Turning LCD displays into glass-like transparency, which sounds like something that could only be achieved in science fiction movies, is now becoming a reality.

Xiaomi's recently released transparent TV explains this possibility: it can not only display various video contents, but also let you see the walls and decorations on the back of the TV through the screen like a glass cabinet.

Just like when the folding screen was born. Once again, it breaks many people's perception of "display", and also foreshadows the changes that may come to all electronic products with screens in the future.

However, if you only think it looks good, you may underestimate the value of transparent LCD screens.

Let's first understand the principle of transparent screen.

Here, we need to revisit a point of knowledge, that is, the OLED screen itself "self-luminous" characteristics, which means that each red, green or blue sub-pixel on the screen will be its own light, without relying on additional backlight.

Only in this way, OLED screens can eliminate the traditional LCD display in the liquid crystal layer, backlight layer and other modules, to achieve higher color contrast, in the form of thin and light enough to ensure.

This innate structural characteristics also meet the needs of many manufacturers want to make the display thinner, or even bend and fold.

But for transparent TVs, the real challenge is to make these millions of tiny pixels "transparent enough". We can take it for granted, as long as the choice of high light transmission of the substrate, with glass instead of the upper and lower cover and positive and negative, it will be easy to let the light through the panel, so that it is the same as the glass.

But now, panel makers have come up with another clever solution, which is to introduce the concept of "transparent pixels".

LG in a video briefly explained the principle of transparent OLED screen - it in the original red, green, blue, white four pixels based on the addition of a "transparent sub-pixel". This pixel does not emit light and is not involved in the image display, but is made of a highly transparent material.

Ultimately, when countless such pixels are evenly distributed on the panel, the screen will naturally get a certain transparency effect, but at the same time, it can also display color images.

You may have noticed that with such a structure, only a fraction of the total number of pixels actually allow light to pass through.

This is why the transparency of current transparent TVs is only about 30-40%, not 100%. After all, some sub-pixels are needed for the image display, but as long as the density and number of transparent sub-pixels are high enough, it is enough to "fool" the user's visual senses.