Rollable OLED, Micro LED Wall Are CES Display Tech Standouts

Each year at CES, we've come to expect a new generation of TVs that are bigger, brighter, and clearer than the year before, and this year's show did not disappoint.

With a TV that could roll up like a shade, several wall-size displays, a new emissive LED technology, and probably the best individual TV picture I've ever seen, I came away very impressed with where TV technology is going. Pretty much all the major brand TVs are very good compared to what was available five or 10 years ago, but the new technology indicates there's still a long way to go.

I'll talk about what's going on with the two most popular conventional TV technologies—LCDs (including most of what is marketed as LED sets) and normal OLEDs—in my next post, but in this post I'll discuss some of the more interesting alternative display technologies I saw at the show.

LG's Rollable Display

The most interesting display I saw may have been a 65-inch OLED rollable display being shown by LG Display. This display is based on the same technology as the company's current UHD (4K) OLED panel, but can completely roll up and disappear into a box that lives below it.

A remote enables you to unfurl the display a bit, to show basic information such as today's weather or family pictures.

The display can also be put in a position with a 21:9 ratio, which is perfect for watching movies. The version shown has the display on a glass substrate, but it will likely be moved onto plastic before it becomes a commercial product, which representatives said was probably two to three years from now.

Samsung's MicroLED Wall

The other really unusual technology was Samsung's MicroLED technology. Samsung has shown its LED technology before, and it has been available in signage applications, typically for very large displays in outdoor places such as stadiums. This is, as the "light-emitted diode (LED)" part of the name implies, a self-emitting technology, as opposed to the backlit-driven technology in LCD sets (including most of what is sold as LED, which refers to LED backlighting behind a liquid crystal display). It's not the same technology as OLED, and Samsung says it offers the perfect blacks of OLED but can get much brighter and has fewer off-axis color issues.

Samsung this year demonstrated that it has been able to shrink the size of the LEDs to a point where the technology makes sense for large home displays, and in particular, the company is planning to offer a 146-inch 4K unit it calls "The Wall." The technology actually uses many different LED modules stacked together, but it's borderless so you don't see seams between the different modules. To me, that was particularly impressive, because even the best LCD or OLED panels have small bezels when placed together for a signage application.

In the commercial version, the modular LED technology is often used to create unusual shapes for signage, but that's generally for companies that create their own content, and not what is used in the home. But because it is modular, it is much easier to ship and install in a home compared to most of the other very large displays. Samsung says it will be commercially available this year.

Laser Projectors

Perhaps the only real competitor when it comes to size are projection TVs. Hisense was really pushing these, and especially its Laser TV line that uses laser lights and TI's DLP technology. Currently, the company sells a 100-inch version, and introduced 80- and 88-inch versions at CES. Most impressively, it showed a 150-inch version, though that is not yet slated for commercial availability.

These are "short-throw" projectors, meaning they are designed to be set up on the floor a short distance away from where the image will be projected. Other vendors touting 4K projectors included Sony, LG, and Chinese vendor Changhong. It's an interesting technology, but mostly suited for viewing in very dark rooms.

3D TVs

Nearly all of the big vendors have moved away from 3D TVs, as the technology just didn't gain market acceptance. But I was interested to see a couple of vendors, such as Stream TV and Changhong (working with technology from MirraViz), pushing glasses-free 3DTVs. Stream TV had a 65-inch 4K version (that it said features 8 million pixels), which should be shipping from partners later this year, and announced a partnership with Chinese panel maker BOE to build 8K sets. It's probably still a niche technology, but it is interesting.

Of course, all of these technologies will be much more expensive than conventional sets, but they are important technologies, because they can often go where conventional TVs are a tough fit.

For more, check out The Most Eye-Catching TVs at CES from PCMag.