Television of the Future

The first broadcasting company (CBS) was founded in 1928. Television has come a long way since then, and is growing faster and faster with each passing year. You may not realize it, but all of these new technologies that keep consumers scrambling to shelves year after year are the result of something bigger. We are in a transitionary period for television technology, and in ten years time it is likely that you will see your current set as nothing more than a bulky piece of obsolete technology.

For the past several years, people have debated over their favorite television screen technologies. LED? LCD? Plasma? Or perhaps you're a fan of the projector screen, if you have the right environment.

Hitting the shelves soon is a whole new contender, the organic LED (OLED) screen. These screens have been used in the most display-centric smartphones for a while now, and LG has already begun to sell TVs using this technology in certain countries.

Organic LED screens are more energy efficient than LCD screens and they operate without a backlight, allowing them to create the deepest levels of black while remaining thinner and lighter than any other screen technology on the market. Meanwhile, Samsung is working on their own new OLED TV's utilizing a curved screen. If you are lucky, you may be familiar with this "curved screen" technology, found in certain theaters such as the Cinerama in Seattle. The purpose of such a curvature is to help avoid the "pincushion" effect found when sitting to the far right or left of the screen.

The next step in television evolution beyond OLED technology will naturally be the long awaited surface screen technology. It is likely that OLED screens will be the precursor to this technology, placing OLED film over our mirrors and on counter tops. In other words, we may only be one step away from what only a few years ago we still saw as nothing more than science fiction...

As internet speeds skyrocket into the unnecessarily fast, streaming media is becoming commonplace. Many of us haven't paid a bill for television in a long time...and we still get to see all the best shows as fast as anyone else.

For now, streaming everything isn't quite for everybody. You have to know where to look, and get your media from a variety of sources. (I utilize Netflix, Amazon, a Roku, PlayOn, and a variety of websites for my streaming needs) These things grow in popularity however, and the only thing holding them back is the all consuming dollar.

Enter Smart TV's. Many sets now come with some sort of "smart" technology, but most often go unused. Corporations will not make it "easy" for us to stream everything we want until they can figure out how to cash in on it. As it stands now, the savvy consumer can watch anything and everything they want for free. It just requires a bit of tech knowledge, and the effort to make it happen.

The next big step in media streaming technology will be to combine Smart TV technology with our ability to access all the video we want. Roku is on the forefront of this fight. By providing consumers with channels that allow us to access everything we could possibly want to watch with a simple click of the button, they will then be able to charge us for exactly that. You might still be able to utilize all the techy workarounds and watch everything for free, but history has proven that the masses will pay for convenience.