CES 2014 Roundup (So Far)

 

CES 2014 reveals head-turning smart home appliances

Sharp boasts 'game changer' high-res Aquos Quattron Plus TV

The Japanese TV maker is known for going big at the Consumer Electronics Show, and this year is all about the subpixels.

Watch your step -- with a Bluetooth-connected insole

Even as Nike moves to wrist-worn electronics, a company called 3L Labs at CES announces FootLogger, which builds sensors into a person's shoe. Expect them in the second half of 2014.

(VIDEO) Track testing the 2015 Chevrolet Corvette and its new Performance Data Recorder

Samsung debuts bendable TV

Not only did Samsung announce new and incredibly weird TVs (you can bend them) but it's moving into the premium tablet sphere with a new line.

 MakerBot flaunts new 3D printers at CES 2014 (pictures)

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Get Ready For CES 2014 - What To Expect

• CES 2014: We'll take you there News Lindsey Turrentine 6 hours ago 
  

  From stellar panels to on-stage torture tests, CNET's CES 2014 coverage will make you rethink your definition of technology. Find out what we have in store for the first and largest tech show of the year.
  
  
• LG HomeChat lets you SMS with your appliances News Megan Wollerton 8 hours ago
  

  Use this app to chat with your LG fridge, robot vacuum, washing machine, and oven.
  
  
• CES 2014 Gaming preview: Gaining Steam News Jeff Bakalar 3 days ago
  

  For the first time in recent memory, gaming may have a significant presence at CES.
  
  

Smartphones at CES: Big, bendy, 64-bit

A look at the year's upcoming trends for Las Vegas' Consumer Electronics Show and into 2014.

The calm before the tablet storm

What's in store for tablets at CES 2014? Probably not all that much.

Wearable tech: Expect the unexpected

The weird, wild world of wearables is bound for a lot of chaos in Las Vegas. What will it all add up to? That's anyone's guess.

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OLED Finally Arrives, But Is The Dream TV Really Worth It?

Forbes - Samsung and LG wowed visitors to January’s Consumer Electronics Show with prototypes of a new kind of flat-panel television using OLED technology. OLEDs, which also power the screens in Samsung’s Galaxy S4 phones, promise unprecedented contrast and thinness in TVs — and the demos didn’t disappoint. The lack of shipping products, however, did. The TVs were first shown last year and both Korean electronic giants promised to ship within months. Technically, OLED stands for organic light-emitting diode, but for the past decade, the “D” might as well have stood for delay. At last, though, 18 months from those demos, LG and Samsung are bringing products to the U.S. They’re strange and extraordinarily expensive, but they’re real.

Once upon a time, it seemed like OLED might be the preeminent flat-panel technology. As early as 2001, Sony SNE -2.4% and Universal Display PANL NaN% were putting out press releases touting joint development plans for large-screen OLED televisions. It would be a couple of years before mass production of large-size LCD TVs became possible and the hype was always that OLED was that much better and imminent. But “imminent” — like those announcements from last year’s CES — never arrived because OLED never had the manufacturing breakthrough that LCD did. And it still hasn’t, which is why the 55-inch models LG and Samsung sets will be available for a breathtaking $15,000 — literally 6 times as expensive as a top-of-the-line LCD of the same size.   Read More

This plasma TV has the best picture ever tested - The Panasonic VT60

 

CNET Editors' Rating

4.0 stars - Excellent

$2,200.00 to $2,599.99

The good: The Panasonic VT60 produces the best picture quality of any TV we've ever reviewed, equal to or better than our in-house Pioneer Kuro reference; exceedingly deep black levels and excellent shadow detail; well-saturated colors and excellent skin tones; industry-leading sound quality; extensive features including touch-pad remote, voice control, and onboard camera.

The bad: Extremely expensive; forthcoming ZT60 might have even better picture quality; worse bright-room picture than that of the Samsung F8500; somewhat humdrum design; camera is limited, and facial recognition is a gimmick.

The bottom line: The Panasonic VT60 has one of the best pictures of any TV we've ever reviewed, but it's soon to face some tough competition.

Read the Full Review

Biggest, brightest, and best HDTVs at CES 2013

PCWorld -

HDTVs take center stage at CES 2013

The stars this year at CES 2013 are big, beautiful HDTVs. All the big names have gotten into the mix, displaying updates to their current lines as well as showing drool-worthy prototypes featuring hot technology not yet released to consumers.

