Gaming on the CLEAR TV Prototype!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,177 words · ~10 min read
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there's nothing in lg's demo room today that i haven't seen before on a show
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floor and a hotel suite well i mean
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except for that but they won't take the veil off that so i
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won't be seeing that today which means i'm not seeing anything new today so
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then you might be wondering well gee Linus why the heck did you fly all the
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way to south korea to make this video and the answer
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is that unlike in a controlled show
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floor environment today i get to go
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hands-on like literally hands-on
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with a prototype transparent OLED from lg display including running my own
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content on it so if you guys were thinking
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there's no way he's gonna hook a pc up to it and game on it well you're clearly
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new to this channel
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so they were a little cagey about how much detail i can give you guys about
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how it actually works transparent OLED is still very much a developing
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technology but one of the key benefits of getting off the show floor and into
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the factory is that i got a chance to sit down with one of the engineers who
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actually worked on the prototype display
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that we will be playing with and between mr suk and the rest of the team here i
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was able to gain a lot of insights here's the thing transparent displays
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are honestly nothing new in fact if you
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have a fancy pant store and you're willing to pay the premium you can
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already get them installed in your Windows which allows you to have your
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you know product display and communicate
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a lot more information about it than you would normally be able to too
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so the demo that they're running here is pretty typical of how they'd expect
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transparent displays to be deployed in the real world but
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the key difference between a transparent OLED and a transparent lcd
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is how clear they can make the portions of the display that are off and i
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actually can't tell from back here it's like it's trippy i can kind of see like
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a ghost of the image from back here i can't tell which parts you guys can see
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through or not so here's the thing lcds partly because they have a separate
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backlight have more layers that are required for them to display an image
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and they also require more circuitry to drive them which obviously gets in the
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way of light passing through them so at this time you could expect about 10
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transparency out of an lcd display
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by contrast OLED only really requires
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the OLED pixel sheet which if you're familiar with the technology emits its
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own light and the circuitry that connects all of
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the pixels together so the thin film transistors or tft
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none of the other optical sheets are actually needed so when i asked mr suk
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to tell me about one challenge in creating a transparent OLED
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he laughed and then his answer was immediate he said one of the biggest
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challenges in achieving this level of
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transparency was figuring out how to
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align the circuitry that drives the pixels behind the self-emissive pixels
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that way you can make much better use of the available space for transparency
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so to better understand then how a transparent display works i asked then
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well what exactly is the difference between
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the OLED pixel sheet in the transparent display
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and then the one that would be in your normal OLED tv at home
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and apparently it's pretty negligible
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so my follow-up question of course then was if i took my tv from home
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you know off the wall and started peeling layers off the back of it could
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i make it transparent i mean if you've ever tried this with an lcd you'll know
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that it actually kind of works that's how i buy power does those trippy side
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panels on some of their computers and the answer was unfortunately no
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to make it clear pardon the pun
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it's not so much that they leave out the back opaque layer and it's more like
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that they punch thousands of holes through the entire
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displace now it's time for the fun stuff
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so i ended up with one of the heaviest bags
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that i have ever taken on a trip the thing about these kinds of like demo
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grade displays is you're never really sure what exactly
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is behind the curtain or under the cabinet you don't know you know what it
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takes to drive them so i came equipped with everything that
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i could possibly think of but i think
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given how straightforward this one ended up being
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honestly we could use either so we could use our xbox one
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or i actually brought a full-fledged
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gaming pc equipped with a gtx 2080 ti
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tell you what why don't you guys leave a comment below letting me know which one you think i should use
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i'm just kidding by the time i read your comments i'll have made the decision like ages ago so we're gonna go with the
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gaming pc all right so they actually pre-hooked us up an HDMI cable that
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plugs into just sort of this gray box here
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all right so we can go ahead and hook up to that also i think we can probably get
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our our jewelry display out
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what do you think dennis does this suit me dazzling thank you
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you know what i'm going to wear it for the rest of the video yeah what do you think
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this is a good look for me you know while we were shooting this dennis asked me hey do you think that
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stuff's real you don't know
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all right so we're almost ready to fire it up but first i gotta figure out how
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to use the lg factory svc remote con
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look at this thing like what is HDMI hot usb hot
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it's got all kinds of stuff on it hey look at that okay it works just like
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a normal one so let's go ahead and turn on our gaming pc
