LG continues to develop Micro LED technology and unveils a colossal new 325-inch screen that weighs a ton and costs a fortune
In the tech world, the concept of a limit is something to be pushed, again and again. Especially if you're a market leader and have to compete with other global giants. That's why LG has unveiled a new line of screens with dimensions at the limits of the incredible, technology at the limits of the futuristic and prices beyond the limits of what any normal person can earn. These are the new Micro LED DVLEDs with diagonals up to 325 inches and prices exceeding $1.7 million.
What's it all for? Art installations, showrooms, but also luxury home cinema, the kind that doesn't compromise on quality or size. Stuff for few, not only for the stratospheric prices but also for the space required and the power consumption generated by these real "monstrous" screens that weigh up to a ton. If the models just presented are still for a few, however, the technology used will sooner or later be for everyone: it is the Micro LED, considered by many to be the perfect balance between the merits of LCDs and those of OLEDs, without their respective flaws. It's the same technology we find on Samsung The Wall and Sony Crystal LED. It is based on millions and millions of microscopic light-emitting diodes that make up the three sub-pixels needed to generate the individual pixels. Considering that the 8K resolution has about 33 million pixels, and that to make a pixel you need 3 sub-pixels, the count of light-emitting diodes comes close to 100 million.
LG DVLED 325 inches: how it is made
Since an inch is equal to 2.54 centimeters, it is easy to do the math and find that the giant screen LG DVLED 325 inches has a diagonal that measures 8.25 meters. In a 16:9 configuration, then, you get a panel that's 7.2 meters wide and 4 meters high, but this isn't the only possible configuration, because LG DVLEDs are modular screens, made up of smaller dials mounted next to each other. The 325-inch model needs as many as 144.
To keep it on, however, requires 17,000 watts of electricity. This means that when turned on, a 325-inch LG DVLED requires the power of five 3.3 kW household meters (and you have to keep the washing machine off, otherwise everything blows). At the average price of kWh in Italy in 2021, to watch a 2-hour movie on such a screen you'd spend 8 euros, basically as much as a cinema ticket.
It's not a Smart TV
To these costs, to tell the truth, you have to add others: those of the external module that contains all the smart electronics to reproduce the contents. The LG DVLEDs, in fact, are not Smart TVs but simple (so to speak) displays on which to project something.
You can connect them to an external LG Controller box, based on the proprietary WebOS operating system (the same one found in regular LG Smart TVs), which has a four-core processor and 3.6 GB of memory to store apps. Needless to look up the price of this controller: it's not like a few thousand euros will make a difference.