Many consumers have been less than enthused about 3D TVs, whether because of a lack of viewing options, the additional cost of the sets, or the need to wear glasses while watching 3D content. Nonetheless, the shipments of 3D LCD televisions continue to grow significantly.
There's something strange happening at Consumer Electronics Show 2012 that many pundits -- and, of course, the Apple Fanclub of bloggers and journalists -- pegged as impossible just six months ago. Even I asked "Who killed Google TV?" after Logitech, the first of two launch partners, lost its shirt, pants and shoes on Revue. The peripherals maker gave up on Google TV, leaving Sony to go it alone.
For more than a decade, TiVo has been one thing: a DVR. And while it's been a really good one, an awful lot has changed about the way we find and watch TV since the first TiVo box debuted in 1999. And now the company is involved in its first non-DVR project. It's designed the on-screen interface for two new Internet-connected LCD TVs from Insignia, one of Best Buy's four "exclusive brands" (along with Dynex, Init, and Rocketfish).
is an online source for consumer electronics at discount prices. Home Theater Systems, Receivers, Digital Cameras, LCD Screens, Microphones and so much more.
OK, so maybe the television antennas littering the housetops across urban and suburban landscapes were downright ugly -- and perilous to install on steep roofs -- not to mention that windstorms could leave them twisting in the wind like pretzels.
Cello is a UK TV maker that does much of its business through high-volume websites and shopping catalogues. You'll find Cello TVs on M&S and ebuyer websites, as well as in tomes from Grattan, Freemans and the like.
Gorilla Glass won't reach $1 billion in sales for 2011 thanks to weaker-than-expected demand TV cover glass, said Corning. But Gorilla Glass will post sales of about $800 million, triple relative to last year's tally.
Gorilla Glass sales were $150 million in the first quarter, up 50 percent from the fourth quarter. Corning said Gorilla Glass is on pace to rack up $1 billion in annual sales.
Logitech is taking a beating for throwing early support behind Google TV. The company announced that it will cut the price of its Logitech Revue Google TV box to $99, which means each unit will be sold at a loss. And just in case there was any question of whether Google TV was a flop, Logitech offered an embarrassing statistic: The Revue saw more returns than sales last quarter.
NHK Science and Technology Research Laboratories, the research arm of Japan's NHK public television company, recently held its annual open house, which serves to show off the latest innovations in television and digital media. This year's event, in conjunction with Nippon Telephone and Telegraph, highlighted both a new way to transmit 3-D content and a way to broadcast animation in a more personal way.
LG's monster 100in (250cm) LCD TV - already assured of a place in the Guiness Book of Records as the world's largest liquid crystal telly - is finally set to go into mass production, the company has revealed.
LG Electronics will show at next week's International Consumer Electronics Show a set-top box that delivers Internet content and applications found on LG Smart TVs to televisions without those features.
LG has announced that it has developed the world’s largest OLED TV panel, which the company will have on display at next month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
If you can live with its homely design, the excellent picture quality and feature set of the Panasonic TC-PST30 series combine to make it one of the best plasma TV values available.
The introduction of 3D-ready LCD TVs marks a major policy shift for Panasonic. The brand has been a vociferous advocate of plasma tech for 3D, yet now it's hawking a pair of LED backlit 3D screens, a 32in model and the 37incher featured here. The justification, the company will tell you, is to provide a smaller Active Shutter solution for gamers. But Panasonic's aspirations are far broader than that. It wants a slice of the rapidly expanding LED pie.
There was a much-used gag in Warner Bros' Road Runner cartoons, where Wile E. Coyote would paint a tunnel and road onto a cliff face -- and then watch in confusion as a truck drove through it. This 65in Panasonic plasma creates a similar illusion. Its pictures are so large and sharp it's easy to be convinced of their reality.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors have been a hallmark of mobile devices for the past few years. Not content with keeping the party in your pockets, the Snapdragon is coming to your TV, to the tune of 1.5GHz quad-core processor mightiness.
