With well over 1.7 million net square feet of exhibition space, saying that CES 2008 is big is somewhat of an understatement. It is the BIGGEST Consumer Electronics Show in the world! It was simply impossible for any individual to take in the sights and sounds of every company, every booth, given the time constraints placed upon us. As such, you have to stay pretty focused on what you want to see and one area that I really wanted to check out in Las Vegas was the latest innovations in the area of home televisions.
It goes without saying that HDTV is a huge industry. Both LCD and Plasma manufacturers had a lot to show us, both proclaiming just how great their image quality is and how accurate their color reproduction is. In fact, several firms offer both technologies, and some do the DLP thing instead. And then there’s OLED too. Man alive, there are a lot of televisions to consider, but let’s have a look at four of the biggest players in the game and what they had to offer in terms of TV at the Consumer Electronics Show this year.
LG: Life’s Good, but BETTER in 3D
LG is known for making a lot of shiny things with cool touch-sensitive controls and their televisions were no exception. The two primary technologies that they had on display at CES were 3D TV and wireless HDTV.
The cool thing about the 3D LCD monitor from LG is that, unlike so many other 3D monitors, this television doesn’t require any special goggles. In recent years, we’ve seen all sorts of movie theaters and theme parks make use of easier-to-use three-dimensional displays, but these still need you to wear a piece of flimsy paper (or plastic) glasses. With the LG offering, this is not necessary and you get a similar (albeit weaker) three dimensional image that is visible to the naked eye.
This is achieved by using three panels stacked on top of one another, giving you the impression of depth. The key advantage, of course, is that you don’t need glasses, but the there are several disadvantages. For starters, the third dimension is not seamless; it’s composed of three “levels.” Also, the image can get very blurry and out of focus if you are either viewing from an angle or from a non-optimal distance.
The other tech that LG was proudly proclaiming was the idea of a wireless 1080p LCD TV. They had these in a variety of sizes, topping out at about the 50- to 60-inch range. There is basically a set-top box that supplements the back of your television, granting you access to the usual set of connectors. This way, you can mount the TV on your way and never try to access the back of it again.
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Samsung: OLED Shining Bright
Samsung loves the piano black finish, but they’ve got more up their sleeves that just glossy coatings.
We were told that the Korean manufacturer didn’t really have anything new for us at CES 2008, but that didn’t stop Samsung from dropping our jaws with their huge wall of high-definition flat panel televisions. The smaller panels were placed near the top and they got bigger as you got closer to ground level. I’ve been a big fan of Samsung LCDs for some time now, because they offer some of the most attractive packages and most beautiful images I have ever seen.
If you’ve been concerned about brightness, as would be the case if you were placing one of these TVs in a well-lit room, then you might want to consider a new family of televisions coming from Samsung that are based on OLED technology. This technology has largely only been used in a much smaller scale — MP3 players and the like — but Samsung wants to bring it to big-screen TVs too. Not only are OLED displays brighter, they’re also more energy efficient. Going green with glossy black? Count me in.
Pioneer Kuro: The Skinny One
When you ask many people about where you can get the best plasma televisions, one name that inevitably comes up is Pioneer. While other companies are pushing the size barrier to grander and larger proportions, Pioneer had an interesting project that looked much more special from a different angle.
Project Kuro by Pioneer is comprised of a plasma television that looks pretty normal from the front. The color reproduction, contrast ratio, and so on are just as good as you’d expect from a high-quality Pioneer plasma. However, it’s only when you look at this TV from the side that you appreciate how incredible it is. That’s because it’s less than an inch thick! Seeing the Kuro in person, you’re almost inclined to think that there are no electronic components whatsoever and all you’re looking at is a single pane of glass. It really is that thin.
Yes, it becomes another numbers game — just as Samsung likes to do with their “world’s thinnest” cell phones — but when you mount this ultra thin TV on the wall, it’s going to sit almost flush. That’s not only pretty; it’s pretty freaking impressive.
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Panasonic: Bigger is Better
This was the TV that everyone was talking about. And I do mean everyone. You could not walk down the CES trade show floor without hearing a couple of people buzzing about the monstrous proportions of this thing.
The contrast ratio wasn’t the best and the color reproduction could have been better, but there is nowhere else where you can bask in the monumental glory of a 150-inch plasma display. This results in a television that is nearly 8 feet tall and almost 12 feet wide, making it pretty much impossible to fit into any normal person’s home. It’s an exercise in futility, but it’s an exercise that will leave you in awe.
Having a huge television without resolution to make is pointless. We’ve all seen non-HDTV content on a big HDTV and, well, the image is less than stellar. Stretching regular HD content onto a 150-inch screen would be equally disappointing. That’s why Panasonic has opted for a resolution that has four times as many pixels as 1080p. The effective image is 2160 pixels tall and 4096 pixels wide, for a total of 8.84 million pixels.
Panasonic was not willing to disclose any further information, so we don’t know when this will make it to market (if ever) nor do we know how much it’ll cost. But that’s almost beside the point, because you’ll have to build a room around this giant TV, rather than the other way around.
For more HDTV eye candy, don’t forget to check out our galleries:
Panasonic CES 2008 Photo Gallery
Pioneer CES 2008 Photo Gallery
Samsung CES 2008 Photo Gallery
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