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Groupon CEO Andrew Mason admits that his team made mistakes before the daily deals site went public late last year, but he defended his performance in guiding the startup's meteoric rise.

In an interview with Lesley Stahl aired tonight on the CBS news magazine "60 Minutes," Mason conceded that his team made a "bush-league mistake" when it misstated its revenues before going public. The Securities and Exchange Commission forced the daily deals provider to revise its filing papers after the company reported that it generated $713.4 million in revenue in 2010, while the SEC … Read more

LAS VEGAS--In the past, Panasonic's GT variants have been almost as good as the flagships they supported, and at much more affordable prices. We anticipate that this trend will continue with the new GT50.

The GT50 will come in four sizes from 50 inches to 65 inches and ships with an "Infinite Black Pro" panel. The full-HD 3D panel features 2D-to-3D conversion and a new louver filter designed to provide better contrast in lit environments.

With the exception of the Z1, design wasn't a key consideration for Panasonic plasmas until last year, with the "metallic … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Last year Samsung introduced a TV with a bezel just 0.2 inch wide, and I couldn't help but gush that "the picture comes as close to naked as you'll ever see outside a projector."

This year the company offers that sexy all-picture look on three series of high-end LED TVs announced at CES, the least-expensive of which is the UNES7100. Available in three sizes, its main differentiator compared with the other two--the UNES7500 and the flagship UNES8000--is lack of the company's new Smart Interaction voice/gesture control feature.

By the way, if anybody'… Read more

LAS VEGAS--New for 2012, Samsung says it will include two pairs of active 3D glasses with its 2012 3D-compatible HDTVs, and the least-expensive such LED will be the UNES6500 series.

Available in six screen sizes, the UNES6500's major step-up over the 2012 UNES6100 models will be 3D compatibility. Otherwise both will feature the company's Smart Hub interactive TV suite as well as a thin 0.5-inch-wide bezel around the screen.

All of Samsung's 2012 3D TVs will utilize active 3D technology, as opposed to the passive variety employed by LG and others (more info).

Its features peg … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Samsung's Smart Interaction allows control of certain TV functions by talking or gesturing to the TV, where a built-in microphone and camera captures your voice and movements.

The UNES7500 series of LED TVs is the company's least-expensive with the feature, which also makes cameos on the step-up UNES8000 LED and the PNE8000 plasma. If you'd like to read more about Smart Interaction, here's what we know so far.

Aside from that little extra, the UNES7500 has similar features to the UNES7100, highlighted by a 0.2-inch-thin bezel (admittedly it bulges a bit around the camera/… Read more

LAS VEGAS--On high-end LED-based TVs, our favorite picture quality extra is a full-array backlight with local dimming, which allows different areas of the screen to dim independently of one another.

Unlike the flagship LED TVs of LG, Sony, and Sharp Elite, Samsung's best LED, the UNES8000 still lacks the full-array part, but the company says its local dimming, despite relying on LEDs around the edge of the screen, has been improved over last year's version. Check out our breakdown of LED backlight schemes here for some background.

Dubbed "micro-dimming ultimate," the new feature divides the screen … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Sharp continues its 2012 Quattron onslaught with four new models, in 60-inch and 70-inch versions, featuring its brightest Quattron panels with 3D and an ultraslim aluminum design.

The 847/745 series features edge-lit LED screens with 3D X-Gen panels housed in Sharp's "ultraslim and narrow-bezel design," with a new brushed aluminum finish.

The televisions feature Wi-Fi onboard and come with a new "smart TV" interface offering both full-screen and dock views. The TVs feature DLNA, browsing and search functionality, and more than 100 apps, including Netflix and Vudu. They come with four HDMI ports … Read more

Update March 2, 2012: Company reps have told me only that the status, and indeed the model name and prospective features (eg local dimming) of this model, are now uncertain. For that reason I have removed it from the company lineup chart until I hear more.

LAS VEGAS--We love the picture quality improvements wrought by full-array local-dimming backlights, so color us excited that Sharp is migrating the technology down from its awesome Elite TVs to these new models.

The 945 series will offer that sweet backlight configuration in two screen sizes that will be familiar to fans of the Elite: … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Last year LG released only one TV with our favorite kind of LED backlight, but for 2012 it has announced three sizes, from 47 through 60 inches.

All three of the LG LM9600 series offer that rare full-array local dimming LED backlight, but only two--the 47- and 55-inchers--utilize the "Nano" structure found on the 2011 55LW9800, which allows for a thinner cabinet design. The non-Nano 60-incher will have a thicker cabinet, although all three will boast the company's new thin Cinema Screen bezel, measuring "less than 5mm" according to a company rep we spoke … Read more