The word "hybrid" comes in because these battery-operated devices can receive both Mobile DTV and standard digital TV signals in four configurations. RCA touts that these gadgets are the first of their kind to offer reception of either regular or mobile broadcasts transmitted from local TV stations. But you can forget about analog lower power TV signals.
South Korea's electronics giants are engaged in rare public mudslinging about whose 3-D television technology is better, as they battle for a greater share of a potentially huge global market.
Earlier this week we saw proof that power usage for displays had fallen significantly when Toshiba unveiled a 14? LCD monitor that was powered over USB. A second display that fits in your laptop bag and needs no power cable and plug is an impressive achievement, but Samsung has set the bar even higher with its latest prototype TV.
If you want a big screen that can display 3D, but don't want to spend a lot of money, the 51-inch Samsung PN51D550C1F plasma HDTV is a solid choice, as long as you can live without integrated Web apps.
With the Nintendo 3DS debuting imminently, you might be wondering why glasses-free 3D is being limited to handheld devices when it's just begging to come to the living room. The reason is simple: glasses-free 3D is easy to do when you can predict where someone's eyes are going to be, but much less so the more viable viewing angles there are. So while it's easy for Nintendo to predict where a user's eyes are going to be on a handheld device that they will need to clutch with both hands during playtime, the problem becomes a lot more difficult when you're talking about a 60-inch HDTV viewable from any angle in a living room.
In 2009, Sony sold an 11-inch OLED TV. Then, for two full years, there was hardly a peep about OLED, even though it was touted as the thinnest, most efficient and highest contrast technology ever. Now, both LG and Samsung are showing off 55-inch models at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. OLED is finally ready -- or almost ready -- to compete with far cheaper LCDs for space in the living room.
When it comes to features, Samsung's UE40D6530 40in LED telly doesn't skimp on anything much. Freeview HD, 3D, Video on Demand, Skype, integrated web browser, social media apps, media streaming, PVR recording to external hard drive -- it's all here. This isn't so much a TV as an all in one entertainment centre. And priced at £1099, Samsung is clearly planning to shift a lot of these puppies.
The Samsung Series 6500 PN50C6500TFXZA delivers good image quality and great connected TV features at a reasonable price; but it's an energy hog, has no 3D support, and skimps on inputs.
LG and Samsung both showed off 55-inch OLED TVs due later in 2012. The screens are only a few millimeters thick and provide astounding color contrast and clarity. Granted, the TVs might cost $8,000 when they hit Best Buy, but both South Korean vendors, who truly set the agenda for the TV industry, say these are real products that will come out.
As much as television makers would love to say that Google and Apple simply make products to complement their big screen TV's, the fact is that both Silicon Valley innovators are seeking to disrupt the market.
At $2,800, Sharp's 60-inch LC-60LE835U LED HDTV isn't cheap, but between its green power-saving mode, its wide color range, and strong 2D- and 3D-picture performance, it's a solid choice for a large-screen 3D HDTV.
While Japan's NHK has been working on the successor to HDTV, Super Hi-Vision, for years, there haven't been any direct-view HDTVs capable of showing its full 7,680 x 4,320 pixel resolution until this prototype unveiled today by Sharp.
With lower prices, and with TV makers pushing 3D harder than ever, shipments of 3D sets are likely to jump by 463 percent this year to hit 23.4 million units from just 4.2 million last year, IHS iSuppli said. Eyeing the years ahead, shipments will climb by 132 percent in 2012 to reach 54.2 million. By 2014, consumers will be facing more than 100 million 3D TVs, followed by 159.2 million in 2015.
Sony CEO Howard Stringer saved no rhetorical flourish while describing picture quality: "Your eyes will pop, your mouths will water, you'll tell your friends 'I have seen the future, and it's a Sony'". The company claims the color reproduction is far superior to an LCD television set, the technology powering a significant portion of HDTVs.
