Archive for: August, 2009
August 30th, 2009
More cool HDTVs are announced for Asia; we wait to find out if we'll ever see them here
If you have electronics envy for the big continent to the East, who can blame you. They already have 3D TV in Japan, and seemingly everyone in South Korea has broadband speeds that make ours look like dial-up. Salivating over the latest TV introductions in Asia is almost pointless, as it’s hard to know when, if ever, we’ll get to see these sets reach North America.
They tantalize us nonetheless. For instance, we now know more details about LG’s new OLED HDTV, which will be a 15-inch model that will be released in Korea in November. Of course, a 15-inch screen seems like a relic if you’re talking about a LCD computer monitor, but considering the only other commercially available OLED is the 11.1-inch Sony XEL-1, 15 inches is quite a bit bigger. Unfortunately, there’s been no announcement about a US release date, and given that it’s price tag would be at least $2,000—and probably quite more—it may not even behoove the company to offer it here. Supposedly, LG is also working on a 40-inch OLED, but that would conceivably be priced at $10,000 if it ever sees the light of day.
Meanwhile, Japan will see some new sets from Hitachi with what would seem to be an inevitable feature: built-in hard drives. These new models will come with 500GB drives that can store up to 400 hours of high-definition programming. We’re just seeing sets from Sharp in the US that come with built-in Blu-ray drives, so who knows what kind of a time line we could expect before a hard-drive-enabled set hit our shores. Hitachi is a minor player in our TV market, but introducing these sets here would be an interesting differentiator in a sea of similar HDTVs. (People could be free from paying for DVR services from their TV provider, a potentially popular prospect.) And if the company could produce some of its wilder designs for its Wooo series that it showed off at this year’s CES, it could be a market leader. No doubt, we’ll still stay have to stay tuned to Asia to find out if they’ll ever roll the dice.
August 26th, 2009
Samsung working on a 480Hz HDTV?
Some people question the value of 120Hz refresh rates for LCD HDTVs, and even more wonder if 240Hz is worth the extra expense. But it’s a spec with buzz, so it shouldn’t be entirely surprising that Samsung is supposedly working on 480Hz sets that it may reveal at the IFA electronics expo in Germany next month.
The rumor is that the 480Hz HDTVs would use a little different sleight of hand to achieve this figure, which has the goal of reducing the blurring effect that fast-moving action can have on the screen. It will drop a black frame between frames of the source material (instead of interpolating new frames)—in theory, this will help break up an image that could otherwise be seen as a blur. Sets with 240Hz refresh rates already sell at a premium as 120Hz models have dropped in price. No doubt 480Hz TVs could be priced even higher, as 240Hz sets proliferate and reach more mainstream prices.
Do you think 480Hz is just a marketing ploy? Have you viewed a 240Hz set and noticed a difference in material that includes fast motion sequences? Let us know in our TalkBack section.
August 24th, 2009
James Cameron to promote Panasonic 3-D HDTVs around release of "Avatar." Now are you interested?
Sci-fi fans already know that director James Cameron’s long-awaited follow-up to Titanic is Avatar, the biggest release so far that makes use of the latest 3-D film technologies. No doubt calculating future home-video revenues, Cameron is now teaming up with Panasonic to promote the company’s 3-D HDTVs, which are slated for 2010 release.
The coolest aspect of this effort is a truck tour Panasonic will be sending out across the country this fall, using the same 103-inch plasma TV and Blu-ray player (both 3-D equipped) that the company demoed at CES back in January. It’ll be interesting to see what people’s opinion of the 3-D TV setup will be, as I felt pretty noncommittal after viewing the demo in Las Vegas. On the one hand, there were some segments—particularly sports scenes—that benefited from the added depth; on the other hand, some footage looks too gimmicky. And you still have to wear those plastic glasses while you’re sitting on the couch.
