Korean electronics company Samsung has announced a new smart television set, called The Frame, which displays artwork or pictures when not in use.
The TV set was first displayed as a concept device earlier this year at the CES trade show in Las Vegas.
This weekend, at the annual pre-IFA 2017 global press conference in Lisbon, Samsung announced The Frame would come to market by the end of May. It will first go on sale in Europe and then globally over the following weeks.
Michael Z"oller, VP of Samsung visual display in Europe, told the 300 journalists in attendance that the company was looking towards expected living conditions when designing new products.
He said trends predict people will be living in smaller living spaces in the future, but have an increasing number of devices. Therefore, he says Samsung is looking for ways to "blend" electronics into the background so that smaller spaces don't get cluttered with various wires and black screens.
The Frame is a mounted screen which sits flat against the wall. Z"oller says 30% of people in Europe are wall-mounting their television because it saves space. However, he says, the problem of cables hinders others from making the same choice.
Samsung has created a fibre glass "invisible" cable for The Frame, which gives the impression that the screen is wireless.
The TV also has intelligent sensors which detect if there is no one in the room and turns off the screen. The sensors and processors also look for the brightness and colour temperature in the room and adjust accordingly to prevent the picture displayed from looking fake.
The Frame also has customisable wooden frames that clip around the screen so they can be coloured to match the existing frames in the room.
At launch, there will be more than 100 curated pieces of artwork to choose from in the app. Users also have the option to display their own photographs.
The Frame will be available in two sizes ? 55-inch and 65-inch ? and prices will start at EUR2 199 (R30 954).
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