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hey that was easy wow this looks ridiculous dennis you
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told me i looked dazzling i know someone told me i like dazzling you can see
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through it but like just barely because it's so
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it's so bright like it's basically the same as an OLED tv
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like is that is that crazy like can you see that
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and then as soon as i go over here it's like boom window or should i say Windows
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because it's it's a Windows window wait no
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this is so weird it's like the game is floating in the air like from your from
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your angle can you
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so have you seen how much you can see through it from
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behind like you can actually see right through it from the back as well
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oh yeah yeah like the game is running here come around come around don't cut
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like that's what's on the screen right now and then if you go around behind
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it's like basically completely clear
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it's nuts the trippiest thing about this
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is that even when the image is relatively bright like what we're
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looking at right now can i open this yeah i can open this
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it's really about where your eyes focus
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that determines sort of what you can see and what you can't see like when i'm
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focused on the image in front of me i
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can barely even tell that it's clear but if i look behind it
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where obviously my my game goes out of focus like i can see what's behind it i
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mean this opens up so many possibilities
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for changing the viewers experience like obviously it's not the kind of thing
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that would be applicable to movies or i mean even gaming we're just
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fooling around right now but
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for signage or for you know custom experiences
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it's really cool you know what we should do i should try
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and play from the back like i can only kind of see a ghost of the image
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remember how the challenge here was getting the
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electronics aligned with
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the self-emitting pixels right i mean looking at how thin this is like this
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bezel is nothing to do with how thin the actual glass is like would it even would
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it be possible to create one that works on both sides where you could actually
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you know you could turn it clear like imagine that as a head-to-head gaming
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experience right where you've got one person playing on one side you've got
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one person playing on the other side and then you know
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after the match is over you can you can see each other or if you focused hard
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enough like past the glass you could like you could see the other player you
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couldn't see what they're doing because like i can barely make out what's on the
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other side of the display but like the possibilities are just kind of endless
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right oh okay i think part of the problem is that i'm trying to go left and i'm going
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right yeah i got no idea what's going on
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this was a better idea on paper
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ah yes well that is significantly better
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knowing how it's assembled i shouldn't be that surprised but i still am by the
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the vibrancy of the color and the brightness of the image like you
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think about no it's a clear display like you wouldn't really
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expect that but honestly i think the only thing really preventing this
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from looking like a normal OLED tv right now is that the wall behind us
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is kind of gray actually new idea so lg
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says they can kill the lights in here and we can just unplug these things okay
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do you guys want to go ahead and do that so this should give us an idea of what
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this would look like with a much more black background
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nice oh that's crazy
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look at this so even the parts where we've got the gray and white background
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you can barely see it like can you see me right now
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that's crazy so like imagine this what if you could
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have a tv that maybe used like a secondary layer or
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something like some kind of polarization filter or like i don't even
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know where you could convert between
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transparent and opaque you could easily convince me that this
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is just a tv so theoretically the closer you get the
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easier it should be to see through like like a screen door
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but in practice actually i find the closer i get the more the brightness
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of the of the oleds just kind of overwhelms my eyes like i can't actually
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see through it like can you see me at all no
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i'm leaving for me the exciting thing here is just as this continues to
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develop like what kinds of possibilities we're going to unlock i mean
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even things that have been imagined already like smart mirrors for example
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are we better off with a two-way mirror in front of a conventional display
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or you know what if we did have uh a transparent display over top of a
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conventional reflective back i don't know i mean let me know in the
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comments below what you guys foresee for
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a technology like this in the future and while you guys are down below by the way
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you can check out lg's dedicated site to OLED technology so they're going to have
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information about oleds content about oleds
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articles that are written about OLED technology i think right now it's korean
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only but i believe they're gonna have an english version coming sometime in the
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near future so guys you can check that out below and that's
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honestly pretty much it for the video today if you guys disliked it you can
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hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider
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checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the down just kidding you can't buy one of these yet
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but but later later it's it's gonna happen it's gonna happen
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while you're down there you can check out our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community
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