Samsung Electronics plans to announce later this week a flat-panel TV that is 6.5-millimeters thin, which is hardly thicker than the cardboard used in the box that holds your morning Wheaties. It will be shown at CES in Las Vegas over the weekend.

The TV set is between 6.5mm and 7mm across its width and has an LED (light emitting diode) backlight.

The backlight sits behind the LCD panel and generates the light that shines through it to allow the image to be seen.

Most LCD panels use thicker backlights that make use of fluorescent lights but LEDs are probably the way we are going to go.

These screens can hang on your wall and look like a framed picture. Some of them have screensavers built in so that you can have a slide show when not watching television. Yes, it would drive you mad. But there are some people who like it.

Until now the record for a full size television with television anorexia was held by Philips, which publicly unveiled an 8mm prototype LCD television at the IFA electronics show in Berlin. At the same event Sony has a 9.9mm set that is on sale and it is currently the thinnest LCD TV available for purchase.

Can screens get thinner? Yes. Sony is working on screens so thin as to be flexible. Sony  in 2007 posted a video — you can see the video clip on YouTube — of a new, admittedly small, 2.5 inch display which was flexible. 0.3 millimetre thick. Less than half the thickness of the Samsung display coming later this week.

This flexible Sony display, which is now a few years old, combines Sony’s organic thin film transistor, or TFT, technology, which is required to make flexible displays, with another kind of technology called organic electroluminescent display — OLED

Although flat-panel TVs are getting slimmer, a display that’s so thin it bends in a human hand marks a breakthrough. In fact, Sony had been working on this some time and started with the concept of a foldable screen. One you could also roll-up. Just like a newspaper. But Sony is very canny about this and said at the time plans for a commercial product using the technology were still undecided. They still are.

Chisato Kitsukawa speaking for Sony said, ‘In the future, it could get wrapped around a lamppost or a person’s wrist, even worn as clothing. Perhaps it can be put up like wallpaper.’

Tatsuo Mori, professor at Nagoya University’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, agreed that lots of hurdles remain such making the display bigger, ensuring durability and cutting costs. But he said, ‘To come up with a flexible screen at that image quality is groundbreaking. You can drop it, and it won’t break because it’s as thin as paper.’

And that is the target — a television screen as thin as paper.

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Entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 1:27 am under Science and technology, YouTube.

Read more entries by Gareth Powell.
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