Is this where we're headed? Xiaomi introduces a transparent OLED TV

Finally I can see the mess of cables behind my TV in all its glory: Chinese IT company Xiaomi has brought the first TV with a transparent display to market – thereby overtaking Panasonic on the home stretch.

After all, it was actually the Japanese who, at last year's major IFA technology trade fair in Berlin, promised to be the first to bring transparent televisions to the living room in 2020. As far as we know, nothing changed in their schedule. Nevertheless, Xiaomi takes the gold.

Xiaomi's «Mi TV Lux OLED Transparent Edition», as it's fully called, is scheduled to be available as early as August 16. At least on the Chinese market. Upon request, Xiaomi hasn't yet been able to give us a concrete start date for Europe. It still needs to be validated.

Now, let's see what all this transparent fun will cost you... 49,999 Chinese Yuan. Currently about 6,550 francs or 6,100 euros. That's acceptable for a 55-incher. And according to Xiaomi's advertising, it allows you to look directly into the future. Or your neighbour's bedroom, at least. Whatever suits your needs.

According to Xiaomi: high-end hardware?

Okay, enough jokes about transparent displays.

When it's off, the glass is only about 5.7 mm thick. This is possible because the Smart TV uses a TOLED panel without a back plate for the 55-inch display; the T stands for transparent. The frame itself contains only two lightly tinted glass plates with the TOLED layers in between. The TOLED consists of 1920×1080 pixels – just over 2 million organic light-emitting diodes. No Ultra-HD then. Full HD only. But thanks to its 70-85 per cent transparency, the image is visible from both sides.

The Mi TV Lux Transparent 120 Hz OLED panel displays 10 bits per colour channel. That's just over 1.07 billion colours, as Xiaomi claims in their press release. In addition, the TV covers 93 percent of the DCI-P3 colour spectrum.

The electronics are located in the stand. Hard to do it any other way with a transparent display. Plus three HDMI 2.0 inputs. The stand also features a MediaTek-9650 processor and internal TV speakers that can handle Dolby Atmos. Xiaomi installed its own Android-based Miui operating system to control everything.

Let's ask ourselves the most obvious question: what does this TV do?

As exciting as the technology is, it's unsuitable for everyday use..

The specs are somewhere between high- and low-end. Especially for what is expected from a home theatre television. Full HD resolution for 55"? That's not a lot. A 93 per cent DCI-P3 colour range? That barely beats out most projectors. High-end televisions achieve around 97 to 100 percent coverage of the colour range used for HDR content. The 10-bit panel and native 120 frames per second are industry-leading.

However, the following statement from the press release is a bit much:

I'm sceptical: contrast describes the maximum difference between the brightest and darkest pixel. OLED TVs are said to offer infinite contrast because OLED pixels can switch on and off. They show real black where there should be black.

The problem with the Mi TV lies in its transparency: as light hits the pixels from behind, true dark black values don't seem possible. This all depends on what's behind the television set. How can Xiaomi even dream up these static contrast ratios? And we're not even going to start with crazy contrast values like the purported 150,000:1.

Panasonic, however, announced at the last IFA that it would solve the problem by having one side of the glass sandwich seal itself off from light. Or more precisely: it switches to «milky». You may have seen this in a tram: some clear glass windows can turn into an opaque translucent when needed. This makes it possible to display black and thus a regular picture. The image is then only visible from one side.

No one knows how Xiaomi will solve this problem. Sure, the technology is impressive. Perhaps even a first glimpse into the future of television. But it quickly becomes clear from the videos circulating around the Internet that the contrast ratios – and thus the picture quality – are far from what would be acceptable for home cinema.

Xiaomi, in any case, is courageously striding forward. This isn't only the first transparent OLED TV for home cinemas, but also the first of its kind to go into mass production. Things will get really exciting when Panasonic – but also OLED top dog LG – get involved in the near future.

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