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The Inevitable Rise of the Art TV (wired.com) 53

Posted by msmash from the hanging-around dept.
Several years after Samsung introduced the Frame TV in 2017 -- a television designed to display fine art and resemble a framed painting when switched off -- competitors are finally catching up in meaningful numbers. Amazon announced the Ember Artline TV at CES 2026 this week, a $899 model that can display one of 2,000 works of art for free and includes an Alexa AI tool to recommend pieces suited to your room. Hisense unveiled its CanvasTV late last year, TCL has the NXTvision model, and LG has announced the Gallery TV for later this year.

The surge in art-focused televisions comes down to two factors: smaller living spaces in cities where younger buyers lack dedicated rooms for large screens, and advances in matte screen technology that enable displays to absorb light like a canvas rather than reflect it like a window. Local dimming and improved backlighting processing allow these newer models to maintain their slim profiles for flush wall-mounting while delivering more realistic art reproduction than earlier edge-lit designs.
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The Inevitable Rise of the Art TV

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  • This is just a shallow form of marketing... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PubJeezy ( 10299395 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2026 @02:45PM (#65908309)
    This is just a shallow form of marketing designed to push the "always on and always connected" model of consumer technology that reduces privacy, cyber-security and consumer rights. This is gross and it has nothing to with art. Yuck.
    • It's even more stupid. If I really wanted something like this why would I pay $900 when I can buy a 60" 4K TV for $200 during a Black Friday sale and use it to display any number of works of art or other images I wish to as opposed to being limited to merely 2,000 different works. I'd much rather just get a painting though. I can go to a museum to look at something old and famous. I'd rather have something personal to me on my own walls.

      • Re:This is just a shallow form of marketing... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by sid crimson ( 46823 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2026 @03:17PM (#65908419)

        We have one of these in our home. It was a housewarming gift. It's not connected to the Internet, but still displays art. The frame matches the other items surrounding it on the wall. It brightens and dims as the light changes. It's also a really good TV. We love everything, except that there is an external box that required we install a flush-mount box behind the TV to hide the wiring and keep the illusion of "art".

      • Teaching the kids to be helpless is profitable.
        You said it, why pay $900 when you could have paid $200? Makes sense to me but,
        soon the kids or whoever buys this overpriced crap will be telling you that putting whatever images you want to see on a USB stick and looking at that is "dumb". rinse. repeat.
        And that is the world we live in.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        i need to start a blog of "the grumpy old men of slashdot" who will type anything to be contrarian complainers even when it makes no goddamned sense.

      • Something like this is probably akin to letting algos show you stuff on Spotify vs curated your own music collection. There's a niche for someone that wants a TV, doesn't want a black void on the wall when they aren't watching it, and appreciates art but doesn't want to curate it. But I agree that the price premium seems... excessive, even with the presumed licensed art content.

      • I'd much rather just get a painting though.

        From TFS: "The surge in art-focused televisions comes down to two factors: smaller living spaces in cities where younger buyers lack dedicated rooms for large screens..."

        So some people don't have much wall space and have to choose between a TV and a painting. For them, a TV that doubles as a painting - or vice-versa - would be very desirable. And being able to change the "art" readily is a pretty cool feature.

        It's probably not something I'd want - it strikes me as a bit kitschy - but I do get the appeal.

      • If I really wanted something like this why would I pay $900 when I can buy a 60" 4K TV for $200 during a Black Friday sale and use it to display any number of works of art or other images I wish to as opposed to being limited to merely 2,000 different works.

        Well, let's see, your counter-product relies on special, loss-leader pricing which occurs once a year, and you gloss over the need to collect the artwork, prepare it for display device (oh, I'm sorry, are all your images proper even fractions ok your devices 4K resolution?), and some sort of computing device to store and serve-up the images, with the requisite hacking/programming to make all work seamlessly... I'm eager to learn about your woodworking/frame making skills to house this collection of pieces,

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sosume ( 680416 )

          The first thing I'd do is open up the device and desolder anything connected to network or wifi. Then connect a raspberry pi running Linux to it and I can display all the art I want - no ads!

      • Re:This is just a shallow form of marketing... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by ihadafivedigituid ( 8391795 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2026 @11:07PM (#65909461)
        That $200 TV is not the same thing in several respects, and I can put anything I want on mine (HiSense CanvasTV) without a subscription or even a network connection--including my daughter's art, photos, etc.

        I wasn't sure if it was a gimmick I'd get bored with. After 7 months, I'm still stoked.

      • The surge in art-focused televisions comes down to two factors: smaller living spaces in cities where younger buyers lack dedicated rooms for large screens, and advances in matte screen technology that enable displays to absorb light like a canvas

        No, it comes down to one factor: That they're not selling as many TVs as they'd like to and have to invent a new market for them after they ran through LED, 3D, OLED, quantum dot, pixie dust, ... to keep selling us the same thing over and over again.

