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From the average family home to five-star hotels to the White House, TV lifts are popping up all over the place.
Since their inception, TVs have been a common sight in American homes, but they can take away from the attractiveness of a room. The changes TVs have undergone throughout the years have changed the way people are treating them. When plasma TVs first came out, many people hung them on the wall.
"People have quickly tired of it being on the wall because it's ugly unless you're watching it, and so that's where we come in," says Virgil Walker, president of Auton Motorized Systems, inventors of the first TV lift in 1955. "On the Shadowtrack we've created a box that you put into your wall, you screw it into the wall or attach it to the wall, however you want to do it, and then take your favorite painting and hang it in front of it."
Growing popularity
Although TV lifts have been around for over 50 years, the growing popularity of plasma and LCD TVs in the last few years has translated into a greater desire to hide them. Adding in a TV lift has become a popular trend in both cabinet and furniture design in the past 18 months, according to Dan Pickett, vice president of Knape & Vogt. Before, lifts were seen as more of a novelty item, but now they are becoming a much requested, high-volume item, he says.
"When they came out with the plasmas, that was the biggest thing for us because people started throwing away their old TVs and buying the plasmas," says Walker. "We are utterly swamped with business."
Walker says Auton's business as grown over 300 percent in the last year, all of which he attributes to the popularity of plasma TVs.
Pickett agrees that the popularity of lifts is being driven by the popularity of plasma TVs.
