hdtv

LAS VEGAS--At the start of 2012, CNET television editors David Katzmaier and Ty Pendlebury put forward their predictions for what we will see in the coming year.

Sadly jetpacks and metallic jumpsuits will have to wait till next year, but we will see the debut of big OLEDs and voice/gesture-based TV control.

So what did we learn from this year's show? Read our head-to-head CES 2012 wrap.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--CNET's team of crack technology editors argued long into the Vegas afternoon yesterday, painstakingly honing hundreds of cumulative man- and woman-hours of CES 2012 coverage into 10 category winners and, finally, one product sharp enough to earn Best in Show: the LG 55EM9600.

It's a TV. And its organic light-emitting diode display technology is the future of flat-panel tech. OLED promises better picture quality than either plasma or LCD/LED--thanks to effectively infinite contrast (for realzies this time!), wide viewing angles and lightning-fast response times--combined with an unbelievable form factor. The winning LG measures just 4mm in … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Active 3D glasses that come free with the TV, don't cost too much for extra pairs, and work with other brands might help win a few more 3D TV naysayers.

Ami Dror, Chief Strategy Officer for 3D glasses maker XpanD, told CNET that he expects active 3D glasses to cost as little as $20 each before the end of the year. That's $10 less than the current least-expensive such glasses from Samsung, which retail for $30 per pair. Active glasses from Sony and Panasonic currently cost more.

But current active 3D glasses don't work across … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Are you interested in 3D, but hate the glasses? For a second year in a row, Sony is showing off glasses-free 3D TVs at CES.

There are two displays here: a 24-inch LCD capable of 1080p and a 46-inch LCD with up to 4K resolution. Adjacent literature was at least truthful in admitting that the autostereoscopic 3D setup is showing at a "HD equivalent" quality. This is because the parallax barrier, which causes the 3D effect, effectively halves the resolution to ensure each eye is receiving separate images.

My observations of the 24-inch glasses-free 3D TV … Read more

LAS VEGAS--The highest-end plasma and LED TVs Samsung announced at CES yesterday offer a feature called Smart Interaction, which among other functions allows volume and channel changes at a word or gesture. Most TV watchers, however, use a cable box and not their TVs to change channels.

The solution is an IR blaster, a device designed to send infrared signals (just like a remote control) to operate the box. The little device pictured above handles that duty for Samsung's 2012 Smart Interaction models, namely the UNES7500, UNES8000, and PNE8000 series.

The TVs communicate with the blaster via Bluetooth, as … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Google TV has a way of disappointing expectations, and one strong case in point is the Vizio's VIA Plus platform for TVs.

At CES 2011 we named the VIA Plus models as our favorite TV product of CES. They used Google TV to deliver what the company described as interoperability between the TV and Android-equipped phones and tablets. Among other features, Via Plus was also said to support the OnLive gaming service. Those extras, along with the same kind of full-array local-dimming backlight we know and love, was enough to convince us that the so-equipped TVs were going … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Do you think your wide-screen TV isn't wide enough? Vizio's 21:9 TVs have you covered.

The company's CinemaWide models, dubbed the XVT3D0CM series, offer three screen sizes (50, 58, and 71 inches) that have an aspect ratio of 21:9, which in person is noticeably wider than the normal 16:9 rectangle shape used by typical HDTVs.

The advantage of the shape, according to Vizio, is that it allows the sets to display 2.35:1 (CinemaScope) movies without any black bars. As the company points out, many big-budget Hollywood flicks are shown in CinemaScope, … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Despite the increasing ubiquity of the 3D feature, we get plenty of e-mail from people interested in "non-3D" TVs, or TVs that couldn't support 3D. In 2012 such TVs will be even rarer, but one will be the Sony EX640 series.

This relatively bare-bones LED TV lacks most of the other fancy step-ups of the higher-end HX750, such as local dimming, Monolithic styling and Gorilla Glass, but it does keep the Internet extras. Unfortunately, you'll need to either connect an Ethernet cable to the TV or invest in Sony's dongle since the EX640 lacks … Read more

LAS VEGAS--As a rule, no company divulges pricing at CES anymore, but we still have reason to suspect that when its price actually does get announced, the Sony HX750 series might represent a good picture-quality-for-the-buck proposition.

This set is the least expensive in Sony's admittedly small 2012 CES announcement lineup to offer the edge-lit local dimming we liked so much on the NX720 from last year.

Sony has slowly begin competing in price in some TV categories over the last couple of years, and the HX750's feature mix eschews the MotionFlow 960 of the step-up HX850, settling for … Read more