TV

The wall unit gets a much-needed facelift

As far as furniture goes, nothing makes us shudder more than two words: wall unit. Anyone who lived through the '70s will remember the oak-veneered, round-cornered shelves that could be stacked or assembled together, forming an unsightly mass on which to place innumerable ceramic Garfields and prom photos. So we were slightly afraid to look at Gruber Schlager's "Cubiko TV Wall Unit" based on its name alone but, thankfully, it had none of those lovely trappings.

The concept is similar--addressing several home entertainment needs at once--yet the Cubiko has been updated for the digital era, in form … Read more

An all-in-one, 42-inch PC-HDTV (whew)

As Gateway showed recently, computer makers can still generate considerable buzz with an all-in-one machine. At the same time, more than a few TV makers are dabbling in their own Frankensteinian creations with combo PCs. Lumenlab is trying to do all of the above with an ultimate convergence product it calls simply the "Q" (we like).

The North Carolina start-up is developing a 42-inch 1080p HDTV that's also a self-contained computer with a terabyte of storage, 2GB of memory and an Intel Core Duo chip, Engadget says. That's pretty much all we know about it, other … Read more

Current TV launches new site

Al Gore has proven that there can be life after politics. He's written several best-selling books, received an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, helped develop Current TV, a cable television station focused on getting young people interested in the world around them. and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last week. Seven years ago, he was running for president and since that time he's done all this.

Today Current launched a new website at Current.com that not only brings all the television content to the web, but also seeks to build a new social media platform. … Read more

New ATI external tuner on sale at Best Buy

BestBuy.com lists six Visiontex-branded ATI TV Wonder products today, including the never before seen ATI TV Wonder 650 Combo USB external ATSC/NTSC TV tuner. The others are merely reboxings of various 600 and 650 tuners on the market, ranging from a USB key-size model to two full PCI Express cards (excepting, of course, the CableCard-based TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner, which remains a PC vendor bundle exclusive).

All of these tuners support (as federally mandated) both analog and digital signals, and both the new $149 TV Wonder 650 Combo USB and the $129 TV Wonder 650 Combo PCI … Read more

JVC cranks up refresh rate on LCD TVs

CHIBA, Japan--TV maker JVC says it will crank up the refresh rate on LCD TVs to 180Hz, which should lead to clearer images with less fringing.

Older and cheaper LCD TVs refresh images at a rate of 60 times a second, or 60Hz. Last year, Samsung and others announced plans to crank that number up to 120Hz and followed up the announcement with products.

At the Ceatec show here, JVC showed off a TV humming at 180Hz--a 50 percent speedup of the refresh rate. That doesn't mean a 50 percent improvement in quality, but it should result in more … Read more

Dish sends TBS HD to the plate

Are you a Dish Network subscriber frustrated that you can't watch the first round the baseball playoffs in high def? Well, fear not. As reported in a forum on Satelliteguys.us, Dish is testing TBS HD on channel 542, and it looks good. There are a few audio and video hiccups, but I am also getting those on TBS SD (and I haven't experienced them on any other channel--go figure). So it's as good as Fox or ESPN's offerings--better if you consider that you don't have to listen to Tim McCarver.

Dish had been taking … Read more

'Media Range Hood' reinvents the TV dinner

We hate to say this, but we fear that this whole multimedia-kitchen thing may be getting out of hand. As much as we appreciated the built-in LCDs, espresso makers and, of course, beer on tap (we're human, after all), those conveniences were restricted mostly to the refrigerator--where we spend most of hour waking hours anyway. But a range hood? That's a little sick, even for us.

Nevertheless, Siemens plans to introduce its "Media Range Hood" to North American markets sometime next year, Appliancist says. Based on the "AvantGarde MultiMedia Hood" that has been selling … Read more

Xtreme Notebooks announces all-in-one PC/TV

Xtreme Notebooks, the company responsible for sticking a quad-core desktop processor in a laptop case, may have to change its name: This evening the manufacturer announced its first nonlaptop offering, the all-in-one Xtreme XN1 PC/TV hybrid.

Key features include your choice of a 19-inch or 22-inch WSXGA+ LCD display, optional dual TV tuners, high-definition audio and room for two terabyte hard drives. The whole system runs on Core 2 Duo E series or Extreme Edition series processor, with your choice of integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics or a 256MB Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 graphics card. There's also a … Read more

You just bought a 1080p TV--why listen to its lo-fi speakers?

Tom Hannaher of ZVOX Audio and I were chewing the fat about the state of the consumer electronics business when the subject veered over to flat-screen TV manufacturers. They're all under incredible pressure to slash prices while they load on more and more features, and it's getting kinda scary.

I've had folks in the TV biz tell me not to wait any longer to buy a flat display because the manufacturers are starting to substitute lower-quality parts to keep lowering retail prices. But long before they do anything drastic that would affect picture quality or reliability, they … Read more

Verizon sued over Fios TV numbers

The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday that Verizon Communications is being sued by a TV advertiser for overstating the number of customers the company has signed up for its Fios TV service.

Digital Art Services, a media and advertising buying company based in Great River, N.Y., said in its lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, that Verizon fraudulently inflated the number of people signed up for the Fios TV service.

Specifically, the lawsuit alleges that Verizon included pending customers when it reported total number of subscribers in the New … Read more