Australia’s lounge room revolution puts big TVs on a diet, replaces surround-sound systems

YOU want an enormous TV in a tiny space? Home-entertainment technology is being redesigned to give apartment dwellers a cinematic experience.

Lounge rooms are evolving in design to fit more into a smaller space.

IT’S a bizarre physics problem. Our homes are getting smaller but our TVs keep getting bigger.

Something has to give and, according to experts, we’re leaving it to design and technology to solve the problem.

One company launched a TV as thin as just four credit cards in Australia this week, huge screens now weigh as little as 26kg so they can be hung on walls, and consumers are ditching complicated home-theatre sound systems for a one-speaker-to-rule-them-all approach.

And that’s in addition to greater resolution letting us sit closer to the screen than ever.

Australian interior designer and author Amanda Talbot, on hand for Samsung’s TV launch, says TVs used to be a serious constraint when designing a space.

The screens, now most often 50 inches and above, are now impossible to camouflage, she says, but significant effort has been made to make them more attractive and a feature piece for the lounge room.

Televisions, like this Samsung Series 9 JS9500 SUHD TV, are slimmer than ever.

“In the past, in design, we’ve always thought to hide the TV behind the cupboard door but now our screens are getting so big it’s actually not the way for us to go,” she says.

“As consumers, we’ve become really design-conscious for our homes. (Today’s) TV is not what we’re used to seeing to the point where the back of the TV that used to be so ugly they’ve even considered that.”

It’s into this market that LG launched its flagship TV this week. The G6 is a 65-inch television screen but, at its thinnest point, it is less than one centimetre thin.

LG home entertainment marketing manager Grant Vandenberg says the TV, revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, was dubbed “Picture on Glass” due to the way it was made and its slender profile.

“The OLED panel itself is bonded on to a glass plate, and the total thickness of this is a mere 5.8mm at its thinnest point,” he says. “From side on, you can barely see it.”

The $10,999, 31kg television is in currently available in limited numbers.

It will go head-to-head with sleek offerings from the likes of Sony and Samsung, both of which prove big TVs no longer need to weigh 60kg or more.

LG's G6 65-inch television has a profile less than 1cm at its thinnest point.

Sony’s 65-inch X9300D television, for example, is just 3.6cm thin and weighs 32kg with its stand. Samsung’s competing 65-inch Series 9 TV has a profile of just 3.26cm and weighs 31kg with its stand or 26kg without it, in case you want to mount it on a wall.

The rest of the home theatre is shrinking in size too.

GfK research shows multi-speaker surround sound systems are not as popular as they once were but Australians are spending more on all-in-one soundbars that sit below the TV and deliver a similar effect.

The company found consumers spent 18 per cent more on soundbars in April this year than last year, and the average sale price is on the rise.

Another unexpected technological plus: the trend towards 4K Ultra High Definition resolution could help consumers justify adding big TVs to small spaces, Vandenberg says.

The TVs offer four times as many pixels as HD TVs and “what this means is you can sit closer to the TV without seeing pixilation on the screen”.

Originally published as Australia’s lounge room revolution puts big TVs on a diet, replaces surround-sound systems