The sets range from B&O Play’s sexy looking—and sounding—BeoVision 11 HDTV, to numerous 4K Ultra-HD offerings that feature four times the pixels of standard HD sets. Here are some of our favorites from the show.

New Sony 4K Bravia HDTVs

Sony has been all about 4K at this year’s CES, promoting a number of new ultra-high resolution HDTVs. While Sony’s current OLED 4K offering, a massive 84-inch beast, will run you around $25,000, the newly announced 65-inch 4K Bravia XBR-65X900A and 55-inch Bravia XBR-55X900A should offer (slightly) lower price tags.

But what good is a 4K TV if you can’t get 4K content for it? Sony seems to have caught on to this sentiment, teasing a 4K World UltraHD video-distribution service that promises to give viewers access to 4K content from Sony Pictures and other studios.

B&O Play - BeoVision 11

Products from B&O Play are known for being attractive and great sounding—as well as expensive—and the new BeoVision 11 HDTV does not stray from that mold.

The BeoVision 11’s 240Hz LED-based LCD screen can handle both 2D and 3D content. A nifty 360-degree Automatic Picture Control feature detects ambient light in the room to adjust the TV’s brightness and contrast.

Media streamers can delight too, as the BeoVision 11 supports DLNA media streaming and the new Send to TV feature from YouTube. There’s even a dedicated cupboard behind the set for storing an Apple TV box. To top it all off, you’ll be able to enjoy all that content on dual 3-way speakers, powered by six amplifiers.

The BeoVision 11 is available now in 40, 46, and 55-inch sizes.

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The only $299 TV with smart apps - Vizio E320i-A0 Review

CNET Editors' Rating

3.5 stars - Very good

The good: The Vizio E320i-A0 32-inch LED-based LCD TV is a superb value, bringing Smart TV and solid picture quality in the same price range as many small TVs with neither. The Smart content selection is excellent and responsiveness was very good. Image-quality highlights include relatively deep black levels and good color. With its thin bezel, the set has a more compact, sleeker look than competitors.

The bad: The Vizio's picture falls short of some entry-level TVs', with subpar shadow detail, and shows some discoloration in dark areas. Its Smart TV interface design seems a bit dated.

The bottom line: For people seeking integrated Smart features, the Vizio E320i-A0 is the strongest value we've seen yet among 32-inch TVs.

Read the Full Review

Sony's stellar LED TV better than 4K? - Review of the Sony XBR-65HX950

(Credit: Sony Electronics)

CNET - Forget that 84-inch 4K monstrosity grabbing all the headlines. If you've been holding out for the best Sony TV of 2012, this is probably it.

Yes, the XBR-HX950 is smaller and lower-resolution, and yes, it's still extremely expensive at a beginning list price of $3,500. But I expect it to have better picture quality than the 84-incher, along with just about every other LED TV.

Before I get into the reasons why, allow me to indulge in a (recent) history lesson. Last year the Sony XBR-HX929 was hands-down the best-performing LED TV on the market until the Sharp Elite came along. Due largely to their use of full-array local dimming the two sets were quite a bit better than the next-best alternative (Sony's own NX720) and also cost a lot more. Compared with the Elite, however, the XBR-HX929 is a relative bargain -- its 55-inch size currently sells for around $2,000 less than the smallest Elite, a 60-inch model.

At CES in January, Sony's TV announcements conspicuously omitted mention of a successor to the XBR-HX929, which the company continued to describe as "current" -- until now. The XBR-HX950 previewed here replaces the HX929, and according to Sony offers some improvements. We expect it to beat the 2012 HX850 in picture quality, at least equal the HX929, and perhaps challenge the 2011 Elite (Sharp has yet to announce any successor).

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Monster 84-inch LG LCD will be first with 4K resolution

 

(Credit: LG)

 

CNET - One of the biggest buzzwords to emerge from this year's CES was 4K, which is pinned as the next consumer resolution after 1080p. But after a promising beginning we haven't heard much about actual products since then.

Toshiba's 4K screen has quietly slipped off the radar, but it appears LG's 84-inch LM9600 is still on track for release this year. In fact it could be available as early as September, which would make it the first 4K TV available for sale in the U.S.

The LG 84LM9600 will have a resolution of 3,840x2,160 pixels, aka the consumer version of 4K, since it's four times the number of pixels employed by garden-variety 1080p TVs (1,920x1,080). For its part, LG calls the resolution "UD" for "ultra-definition," making this a (wait for it) "UDTV."

When it ships, this monster will actually be only the second-largest flat-panel size widely available to the public. Sharp's 90-inch LC-90LE745U is the biggest, although it has "only" 1080p resolution.

