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CES in Depth: Inside the Best of Show

2012-01-13
I reviewed the first latv to hit the market in the u.s. a few years ago that was missoni that was 11 interested that was I saw that one introduced it was this thin and it was like a technology demonstrator yeah but this LG machine is for real yeah this well you know that's not a TV this is a TV and the real coolness is that you know you get this great picture quality but you also get incredible dimensions so LG is talking about a one millimeter bezel which is the thinnest possible thing so it's pretty much all picture the most compact you can get from the 55 inch TV it's also what I'm told seven point six kilograms so math math math hey I don't know how much that is but like 17 pounds something like that we do a lot of lifting televisions in and out of boxes so that's going to help us just as a side note I was at the sharp press conference and they said one of their big focuses is going to be making their televisions lighter which I can really appreciate any of these things around well I guess you know this thing's like infant hazards you know for example people have to attach their TV to the units so their children don't knock them over it so having a lighted TV I don't know if that's more dangerous or less fingers well as a manufacturer it's also a lot cheaper to ship those things so everybody you know unless you're getting free shipping from amazon it really doesn't matter now ty there's another new technology that's being talked about i think it's sony is showing this one is called what is a crystal crystal display i believe it is it's essentially what you see at the baseball games you know the huge screens that they show that the plays on shrunk down into a 55 inch television that seems to be the magical number this year 55 so essentially it's little LEDs similar to what you get behind an LCD TV but they are actually used to display the pictures similar to 0 lead as well so I think we need a little technology refresher here because we are sold all the time at the stores oh this is an LED TV tell us the difference between an LED TV and an LED TV ah so LED tvs that we know are actually it's a marketing ploy so it's it's just using LEDs like you'd get on the power buttons of your television for example used to light the screen itself because LCD doesn't mit its own might like you got in a digital watch you actually have to press a button to get the thing to display but an LED TV is actually using those LEDs as the picture as the pixels so there's a six million LEDs in this television Micro Micro size and it's going to be expensive if it ever comes to market oh you think there's a chance it won't absolutely you know they're dead pushing it as a prototype which I don't think sony has done in a long time yeah this TVs it's basically a CES kind of you know come check us out thing they haven't talked about marketing this thing at all if they do it'll be really expensive maybe between that and Oleg's we just mentioned is the old lives are actually shipping Samsung and LG both you know assure us that they're going to come out with these 55-inch oled tvs by the end of the year LG says you know third quarter and Sam somewhat probably around then as well now when I I just got a new TV and before I did I talk to the guys have seen it about what kind of TV I should get and they said get a plasma set now there's only one or two vendors I think actually making plasmas but one of those being Panasonic and they're they're not stepping away from this technology is that right why is plasma still a thing at Panasonic well I've the main reason we like plasma TVs is a couple of things they have excellent screen uniformity so they they have the even brightness across the screen they're also superb from off angle so as I was explaining with the LCDs you have this backlight issue where they shine through to the LCD and it actually makes the picture be less fidelity fun of buzzy yeah you miss out on a lot of fidelity when you sit extreme angles plasma doesn't have that problem that's one of the couple reasons why we like them they're also have on a lot of the high in plasmas like the panasonics we really like last year they give excellent black level forms as well so Panasonic's plasmas again I saw those this morning in person and they look really good they're talking about how they've improved a lot of their picture quality aspects deeper blacks brighter color and addressing one of the Bugaboos of plasma which is energy efficiency so you know all of these things are supposedly better for the 2012 panasonic line and i called the st 34 master the best value i'd ever seen pretty much in terms of picture quality for the money that you're going to spend its and excellent bargain and I think plasm is going to continue to occupy that niche what I can see happening is that oil adds going to come up like this and plasma is going to go down like this you'll see LCD start to fill up the lower under a thousand dollars maybe some budget plasmas as well but I leads probably in 2015 2016 companies like LG is saying that it's going to be the same prices in LCD so you think that OLED will take up the mantle as the high end where plasma is right now plasma will eventually finally make it exit I I think so i think it's the kind of technology that's probably on the back end of its life span i mean at the end of the day plasma is still going to give you the best picture you can buy right now without spending eight thousand dollars which is what I think these old ads are going to cost so that's still like a really really high end