Besides the upward trend of putting a screen on everything, the next thing on everyone’s lips is modular. As we’ve covered stories before about small modular smartphones or modular phone cases, we thought it’d be fitting to follow up with a bigger modular device — a TV.
Yup, Samsung have come up with a modular TV that can split into several different parts and dance around your wall like something you’d find in a bachelor pad from the future. If you can’t wrap your head around what I’m talking about, take a look at this short clip by Gizmodo:
Pretty freaking cool. However, Mashable’s Pete Pachal does note that while all the moving around is cool and stuff, when the screens do come together, he could see the seams between the displays which we found pretty disappointing. Then again this is relatively new tech so there are plenty of kinks to work out.
Another TV that Samsung had on display showcased the ability for the TV to change its aspect ratios with the modular technology. The display could rotate two sides of the screen to switch it from a 16:9 aspect ratio to a 4:3 aspect ratio in seconds. This means you can use up all of those valuable pixels for either of the popular aspect ratios, eliminating those annoying black bars. It’s pretty cool but once again Pete noted that the seam was visible.
One final modular TV on display, however, showcased what is realistically the closest to a completed product — a massive 170″ wall TV that is made up of several smaller panels. Mashable notes that this is perhaps the most practical use of the modular technology, especially since the seams were not visible.
Not only does it allow manufacturers to push the TV’s size to even more ridiculous proportions, Mashable notes that it also makes these monstrous TVs easier to ship because movers can break down a huge set to smaller screens.
That’s cool and all but we can think of one more way to utilise these modular panels. Assuming they’re easy to remove and hot swap, parents could easily remove a section of the TV to prevent their kids from watching it when they’re being grounded or during their study sessions. In fact, you could probably remove one panel and bring it along with you on holiday to discourage thieves from nicking your precious television. Then again they’d have to have a pretty sizable moving truck to be able to ship a 170″ television in the first place.
Either way, as all modular things usually are, the possibilities are almost endless. What do you guys think of a modular TV? Can you think of any other useful things it can bring to the table that your current TV set can’t? Let us know in the comments below.
