Future-proof your TV says Samsung at CES

Samsung wants you to keep (most of) your Smart TV for longer

CES closed last Friday but I'm still picking over the bones. One initiative that struck a chord with me was Samsung's proposal to make their TVs future-proof by sporting a replaceable processor module. Most up to date TVs are already pretty good at, well, displaying live TV and video, and as explored yesterday, many can now connect you to the local network or Internet to play videos or to watch photo slide shows (see, there really is a photography link!).

With the evolution of TVs now heading in the direction of giant tablet computers, running apps and doing other processor-intensive clever stuff, video processing and number crunching power requirements could increase fast. The original iPad and smartphones started off with rather puny single-core processors and not much memory, but the prospect of cutting-edge phones and tablets with quad-core processors is imminent.

With TV flat panel displays lasting longer than ever, benifiting from fade-resistant LED backlights, or long life plasma display technology and OLED panels (actually, the life spans of OLED panels are still a bit of an un-known), the prospect of having to ditch a perfectly good TV set because it won't run the latest TV apps properly is obviously on the minds of Samsung's engineers.

So I salute Samsung's concern over the longevity of their TVs in our living rooms, espicially as my first LCD TV conked out after less than 18 months and was irrepairable because the parts that needed replacing were, amazingly, no longer available. Looks like Samsung is learning from its mistakes!