How Will transparent TVs work??

[Gary Klein]

The idea of transparent Tvs sounds really cool and I bet it would look amazing in your living room, but I'm genuinely struggling to see how these will actually work? 

[Stanryder]

At CES in January, both LG and Samsung showed off transparent TVs. These seemingly magical devices can show an image just like a regular TV, except you can also see right through them. Images seem to float in the air. When off, they seem like they're part of the furniture. I've always been sceptical of transparent TVs.. seeing them more as a bit of a gimmick to be honest. 

Transparent TVs are made possible by two major see-through display technologies: LCD and OLED. 

All LCDs are transparent by default. That is, if you took apart an LCD, removed the backlight, and powered the display, you'd be able to see through it while it was working.

LCD screens aren’t left transparent because they don’t produce their own light, and as a result, need an external backlight to work well. Most backlight used to power LCD screens usually has a background. This background is what makes LCD screens obscure.

But with improvements in technology, LCD screen manufacturers have now found ways to create hybrid display systems. That is, using transparent LEDs to power LCD screens. This fusion of transparent OLED backlights into LCD screens eliminates the need for other light sources, potentially needing a background.

The use of transparent LED backlights instead of the traditional backlighting systems, which come with a background, is how transparent LCD TVs are made possible.

 

OLED displays are made of a couple of layers of transparent plastic sandwiched between two layers of glass, consisting of emissive and conductible layers. Electrical impulses travel through the conductive layer and produce light at the emissive layer.

OLED screens aren’t naturally transparent, as is the case with LCD screens but TV manufacturers favor OLEDs over LCDs because they don’t require additional lighting. OLEDs produce their own light, which allows the screens to be much thinner.