Samsung teases CES unveiling of HDTV with 'unprecedented new shape' - Page 6

http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/07/samsung-ultra-hd-UN85S9/

I guess... ...if "black easel" is a new shape.

 

They were right about one thing: it's unprecedented.

 

…ly hideous.

If it has a VESA mount that would probably look pretty slick on a wall.
Edited by SolipsismX - 1/7/13 at 3:26pm

 

Yeah, get rid of the easel and it doesn't look half bad! 

I'm just realizing what thread this is in. That is one ugly new "shape" for a TV stand. They call it a "Timeless Gallery" frame, and I agree if by timeless they mean there is no time that anyone would want to see that frame in a gallery.



It doesn't appear to have a VESA mount but that could just be a CES demo model or a marketing pic.

 

Or timeless in that at no time in the past, present, or future will any other company be foolish enough to create something so aesthetically displeasing. 

 

I got it: timeless in that, when looking back, no one will be able to place the era in which it was released since no other products will ever look like it.

If you put a curvy girl next to it and turn out most of the lights, you can hide a lot of the design though:



The back does look very clean and it's probably quite stable. A lot of the frame seems superfluous but I like that they're doing something unique. I think it would have been a bit nicer to not have the top so far up but more symmetrical in the rest position:



It can still be used to carry it. The stand will be one of the easiest to detach from the screen, which is good for wall-mounting. They'll probably have a bracket somewhere that fits into the sides and allows it to be wall-mounted. Unless you're just supposed to lift it onto a couple of hooks like a painting or something.

I assume it's a concept, an idealized version rather than an exact representation of what ships, so they leave off things that don't present well, such as connectors and mount holes.

There are so many TVs out there, there's no point in supporting this.

The style of mounting reminds me of the roll around classroom chalk boards that you could flip horizontally to reveal another chalkboard. With silly concepts as this, I've one more reason to avoid Samsung TVs.

 

THIS is idealized?! 

I guess TV design had to have its crinoline at some point:

Yeah, there's only so much they can do with the form factor. I wouldn't be opposed to HDTVs having nicer front-facing speakers, maybe a thin integrated soundbar similar to the iMac "chin." And improved auto picture scaling, so people stop stretching 4:3 content.

Because of VESA mounting, I see stands as independent of a TV. My current stand is something I designed and put the stock stand into storage. If even Apple made a TV and the stand was integral like the iMacs, then I wouldn't consider it.

Better speakers would help, but they're a harder feature to market. A "chin" isn't totally necessary, but it's one way to do it.

I think picture scaling is a solved problem. The only reason people stretch 4:3 content is some odd morbid aversion to black picture area, at least more so than seeing egg-shaped circles and other oddities caused by a stretched picture. In my experience, most TVs have scaling modes that preserve the aspect ratio.

@ Chandra69 re: "It has to invest in Bada OS. It has to kick the bloody Android OS."

 

Samsung is gradually ramping up their work on Tizen, the open-source, standards-based alternative to Android.  In the meantime, while they're still shipping Android on their products, they should probably fork Android the way Amazon did.

 

Why fork Android?  Because that's the only way for Samsung to 1. control their own destiny, and 2. build out their own content and services infrastructure.  Because, as we all know, it's no longer just about hardware.  It's no longer just about the OS and apps.  It's all that plus content and services now.  

 

Samsung has crushed all other Android hardware partners, and they'll fight to maintain their position.  Even against Google, who are evidently clinging to their hope that they can re-animate Motorola as a viable competitor.  Relying on Google for their OS, and more critically for their app / content / services infrastructure, is a risk that Samsung should eliminate.

Acknowledged. Maybe I just want to entirely eliminate modes that distort the AR, especially the fisheye mode. Val Kilmer is fat enough lately; he doesn't need to gain another 40 pounds every time he's not centered in the frame. I certainly share Apple's proclivities for content control: "You'll experience this the right way, or not at all, dammit."

 

Sounds crazy, but Samsung could certainly pull it off. They have enough experience with various appliance interfaces, and their general mucking about in Android modifications. It wouldn't be elegant at first, but it would be entirely under their control.

I can understand that. If it's like their iOS scaling, then if the video doesn't fit the screen, your choices would be uncropped with black bars or cropped. I would take cropped before I would take the stretch, and I bet that most users would be fine with cropping.


Samsung is roughly half of the total Android ecosystem. If anyone strikes out on their own, I think it would be them. I wonder what they would to do replace the services Google provides. We saw how controversial replacing the mapping service was for Apple. Going with Bing would be switching from one competitor to another.