LG Electronics has announced the creation of the world’s first 55 inch, curved HD television (designated OLED), and it is a huge breakthrough. Curved LED screens have been available for 20 or so years now, but their resolution was so poor they were almost useless for anything other than very, very large screens designed to be viewed from very, very far away. But with an estimated price tag of $13,000 and availability limited strictly to South Korea, should you be excited?

Yes, you should. Because:

  1. Your brain processes images better when they are curved. You view the world in a curved field of vision, which is why panoramas flow more naturally when they are curved around you and why Imax builds curved theatre screens for a more realistic experience. Now you can get the same amount of realism at home. Or on the road, because:
  2. There are hundreds of areas in your life where a curved display would do you a lot of good. Phones could curve to fit your pocket better. Monitors could curve to make it easier to view information at work. OLEDS could be used heavily in your car to provide you with better information on the road or used on your wrist to provide a more comfortable watch. The possibilities are endless.
  3. This is solely the first generation of the technology. LG isn’t just rolling out these televisions to appeal to the super-rich or as a marketing gimmick. They are rolling these out to get a jump on Samsung, who have announced their own curved display sets but have yet to move from prototype to production. LG is going to use this time to get their assembly line set up and cut their costs. Which means the costs of these units will go down. Then, when Samsung enters the market and solves its own set of production problems, costs will go down again. And when the price of these televisions fall, the price of creating OLED’s will also fall, which is great because OLED’s can do amazing things. Transparent full color displays. Scrolls that unroll to become fully functioning monitors. This is just the beginning.

Stories like this make us excited to work in the tech industry. We hope you enjoy them too, but why not leave us a comment about what you’d like to see next?