three when you can limit it to one view per day. I want to use devices for at least 10 years.

      LG is claiming 50,000: https://www.engadget.com/2019/... [engadget.com]

      • Hmm, 10x per day for almost 14 years? Yeah, that's probably long enough for other problems to develop first.

        I wonder though if rolling accelerates the existing OLED degradation, or if it only degrades in some completely independent way that just has to outlast that. If every roll-up shortened the OLED lifetime by even just several minutes, I might be hesitant to do so too frequently.

      • If it last that long. They will switch broadcasting technology before that ;-)

  • Bottom of the stand in the picture reminds me of mirror setup magicians are using on stage to pretend there is empty space under the box, while in reality, there is enough space to fit their assistant there. By making it few inches higher, they could do the same without any foldable screen, just slide existing flat panel down. Or, if their OLED display is so good, just point backward facing camera on the stand and display area behind it on the screen itself as it lowers and don't use mirrors at all.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by d0rp ( 888607 )
      That's not a bad idea, and could be something you could build yourself for your existing flat screen TV (though it likely would lack the fancy features they have for when it's in it's "almost fully rolled down" state, i.e. displaying the time, weather etc on just the top of the screen).

  • Eh?? (Score:3)

    by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @04:41AM (#57923088) Homepage

    "the very human need" of seeing the wall behind the TV? The only case I could see this being true is if you somehow had a really ugly TV...?
    Another solution in search of a problem.
    We are waiting for rollable/foldable screens on mobile devices*. Give us that. It is nice to have a big screen with you to consume media, but a mobile device that doesn't fit your pocket is no good. Work on that, don't try to hide a perfectly fine TV.
    Unless the master plan is for buyers of this thing to fund R&D for foldable mobile phones? I'd be fine with that.

    *Personally, I'd prefer a slide out full keyboard, which is feasible with current tech (my ancient N900 was doing it great), but it seems I won't be getting that hence I'll have to settle with the foldable screen which has a greater appeal...

    • I actually like not having a TV be the Center piece of my living room that all-must-face. So I use a projector. I plastered the wall so the all itself is worth looking at even as a blank white wall.

      Projectors have downsides: they need dark rooms but I consider that a good thing--- it discourages TV watching during the day when you could be something other than a couch potato. The real downside is they can't match the color saturation and contrast of a good TV. But on the otherhand they are pretty goo

    • It doesn't leave a huge chunk of space behind the screen just gathering dust.
      Same goes for desk-space.
      With the price it will be marketed at (which TFA is only guessing at around $15k) they should really offer some furniture that goes seamlessly with it, in stead of that aluminum stand.

      On the other hand... people who could actually use it will not be able to afford it for at least a decade or so.
      Well... apart for some rich folks roughing it in tiny and overpriced apartments at exclusive locations.
      Or execs hu

    • Think of things you can do with a wall, that you don't mind being blocked while watching TV.

      Pictures? Shelves? Windows? Right now the TV claims exclusive reign over a large chunk of wall space. If it disappeared when off, then you could use that space much more enjoyably.

      There's also the issue of the big ugly black rectangle dominating part of the room for no good reason - why would you want that if you could easily make it go away?

      I agree that roll-up mobiles have a lot more promise - but they are also a

    • > "the very human need" of seeing the wall behind the TV? The only case I could see this being true is if you somehow had a really ugly TV...?

      Off the top of my head I can think of at least 2 use cases.

      1. There are a LOT of condos being built around my city where the living room is basically glass windows on one or two sides, and the best place to locate a TV in the floor plan is right in front of those windows. Would be nice to have the option to have the TV roll away to see the view.

      2. Projector scre

  • Actually there is an application (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Since most content is made on 16:9 most TVs are made that way, but if you can roll up part of the screen you could have 2.35:1 and other ultrawide aspect ratios without black bars. Hell, they could even make it 4:3 base and roll up for 16:9, but that would increase cost and very few people would want that (I would love me some retro gaming / old TV shows on that)

    Very niche and small application, but still somewhat cool.

  • I've always wanted a TV which can roll up into a enormous box laying across the floor.

  • about time (Score:3)

    by sad_ ( 7868 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @06:44AM (#57923364) Homepage

    i used to roll up my newspaper to smash flies and other insects, but since i don't get any newspapers anymore i've been looking for another good replacement.

  • We had this over twenty years ago...
    They called it liquid paper.
    You rolled it out and it was held in place up with Poster clamps type slip-ons.
    You could also cut it to size, the bottom slider had the old RGB connectors.
    That tech got pushed back because CRTs were still selling...
    Forget who made it though and can no longer find anything on the net about it...sigh.

    • You sure you're remembering that name correctly? The only thing I can find with that name is the white-out brand, and it would seem a really odd choice to brand your snazzy display technology the same thing as a well established error correcting fluid, even before you consider the nigh-inevitable trademark battle that would result.

    • or 40 years ago, if you meant Nick Sheridon of Palo Alto's Gyricon project in the 1970s, was with 80 - 100 micrometer black and white spheres inside silicone sheet

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • This sounds like a gimmick, like 3D TV, that very, very few will want.
    • I want it to make very large consumer sets viable. 200 inch sets can't be shipped without damage. Somewhere between 100-150 inches would comfortably fill the wall across from my couch.

      I really see these being build into bookcase valences and lowering. Then the room could be decorated far more flexibly without a clash with the TV.

      • Or forget built in, just set it in front of them and allow for full personalization of what gets hidden. Heck, do you really need to see that window while watching TV?

        I admit the dropping down from above thing has appeal though, I do like to avoid clutter down at a more useful height. Something that could be easily mounted to a wall or ceiling perhaps? Or even set on top of a bookshelf?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        I want it to make very large consumer sets viable. 200 inch sets can't be shipped without damage.

        I think the hope for the future there is MicroLED. They just showed a huge 219 inch [digitaltrends.com] set and because it's made up by tiles the price may not go crazy with size. Like now an 80" TV is way more expensive than 4x 40" TVs, but with tiles it should be proportional to screen size. They also showed a smaller 75" version that's closer to market. Of course they still haven't revealed any pricing info and it's probably going to be very pricey to begin with, but the scaling possibilities are extremely interesting. If i

  • Is it TV-sized because of limitations of technology making the base large, or because they're targeting viewing audiences for the 8K wow-factor? I think a tablet-sized retractable screen is more practical. Just like in the movies, eventually a small cylinder that pulls open into a transparent touch-enabled widescreen and hopefully even with AR.

  • Did you notice that the presenter forgot to turn his mic. off and can be heard saying, "It worked. Everything worked... ha, ha."
    I am not sure if that instills confidence or not, but I found it amusing.

  • Give me a call when they sell for a reasonable price. Even OLED HDTV and 4K TVs dropped in price.

    Early adopters always get burnt.

    (caveat: I still own a Rio MP3 player I bought for $1000)

  • Didn't the future Marty McFly have one of these, several years ago now? Although at that price, I'm not sure how he could have afforded it.

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