Momentum is gathering for 3-D hitting the living room, as a dedicated 3-D channel could be launched in the U.S. in the next couple of years. But momentum won’t account for much if people aren’t convinced that the technology (and content like Avatar) is worth the extra expense—or having to wear those glasses on a regular basis.
August 23rd, 2009
Okoro OMS-BX300 home theater PC delivers high performance, high price
While companies like Dell and Lenovo are trying to enter the home theater PC market at the low end, with unassuming processors and nary a Blu-ray drive to brag about, Okoro is heading in the opposite direction with its new OMS-BX300 “Blu-ray Digital Entertainment System.” Forget an Intel Atom or AMD Athlon CPU—Intel’s high-performance Core i7 920 2.66GHz processor anchors this HTPC, along with 6GB of DDR3 memory. It doesn’t slouch on the other components, either, including a bevy of graphics cards: the ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB for solid gaming and options for multiple HD tuner cards (including CableCard support).
To record video off those cards, the OMS-BX300 includes a pair of 2TB hot-swappable hard drives in RAID Level 1 configuration; it also comes with a 64GB solid state drive, no doubt to speed up boot times. A pair of Blu-ray drives handle recordable media duties, and the Radeon HD 4850’s 7.1 LPCM audio support lets you output surround sound audio via HDMI. Other connections include component-video, S-video and optical audio outputs. Finally, you get the option to get SageTV Media Center 6.5 pre-installed if you’re not a Windows Media Center fan.
Sounds like a dream living-room system—if you can afford it. The OMS-BX300 starts at $3,095, though it’s pretty stacked for that price. Upgrade options include an additional ATI TV Wonder Digital CableCard Tuner ($300), more storage ($250 for 6TB, $550 for 8TB), and some keyboard upgrades. The costliest add-on is a touch pad remote, which tacks on another $800 for well-heeled couch potatoes. For the price, you could buy a handful of nettops, but if you’re looking for your one main PC to hook to your HDTV, the price is a little easier to swallow.
August 22nd, 2009
Did crook lure victims with oven door disguised as plasma HDTV?
I know plasmas are becoming popular again, but I didn’t realize they were this “hot.” According to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle, con artists are using fake HDTVs to lure marks in store parking lots and then robbing them. There may be nothing new about the technique—crooks have been “selling” speakers from their trucks and vans in parking lots for years—but you have to appreciate the lengths the cons go to fool their potential victims.
You’d think maybe the criminals would just steal some of those fake TVs from an Ikea and sucker people with them, but one of them was particularly desperate/inspired. He took an oven door, used aluminum foil to “trim it,” then covered it with Bubble Wrap and placed stickers on it. The goal was to make it resemble a 37-inch plasma HDTV. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t include a picture of the “set” to give us an idea just how convincing this phoney actually looked. The guy in possession of the object supposedly tried to sell it in a Wal-mart parking lot, then was arrested after the cops investigated a tip. Ironically, since just owning an over door disguised as a TV isn’t an actual crime, he was released on this technicality.
The morale, of course, is: Don’t ever buy anything in a store parking lot. Apparently, some victims still haven’t learned that lesson, since crooks wouldn’t bother faking electronic devices if there weren’t potential marks gullible enough to buy them.
Have you ever been approached by someone trying to sell you fake electronics? Let us know about the experience in our TalkBack section.
August 19th, 2009
Mid-week HDTV news: Plasmas are hot sellers (again); Vizio remains tops in LCDs; Sony delays next OLED set
The economic downturn no doubt helped push some manufacturers (like Pioneer) out of the plasma market, but the recession may now be saving plasmas from the brink of obsolescence. According to a new report from Quixel Research, plasma HDTVs have zoomed to a huge gain in 2Q of 2009, with 42 percent more units sold than in the first quarter. Aggressive price cutting has made plasmas far more affordable than they’ve ever been, and mainstream buyers are finally paying attention. Plasmas with screen sizes of 50 inches are now available for $800 to $900, which is a few hundred dollars less than many 52-inch LCD sets. Of course, those LCDs are full 1080p HD, and the sub-$1,000 plasmas are 720p, but since most people can’t tell the difference between them, they probably won’t miss the higher resolution.
