Why curved TVs failed but curved gaming monitors thrived

Much like 3D sets , curved TVs at one point seemed like they were everywhere. Throughout the 2010s , many TV makers tried to market curved TVs as a more immersive way of viewing your new flat screen set. And simply put, they also looked pretty cool, especially if they were replacing a clunky first-gen LCD. But by 2020, even Samsung, the last holdout for curved TVs , gave up on the idea.

Aside from a few concepts that will likely never reach production, curved TVs are effectively dead. Instead, the dream of that technology lives on in gaming monitors, which offer more extreme curved angles than we've ever seen on televisions.

So what went wrong with curved TVs? There's an obvious short answer, and a few more complicated reasons.

The notion of gaining immersion with large curved screens isn't anything new. We've seen it for decades in IMAX theaters and other large format screens, like the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. It's easy to feel drawn into The Odyssey when you're sitting very close to a concave 65-foot tall screen. But there's a big difference between those massive theaters and a 55- to 65-inch flat panel in your living room, which is likely six to ten feet away from your couch.

Unless you were lucky enough to have a 78-inch curved set and sat fairly close, it was simply hard to replicate the sense of immersion from theaters. And even those large TVs, which were very rare, were still surrounded by everything else in your living room. You can't exactly get lost in The Lord of the Rings if your TV is surrounded by decorations, family photos and pets eager for your attention.

Even if you were completely satisfied by your curved set, there's a good chance your friends and family weren't. Curved LCDs had a sweet spot directly in the middle of their viewing angle, but once you drifted away from that, you instantly lost contrast and color saturation. If you were to watch Game of Thrones' infamously dark night scenes while sitting off-center from a curved TV, you'd likely have a hard time making out anything happening. (Curved OLED TVs didn't have the same sweet spot problem, but they were also typically more expensive than standard OLEDs.)

I noticed this myself while watching countless CES TV demos – some curved TVs practically looked greyscale when you were sitting at extreme angles. It was genuinely painful to see what those awful angles did to vibrant and colorful films like the majestic Life of Pi.

According to Dipin Sehdev, founder and CEO of the consumer electronics aggregator CE Critic , it wasn't just viewers taking issue with curved TVs. "I remember hearing from manufacturers that they were a pain to manufacture at scale," he said in an interview. "It's one thing to do a 30- or 32-inch TV, but when you start to get to 55, 65, or even 75-inch curved TVs, they were very difficult to manufacture and ship and keep the uniformity as best as they can."