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LG’s Classic TV gives old CRT new legs

In these complex, digital days, it’s easy to yearn for simpler, analog times — when everything was daisy-chained coax cable and all you needed was the odd RF adapter to get your gaming on. LG is taking its customers back in time with the Classic TV, an honest to gosh CRT clothed in period-appropriate attire. While it does break with tradition slightly by including a remote control, it offers nicely tactile dials and even a set of color-matched rabbit ears, making it the perfect thing for hooking up your Famicom or watching Astroboy re-runs. It’s available now in Korea, your choice of basic black or cheeky red for ₩ 249,000. That equates to about $215, but don’t go looking for it in your local Caldor flier.

LG’s Classic TV gives old CRT new legs originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nanosys and LG Innotek agree deal for newfangled LED-backlit displays

For the nitty gritty of how Nanosys’ proprietary LED backlighting technology works, check out our earlier coverage here — what you really need to know is that the company promises a significantly wider color gamut from its displays, while reducing power consumption by up to 50 percent. Quantum dot LEDs have shown their faces before, but now there’s the big hulking heft of LG Innotek — LG’s component manufacturing arm — behind what Nanosys is offering, which indicates we might actually see the release of nanotech-infused displays within the first half of this year as promised. The early focus appears to be on mobile phones, which gives us yet another next-gen feature to add to our list of requirements for our next phone. Check out the full PR after the break.

Continue reading Nanosys and LG Innotek agree deal for newfangled LED-backlit displays

Nanosys and LG Innotek agree deal for newfangled LED-backlit displays originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LG eXpo Mobile Projector hands-on

As Windows Mobile 6.5 handsets go, LG’s eXpo on AT&T is very near the cream of the crop — it’s got Snapdragon and a biometric scanner, after all — but we all know that the spec sheet doesn’t tell the whole story with this one. Really, people care about this phone because of the trick $179 pico projector that you can optionally bolt underneath. Besides being insanely cool, the concept makes sense considering the eXpo’s target demographic — business users probably want to be able to share documents and PowerPoints on the go, right?

Continue reading LG eXpo Mobile Projector hands-on

LG eXpo Mobile Projector hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Verizon cuts 10 phones off of the $350 ETF list

Everyone and their mothers were up in arms when Verizon announced its new early termination fee policies last year. For a select group of smartphones and “advanced devices,” canceling one’s contract would incur a hefty $350 fee. Customers fumed, the…

3D stole the show at CES 2010

Not sure why we’ve been putting this off, but we’ll just come right out and say it: there’s no doubt that this was the year for 3D at CES. We walked the show floor for countless hours and can tell you that just about everyone was showing something related to 3D at their booths. Most of these demos required a bit of a wait to experience them (thanks, hype), and everywhere you went people were talking about 3D. Granted, not all of that talk was positive, but it was talk nonetheless. Whether or not the technology will be seen in history as a success in the market place is obviously still up in the air, and much like a finely crafted episode of Lost, 3D at CES this year was littered with more questions than answers.

Continue reading 3D stole the show at CES 2010

3D stole the show at CES 2010 originally appeared on Engadget HD on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LG’s X300 ad strikes an amazingly familar tone

Continue reading LG’s X300 ad strikes an amazingly familar tone

Filed under: Laptops

LG’s X300 ad strikes an amazingly familar tone originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Why a Blu-ray Player Might Become Your Only Set-Top Box

My love for Blu-ray players grows whenever companies add another feature that has nothing to do with Blu-ray. Now any worthwhile player is a home-entertainment hub, replacing cable box and Apple TV alike. How soon till they handle everything?

We looked at the four newly announced flagship players from the four biggest Blu-ray companies, LG, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony. Any self-respecting Blu-ray player today has Pandora and Picasa, and of course Netflix subscription streaming video. They also have some form of pay-per-view movie download service, from Vudu, Amazon or Roxio’s CinemaNow and Blockbuster apps.