technology as I was saying you know they're expecting it to come down pretty fast and there's a lot of impetus to do that because again you get the lighter screens you get the smaller size and you give people a chance to buy another TV now we're looking here at TVs for the next year or two but just for the moment let's say that somebody is looking for a TV today in the sweet spot which I guess is about 46 to 55 inches let technology would you recommend and what's about the price point for a really good display good value you can get excellent guys I would say the value price point started under a thousand dollars for 50 inch and up screen size so you know that's where these some of the better LCD and plasmas are hovering right now like I was talking about with that Panasonic st thirty thousand dollars that's actually got down to nine hundred dollars for a 50-inch that we gave an eight in performance to which is excellent and you know one of the best pictures we've seen so that's a pretty good combination right there but I wouldn't actually wait for this year's TVs to come out if you're you can always wait you know you know in six months it's going to be another TV you know it's an unending cycle so if you're looking for a TV now probably februari when these models are going out and then once we're going to save this show start coming in you're going to see really cheap tvs really good tvs yeah so I wouldn't wait for this year's technology if you need a TV right now that's good because I just bought one of those well this is just so I didn't feel bad now for you Ray thank you so much now speaking of weird stuff that's going into TVs so we've got four different technologies play technologies we've got plasma oulad crystal LED regular old LCD actually there's more than and then the different ways they like that with the old tube so i guess the tubes are gone edge-lit and back lift oh that's a lot of technologies to sort out yeah and and manufacturers don't make it clear to consumers they basically just say hey it's led we have a big explainer up that list the four different types of LED backlights that are available now and that's actually a big differentiator for video files who want the best picture quality out of their led-based LCD TVs it's good to know the differences but you know there's still a lot of stuff out there I think of some manufacturers do thrive on that confusion people just go screw it I'm going to buy you know whatever is expensive hence our jobs manufacturers thank you very much for young confusing please keep it up so we can continue to explain things the way they can understand it thank you now panasonic in addition to of being rolled out with plasmas also you said they have a dual core TV yeah this is I so crazy you know we went through the whole dual core was the savior of computing then it went into our phones last year announcing our televisions make sure it's going to be juicers that's our juicers yeah okay right Android juices is going to happen essentially what the trial would is put it past them they've tried the 3d is really amazing they've tried the it's got sixty percent more black which doesn't really mean anything so they're going for the technology angle they're going for okay it's about a dual-core processor but actually what it's doing is that because there's so much technology in there you've got a lot of different things like Netflix having a dual core actually makes that sort of process a lot smoother so do we do so we want our big displays to be basically computers essentially how long until they we get Android TV what we have google TV we do yeah yeah we have right now lenovo go announced one a couple of days ago yeah they have an Android TV and a couple of manufactures are still doing Google TV LG is actually coming up with air google TV in the next couple of months samsung hasn't talked about google TV but i think they will to vizio even said no they're going to push their google TV to follow this year so those things are out there you know i don't know not people actually want them or enjoy them we were just talking backstage and it sounds like the actual apps built into the TV or not that satisfying for you Rafe and at the end of the day you had a blow yeah broken and it's fifty dollars and you get the same thing and it's you know you know to worry about it does anybody make a really good monitor that's just a display panel that says you can put in your signal and we're not going to junk it up with all these apps which we really don't know how to make interfaces for the last thing that really did that was supplying akiro is what three years ago yeah they went for out-and-out picture quality but the problem was that people didn't buy it because they didn't want what was in the straight and Australian TV eleven thousand dollars they didn't want to spend on it didn't have features they want big screen they want cheap and he can't really sell a high-end TV in this market anymore which is a shame yeah because the upgrade cycle is mixed up i mean the display technology that you get today will be good for another maybe five years maybe 10 but you know if you buy a dual-core plasma display or built for anything right now that's going to be obsolete in 18 months on the outside technologically most of the readers that i talked to are completely unconcerned about those sorts of things they want the picture quality first and foremost you know it all these extras that manufactures add-in are a little less relevant i think to answer your question you know guys can't do it they can't build these you know these tvs with just the monitor only because they're competing