This is the first of a two-part, illustrated blog from Haksun Kim, Executive Vice President, Samsung Display on the functionality, attractiveness and popularity of curved TVs. <

Many people have admired the world’s naturally curving scenery and landscapes for their beautiful shapes and quite a few man-made artworks, including the Roman Coliseum, and the Sagrada Família church in Barcelona, have been created to emulate nature’s illustrious curvatures. Admiration for a curve’s beauty and greatness doesn’t end in architectural buildings, though.

Samsung's curved TV display. (Samsung/LEDinside)

Recently, in the TV industry, the idea of curved designs has been adopted by many technology companies, led by Samsung Electronics, resulting in the development of high definition televisions with large curved displays. But apart from the aesthetic beauty in their shape, what is the practical value of the curved screen TVs?

Samsung's eye friendly designs. (Samsung/LEDinside)

To answer that question, our Samsung Display affiliate recently shared insights into the functional beauty of curved televisions, especially in their organic, eye-friendly shape and the degree of curvature which provides an optimum viewing environment.

Eye-friendly design based on human engineering

The design idea of the curved TV originated from the structure of the human eye. Spherical in shape, our eye sees objects with light focused on the curved retina. And as you can see below, the image of a flat item on the retina tends to be somewhat distorted when viewed from different angles. But when the eye sees the object projected on the curved screen, the retina can recognize it as flat with reduced distortion. Based on such findings in human engineering, a paradigm shift is occurring in TV displays from flat-panels to curved screens.

(Source: Samsung)

Golden curvature

Currently, a wide range of curved televisions are available in stores, varying in sizes from 40, 48, 55, 65 and 78 inches. But many consumers ask, “What is the right size of the curved TV in a home?” Although some may say the bigger, the better, what matters most for a curved TV is the bending degree of ‘curvature’ – the radius of the curved display. This is a key determining factor of the quality and immensity of TV images. To find the optimal or “golden curvature” of the curved TV, it is important to give full consideration to the viewing environment of the living room, factoring in the TV’s size and its general distance from the viewers, as well as the radius of the curvature.