Japanese engineers have unveiled the prototype of a flexible, plasma television that can roll up like a window shade.

Japan’s Shinoda Plasma Co demonstrated the plasma screen at the Display Week 2013 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, last month, winning an award for ‘Best Prototype at Display Week’

The company calls its invention a ‘Luminous Array Film’, or LAFi. Instead of being made from one large, flat sheet of glass, the display uses a thousand tiny glass tubes.

Each tube is 1 mm in diameter and a bit more than 3 feet long. The panel can be rolled into a cylinder less than 4 inches across, Fox News reported.

In spite of their tiny size, the tubes are hollow, and can hold the inert gas and phosphors required to make the light to create an image.

Shinoda already makes larger displays it calls SHiPLA based on 2 metre by 1 metre panels, which have been used to create large, curved displays for museums and other public displays.

The company is working on developing a display with even smaller tubes — going from 1 mm to just 0.5 mm — which will make it possible to roll up into an even tighter circle.

Shinoda is positioning the product for digital signage at this point, but intends to come out with a version for home entertainment displays.

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