I wouldn't give Sony's troubles to a monkey on a rock. Horrible financial results, the PSN hacked to its knees, and now the distinction of producing the worst 3D TV I think I've ever seen. Yep, the KDL-40EX724 reviewed here is a three dimensional suckfest. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Sony's KDL-EX720 series represents the least-expensive model in the company's 2011 TV lineup with 3D and a 240Hz refresh rate--both bullet points that the less expensive KDL-EX620 series lacks. It's also Sony's highest-end 2011 TV to feature a matte screen finish--not a bullet point, but something we really appreciate. The latter helps improve image quality in bright rooms, but overall the EX720's strongest suits have little to do with the picture. Those highlights include miserly power use, extensive Internet content options, and a competitive price compared with other active 3D-compatible LED-based LCD TVs.
Sony's KDL-EX720 series represents the least-expensive model in the company's 2011 TV lineup with 3D and a 240Hz refresh rate--both bullet points that the less-expensive KDL-EX620 series lacks. It's also Sony's highest-end 2011 TV to feature a matte screen finish--not a bullet point, but something we really appreciate. The latter helps improve image quality in bright rooms, but overall the EX720's strongest suits have little to do with the picture. Those highlights include miserly power use, extensive Internet content options, and a competitive price compared with other active 3D-compatible LED-based LCD TVs.
Sony has released a firmware update for its Bravia televisions that adds Skype functionality as well as the ability to use smartphones and notebooks as remote control devices.
The Bravia KDL-40CX523 is the little net-connected TV that could. Consigned to somewhere near the bottom of Sony's 2011 line-up, and cursed with a CCFL backlight instead of trendy LED bulbs, it's clearly not one of the brand's hero products. Yet this transpires to be a quite a desirable gogglebox.
Along with Vizio and LG, Toshiba is the only other TV maker selling a passive 3D TV in 2011. That model, the TL515U series reviewed here, performs basically the same with 3D material as its LG doppelganger, and in short we like the image produced by active 3D TVs better. Meanwhile the Toshiba's 2D picture quality, which is much more important in our book, didn't quite match that of the LG or the better LED-based LCDs in our tests, due mainly to its overactive backlight.
The TL515U's backlight fluctuated more than usual, causing contrast and color to vary depending on scene content. Its picture loses fidelity from off-angle in dark scenes worse than other LCDs. The Net TV internet portal is light on content compared to competitors. Passive 3D shows a softer image with more artifacts and worse overall quality than active.
This Toshiba delivers possibly the sharpest HD picture I’ve seen on any 32in TV all year. There, I’ve said it. If you’re looking for a good reason to buy this set, that’s it.
Toshiba is pushing the envelope in the world of TV technology. From its growing preoccupation with auto-stereoscopic (glasses-free 3D) screens, to cerebrally smart TVs that use Cell and CEVO processors for multitasking and advanced picture processing, the brand seems desperately keen to take television to the next level.
Although ostensibly an aperitif to Toshiba's incoming flagship LED TV models, this modestly priced 47-incher is a headline maker in its own right. Not only is it the first flatscreen from the brand to offer access to the newly-opened Toshiba Places portal, it's also Toshiba's first passive 3D panel.
Viewsonic has announced the release of their budget friendly 7 inch ViewBook 730 Android tablet today. While their tagline of "changing the face of tablets" may be stretching things a bit, this one looks to be a great new product in the multi-purpose eReader category, and appears to have the market currently dominated by the Nook Color directly in its sights.
The first passive 3D HDTV, Vizio's 65-inch XVT3D650SV delivers theater-like 3D on a big screen, and includes four sets of 3D glasses, five HDMI ports, and a generous catalog of Internet apps.
Sometimes, excitement about an imminent Steve Jobs keynote can make people do crazy things. In this case, Walmart has slashed the price of the 16GB iPhone 4 to $147--down from its regular $199 price tag--from now through June 30. Both the AT&T and Verizon editions of the phone are on sale.
To many, it may. But for the company that makes it, Mitsubishi, it's pretty much the only way to distinguish itself among its competitors and try to stay in the TV business.
Samsung has unveiled a new TV at CES 2012 in Las Vagas that can receive a hardware upgrade every year in order to keep it current and add new features.
Sure, you can browse through every kind of television imaginable, but check out the new cool products like Z-Trak, DVD and HDTV. Job and company information also available.