One of the companies that abandoned plasma, Vizio, isn’t exactly hurting from the decision, as Vizio tops the LCD TV charts again in 2009 2Q in units shipped, according to a new iSuppli report. The company slightly increased its market share—going from 21.4% to 21.7%—while Samsung closed in with a 21.3% share, after having dipped to 17.8% in the first quarter. Given plasmas’ sales boost, it’s no surprise that Panasonic (6%) jumped ahead of Sharp (5.3%) in the most recent quarter, while Sony slips again to 11.9%.
Given Sony’s woes in the HDTV market, the electronics giant continues to be in a cost-cutting mode in order to boost profits. That means everybody’s favorite future display technology, OLED, is getting moved to the back burner, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company had hoped to release a 27-inch OLED set this year as a sequel to its exquisite but ridiculously priced 11.1-inch XEL-1. But the outlay to produce the new set would be too much to offset whatever sales the set could muster, so the 27-inch model has been shelved at least until next year. Given that the XEL-1 is available for $2,500, you can imagine how much the larger version would sell for. Clearly, there’s a chicken-and-egg dynamic at work here, which Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer summarizes succinctly as “”We got great praise for [OLED], but then you don’t sell any.” The way to sell more, of course, is to reduce the price to something more palatable, but Stringer is clearly in no mood to suffer the losses that the price cut would demand. At least in this economy. Maybe Sony should go back to selling plasmas.
August 17th, 2009
First 3D TV channel coming to U.S. next year?
The movie world has thought of 3D enough as its savior that the fever has spread to the TV industry. While there have been 3D HDTVs already on sale in the U.S., most recently from Mitsubishi, the content infrastructure needs to be in place for the technology to take off in living rooms.
Depending on whom you ask, a channel with dedicated programming could either hit the States next year (Mitsubishi exec) or in two to three years (Sony exec). Not surprisingly, Japan already has 3D programming airing, and British Sky Broadcasting is planning a 3D channel for the U.K. next year. One big sticking point for 3D adoption is that a number of competing solutions are vying to be “the one.” The Society for Motion Picture and Television Engineers is working on one format, while Discovery is partnering with Sony and Panasonic on another solution.
While the competing 3D technologies are designed to deliver the high-def content in two dimensions if you don’t have a 3D set, they do seem to require for 3D viewing those plastic glasses that are a step above the flimsy specs for 3D movies from the ’50s, but not necessarily what you want to wear while you’re sitting on the couch. Are you excited by the prospect of having a 3D TV experience in your own home? Let us know, yay or nay, in our TalkBack section.
August 12th, 2009
The big boys eye home theater PC market: Dell Inspiron Zino HD, Lenovo Q700
A couple of surprises popped up today in the home theater PC market, involving two of the biggest computer makers in the world. Gizmodo is showing an image presumably shot at a press event of what can definitely be called Dell’s Apple Mac Mini-killer: The Inspiron Zino HD. It may be black instead of Apple white in its base option (with other colors and patterns also available), but it’s clearly Mini-shaped and sporting something Apple hasn’t added to its tiny Mini yet: an HDMI port. (Yes, I know, you can use a mini-DV-to-HDMI adapter, but still.) What’s unclear is whether this is a straight-up Atom-powered system (which can only handle 720p HD video) or if it will be using Nvidia’s Ion solution, which can handle full 1080p HD. Of course, there are those minor price and availability details also outstanding, though Engadget says the Zino HD will be out in the fall.
