The major consumer electronics manufacturers, which
each hosted carefully rehearsed dog and pony shows for thousands of
journalists gathered from all over the world, did it this year with
dark glasses and promises that the world would welcome 3-D into its
living room.
No matter that the technology is almost entirely
untried on home consumers. Except for a few cheesy experiments,
television programming has been physically flat all these decades.
But with technological enhancements — including
high-definition imagery — finally making quality 3-D at home a
possibility, the consumer electronics giants hope you’ll be willing to
pay extra to buy a set (and the requisite glasses) starting as early as
this spring.
There were other TV announcements, too, involving Internet connectivity and the wider availability of LED-backlit models.
Here’s what manufacturers said they have in store for 2010.
One of the big obstacles to 3-D TV adoption is lack of something to watch with depth. Visual depth, that is.
The channels will be made available to
It was the first announcement by a U.S. distributor
that it would provide a steady supply of 3-D. One of the first live
sports events to be shown will be the Major League Baseball All-star
game this summer.
To view 3-D programming at home, viewers will need specially equipped television sets.
Of course, 3-D glasses will be needed to view the channels and the TVs.
Bucking the trend of falling TV prices,
announced a new line — Cell TV — with a super-fast processor now used
in the Sony PS3 game console. This is the first announced use of the
Cell chip in a TV.
“
missed out on HD DVD — which got beat out by Blu-ray — but that gave
them the first shot at defining the future of TV,” said obviously
enthusiastic analyst
This future probably will be expensive, however.
“We don’t have to rush to the bottom,” said
The Cell’s added power will support numerous
enhancements, including a feature that will supposedly take any 2-D
show and present it in 3-D when the viewer chooses.
Another feature of the Cell: video calls on the set,
supposedly with “crystal-clear” images, even on a TV as big as 55
inches. (This feature, however, was not demonstrated at the news
conference).
The Cell will also have built-in wireless
networking, so sets can connect to home networks without snaking more
cables into living rooms. That will eliminate the need for separate
Internet-connected devices to view services such as
But will Cell sell? Stay tuned.
The company launched its new line of 3-D televisions, Blu-ray players, glasses and home theater systems with a bit of
DreamWorks Animation Chief Executive
Aliens” as a 3-D Blu-ray disc, in an exclusive promotion with
Katzenberg said theater audiences have embraced this
new way of watching films, with four of the 10 films released in 3-D
ranking among the top movies at the box office.
“With 3-D, we give them the feeling of being immersed in the stories and characters,” Katzenberg said.
Not to be outshone when it comes to entertainment,
“All these announcements are designed to create excitement around 3-D,”
LG
Like others, the company announced 3-D TVs and Blu-ray players. And it said it would add
But it also ventured into mostly untried screen
technology. LG said it would have a 15-inch organic light-emitting
diode screen TV on the market in the first half of the year.
The only OLED out now for consumer use is an 11-incher from
It came out a couple of years ago and got a lot of attention because it
is super-thin and sports a high-quality image. But other manufacturers
shied away from jumping on the OLED bandwagon because of the difficulty
of making larger screens at affordable prices.
No price was announced for LG’s OLED set.
SHARP
While other TV manufacturers were focusing on a third dimension for their pictures, Sharp homed in on a fourth color.
Company executives unveiled their “four primary color” technology, Sharp’s hope for a new edge over its rivals.
LCD makers have traditionally relied on pixels in
three colors—red, green and blue—to generate a broad palette of colors
on screen. Sharp is adding a fourth, yellow, which increases the number
of colors on screen to more than 1 trillion. That’s about 1,000 times
better than the previous approach, Sharp executives said.
The technology will be available this year on about
a third of Sharp’s flat-panel TVs — typically, the larger LED-backlit
screens. The new technology carries a premium of about
Technical advantages are hard to maintain in the
consumer-electronics industry, where innovations are quickly replicated
and leapfrogged. And at tech shows, often the breakthroughs amount to
little more than clever marketing. So while it stands to reason that
adding a fourth color to the mix will make a difference, it’s not clear
that will translate into a great leap forward in the viewing experience.
If it really is the next big thing in picture
quality, expect to see similar moves by other manufacturers next year.
It’s also safe to predict that the price premium will drop rapidly.
And in case having four colors isn’t as important to
consumers as three dimensions, Sharp also plans to have a 3-D TV on the
market this year. Just like the rest of the pack.
—
(c) 2010, Los Angeles Times.
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