The annual January Consumer Electronics Show (better known as CES) always straddles the very fine line between extremely silly and actually pretty cool. It is an annual trade show where every major and aspiring electronics company (and an increasing number of car companies) shows off their latest and greatest products.
Some companies show off prototypes that signal the direction that they’re taking their company (or are simply showing off at what they could do if selling products at a reasonable price wasn’t a concern), but for most companies it is an opportunity to unveil their new products for the years ahead.
For too many years, TV manufacturers at CES have been showing off amazing picture quality and ever slight improvements to their lines every year. Within technology circles, this is a bit exciting. But for most consumers they aren’t really going to notice. But in recent years TV technology has started to get exciting.
The technology has improved and TVs are now getting bigger and more adaptable in our lives.
Bigger is better
Australians love buying big, oversized TVs. This has been true for a number of years, with flat screen TV prices dropping as quickly as the inches keep creeping up. The reason for this has historically been attributed to Australian lounge rooms often being bigger than you find in many countries overseas. But, these days, the more likely reason is that so many more homes are designating rooms as dedicated home theatres.
And you can’t have a home theatre without an impressive screen.
While high definition looked good on your old 40-inch TV, it looks not-great on your 60-inch TV. 4k looks great on your 60-inch TV, but less impressive on your 80-inch TV. And as that screen keeps getting bigger, the more your TV needs some gimmickry to make the image on the screen look okay.

At CES Hisense showed off its new huge 116-inch TV. Karl Stefanovic will practically be sitting opposite you as you eat your cereal in the morning – that’s how big it is.
When this TV goes on sale in Australia this year, it will be the largest available. In an engineering feat, the TV will not only be cheaper to run with greater energy efficiency than smaller, previous Hisense models, but it will come with an improved picture quality.
To boost the quality and make it a brighter, better experience to look at, it is using what it has branded ‘TriChroma’. The new TVs use RGB LEDs for its backlight system instead of white or blue. You can watch Caleb Denison from Digital Trends talking about what the effect of the TriChoma technology has on the TV:
A TV of that size comes at a pretty hefty price. The Hisense 110 inch UXAU TV, the current flagship TV from the manufacturer, costs an eye-watering $24,999 (RRP). So, one would expect that the new 116 inch TV might be a bit above that. One would really want to like Karl Stefanovic a whole lot to pay that for a TV at home.
Again, it should be stressed – any TV reaching the 100 inch size and above makes no sense in a standard lounge room. But there are a lot of high-end home theatres being installed in homes around Australia these days with some very pricey construction costs involved. A good-quality, impressive $25,000+ TV is pretty reasonable in that context.
The See-Through TV
Back in the day, the worst types of people used to say horribly pretentious things like “I don’t watch TV.” It was an attitude that even led some TV-owning types to hide their filthy behaviour away in armoire furniture. The doors would be closed if company came to visit, but opened in the evening to watch The 7:30 Report, an episode of Keeping Up Appearances, and maybe the tennis if it were summer.

Those attitudes have mostly changed, with most homes now adorned with an elegant flat screen hanging on a wall, or tastefully perched on an entertainment unit. But there still remain those who would like to hide the existence of their TV entirely.
If you fall in that camp, you may be excited to hear that LG showcased the transparent Signature OLED T at CES. But, before you grab the AU$80,000 you will need to buy one from your mattress, it is probably important to understand that even though the TV is transparent, no TV has ever called more attention to itself.
Look at it. It’s right there!

Samsung also have a transparent TV. Like LG, it actually showed off the transparent TVs at CES last year. This year, LG committed to selling the fish tank-like TVs, while Samsung are holding off and are planning to sell to commercial customers rather than normal, everyday TV viewers (who have $60k to blow on a cool-looking telly).
This TV sucks
The gimmick/benefit of the Displace TV Pro is that it is a wireless TV that can be carried anywhere around the house or office. It comes in both a 27 inch and a 55 inch model and has built-in speakers that Displace says is are so good you won’t need a sound bar (but there are add-on speakers and a sound bar sold separately if you do want to improve it the default audio quality).

And when they say it is wireless – they mean it is completely wireless. It doesn’t have a power cord. Instead, it is powered by batteries.
All of that sounds pretty good – it means you won’t be tripping over any cables wherever you choose to put it down. It really is a TV that is built to be picked up and moved around.
That even means being positioned on a wall. You don’t need any brackets – that really goes against the spirit of the TV, which is that it can be moved around without fuss.
This is literally a TV that sucks.
With huge suction cups on the back of the TV, this TV will tell you when it is safe to position it on a wall and let go. With a price of US$2499 (27 inch) and US$3499 (55 inch), you will not only get the thrill of placing your TV on any wall you want, but it will give you the heart-stopping adrenaline thrill of finding out whether your expensive TV will stay on the wall once you actually let go.
There’s also a pretty cool feature that lets you add up to four of the screens and cluster them on a wall together. Each screen can function independently, or they can sync up with the one image split across them. Perfect for anyone wanting a 100 inch TV at 2x the price, but with a big, thin cross in the middle of the image.
Right now, this TV is only available for pre-order (it ships in March) and only for customers in the US. So, it will be a while before the Build-it team will be able to get our hands out on these to try.

We do have one pretty big concern over this tv, as cool as it is. With a battery size of only 5,000 mAh, the power storage is smaller than a current generation iPad Air (7606 mAh), so presumably the battery on this will last far less than the 10 or so hours you can watch video on the iPad for. If you’re planning to sit down and watch the three Lord of The Rings movies back-to-back, you’ll want to schedule in some downtime to finish that last film.