AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – No matter how nice your television looks, there’s always a cluttered mess around it.
Cables, power cords, and cable boxes or streaming devices are necessary.
That is, until recently. Several companies are touting ‘wireless televisions’, but they all need at least one power cable connected to the set’s rear.
The Displace TV needs no power cable. Or any cables for that matter.
“This is a battery-operated TV,” said AJ Kirsch as he showed me around the company’s OLED 4K television. “We’ve got two internal lithium-ion batteries and then four hot-swappable lithium-ion batteries.”
The external batteries have slots on the side of the TV that are removable with the touch of a button.
When the internal batteries are depleted you can just charge the external batteries which will recharge the ones inside.
Kirsch said with all batteries on full-charge the TV will play for 180 hours.
“No wires, no ports, no cords. The world’s first truly wireless TV,” Kirsch said.
So what about the devices that need to be plugged into the television? The gaming systems, cable boxes or streaming devices, soundbars and antennas?
Where do those connect to the television?
“There’s a place to do that,” said Hirsch, pointing to a series of boxes that look like modems. “That’s what’s sending the signals to the TV, and it does so through WiFi 7. So there’s no issue as far as range. It doesn’t even need to be in the same room. It doesn’t even have to be on the same floor to communicate seamlessly to the TV.”
That’s impressive, but it’s not the only “wow feature” of the Displace TVs.
“No mounting or installation of any kind. It’s air-sealed to the surface,” Kirsch explained.
Demonstrating this, Kirsch pressed two buttons on either side of the TV while mounted on a large piece of plexiglass. The TV played a sound to signify it was ready to be removed from the wall.
Kirsch then pulled the television off the wall—large suction cups on the rear of the TV affixes to almost any surface. Hirsch said the only surface they don’t recommend is brick.
Otherwise, the set will stay put on the wall for as long as the batteries have power.
What happens when the batteries are depleted? At last year’s presentation at CES Displace could only say that it could crash to the floor. After another year of development came up with a solution.
“The TV will detect critical levels of battery life. Affix itself to the surface and slowly lower itself down on a tethering system so that it doesn’t fall.” Kirsch said.
A demo video showed a Displace TV slowly lowering to the floor and then laying itself face-down. Another feature of the Displace TVs is a facial-recognition camera that sits on top of the TV.
It learns the faces of the people in the home. If you’re watching a movie and get up and leave the room, the TV will automatically pause until you come back.
If you have more than one Displace TV the programming will unpause on the other TV when it detects you’ve walked into the other room.
So what is this going to cost? Kirsch said the 55″ version is $4,000. A smaller 27″ Displace TV will be $2,000. A third version, the Displace Flex, is a 55″ TV with a stand that will charge the TV’s batteries, much like wireless smartphone chargers.
Displace is taking pre-orders now on the Displace website, and Hirsch said they expect to begin shipping the TVs in June or July.
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