Smart future tech at CES
(Part One)
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) takes place in Las Vegas every January, and it is THE place where the smart home and home entertainment industries launch most of their new products. At Modal AV we always keep an eye on CES as it provides a glimpse of what’s coming in the future. Let’s take a look at some of the things that caught our eye this year…
LG Micro Lens OLED screens
LG have been the pioneer of OLED screen technology from the outset (they even make the OLED panels for other TV manufacturers such as Sony). One of the shortcomings of OLED technology compared to traditional backlit LED is that it can’t achieve the same brightness levels to make the most of HDR content (although of course, they achieve much deeper blacks). Well LG has a number of advances that will improve OLED screens over the coming years. Using what they call META technology, the new panels are up to 60 per cent brighter, with LG claiming they can achieve peak brightness of 2,100-nit (current OLED screens are nearer 1,000-nit brightness). META technology works by using a Micro Lens Array—a layer of tiny convex lenses that maximise light emission. It also provides a 30 per cent wider viewing angle and enhances energy efficiency by 22 per cent. OLED screens have a bright future and as they continue to increase in size could soon replace projectors in many home cinema installations!
BMW Full-windscreen Head-Up Display
Controlling your smart home from the car has been possible for a while with technologies such as geofencing, CarPlay and Android Auto. However, if you are the driver then taking your eyes off the road to adjust the temperature of your house ready for when you arrive home is perhaps not the safest course of action. Head Up Displays (HUD) that project information onto the car’s windscreen so you don’t have to look down at the dash that has been around for a few years on many cars, but generally only feature speed and navigation information. Well BMW are planning on taking the HUD to a whole new level by making it possible to display information anywhere on the windscreen. Targeted at a 2025 launch, it could soon be much safer to interact with your home while driving.
Samsung Smart Kitchens
Samsung has been putting smart technology into their washing machines and dishwashers for a while now; allowing you to get notifications of when a cycle has finished, or make a change to a wash programme without going back to the laundry room. Now it’s the oven’s turn to get smart— the Bespoke AI Oven, Samsung promises, will make meal preparation stress-free. The AI Pro Cooking system uses a camera plus other technologies and advanced AI software to warn you when you're about to burn your food. Not only that, the camera analyses what is being cooked and suggests optimum temperature and cooking times for more than 80 different dishes and ingredients. No more burnt lasagne.
We’ll take a look at some more of Modal AV’s favourite announcements from CES 2023 in our next blog