One of the biggest reasons I don’t have a wall mount for my TV is because I don’t want to deal with installation confusion. Dust, punctures, persistence – all these things stress me out (I know, I’m more sensitive than most people). So when I heard that the Displace wireless TV could be mounted on any wall or surface without a mount, I was very excited. It’s a 55-inch 4K OLED screen that uses active-loop vacuum technology to suck it into place, and the company built handles into the frame to make it easier to lift. With two onboard batteries that are hot-swappable, you don’t have to wait for one to recharge before watching TV again.
The company said that the prototype it saw in Vegas was custom-designed for CES, so details about battery size and charging time are not yet available. However, they state that the user expects he will watch six hours of TV a day to get a month of runtime. One of the reasons Displace can run without a power cord is because it doesn’t do any heavy lifting onboard. Basically, you stream media from a base station that comes with your device and does the rendering.
What I love about Displace TV is how easy it is to set up. I didn’t get to try this myself as the prototype was pretty valuable. So we could only watch the company’s CEO slide his hand into his two slots and lift the screen. Each unit weighs less than 20 pounds for him, according to Displace, making it surprisingly lightweight.
The CEO held the TV to the window, and when the vacuum loop on the back detected the TV touching the surface, the mechanism began to rotate and stick to the glass. After about 8 seconds it went silent. Then I was able to shake the unit to see if I could pry it open. I tried to use the same force that would open the refrigerator door to get the suction to work, but it didn’t.
To remove the TV, you have to hold down the buttons on either side and wait for the vacuum loop to slowly disengage. It says it works on any flat surface. I tried to mount the demo unit on another wall, but couldn’t find enough space to accommodate the 55 inch panel.
The Displace TV also incorporates a pop-up 4K camera at the top of the frame, not only facilitating high-definition video calls. It also enables gesture control, which is the only way to interact with the TV. You can zoom out. If you have more than one of his Displace TVs, you can arrange four in a square and zoom in on the feed from a particular quarter.
there is also very minority report style Gestures to “grab” content from one screen and “throw” it onto another nearby screen. Also, pointing the thumbs-up gesture at the camera activates a mode where the content follows you as you walk around the house and move to different rooms. Since they’re all streaming from the same base station, multiple screens can pick up content you put in different rooms.
If you’re feeling down, you can combine 4 Displace TVs to create a 110-inch 8K TV. In that scenario, the relatively thin bezels here help minimize confusion when the four screens are playing out as one. The company also said it is working on future bezel-less models. We have a lot of plans, such as releasing an API that will allow you to create one.
So far, though, I’m already pretty impressed with the concept and want it. Only 100 units of him are available for pre-order at the moment, and the company says it will start shipping in December. I want to see how long my vacuum system will last, and I don’t want a $3,000 TV crash destroying my furniture, hopes and dreams.
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