LG Display bolts curved OLED TVs to motorized throne, exercise bike at CES 2022
Neither is a real product yet, but they sure look cool.
- Although still awaiting his Oscar for Best Picture Reviewer, David does hold certifications from the Imaging Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Standards and Technology on display calibration and evaluation.
The chair puts a 55-inch OLED TV at the optimal viewing distance.
CES 2022 has quickly unraveled as an in-person event with numerous companies canceling in-person attendance in Las Vegas. But the show will go on in virtual form. And no company has a stronger CES track record of futuristic concept technology than LG Display.
The company best known as the world's only source (for now) of big OLED TV panels made a few announcements for the CES season and the most impressive-looking is basically a big chair with a screen attached.
LGD is calling the concept "media chair." It consists of a thronelike seat ensconced in an arc that allows it to tilt back, but the coolest feature is the screen. A fixed arm mounts a 55-inch, curved OLED screen at a distance of 1.5 meters (about 5 feet) from the face of the viewer in the chair, which LGD says is the optimal viewing distance.
The screen is curved and a motor in the mount allows it to be turned from a standard horizontal (landscape) orientation to a vertical (portrait) mode, a bit like the Samsung Sero TV. The chair itself is no slouch either, with an integrated 5.1 channel sound system -- speakers are in the display itself as well as the headrest and a subwoofer in the base -- and a pair of LCD touch panels in the armrest for control.
LG Display's "virtual ride" gives this cyclist a bucolic tour.
The company also debuted a second concept featuring curved, flexible OLED panels, dubbed "virtual ride." It's a stationary exercise bike facing a vertically oriented OLED display designed to surround the rider with a kind of virtual world -- think Peloton with a much, much bigger and better screen. The screen consists of three 55-inch OLEDs that curve in front and above the rider, whom LG says can cycle through virtual forests, cities or other environments while tracking miles ridden, heart rate and more.
As a manufacturer that makes OLED and LCD screens to supply them to other companies, including LG Electronics, Sony and Vizio, as well as commercial customers like malls and museums, LG Display isn't showing off actual products that will exist in the real world. Instead, these are strictly concepts designed to demonstrate possible uses.
LGD representatives told CNET that the company is working with a Korean massage chair manufacturer on something similar to the media chair, and that it would make sense in something like a VIP airport lounge, but I'd be surprised if it, or the exercise bike, became something you could buy this year. On the other hand, some of the company's weirdest concepts have gone on to become real products, so who knows?