If thin is in, then Samsung moves to the front of the class. The company just put its prototype 40-inch LCD on the runway at the Korea Electronics Show in Seoul last week, a scintillating model which measures just 7.9mm thick. That's enough to earn 1/10th of a millimeter worth of bragging rights over Phillips, who showed off what was previously considered the thinnest LCD at 8.0mm at the IFA exhibition in Berlin this past August.

So how did the two companies fit all those electronics into an ultra-thin frame? The answer is they didn't. Instead, each company's respective prototypes moved the tuner and much of the electronic inner-workings into an external box located near the screen. Whether this approach ultimately leads to a consumer product remains to be seen, as neither company has talked about making their LCD commercially available.

Image Credit: TomsHardware