CES - Televisions

CES: Optimism back as economic worries fade

LAS VEGAS--Few tech industry professionals truly relish the annual trip here each January for the ritual that has become CES, the largest and most important event on the tech calendar. But this year, for the first time in awhile, they were able to get back to complaining about long cab lines and bad food rather than layoffs and budget cuts during their week in the desert.

"Double the energy and enthusiasm at CES compared with last two years," said NPD Group analyst Samir Bhavnani on his Twitter account Friday, summing up a week that lacked a signature announcement … Read more

CES: TV makers not yet tuning in to Google TV

LAS VEGAS--History may be repeating itself as the Internet draws closer to televisions, but no clear front-runner emerged this year at CES; certainly not Google.

There was a television roughly every 10 feet last week in the Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, home to the massive CES gathering of the geeks. Samsung, LG, Toshiba, Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, and virtually anyone else you can think of that makes a television constructed a sprawling booth to hawk their wares, with an increasing focus on so-called "smart TVs," or TVs that can access content from both the Internet … Read more

CES: LG's LED monitor/TV

LAS VEGAS--Monitor TVs are nothing new, but it'll take manufacturers some continued innovating to keep me excited. LG shows that it understands this with its latest monitor/TV, the M80D.

The M80D is LG's first monitor/TV to use an LED backlight. The design is sleek and stylish and looks to be wall mountable.

Incoming specs:

1,920x1,080 resolution 250 cd/M2 brightness 5ms response time VGA, DVI, HDMI connections Component, VGA, HDMI, Audio in/out

Built-in speakers with 2.1-channel sound

Look for more info in the coming months.

2011 TVs wrap-up

For the last few years the biggest category at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas has been, in more ways than one, televisions. Gigantic-screen HDTVs festooned with yearly boosts in technology--from SXRD to 1080p to LEDs to lasers to 3D--have owned the headlines at previous shows, but this year something "different" happened.

There were still plenty of TVs announced, but show-wide it seemed like everyone followed Apple's iPad and released a tablet.

Best of CES: TVs Vizio is a TV-centric company whose 2010 flagship 2D model, the XVT3SV series, won our Editors' Choice for LCD TVs. … Read more

Sexy sells at CES

LAS VEGAS--At last year's CES, we put together a slideshow called "Sexy sells at CES" that highlighted part of the human element that companies use to help make their gadgets stand out on the crowded show floor--or at least encourage people to stop at their booths.

For some reason, this slideshow proved to be rather popular with our readers, so we thought we'd cobble something together this year.

Don't get the wrong impression. Not every company hires models to show off their wares and talk about their products. And even when they do, the product … Read more

CES: Rockchip gives Google's WebM a hardware boost

Rockchip, a Chinese chip designer that focuses on processors for Net-connected phones, TVs, and e-book readers, announced a new processor today at CES that supports Google's WebM technology for video streaming.

WebM can be used to encode video with the the open-source and royalty-free VP8 video codec and Vorbis audio codec, and Google hopes it will keep patent encumbrances off the Net. Its primary competitor is the H.264 codec, also known as AVC, whose use requires licensing an expensive set of patents.

Crucial to WebM's success, though, is hardware support that speeds decoding and saves battery power … Read more

CES: Bang & Olufsen signs chip cooperation deal with Intel

Bang & Olufsen, a company known for its distinctive audio designs, has signed a chip technology cooperation agreement with Intel.

The Danish company has expanded into many technical markets beyond audio, including video, home media servers, telephones, and home automation that brings electronic controls to electronics, curtains, and thermostats.

"This strategic cooperation with Intel provides Bang & Olufsen with access to the latest silicon process technologies. This will enable Bang & Olufsen to stay at the technological forefront in the future and increase the efficiency of Bang & Olufsen's product development," said Bang & Olufsen Chief Executive … Read more

CES: Samsung quietly shows off Google TV devices

LAS VEGAS--Samsung is showing off two devices running Google TV in its booth here at CES, but employees characterized the unannounced devices as an experiment.

Samsung has not officially thrown its support behind Google TV--Google's ambitious but challenged plan for sophisticated TVs--but it was nonetheless showing off both a standalone set-top box and a Blu-Ray player running the software in a corner of its massive booth here at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Executives speaking on background said the devices were being shown as an "experiment," designed to gauge feedback from Samsung partners as to … Read more

CES: Samsung TVs demo Time Warner, Comcast apps for box-free cable

Cable card has long promised, and largely failed to deliver, cable TV programming without the need for a cable box. Now, judging from a demo we saw at the Samsung booth, cable TV providers are willing to work directly with TV makers to deliver content box-free.

The demo consisted of each providers' dedicated apps in the Samsung App menus. Selecting an app brought up a standard program guide grid (pictured), offering the full selection of each provider's lineup. Selecting a show from the grid caused it to begin playing live on the TV, just like you'd expect from … Read more

Yahoo pumps up Connected TV; D-Link announces box for it

LAS VEGAS--Yahoo's Connected TV, its widget framework for TVs, is a low-cost way to bring Internet content to televisions. Yahoo's TV widgets don't give you the full Internet flexibility of a product like Google TV, but Yahoo Connected TV is cheap to build: it's available with a $250 22-inch Vizio set, for example. We first saw this platform at CES 2009, but for 2011 Yahoo is adding some features and partners to the initiative, including a standalone set-top manufacturer, D-Link.

The biggest new feature is content-aware technology. The Connected TV platform now knows what you're … Read more