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Transparent Displays Are Here, But They're Pretty Useless

Posted by msmash on from the making-sense-of-the-tech dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Samsung has debuted the first commercial installation of its 55-inch 'mirror' displays at a salon in South Korea with a transparent OLED screen overlaid over a mirrored surface to allow interaction. The Samsung product rivals an equivalent TOLED from Planar, with both intended for high-end use in the retail display and exhibition space. However both manufacturers are struggling to find practical applications for the much-awaited technology. Transparent displays have been a staple of sci-fi films such as Minority Report for decades, but only, it seems, because they helped to open up scenes which would otherwise have been difficult to film. With the pending advent of AR-based visualization, the innovation of the clear monitor seems not only to have come too late, but also offer limited practical use, even if its current breathtaking prices were to descend to the consumer space.

5 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Captain Obvious is hard at work by JoeDuncan · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is not news.

    Anyone with half a brain could tell you that transparent displays are useless except for some very small niche corner cases.

    1. Re:Captain Obvious is hard at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Foreseeing uses for technology - you make it sound so simple... Let me leave a few quotes you may be joining soon:

      "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
      Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943

      "Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."
      Darryl Zanuck, executive at 20th Century Fox, 1946

      "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
      Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

      "640K ought to be enough for anybody."
      Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, 1981

  2. Re:Switchable by malditaenvidia · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Then we can all have monitors that fade from view and let us see the office through the screen.

    While your idea is good, why would I want to see those assholes? They should make a screen that blocks all peripheral view besides the monitor.

  3. This just in by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    After we have noticed that software that looks great in movies but are completely and utterly shit if they were used in reality (like, say, databases that display EVERY SINGLE false photograph of a potential culprit before finding the correct one, or interfaces where you have to wave your hands about instead of typing on a keyboard), we now find out that hardware that looks great in movies is ALSO crap for real applications.

    Who would have thought.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  4. It's like videophones by roc97007 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...a staple of science fiction for decades, but even when the price became trivial (most modern cell phones will do it) most people didn't want it.

    And for much the same reason -- videophone conversations work well in movies as they more closely resemble the "talking head" interactions the public is used to in films, but in the real world, people don't necessarily want someone else looking at their face while they talk.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.