A revolution in TV or a flop in technology?

IKEA is moving into “hybrid furniture” integrating a home entertainment unit with HD TV, Blu-ray, DVD and CD player as well as a 2.1 sound system featuring a wireless subwoofer which will all be controlled with a single remote control. They have called it UPPLEVA.

The UPPLEVA’s angle is to get rid of all the wires that are required for the devices of home entertainment unit such as the DVD player. We aren’t really sure if it is much of a selling point especially when you consider how well IKEA is at building gadgets...

The TV itself is made by a Chinese manufacturer TCL (which is a budget TV) and with the prices said be starting at around £630 it doesn’t really compete with Samsung or LG for cost/quality.

The customisation options available are pretty impressive though, you will have the option of TV sizes between 24 and 46 inches, you will then be able to customise the units, sizes and colour of the unit to suit you. The units also come with extra storage in case you need it for your games console or DVDs.�

Although the concept does seem pretty cool, there are a few issues you always get with an all-in-one system, for example what happens when technology moves on and what happens if one of the devices breaks? IKEA may well offer solutions to this, maybe by allowing you to replace individual components but this would obviously defeat the purpose of the all-in-one system.

Check out the UPPLEVA video here to see the full specification.

The UPPLEVA will be released to a few select European countries (Sweden, France, Portugal, Italy, Poland, Spain, Denmark and Norway) this autumn and the rest of us should be able to get our hands on it early 2013.

So flop or hit? You decide...