Although nowadays we mainly watch content in the 16:9 aspect ratio, more and more films are being brought to the market in the narrower 21:9 aspect ratio, and of course we still have older content in the 4:3 aspect ratio. If you watch such material on your 16:9 television, you have ‘black squares’ on your screen. LG now seems to be working on a solution to this problem as LG works on different aspect ratio TVs.
Out of patents appeared that LG is working on a 21:9 television that has movable speakers on the sides. These speaker parts can be slid over the screen so that they can hide the black bars (only vertically). The TV is literally slightly smaller when you watch 16:9 content on the 21:9 screen. Three image ratios are supported; 4:3, 16:9 and 21:9 as LG works on different aspect ratio.
The patents were filed with the WIPO Haque Express in May of this year and LG even shows examples of television in these patents. It is easy to see that on both sides of the television there are loudspeaker panels that can be pushed inwards to make black bars disappear. In stand-by mode, the panels can even be placed to the right for a design that differs from the standard. LG sees the television as a part of the interior and therefore thinks of different color variants.
Whether this is really going to be a television that we can buy over time is not yet clear, but in a little month in Las Vegas CES 2019 and that fair is often used to show innovations like this.