Meanwhile, Lenovo, known far more for its laptops than desktops, has announced a new Q series of its IdeaCentre desktop line that’s clearly designed for the living room. The Q700 features an HDMI port, Intel Pentium E5200 dual-core processor, 4GB of RAM, and DVD burner. The higher-priced config also includes 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and a built-in TV tuner card. For some reason, Lenovo chose not to offer a more enticing (if pricier) system with a Blu-ray player and 802.11n Wi-Fi. At least the Q700 can be placed either horizontally or (with the included stand) vertically. Available to order on Lenovo’s Web site, the cheaper one (30151AU) is priced at $499, while the 30151CU (which also doubles the hard drive space to 640GB) costs $549.
(Dell photo credit: Gizmodo)
August 11th, 2009
Netgear unveils 4-port XAVB1004 Home Theater Internet Connection Kit
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that network-ready HDTVs and other home theater devices almost exclusively rely on an Ethernet port for their Internet connectivity, even if most people don’t have an Ethernet jack into their living room and would find built-in Wi-Fi far more useful. Luckily, there are some workarounds to this dilemma, including the improved powerline networking technology that turn your power outlets into a wired networking system. Using a conversion kit that plugs into a typical electrical outlet and provides an Ethernet connection, you can circumvent your lack of an Ethernet jack built into your wall.
Most powerline kits, however, only offer an adapter with one Ethernet port. As you accumulate more connected devices, adding more kits becomes inconvenient and expensive. Though this is a future scenario for most people, Netgear is anticipating a demand with its new Home Theater Internet Connection Kit (XAVB1004), which lets you hook up four Ethernet devices (including videogame consoles and networked attached storage) to a single switch. It uses port-based Quality of Service, so you attach the most important device to the high-priority port. In addition to the switch, the XAVB1004 also comes with an adapter that connects to your router and a pair of Ethernet cables.
The HomePlug AV standard the switch uses can’t match the transmission rate of an Ethernet connection, but at a maximum throughput of 200Mbps, it’s competitive with wireless networking speeds (unlike previous generations of powerline tech). Considering a kit with an adapter with one connection can cost $100, Netgear is pricing the Home Theater Internet Connection Kit pretty reasonably at $179.99. Additional switches, if you own the most connected devices in your state, will be available for $99.99.
August 9th, 2009
How much do stores jack up ambient lighting to sell you HDTVs?
Along with selling unknowing consumers $80 HDMI cables that they could buy online for a few bucks, HDTV retailers other longtime scam is to boost the brightness in their stores (including on the sets themselves) to entice buyers. Why? In part because bright screens can mask poor black-level performance on cheaper sets. But then some buyers are then surprised when sets that “pop” in a store appear far more muted when they are hooked up in the living room.
Adding a little bit of empirical evidence to back up this claim, HDGuru recently visited major retailers with an illuminance meter in hand to see just how much brighter their showrooms are compared to the average living room. While he measured 10 homes with light levels that ranged from 1.2 to 110.1 lux, the stores he visited measured: Best Buy, 180.3; Sears, 236.58; Target, 371.38; Walmart, 411.66; BJs, 412.13, and Costco, 742.77. You’ll notice that the stores that have sales people who specialize in home theater equipment (Best Buy and Sears) register far lower readings than the big-box and warehouse stores that don’t offer dedicated TV help. HDGuru theorizes that the amped-up levels at Target and Costco help the cheaper sets they sell look a lot better than their performance will be once you bring them home.
Of course, all stores will be more brightly lit than a typical home, but that doesn’t mean the TV department has to be as bright as the rest of the store. In fact, HDGuru’s measurement of the Magnolia Home Theater section of the Best Buy found a far more muted reading of 34.7 lux, like in a typical living room. Why the difference? The more expensive sets sold in the Magnolia showroom have superior black-level performance that can’t be properly displayed with the cheaper sets radiating in the other part of the store.
The morale: Don’t expect the HDTV you buy from a bricks-and-mortar retailer to have the same picture as it displayed in the store—and that’s necessarily a bad thing. Have you been disappointed with a new set after you’ve brought it home from a store? Let us know about your experience in the TalkBack section.
Sean Portnoy spent several years as an editor at Computer Shopper magazine, most recently serving as online executive editor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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