The best OLED TVs in the future could turn into coffee tables. Or at least, that's one possible future shown off by TCL in its latest concept, which is a 65-inch OLED TV that folds down when you're not watching it. But while a table-turned-TV is a fun thing to look at (and I've embedded HDTVTest's video of it below), what's really interesting isn't what TCL has done with its panel. It's how it made it.
The panel here is the world's first folding 65-inch 8K OLED TV made with inkjet printing, and that printing could be a really big deal for the OLED TVs of the future.
Why the TVs of the future will be printed on inkjets
TLC has been talking about inkjet-printed OLEDs for a few years now and showed a non-folding prototype at this year's CES.
What's so exciting about this particular panel isn't that it folds, as fun as that is. It's that it's enormous. So far inkjet-printed OLEDs have tended to be half the size of this panel, so a 65-inch 8K OLED is quite literally a very big deal.
The process is less wasteful than traditional OLED TV manufacturing, results in fewer defective panels and is much more precise too. In the long run that means it'll be cheaper; in the short term prices will be higher because of the cost of new manufacturing equipment, but once that cost has been recovered it should send OLED TV prices dramatically downwards. In other words, cheaper, better OLED TVs aren't far away.
