DisplaceTV retools its stick-to-the-wall smart TV’s safety features

If you find yourself constrained by wires and cables when it comes to the placement of your TV, your troubles are over. Or at least they will be when Displace ships its truly wireless TV sometime in 2024. The date has slipped due to some not-insignificant design changes, most notably to the safety features that come into play should the TV’s vacuum system fail to keep it stuck to your wall (more on that in a bit).

If you’re not familiar with it, the Displace TV is a 20-pound 4K smart TV (20 pounds is extremely light for a 55-incher). The light weight is made possible by housing much of the major electronics in a base unit that beams video signals to the TV via Wi-Fi 6e. The manufacturer claims the base unit has enough range that you can put it just about anywhere in the house.

Multiple displays can be combined to create a larger, higher-definition image. The company talks about four 4Ks melded for a 110-inch 8K TV, or sixteen 4K displays for a 220-inch 16K image. Displace CEO Balaji Krishnan said you might eventually be able to take that even further. The company showed a four-TV array at CES earlier this year, but did not repeat that at today’s demo at the Ferry Building in San Francisco.

The other unique aspect of the Displace TV is its vacuum-mount system that allows you to “stick” the TV to nearly any relatively smooth vertical surface: no drilling, no screws, and nothing permanently attached to the wall. In today’s demo, Krishnan showed a prototype hanging on a ceramic tile wall–a hard-but-fragile surface most people wouldn’t try drilling into. The company says the system works equally on drywall and even glass, but doesn’t recommend using it with porous surfaces such as brick.

The prototype shown today was outfitted with swappable internal batteries that Krishnan said should last for three months between charging. A set of external batteries that weren’t on display today should yield 10 months of hang time, according to Displace.

But the demonstration’s biggest “wow” came when Krishnan showed off the TV’s entirely new safety system that replaces the air bags from earlier designs. If the TV detects a loss of vacuum that could lead to the TV falling off the wall, a set of tethers–anchored by removable adhesive tape that gets attached to the wall–will slowly lower the TV to the floor. A set of cushions will emerge from the bottom of the TV to ensure a soft landing, and then the tethers will slowly lower the top of the TV to the floor, so that it ends up face down (so, it probably won’t work if there’s a soundbar or a piece of furniture beneath the TV). The system worked quite well in the demo (you can see a frame from the live stream above), and it sure beats coming home to a shattered TV after an extended vacation.

Instead of a conventional remote control, Displace says buyers will control the TV with gestures and touch. The demo unit in today’s presentation wasn’t equipped with a webcam, so that aspect of the product wasn’t demonstrated; neither was the touch interface. Suffice it to say that Displace has a lot to do before it can ship this TV to consumers.

Displace didn’t perform a picture quality demonstration today, or even comment on what type of panel technology will be used (they’ve previously said it would be an OLED panel), so I can’t comment on that aspect of the TV’s performance. That said, it’s hard to find a bad 4K TV these days, even at the low end of the market.

Update, October 4th, 2023: Displace has confirmed that the displays will be an OLED.

Will you want a Displace TV?

Pricing has not been announced, so I can’t factor that in either, but I can definitely see a market for this unique product in corporate environments or trade shows. The lack of cabling restrictions alone will see to that. For the home? Interior designers will have a field day, and you can put one anywhere for parties (in the yard, on the patio or deck, and so on). So yes, you’ll want a Displace TV if the price is within reason.

For more on the Displace TV, you can check out the company’s website, Displace.tv, or its Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages.