TCL Shows Why It's Ready to Be More Than a TV Brand at CES 2021 By GetConnected Media

You know it's funny, john. I remember back probably even 10 years ago, we'd be going to the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, and you know it's just filled with those giant booths and one of those booths were uh or was a company called TCL, and I'd always walk by, and they get TVs all over the place. I'm like oh, what is this? You know what I mean like there's like a million of these TV manufacturers, but we've come a long way over the past 10 years and TCL is a dominant force in the consumer electronic space yeah. They came out. You know a couple of years ago in the with the TVs, and they've just taken over because they've got. You know a very compelling product at a very attractive price point.

Uh and 2021 looks like they're, not stopping for anything um. They they they're. Actually the number two TV maker in the world. I don't know who number one is I'm guessing, probably Samsung, but they've got a new uh display technology. It's called the od0, and it's a mini LED TV and OD stands for optical distance.

So normally, when you have a backlit LCD TV, you have a couple layers of technology. You have like your backlight LEDs that illuminate the LCD panel and there has to be a certain amount of distance between them, so they can be diffused so that one led can actually light up a couple like more than one pixel. If you will um so what they've done is they've actually got this zero optical distance of zero millimeters. So this sandwich is much shorter, there's no distance between that backlight layer and the actual led layer, and apparently it means for some of the thinnest TVs ever, and it's it. I mean we won't know until we actually get to see them in person, which is something that you know.

We're definitely missing. This year is seeing a lot of the stuff in person, but one of the things that they teased- that I thought was just amazing, although it did look like a render, was this AMOLED rollable display? So the idea behind it is that uh imagine a smartphone at that 6.7 inch smartphone, you press a button and then basically the display stretches to 7.8. It's it basically, it unfurls itself uh the little mechanism, sort of pulls it up, and so you go from phone to phablet. How sturdy do you think that is to be determined, but I mean they've done. They've done seem to have done a lot in this space.

They also had something else, but they're calling the 17-inch printed OLED scrolling display, which is a mouthful, but imagine you know remember all those old parchment scrolls that you would pull open, and they would kind of roll up. Imagine a display that you can do that with so the demo, video that they showed a hiker, hiking up a mountain, and he gets to the top, and he wants to look at the map. He unfurls this display. It's a 17-inch map that he has that it is an lcd, and it's it looks really cool. But again it kind of looked like a render.

You know we're watching these on. Basically, you know video conferencing software, so it's hard to really tell how good or how sturdy or how stable it is. This is the kind of stuff that we would love to get our hands on if we were actually at CES. Yeah, rollable is a big thing I think coming over the next few years and I think they're all scrambling to perfect that technology and obviously get the price down, because I can only imagine how much this stuff is. Lg has shown like a TV that has you know, rolling capabilities as well: um yeah, I love the concept, but for me obviously, price and durability.

Durability is probably the biggest question, which is also kind of surprising why they would choose a hiker as an example, because some guy's going to throw in his backpack and like how? How usable and sturdy is that? That's you know, use it to beat the bears back, perhaps yeah, but they also uh announced that they're going to have Google TV integrated into their TVs later in 2021. You know, so they've already added a bunch of different systems, so presumably you'll be able to pick your ecosystem for your TCL TV, I'm not sure if you can actually choose on the fly, or you have to choose the Roku version versus the Google TV version in the store, for example, yeah, I'm interested john because uh, I really feel from what I've been seeing this past year. Google is really pushing their google TV platform uh. You know especially to these OEMs. These companies like TCL and hi sense, uh and others to build it right in as the smart TV platform, and you know, is that going to do away with all the others.

You know, lg's got their web OS or TV OS. Sorry, um Samsung, you know, they've dabbled in you know different variations of their own proprietary, smart TV system, um, and what will that do to Roku? Roku doesn't have the bank role that Google does know what I mean no, but they have Quimby so but like how do they? How are they going to make money like how is Roku, making money they're selling hardware? Obviously they sell the smart sticks, I'm assuming that they're selling uh some sort of license uh to the TV manufacturers, but it'll get to a point where you know: google, they just give it away yeah. So if Google's just giving it away, uh, basically subsidizing the platform can Roku keep up with that. I guess we'll find out soon, because it's definitely getting a crowded space, and they're all kind of looking the same and everybody, including even the streaming services, are trying to build their own sort of OS system right. So if you got Netflix, you can have all these other things integrated into that or Apple TV, or you know, Disney plus, and all these things like that it makes sense to make it interoperable for the consumer so that you buy one thing, and you can still have access to everything else.

You're, just picking your hardware platform that you're basing that off of I'm just fascinated that apple hasn't come out with integrated Apple TV into televisions. You know what I mean like we've, seen it with cars. Now, when you're getting a car today, you can have you know the Apple Carplay or the android auto. Are we going to see the same thing with TVs in the next five to 10 years? It's just going to come down to one or two camps. I think so I would imagine so yeah whether we're going to see some of them die off or they're going to get assimilated in bought by these bigger players.

Yeah, the big players have lots of money, so they can certainly swallow up a Roku or something like that. But um. Let's move on to TCL's mobile stuff. They had a couple uh interesting new announcements. One is uh.

They basically said that their their their TCL 10 series was very popular, and they've got the 20 series which is out, out now or coming soon depending on the country that you're in- and these are all 5g capable phones at a very attractive price point. I haven't done the math, but the TCL 25g is going to be 299 euros. So quick math, I mean that's still roughly around the same price as what we saw for the 10 pro last year, and they're also going to have a SE model which is going to be half that price. So it'll be very interesting to see where that all fits and whether it's going to come to Canada or not. That's some of the things that these international keynotes, we don't get all the details yet, and it might take a couple more days for us to get that information, but very interesting.

A very compelling snapdragon, 690, 5g chipsets 6.7 inch displays. They also have a new line of tablets, the tab s. It's a 10-inch tablet. They also have something called move: audio s600, its wireless earbuds with noise, canceling active noise, cancelling which is interesting, transparency, mode and three different mics for noise reduction and uh sound cancellation for calls and stuff like that. So again, these are probably very compellingly priced, so we'll have to wait and see what that's going to look like the thing that I was probably most interested of all the things other than the syllables.

I think the syllables are pretty cool was project archery. This is their wearable display for mobile devices that they showed off a little last year, more of as a sort of proof of concept, but now they're actually going to commercially make it, and it's supposed to come out later this year. This is basically a looks like a pair of sunglasses that you would wear that have dual 1080p full HD displays in each eye piece, so you plug it into your mobile phone, and then you can actually see your display play your game. Watch your movies on these uh fairly small, looking headset yeah. I think we're still a ways away on the wearables.

I mean, I think some big guys are going to get into it. There are rumors that apple is getting into the wearable space, so I think the next few years will be defined by what apple announces essentially yeah. For sure, you know if you like this video or any of our videos, make sure you subscribe and hit that little bell notification icon as well, so that you'll be notified of all our CES 2021 coverage.

Source : GetConnected Media