San Francisco (CA) – Imagine you are enjoying the scenery in that Thomas Kinkade painting in one moment and grab the remote control in the next to exchange the picture for your evening TV news cast. Samsung believes such a scenario would open a niche in the LCD  TV market and presented a prototype LCD TV that acts as a huge picture as well as a common LCD TV.  

According to the electronics company, the device combine TV functionality with a “digital art display system” wrapped into what you normally would expect to surround Thomas Kinkade fine art. Called a 46” diagonal Art-TV, the TV will show digital versions of pre-loaded Kinkade paintings or 16x9 art that Kinkade said he will create specifically for such TVs.  

The TV will house a 40 GB hard drive as well as a network port (wired or wireless). The maximum resolution is 1080p, features a brightness of 500-nits, a 3000:1 contrast ratio as well as an 8 ms response time.  The first Art TV is scheduled to become available later this year and is expected to be sold initially through Kinkade galleries.

Thomas Kinkade is known as the “painter of light” as his paintings usually reveal interesting effects when exposed to light sources. These light sources, however, are usually placed in front of the pictures and not, as it is the case with this TV, in the back. We haven’t seen the TV personally, but we are wondering how the appearance of Kinkade pictures changes when displayed on a LCD and the light source will be changed.

Pricing of the TV has not been announced.