Some of the televisions unveiled this week at the annual CES trade show purportedly make accessing metaverse worlds or non-fungible token (NFT) wallets as easy as clicking the remote, escalating a long-running race among manufacturers to produce the screens with the most bells and whistles.

In addition to the usual streaming apps and voice-control capabilities, over the past year a few manufacturers — notably Samsung and LG — have added Web3 features such as NFT marketplaces and metaverse platform integrations to their internet-connected “smart” TVs. These moves represent a bid to ensure their sets appeal to a tech-savvy and, in the long term, potentially influential customer base.

From the other side, Web3 companies see smart TVs as a possible path to reaching a mass audience. Samsung and LG are the top two TV makers in the world by market share, and these days you can’t throw a rock in a TV showroom without shattering the screen of a so-called “smart” model.

(by Pete Pachal)