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Philips' Minimalist, Monolithic DesignLine TVs

By Rain Noe - March 18, 2013

in Object Culture

If I've learned anything from watching movies, it is that you usually get involved in a motorcycle chase through narrow European alleys at the same time that two workmen are transporting a large sheet of glass. I believe this will change, and in the future it will be two workmen transporting a DesignLine television.

With 46" and 55" screens, Philips' new DesignLine TVs might not be as large as Samsung's recently-unveiled behemoths, but they arguably have a more elegant design approach. Whereas Samsung's designers created metal frames—albeit sleek, sexy ones—to support the screen, Philips has adopted a monolithic approach for theirs. It simply looks like a gi-normous piece of glass leaning against the wall.

Cynical industrial designers will see this as the World's Simplest CAD Job, but there was a quite a bit more to it than that, as you'll see in the video below.

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nym

11 years ago

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Basically all you need at the moment is a power cord and an HDMI cable running to the TV...at least as long as you use DVB-T, Disc-Players or streaming devices (boxee, apple tv, etc.) if you have a TV like this you might as well have a nice speaker setup and a powerful AV-Receiver...it wouldn't hurt to hide them outof sight of the TV to be honest.

Not the worst idea...but I guess it's for a small niche of design-savvy customers, as stated in the video.
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LeeM

11 years ago

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Reminds me of an old B&O design from a few years ago now...

http://www.bang-olufsen.com/en-GB/picture
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BFresh

11 years ago

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. Beautifully simple and elegant design. Though I'm not sold on leaning it up against the wall, I prefer the idea of having it mounted flat to the wall with all the cabling hidden.

Speaking of cabling, where would you put all the usual peripherals and paraphernalia that normally sit in the TV unit underneath? Maybe in the future all those peripherals will change orientation like the bang and olufsen CD players.

Well done Philips. Well done indeed. I think this could well be a design icon of the future
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Red

11 years ago

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The viewing angle looks off due to leaning against the wall.
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john

11 years ago

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looks beautiful. It's ironic though, what's been so great about these flat tv's has been the literal diet (thinner = less weight). Putting a massive sheet of glass on it must add at least 100 pounds.
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