OVER THE decades since its invention, the goggle box has been transformed almost beyond recognition. What was once a bulky cabinet sitting in the corner of the living room has grown like Topsy in height and width and shrunk like Ant-Man in depth. The picture itself, once a blurry black-and-white image composed of scanning lines visible to the eye, is now a pin-sharp display presented in a spectrum of hues so rich than even Van Gogh would not have balked at using them. It takes only a slight stretch of the imagination to view TVS as objects more like oil paintings, better suited to hanging on a wall than sitting on the floor. And that, increasingly, is where they do hang.Yet as good as televisions have become, they are about to get yet better. Rival makers of the two types of screen technology, one, called LED, based on liquid crystals and inorganic light-emitting diodes, the other, called OLED, on organic light-emitting diodes with no liquid crystals involved, are beautifying their offerings to the point where they are more dazzling than Lady Gaga, tvs of the future will have yet brighter images with yet higher contrast. Their screens will be bendable and may even become transparent.
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