Samsung Teases Revolutionary TV Design For CES 2013

Samsung has teased a striking new TV design for reveal at CES 2013, what's apparently a portrait form-factor set which will shake up the traditional landscape orientation of televisions to-date. The new model is illustrated only with the somewhat vague picture shown here,  and it's unclear whether we're supposed to guess at some sort of transparent panel.

If that were the case, then it's not Samsung's first unusually-shaped transparent display. The company demonstrated a tiling system of 21.6-inch panels with a 1:1 aspect ratio, building on previous work with more traditional form-factor transparent screens.

However, Samsung said at the time that the transparent sets are really intended for marketing and promotional use, such as in creating a showroom case that could overlay dynamically changing specifications on top of a product.

Another alternative is that the new Samsung set doesn't fill its entire frame with a flatscreen. Bang & Olfusen's BeoVision 10-46, for instance, is a portrait-orientation TV with a display on top and a speaker section below, a form-factor that Samsung is yet to experiment with.

Whether whatever concept Samsung shows off next week would actually reach the market is questionable; the company has brought various big-screen prototype TVs, such as OLED and other technologies, to CES in previous years, but has generally stuck with LCD for its commercial range.