A large TV no longer needs a larger home entertainment center to support it, thanks to hidden wall support, but you still have to deal with wires. You can guide them through the wall so they are out of sight or cross your fingers that this completely wireless TV technology demonstrated at CES 2021 is legal.
If you are really obsessed with wires that are out of sight, you can opt for a smart TV that handles wireless streaming alone, or use a wireless HDMI solution that allows game consoles to be connected on a screen without a physical cable. But to this day, nobody found a way to turn off a TV’s power cord. Companies like Ossia demonstrated wireless power technologies which controls devices such as TV remote controls, in-store pricing instructions and even download a smartphone across the room, but the technology has not kicked in enough to power the large TVs that most people now have at home.
But a Russian startup called Reasonance claims it has found a way to finally cut the last cord and demonstrate a wireless TV prototype using its technology at the CES 2021 virtual CES. the prototype TV has a receiver coil at the back and a transmission coil in the vicinity. The technology works similarly to the Qi wireless charging pads where a current is induced by a magnetic field, but Reasonance claims that its implementation increases the efficiency from 75% for the best induction chargers to 90%, so less power in the process is wasted.
The prototype of the technology demonstrated at CES 2021 is not exactly aesthetically pleasing – few of us swap a thin power cord for a giant spool on a nearby table and a matching spool hanging on the back of our TVs. But Reasonance claims that the wireless power transmission can work at distances of up to 3.3 feet, so that the transmitter coil can be hidden inside the wall behind a hanging TV (the setup of the coils also does not have to be completely perfect) while the receiver coil can be integrated in the frame of the screen. This would possibly limit how thin a TV can be, but it looks like a minor compromise for the convenience of the screen is completely wireless.
Do we want to believe that completely wireless TVs are just around the corner thanks to Reasonance? Yes of course. The company has already patented its technology in Russia and is currently applying for patents around the world in the US, Canada, China, India and South Korea, so it is apparently very confident in what it has created. But we have also seen other companies kill the power cable, including companies with good resources like Samsung that patented his own approach early in 2019 to wireless TVs, but has not yet delivered the technology in a consumer-ready product. A working technology demo is one thing: a product that works reliably, safely, and efficiently in the real world is a whole other thing. Hopenly, Redenance may soon switch its technology to the next step.
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