CES 2012: Televisions

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--Finally, a unique and worthwhile "app" comes to Google TV.

Google announced today that its much-maligned connected TV platform would support the OnLive gaming service.

OnLive's "cloud" gaming allows users to play a variety of console-quality titles on devices like PCs, tablets, and now select Google TV hardware like TVs, streaming boxes, and Blu-ray players, without having to use an actual game console.… 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