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CES 2011

Thomas J. Norton | Jan 06, 2011

Samsung went all Opra on us with it's sit-down, let's talk press conference. They announced that one million 3DTVs were sold in the US in 2010, well under predictions but ahead of the rate that many other new technologies have achieved in their first year. About 35 million TVs are sold in the US each year, however, so that's actually a pretty small percentage. Nevertheless Samsung claimed a 70% market share of 3DTV sales, and this year 3DTVs make up 60% of the company's new HD lineup.

Samsung is going with the flow in using "Smart" as a catch phrase this year for many of its products. The company expects to sell 6 million 3DTVs this year, two thirds of them Smart TVs. The new gee-whiz feature in the D7000 and D8000 sets is an ultra thin frame, barely 0.2" wide (see photo). In addition, Samsung's new active 3D glasses sport an ultra svelt, and it's said far more comfortable design.

Samsung's new BDD 7500 3D Blu-ray player is as ultra thin as the new TVs, and incorporates its own built-in 2D-to-3D conversion.

CES 2011: Smart Stuff from Samsung

Al Griffin | Jan 06, 2011

CES 2011: Panasonic Talks TV Tech

Brent Butterworth | Jan 06, 2011

Panasonic's CES 2011 press event was like a salad topped with a few perfectly seared pieces of tuna. The salad- i.e., the dull part - was lots of talk about 3D and Internet-connected TV. The seared tuna - i.e., the good part - was a list of improvements was can expect to see in Panasonic's already-awesome line of plasma TVs.

CES 2011: Sony Announces New Products in Grand Fashion

Brent Butterworth | Jan 06, 2011

Emerging from beneath a gigantic video screen stretching about 100 feet across, Sony chairman/president/CEO Sir Howard Stringer appeared in the car from the upcoming movie The Green Hornet with the movie's stars Seth Rogen and Jay Chow. It was just the start of what will almost surely be the splashiest event at this year's CES-maybe the splashiest CES event ever.

CES 2011: Active Vs. Passive 3DTVs Battle it Out

Geoffrey Morrison | Jan 06, 2011

LG and VIZIO announced today many new models with Passive 3D. This contrasts with Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, and Sharp who all announced new Active 3D models.

The main differences are that active uses comparatively heavy and expensive LCD shutter glasses. The advantage to this method is that you can have full HD resolutions with minimal modifications to the underlying television. The disadvantages are that potential for flicker, crosstalk, and the aforementioned glasses.

Sharp 70-inch Quattron LCD TVs

Scott Wilkinson | Jan 05, 2011

LG wasn't the only manufacturer to show an extra-large LCD TV. Sharp unveiled a new 70-incher in its Quattron line, which adds yellow subpixels to the normal red, green, and blue. The LC-70LE935 uses LED backlighting with local dimming and offers online content and 3D capabilities, while the LC-70LE732 omits 3D. In all, Sharp will introduce five new lines with screen sizes up to 70 inches and six lines with sizes up to 60 inches in 2011, and all will have WiFi connectivity.

LG Display FPR Polarized 3D

Scott Wilkinson | Jan 05, 2011

LG Display, a subsidiary of LG that manufactures LCD panels for its parent company as well as Toshiba and Vizio, held its own press conference today to introduce its Film-Pattern Retarder (FPR) technology, which allows the use of passive-polarized glasses with 3D TVs. Among the benefits of this approach are much less-expensive glasses that are lighter in weight and require no electronics, higher brightness and refresh rate, and no crosstalk. Of course, the main disadvantage is that each eye sees only half the available vertical resolution540 lines instead of 1080, though the company reps argued that the brain fuses each eye's image into a "full HD" image.

The demo included several side-by-side comparisons with active-shutter glasses. For example, as seen on the right in the photo above, you can lie on your side and still watch 3D with FPR glasses, which use circular polarization, whereas shutter glasses completely darken at 90 degrees as seen on the left.

Another demo tried to illustrate how shutter glasses produce flicker while FPR glasses are flicker-free; from what I saw, this was extremely subtle. More pronounced was the comparison of crosstalk in several still images, which was obvious with shutter glasses and absent with FPR. Finally, a comparison of brightness revealed that passive 3D is indeed brighter than shutter glasses, though surprisingly, Tom Norton thought the shutter glasses display was actually brighter. We both agreed that the passive display looked more washed out and less punchy, and I thought the passive image was a bit softer in all cases, which would be worse on a larger screen.

LG 3D Smart TVs

Scott Wilkinson | Jan 05, 2011

LG holds the coveted position as the first official press conference of CES, which is great for the company, but murder on journalists, who must get to the Venetian before 8:00 AM if they want a seat in the huge ballroom. (Apparently, 3D-glasses maker Xpand had an unofficial press conference at 7:00 AM, but I sure wasn't going to make that!)

As expected, LG's TV lineup for 2011 includes more 3D models and more network connectivity, which is quickly turning out to be the TV story at the show. Out of 31 new LCD TVs, 10 are 3D-capable, and all but five are what LG calls Smart TVs; of the 12 new plasmas, eight are 3D and four are Smart TVs. In both cases, many models include both feature sets. Also, two-thirds of the LCD TVs use LED edgelighting or backlighting.

There are two big tech stories here. First, the LED-edgelit 3D models use passive-polarized glasses instead of active-shutter glasses, a technology LG calls Film-Pattern Retarder (FPR), which I'll discuss in more detail in a following post. Second, the top three LCD TVswhich reach up to 72 inches diagonallyare LED-backlit with local dimming using a technology LG calls Nano Full LED, in which the LEDs are smaller than usual and deliver brighter, cleaner, smoother local dimming in a cabinet less then one inch thick.

CES 2011

Panasonic Reports Healthy TV Sales

Mark Fleischmann | Jan 05, 2011

Recession? What recession? Panasonic's TV sales were up 30 percent in December 2010 over the previous year, the company reported at today's press event -- and sales of Viera sets were up 45 percent. So the little logo projected above the doorway in the picture above is one potent little symbol. The biggest sellers were 54-, 58-, and 65-inch sets. Areas of future growth include 3DTV, projected to rise to 32 percent of the worldwide market by 2014, and IPTV, expected to hit 42 percent the same year.

Perhaps the biggest news for 3DTV fans is that Panasonic will push for a standard for active-shutter glasses. For consumers, this would be a big improvement over the current balkanized situation, with each manufacturer having its own type. Panasonic says eyewear interoperability would drive growth. We're guessing it would also help the company defend its investment in active-shutter 3DTV technology at a time when passive 3DTV is starting to arrive from Vizio and LG. Panasonic is also opening a 3D Innovation Center to foster production technology in Hollywood. A new committee of the International 3D Society will do the same in Japan. Panasonic also seeded the student filmmaking community with 3D camcorders, with results to be chronicled on the website of the Campus Movie Fest.

CES 2011: Monster Announces a Heap of New Products

Stan Horaczek | Jan 05, 2011

It's clear that when Monster found out they had 45 minutes for their press conference here at CES, they took it as a challenge to see just how many new products they could cram into that time period. The results were impressively prolific, including everything from slightly lowered HDMI cable prices (their cheapest model is now $30) to a line of car cleaning products made in conjunction with West Coast Customs. Rather than bombarding you with the whole pile, here are some of the products that caught our interest.

The Monster Vision 3D Glasses

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