directly on a spec sheet by specially basis with other manufacturers and they all have stuff built in so the market really isn't there and guys you know if you have 61 huffing you look at two tvs and one is a complete monitor and you have to take the manufactures word for it that is pure spoil a is excellent unless it's significantly less expensive there's really no images for that and of course the flip side of that is that these tvs are the expensive ones are you know the ones that have the best picture quality so you know they throw in these extra features it doesn't cost too much to throw in dual or all that stuff into these TVs now there is one vendor that we haven't talked about and aren't going to hear from here at the show when it comes to television that's Apple yeah is it possible the reasons that there are all these smart functions going into the TV's is but people are trying to get out in front of apple and when Apple comes along and with their whatever it is television if they do do you think they'll kind of eat the lunch of everybody who's building apps in I'm so sick of hearing about this Apple TV this mythical television the thing is we've got an apple TV now it's on this show floor it's it's Samsung that's LG to some extent we've got these features now and what we can participate you know imagine is going to happen in the future is happening now yeah we've got eating connects if you've got an xbox you can still do those those functions so I don't think it's worth waiting for an apple TV you know if you want that sort of functionality which is still fairly better as far as you know being able to be sold in the work the marketplace ah yeah you can get it now don't wait three years I think ray for one of the things that is a little conspiracy going around right now is the reason why these manufacturers Samsung and LG are pushing out 55-inch oled is because that is the display technology that apple TV is you know according to rumor going to be using so Apple is not going to release a TV and Tyrone Oracle about this earlier they're not going to release a TV that has mediocre picture quality they're going to go for something that has really good fish quality so they're thinking is if they do that it's going to be ola it's going to be wow i said when people look at OLED TVs it is wow you know you're like wow that really that picture really does look better than what I have at home or what I've seen before so if you're going to if your Apple you want that yeah now one of the things we haven't talked about is something that definitely is out ahead of the curve in terms of Technology and that is the 4k display technology which we're hearing about from a couple of vendors what is 4k what does that mean to the two to the buyer what was that movie that came out a couple of years ago Blade Runner they actually rereleased a digital print that was in 4k it's essentially 4000 pixels by about two thousand pixels essentially it's a cinema former so you've got a lot of the digital films a lot of 3d films are actually Sloan in the cinema in 4k yeah so what they're trying to do is sort of shoehorn that into a consumer television for no real reason and you've got a cinema sized room in your house you don't really need for K what it is useful for is dividing into so you actually get full HD passive 3d technology yeah so that's the only real reason you so when you go see a movie that a digital movie that's mostly and that's in 4k today right yes again it's for the big screen sizes and like I said the ability to get rid of passive TV right now is basically half resolution on 3d so what LG told me is that they're actually you can get full HD resolution to both eyes if you're looking at this passive display with 4k resolution so that's one little selling point but at the end of the day these are again it's you're not going to get any content that's 2d 4k for the near future yeah and I heard about where was it sharp was talking about 8k 8k and so a que has I think about the same amount of content for the consumer that is available as 4k right which is to say none if you can get the master discs of Blade Runner maybe you can the watch full k all day but would there be any visual visible this difference between 4k and AK are we down to that to what Steve Jobs called the retina display where that's the limit of our resolution yeah it's really hard to see a difference for a lot of people between 720p and 1080p so you know when you start talking about these resolutions that are 4 times 8 times as high as that it's really no pay off unless you're on a gigantic screen or sitting and possibly posted hey we got to wrap up and there's one thing we didn't talk about because I hate it which is 3d so really briefly the state of 3d here at CES if people forgot about it is going to be back next year what's going on with 3d it's going to be a function it's going to be something you have I don't know if they have telly text here I'm going to straight in but telly Texas a feature it's just like a tick box and 3d is going to be the same I can see passive really taking off people don't want to pay extra for glasses if you get six pairs in the in the box that's good and so you can watch a 3d movie once a year maybe so you're going to be paying for 3d TVs anyway but yeah I think passive is the way to go one of those features comes along with it yeah all right so for more great TV coverage check out cnet com and stay tuned what's poppin on exit 44 is coming up next ty pendlebury from CNN kastle-meyer from Cena thank you so much for joining us Rafe Needleman see you later
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