I recently attended Panasonic’s launch of its new TV range (which includes the first TV to use LG’s new brighter and cheaper OLED panel), and among all the TVs that it’s actually planning to release, the company showed off a few TV concept ideas.
One of them was a portable TV with a battery, as is all the rage at the moment, with Samsung having announced a set like this in 2025, and LG offering its weird-but-cool suitcase TV. Like Samsung‘s TV, the Panasonic concept has a handle and is easy to grab and stand anywhere to start watching something.
There’s a big, round speaker on the left side, and a CD player with a transparent cover on the right side. Panasonic emphasized that if it ever actually put this into production, the idea would be to support DVD and Blu-ray on the player, naturally, but in the version I saw, the combo offered was TV and CD.
I kind of loved the idea, even in its slightly odder form. Panasonic didn’t discuss this, but one has to assume that this would have smart TV features for streaming built in as well (probably using Fire TV, given Panasonic’s common use of that in the UK and US), as other portable TVs do.
But the thing about a portable TV is that you won’t always use it in range of a healthy Wi-Fi network. Maybe you want to watch in the car, or outdoors – that means you need offline viewing, and what could be more offline than good ol’ physical media? I mean, you can still buy those little portable DVD players for exactly this reason, and the first of those debuted in 1998 (produced by… drum-roll please… Panasonic). It’s still arguably the best solution
And hey, why not break out the classic CD wallet, unzip it ceremoniously, and play some tunes when the movie’s finished?
I’ll grant you that downloading movies and TV shows offline on tablets has overtaken much of what I’m saying here, but this TV has a 24-inch screen, so it’s way better for multiple people to watch. I’ll also grant you that it being a 24-inch screen and wedge-shaped makes it a lot more cumbersome to carry around than a tablet, but that’s also part of the charm.
It looks like both a boombox and a TV – movies in the front, party in the back – in a way that delivers a satisfying bit of physical design, especially in a fetching green color.
I’d be surprised if Panasonic and its new TV-production partner Skyworth actually make this thing, but I think of all the portable TV ideas I’ve seen so far, it’s my favorite.
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