KEY POINTS:
When it comes to advances in television design, the emphasis in the past couple of years has been on making them bigger. In both LCD and plasma, the major TV makers have tried to outdo themselves by creating flat-screen panels that crept through the 70, then 80 and
finally the 100-inch barrier.
But as the price of flat-screen TVs has dropped and more people get used to looking at 42 and 50-inch TVs, the focus has shifted to figuring how to do more impressive things with the screen real estate we already have.
The IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin last week saw the debut of some new technology designed to do just that.
Korean electronics maker Samsung introduced its Smart LED system which will feature in its high-end 52 and 70-inch F9 LCD screens. Numerous backlit LEDs (light-emitting diodes) can be switched off depending on what signal is being fed to the TV, allowing for better contrast. Samsung claims a staggering 500,000 to 1.
Sharp unveiled a prototype 50-inch, high-definition LCD that has a display of only 20mm thick, just in case you didn't think the current generation of TVs was flat enough.
Sony's new Bravia LCD TVs use technology dubbed wide-colour gamut cold cathode fluorescent lamp to improve the colour range by 30 per cent.
Philips introduced the Aurea, a 42-inch high-definition LCD screen that effectively makes the TV frame an extension of the picture viewers are seeing. It's an extension of the Ambilight feature that's included in 25-30 per cent of Philips TVs sold. Ambilight consists of fluorescent light panels built into the back of the TV set that beam light up against the wall behind the TV, based on the colours displayed on the screen. A rugby game therefore will bathe the back wall in green while action-thriller Bourne Supremacy gives it a rapid-changing multi-coloured hue.
With the Aurea, the traditional opaque TV frame is gone, replaced by a white, translucent trim that allows LED lights, similar to Ambilight, to be projected forward through the frame towards the viewer. It makes for quite an impressive viewing experience.
The noirish short film Philips paid directing hotshot Wong Kar Wai to make, There's Only One Sun, doesn't have a convincing plot, but its lighting design certainly makes Philips' new TV look very good indeed. Like Ambilight, Aurea senses what colours are being received by the screen and lights up the frame to suit it. LEDs also point backwards to light up the back wall too. The overall effect is to give the TV screen a floating, ethereal look when it's placed in a dark room against a wall. The familiar hard lines of the frame we are used to watching everything within, are gone. Philips' design guru, the Italian Stefano Marzano says that's very much deliberate. It's down to the feminisation of technology.
The product has started to turn into the protagonist. It has life, Marzano told journalists at the launch of Aurea last week.
It's opposed to the angular form recognised in the artistic movement.
Going on to talk about the soft curves of the female form and the shape of a mother's breast, Marzano made the point that women increasingly have their fingers on the purse-strings when it comes to consumer electronics purchases and they're not impressed with the sharp lines and black and silver trim that have been industry staples for years.
Indeed, the US Consumer Electronics Association claimed in a report released in March that women outspent men in electronics purchases - US$55 billion to US$41 billion - last year.
So women want soft lines and emotion in the form of fantastic colour and that's what they get with Aurea, which will debut here in November.
* Peter Griffin attended IFA as a guest of Philips