OPINION: At the end of every year, everyone tries to be a prognosticator and predict the future, but as is often the case, things nudge slightly forward rather than taking a great leap. As far as I can tell with TVs for 2025, it’s going to be more of the same.
That might be a slightly depressing way of looking at things, but much of the ‘innovation’ that’s come our way in the last few years has been fairly obvious. TVs are getting brighter, they’re getting bigger, they’re using AI more often and they’re packed with as many features as you could want from a TV, but are they altogether different from a few years ago? They are better but nothing has signficantly changed.
TVs on the whole could use some ‘big’ innovative ideas to switch things up. In this cycle of TVs we’ve seen AI (or neural networks to be specific) come into their own with regards to upscaling. TVs are getting even bigger – it used to be that 65-inches was fine but now TV brands are pushing 80- and 90+ inches just as much. Who actually has space for these TVs other than millionaires I do not know.
The market has stabilised, every brand is more or less repeating what they’ve done previously or are copying each other, and – without getting too into specifics – applying what they’ve learned with one range of TVs to another subset of theirs, but that uniformity has the effect of making everything the same. CES is not far away but I wager that you could rinse and repeat announcements from previous years but include the word AI more often in the press releases.
OLED TVs are getting brighter but they’ve arguably already reached the point where a significant chunk of them are bright enough – if you’re willing to pay the price. Most TVs above a certain price employ adaptive picture technologies to provide the best image in whatever room lighting conditions you’re watching in.
Sound systems are – more or less – as good as they can get within the slim confines of a TV chassis, which isn’t saying much but year after year I test TVs, and in the last five years there hasn’t been a drastic improvement. Personally I’m rather happy for there to be a TV that doesn’t have a sound system at all, because why bother if it’s just going to be crummy, and at least that way you could offer a TV and a sound system as one purchase.
So where can TVs go next?
From what I can see there is no real big innovation coming as far as TVs are concerned. It’s been an evolution rather than a revolution to where we are now. To repeat myself, TVs are brighter, upscaling is better, the smarts and services are all nice to have but we’re now used to these things.
TVs of today are like an ‘everything burger’. They serve you with all the things you need, even if you don’t want them or use them. We need something that will shake things up.
I’d love to see a TV that does something different from the norm rather than adhering to the group think that’s come to dominate the market. Every brand wants to copy the other for fear of missing out, but it could be that the TV manufacturer that strikes out on its own and does something really interesting and creative gets the attention.
Otherwise, these ‘everything burger’ TVs will just repeat themselves year after year. Don’t you want to be excited by a new TV? I absolutely do but I’m not feeling that excitement.
