The Panasonic Touch the Future Tour will let members of the public (that's you) in 15 cities get direct experience with the company's version of 3D technology, starting Monday March 15 in New York and finishing next month in Miami. See end of this story for other locales and dates.
Well, that didn't take long. Less than two months after 3DTVs were introduced at CES, some models are already available for consumers to purchase. The first out of the gate are Samsung's UN46C7000 and UN55C7000 LED edge-lit LCD TVs (shown here), which can be purchased at Amazon.com for $2339 and $2969, respectively, as well as a few other online retailers such as Crutchfield, which has the 46 in stock for $2400 and is taking pre-orders for the 55 for $3060. Soon to follow are some Panasonic plasmas, which are scheduled to go on sale at Best Buy on March 10, marking the first time that 3DTVs will be available at brick-and-mortar outlets.
TiVo is one of the most recognizable brands in all of consumer electronics—so much so that the name of the company has become a verb in the popular lexicon, much like Xerox. After years of anticipation, TiVo today announced the next generation of its DVR platform—Premiere and Premiere XL.
As part of a National Broadband Plan, the Federal Communications Commission will try to persuade broadcasters to relinquish some of the spectrum allocated just last year in the DTV transition.
Panasonic just finished a bi-coastal press briefing about its 2010 lineup of TVs, Blu-ray players, HTIBs (home-theater-in-a-box systems), and soundbars, but 3D was conspicuously absent. In fact, we were told that the company would be back in the late Spring or early Summer with more specifics about its 3D offerings.
Panasonic's traveling road show for its new 2010 product line came to Los Angeles this week, and we were there. Most of the products shown or described at the event were first announced at last January's CES, where the featured attraction was 3D, with other new products taking second billingif not in Panasonic's eyes, then in the eyes of most attendees. It was not that the new products were uninteresting; far from it. But 3D was king of the video mountain at CES 2010.