LAS VEGAS — As always, the Consumer Electronics Show, the world’s largest personal-technology confab, has been filled with hundreds of new TVs, some as small as a cellphone and others as tall as a basketball player. In fact, there have been so many announcements that it might be tough to keep up with them all if you’re actually looking to CES to help you decide what your next TV set will be.
No worries; here’s a primer to help you cut through the noise:
OLED and 4K TVs
LG Electronics, the South Korean electronics maker, unveiled a 55-inch OLED TV that is just C/af-inch thick, as well as a whopping 84-inch TV with 4K-display resolution. What is OLED and 4K? OLED, or organic light-emitting diodes, are more energy-efficient, are thinner and provide better black levels compared with standard current LEDs used in TVs today. LG’s 55-inch OLED TV weighed in at just under 17 pounds.
But OLED is also more costly to produce than LED TVs, which means they’ll be more expensive to consumers. Just about every TV-maker threw out claims at CES that their displays provided the best picture.
Samsung, the other South Korean electronics giant, rolled out its “super” OLED sets, promising that its prototype display offers “the ultimate in vividness, speed and thinness, with true-to-life picture quality, enhanced color accuracy and motion picture quality even in the fastest scenes.”
4K TVs also also been a major trend at CES in Las Vegas this year.
The promise of 4K TVs is a display whose resolution is much higher than that of today’s highest-resolution high-definition TVs, which currently top out at 1080p. The 4K TVs will make their way into stores late this year.
A bit confused by all the terms? 1080p refers to TVs with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels, or about 2 million pixels. The newer 4K standard refers to TVs with a typical resolution of 4,096 x 2160 pixels, or about 8 million pixels.
Sharp Corp., the Japanese TV-maker, is taking the resolution jump further than its rivals and introduced a prototype 8K TV, which it says will offer double the resolution of a 4K TV set, or a resolution of about 16 times higher than a 1080p TV. So far, not much 4K video content is available (most HD-TV channels are 720p), but many filmmakers are moving toward shooting in 4K with newer digital cameras.
The bottom line with OLED and 4K (or 8K) TVs is that viewers will be able to see sharper and brighter images on even larger screens that are, counterintuitively, lighter than even smaller-screen TVs currently available.
Controlling your TV
Remote controls also are getting a makeover — in an effort to make them more user- friendly.
LG said it would make its Magic Remote, which acts like the Wii remote used by Nintendo’s Wii video-game console, usable with more TV sets.
With the motion-sensing Magic Remote in hand, a user can navigate on-screen TV menus, settings and even change channels.
Google TV
LG also is showing off sets with Google TV software that will launch in the U.S. in the first half of 2012 and later for the rest of the world. Among LG’s Google TV offerings will be a 55-inch model, and each Google TV set from LG will include a Magic Remote with a built-in keyboard.
Google TV will run on LG’s TVs alongside its Smart TV platform unveiled last year. Since last year’s CES, LG said it had added more than 1,200 apps to its Smart TV offerings.
Vizio Inc., the bargain- priced TV-maker, also is releasing a lineup of Google TV products, including TVs running the Google TV software, Google TV Blu-ray player and a set-top box called the Stream Player that will enable Google TV to run on any HD-TV.