That difference begs the question: is 4K worthwhile in and of itself, or are the benefits of all those extra pixels even visible from normal seating distances? We won't know for sure until we can test it out in person, but let's just say we're quite skeptical. Geoff Morrison's "Why 4K TVs are stupid" lays out the reasons.

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Insanely great plasma TV - Panasonic TC-P55ST50 review

Panasonic TC-P55ST50 review 

 

 CNET -

The good: The affordable Panasonic TC-PST50 series exhibited outstanding overall picture quality, characterized by exceedingly deep black levels with great shadow detail, accurate colors, and solid bright-room performance. Unlike LCDs, as a plasma it has superb off-angle and 
uniformity characteristics. The styling is attractive and the feature set well-chosen, including excellent onscreen help options.

The bad: The ST50 uses more power than competing LCD TVs, and doesn't perform as well in bright rooms as those with matte screens. It doesn't come with 3D glasses, and it showed more crosstalk in 3D than some competing TVs. The ST50 is only available in 50-inch and larger sizes. Three HDMI inputs is one fewer than most midrange TVs offer.

The bottom line: With flagship-level picture quality for a midlevel price, the Panasonic ST50 series sets the value standard among videophile-grade TVs.

 

CES 2012 Smart TV Round-Up

Slash Gear - Riding high on Android and with its expertise in search, Google should’ve swept the board when it first turned its hand to smart TV. Instead, Google TV was lambasted for its confusing interface, patchy functionality and ever-changing line up of content (made unpredictable by Google’s apparent refusal to pay for licensing deals but instead attempting to harness free online streams). With the second-gen system now ready for prime time, the search giant has managed to coax some big names back onboard, as well as tease gamers with the promise of OnLive for console-quality play without any extra hardware beyond a wireless controller.

Samsung, Sony, LG and Vizio were all expected to bring Google TV powered sets to the show, and all but Samsung delivered. LG spared us the heavy-duty specs, only saying that its two Google TV sets would drop later this year and use a homegrown quadcore ARM chipset. Like Vizio, which announced the R-Series of Google TVs, LG has reskinned the core Google UI to suit its own interface styling. Vizio also had two set-top boxes, one adding a Blu-ray drive, the VAP430 and VBR430, which promise to make Google TV more affordable.

Sony, meanwhile, took another approach, not bothering with fully-integrated Google TV HDTVs but instead looking to two new set-top boxes instead. It’s possible the company learned the hard way from its first-gen Google TV sets, though the new Network Media Player NSZ-GS7 and Blu-ray Disc Player NSZ-GP9 are arguably more useful given there are plenty of people content with their existing TV but still wanting a smart upgrade.



Finally, Marvell brought along its ARMADA 1500 chipset and a reference design Google TV STB to demonstrate it. The company is pushing the design to its hardware partners, along with a useful upscaling addition that promises to make lower-res content and UI look better on a 1080p Full HD display.

As for Samsung, it stuck with its homegrown smart TV platform for CES, though reiterated its support for Google TV and promised that “a forthcoming offering will deliver an entirely distinct experience in the category” later in 2012. That’s not to say its hardware this week has been underwhelming, however. Our playtime with Samsung’s 60-inch smart TV – which packs Kinect-style motion and voice control – suggested the non-traditional navigation may be gimmicky but the core software is very strong, while integrated DIRECTV support and the potential for hardware upgrades along the line shows services aren’t being left behind either.                 More

Review: Sony Bravia KDL-55NX720

 

CNET Editors’ rating

3.5 stars Very good

The good: The Sony KDL-NX720 series produces deeper black levels than any edge-lit LED-based TV we’ve tested. It evinces relatively accurate color, has a uniform screen for edge-lit LED, and can properly handle 1080p/24 sources. It has a beautiful, thin-profile exterior design with flush Gorilla Glass, it has built-in Wi-Fi, and its Internet suite includes numerous streaming services and widgets.

The bad: The expensive KDL-NX720 shows some blooming artifacts and crushes detail in shadows, and its image deteriorates more noticeably than usual when seen from off-angle. The design of its menu and Internet services is lackluster, and Sony does not include 3D glasses. Its 3D image is poor, with significant crosstalk, flicker when dejudder is turned off, and extreme intolerance to head tilt.

The bottom line: Albeit expensive and plagued by 3D image issues, the beautifully styled Sony KDL-NX720 has better picture quality than most other edge-lit LED-based LCD TVs.

Read the Full Review!

Sony's stunning LED Bravia