    • I love my HiSense CanvasTV: no subscription nonsense, just a cool display design (hardware and software) and a bunch of space to put image files. I have Wi-fi turned completely off except when I'm bouncing art from my laptop.

      I paid ten bucks to someone on Etsy for access to a Google Drive folder that is crammed with properly formatted art image files. A couple of my friends have been startled when the "painting" changed. I love not having a big black screen dominating the room. It might be turned on as a

    • You're speaking out of pure ignorance. There's nothing more or less on or always connected between a Samsung Frame displaying artwork and any other smart TV on the market. Your TV isn't "off" when it is off. It is in a standby mode, and there's no more or less consumer privacy intrusions between these types of TVs.

      You can be a conspiracy theorist if you want, but all you're doing is showing a preference for an ugly TV. These things actually look really damn awesome in the living room and is part of a global

  • Screensaver (Score:3)

    by TwistedGreen ( 80055 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2026 @02:45PM (#65908311)

    Did we just reinvent the screensaver?

  • Display paingings when switched off (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Valgrus Thunderaxe ( 8769977 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2026 @02:48PM (#65908325)
    You keep using the word "off" - I don't think that word means what you think it means.

    • Yeah, how much power does this consume when it's "off"?

      • I measured my 55" HiSense CanvasTV at 35-40 watts in brighter lighting conditions when in "Art Mode". It has a "people detector" and shuts off automatically when no one is around. The effect on my power bill has been negligible even here in crazy $$$ Southern California.

      • Only marginally more than many other TVs when "off". They usually display a picture with a very dim backlight without any panel refresh. Ours uses around 20W displaying art, quite a bit less than the 180W it uses when it's on. Though there's also a moving art mode which chews through 60W.

  • The Frame was the only TV that actually was flush against the wall.

    All the others stood away from the wall.

    Had nothing to with displaying art.

  • Isn't the digital display of artwork, it's keeping advertisements out of the display.

  • We've had $200 55" tv hooked into a raspberry pi zero displaying family photos and art for years and we have complete control over what gets displayed - it's not connected to the public net in any way.. Why would we ever trade that for an "always connected" service were "200 art works for free" implies setting up a subscription based account.

    The one we have replaced a dedicated framed tv that displayed art this way, until the company went out of business and left us with a tv that no longer did anything at

  • My 2019 LG OLED pretends to be a painting when it has no input, picture frames and all. You can have it do the same instead of turning off properly but that just seems insane to me. My more recent LG OLED monitor is the same. This isn't some recent catch-up from LG. The marketing feels like they're doing it to highlight the image quality and HDR of their high-end displays.

    • People keep saying OLED burn-in is has been solved, but every OLED phone I've had has very noticeable burn-in after a few years. I wouldn't want an OLED screen to be on all the time, let alone on all the time displaying substantially static content.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jaa101 ( 627731 )

        My TV has several different images of paintings and it cycles between them, presumably to reduce this issue. They also seem to be displayed with relatively low brightness, which greatly reduces the potential for burn-in. But, yes, there's no way I want to burn electricity and wear out my expensive TV to display images constantly when people mostly aren't even watching it. I guess LG doesn't mind, and having me buy a new model sooner is a plus for them.

  • If I'm going to have a 60" black mass on my wall, I'd rather it display art.

    That being said, I want it to display what I want it to display and not require someone elses infrastructure etc. It needs to support local storage option (USB storage) as well as an API to call photos from what ever service or host I chose that supports free or cheap API access. Random pictures from a local NFS server. It should never require calling the mothership or an account to simply use baked in features; all such features

  • Viewing art height and watching TV height are two different things.

  • The Samsung software is pretty useless.
    You get flush but thick TV and then a huge box you have to hide somewhere with a fragile snake cable.
    Want to connect it to your cloud photos to display them. nope.
    Want rotate photos faster than 10 minutes nope.
    Apps like TV are slow to load.
    We ended up connecting a google tv to it to replace the functionality missing from the horrible Samsung software.

  • A typical 55" TV draws perhaps 80W. Convert to kWh/year, and it's 80*24*365.25/1000 = 701.28.
    If you electricity is $0.20/kWh, then you're looking at $140/year for your "art" display. That's over $10/month.

    Some people don't care, but it's really wasteful.

    Now an e-ink display would be really efficient, only needing power when the image is changed, but those aren't practical for TVs (or likely for any large use).

    • Now an e-ink display would be really efficient, only needing power when the image is changed, but those aren't practical for TVs (or likely for any large use).

      Please, tell me more about these full-color, 4K resolution e-Ink displays that consume NO power until the image changes... and please, provide pricing info also...

    • They draw a lot less power in art mode. I have measured mine to verify. You could look this shit up, you know.
  • 'The Frame' is different to a standard TV because it's matt. That's the thing - it truly is designed more for static image than for moving glitz and glamour. I like them, and if it weren't for my distrust of online Samsung these days I'd likely have got one. I fully understand those who have done - it's a nice device that's good at its task.
  • I can pick 1,000's of different images to display ..for over 30 years !

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