Panasonic AMP display is part TV, part picture frame

The idea of having a TV act as more than just a movie-viewing slab in your room has taken off in recent years, with Samsung’s the Frame TV positioning itself as much as an interior design piece as a display, presenting works of art when it’d otherwise be in standby mode.

At the Panasonic Innovation Forum, celebrating the company’s 100th anniversary, it showed its own intentions to spruce up your living room with a new type of display, the Panasonic AMP.

As much a picture frame as it is a TV, the AMP can be free standing, balanced against a wall or hung, displaying both static works of art and video art works. In fact, the Panasonic engineers on hand to explain the purpose of the screen spoke of how it was not really intended as a product to view shows or movies on – and that’s in part due to its unusual size.

Picture perfect

The work of a new internal incubator project for fast-tracking design concepts at Panasonic, the AMP is unique in its screen ratio, being a near-perfect square, rather than the 16:9 widescreen displays we are more familiar with.

A 4K-equivalent LCD panel, its size allows for varied types of art to be displayed, as well as giving it just as varied options for placement in your home.

As an incubator project, there’s no street date for the AMP yet – it’s more an opportunity for Panasonic to gauge interest in the idea. And there’s room for some seemingly obvious features to be included – though the screen also includes speakers designed to disperse audio in a wide stage to envelope a room in relaxing ambient sounds, there’s no way to upload your own pictures or videos. All content is piped in over the internet from Panasonic’s archives – which seems a missed opportunity for a piece that would work wonderfully as a large-scale digital picture frame.

But it remains an interesting idea that would be well worth exploring for the company – though that early rush for digital photo frames was let down by cheap, low quality screen technology (and equally primitive smartphone camera tech), it’s now possible to make slimline 4K panels of excellent quality with relative ease. And, with smartphones offering near-pro level cameras in our pockets, there’s no end of personal, high-quality imagery with which to populate them.

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