LG Electronics has something exclusive for swanky homeowners with serious cash to burn - a curved organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TV handcrafted with Swarovski crystals.
In a statement released by LG, the Korean electronic goods maker says it has forged a partnership with famed Austrian maker of luxury cut lead glass, otherwise known as Swarovski crystals, to introduce the world's first crystal-embedded curved television, which LG will unveil at the IFA 2014 in Berlin which kicks off this month.
This extravagant addition to the living room sits on what LG calls a Crystal Stand, which features about 460 Aurora Borealis crystals in three sizes. To top it all off, these crystals were applied by hand using a uniquely-crafted stencil for this TV alone. LG says this, along with the curved display, gives off the impression that the TV is floating on thin air, or perhaps a star-studded night sky, providing users a premium viewing experience.
"We are excited to showcase this one-of-a-kind TV -- our first collaboration with designers from Swarovski -- to visitors at IFA," says LG's Home Entertainment Company president and CEO Hyun-hwoi Ha. "The epitome of luxury and refinement, Swarovski crystals and LG's premium OLED TV complement each other perfectly. The crystals help to create an aesthetic that is, quite simply, gorgeous, while our OLED technology ensures a level of picture quality that is every bit as stunning as one could imagine."
LG has been taking the long and lonely road toward making OLED TVs a mainstream addition to the American household. Its Korean rival Samsung has been touting the benefits of its much marketed Super AMOLED displays for its mobile devices, but LG's pixel-dimming system used in its OLED screens also produce similar benefits, including sharper colors, deeper blacks and less flickering and blurring.
The downside, however, are the staggering prices that comes with these new technologies. The first curved OLED TV that LG debuted about a year ago was a 55-inch model that first became available at Best Buy with a steep $15,000 price tag. Granted, LG executives have been coming out saying that technology improvements have led to more efficient productions, cutting costs that allow the company to slash down its prices.
With the inclusion of luxury crystals into the stand, however, customers can expect to burn their pockets a little bit more for LG's crystal-coated curved TVs. It is not clear which models will get the luxury makeover, though, but LG is most likely not going to sell these exclusive items in the mainstream market and will probably limit the luxury to its latest 4K 77-inch curved OLED TV unveiled last week.
