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CES 2012
CES 2012: OnStar FMV
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Jan 09, 2012
OnStar, owned by GM, was one of the first embedded telematics options for cars.
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CES 2012
CES Day One: Monster Press Event
Brent Butterworth  |  Jan 09, 2012

Cutting the cable” is a fashionable trend, but Monster is doing it in a different sense: It’s now just going by Monster instead of Monster Cable. True to its new moniker, the company didn’t even mention cable in its CES press conference today. But given the onslaught of cool new products the company introduced, nobody seemed to notice.

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CES 2012
CES 2012: CES Unveiled
Brent Butterworth  |  Jan 09, 2012

CES kicks off with Unveiled, an event that crams a thousand or so members of the press, most of them desperate for a snack and a free drink, into a loud, stuffy ballroom full of manufacturers exhibiting a few key products in tiny booths. It’s so loud inside that any serious demos are impossible. Why do I go?

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CES 2012
Dish Network Gets New Mascot
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Jan 09, 2012
Dish Network’s new mascot, Hopper, was happy to be at CES.
CES 2012
Klipsch Takes to the Air(Play)
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Jan 09, 2012
Klipsch says that sales of iOS devices - those handheld and portable digital multimedia/smartphone/tablet/etc things we all can’t live without - are eclipsing (“eKlipsching”?) sales of HDTVs and other “traditional” entertainment devices. Keeping to the company’s audio-reproduction roots, the Klipsch folks want to bring high-performance audio to you and me in whatever form we find the most convenient, be it a home theater system, a bookshelf system, or a pair of earphones. At the Klipsch press conference this morning, the company presented a couple of the new and soon-to-be AirPlay-enabled audio systems.

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CES 2012
Stream TV Banishes 3DTV Glasses
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Jan 09, 2012
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a one-eyed Cyclops or a three-eyed alien being locked away deep in some secret laboratory in Area 51 - no one likes the idea of wearing glasses to watch 3D video. Stream TV hates glasses for 3D, too, and this morning they showed off the company’s Ultra-D technology that can produce a glasses-free 3D image that’s watchable across a wide range of viewing angles. (Just to eliminate any confusion, “glasses-free” doesn’t mean you get “free glasses” with the system. It means you don’t need no stinkin’ glasses at all to watch 3D on the screen.) According to Stream TV, the proprietary technology can be used with all types of displays; and they anticipate we’ll see Ultra-D technology in everything from flat-panel TVs to tablets to smartphones.
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CES 2012
CES Day One: LG Press Conference
Al Griffin  |  Jan 09, 2012

LG packed info about lots of new stuff into its CES press conference: refrigerators, phones, washer/dryer combos — you name it, they announced it. But the appliances I came to hear about were the TVs.

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CES 2012
Just Call Them Monster
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 09, 2012
The big news from Monster Cable is that Monster Cable is no longer Monster Cable. It's just Monster, period. For the first time the company's well-attended press event made virtually no mention of cable products (aside from a press release on ISF-certified HDMI cables). We're guessing Monster is not withdrawing from the still lucrative cable market. It's just that Head Monster Noel Lee has found something even more lucrative and au courant: designer headphones.

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CES 2012
LG Kicks It Off
Tom Norton  |  Jan 09, 2012
While not as svelte as the company’s 55-inch OLED prototype discussed below, LG’s new lineup of Smart LED/LCD sets is still just a bit over an inch thick with a 1mm thick bezel framing the screen. The top of the line Nano sets, available several sizes up to 84” in size. The Nano designs are full backlit local dimmers, utilizing LEDs impeded into t thin membrane that allows for superior backlit local dimming in a thinner design. LG’s magic remote has been improved, allowing not only pointing but also both gesture and voice recognition. And like all the HDTV manufacturers at the show, LG’s Smart technology offers further enhancements in convergence and connectivity with Web-based sites and features.

That 84” model is unique in that it is a 4K design. Despite the lack of 4K sources, 4K offers significant advantages for LG’s passive glasses approach to 3D. Specifically, it can present a full 1920 x 1080 resolution to each eye, unlike the half vertical 3D resolution on conventions 1920 x 1080 sets.

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CES 2012
LG OLED
Tom Norton  |  Jan 09, 2012
While no price or availability date was announced for LG’s 55” OLED HDTV, its prototype drew big crowds at the opening press conference of the day. So big, in fact, that you can’t see the set with the madding crowds pushing in for a closer look.

What we do know is that the set uses what LG refers to as 4-Color Pixels (red, green, blue, and white) together with a Color Refiner for color consistency over a wide viewing angle.

An eye-opening infinite contrast ratio is also claimed. This is possible because OLED is a self-illuminating technology in which the individual pixels, in theory, can be completely turned off. Response time is also said to be 1000x faster than in LED/LED sets.

LG’s OLED TV is as pleasing aesthetically pleasing as it is technologically trend-setting. It’s passive 3D-capable and an incredible 4mm thin (about one-sixth of an inch) and a feather-light 17 lbs.

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