This year, though, the companies turned up the juice. LG added a built-in hard drive; Sony surprisingly built a remote-control iPhone app. And now all top Blu-ray players will go 3D. Integrated Wi-Fi was a stand-out feature last year; this year it’s par.

These won’t be out till the summer, and there’s no pricing announced yet, but already we’re excited. See, putting everything but the the kitchen sink into a firmware upgradeable $200-to-$300 box is way smarter than jamming it all inside a $1500 TV, where picture quality should be the chief concern.

What Do Blu-ray Players Still Need? Video File Support

If you want to know who will soon be putting HD media players out of business, look no further than these connected Blu-ray players. Samsung and LG won’t let smaller companies steal their spot on the TV stand; my guess is that they will have amazing file compatibility at launch or slightly after. I mean, LG put in a hard drive, for God’s sake. If that isn’t for dumping crazy video files, I don’t know what is.

The hard drive sounds nice, but it’s not even necessary. With Wi-Fi connectivity and DLNA compatibility, these players should technically be able to play all your home videos, wherever they are. But they absolutely need 1080p DivX, H.264 and AVC (TS) compatibility—and the ability to read DVD disc images—in order to be considered viable HD video players.

I don’t list reported file compatibilities here because I have learned that spec sheets can easily lie when it comes to supported video, especially when the combination of codec, wrapper, resolution and file size all affect readability. Until the players are shipping, their true file support is a mystery. Still, I have hope for these.

The $100 Roku is already on the ropes thanks to current Blu-ray players, since they give you what Roku does plus disc playback. The $120 Roku HD-XR hasn’t yet taken advantage of its USB jack, and the company didn’t announce anything at CES. If they wait too long before providing wide HD video file compatibility, that product, too, will be hurting.

If the makers of Blu-ray players get with the program, and address the need for true universal home-video playback, they will easily shove aside Asus O!Play and everything else too.

OK, not everything else. Game consoles, already bestsellers, have been actively converting non-gamers by adding streaming video services, and developing natural interfaces like the Wii’s popular motion controls and the more ambitious forthcoming Xbox 360 Natal project.

Hopefully this will be the year they see the light on video support, too. The PS3 could have been the ultimate set-top box, but Sony’s inability to see the commercial value of openness killed the PS3’s non-gamer appeal. The Xbox is a lot closer to the ideal, but it doesn’t yet support all files, and betting on HD DVD—and then not jumping to Blu despite Ballmer’s frequent (and justifiable) promises—means no HD disc support, also a mistake.

Look, some of these Blu-ray players won’t go all the way with file support, either. Speaking of Sony, can you imagine the king of patent royalties and DRM embrace file formats it doesn’t get cash payoffs from, or could possibly be used in the service of piracy? Still, at least one great Blu-ray player will rise here. Am I dreaming? A year ago I would have thought so, but from what we all now regularly get from our cheap HD media players, my dreams are likely to come true—and soon, too.

What It Feels Like to Watch 3DTV: Viewing a Digital Diorama

I’ve written a lot about 3DTV and that I consider it occasionally incredible. But the entire concept is tough to explain because, let’s face it, I can’t just embed 3DTV example videos and you’ve probably never seen it. Allow me:

I stood on a crowded CES floor with an assignment I dreaded. I had to look at every 3DTV I could find, an attraction that seemed to be drawing the slowest, most annoying attendees of all of CES into long lines to split a few pairs of glasses.

And these stupid screens are so unimpressive at first glance. To the naked eye, the screen is a tad blurry and maybe even a bit washed out. Then you slip on a pair of lightweight, heavily-douchey, thick-framed glasses. After a moment or two, the world around you goes darker, that once-blurry image sharpens instantly, and suddenly you’re watching 3D.

The image you see will vary with content. You’ll note a light flickering over your eyes, somewhere between the gaping black holes of an old time projector playing silent films and smooth 24 or 30fps video of a DVD or digital projector. But the biggest change is that your TV is no longer a flat pane but a window, an image in which there’s an actual depth your eye can dig through, a digital diorama, if you will.

And if you happen to be looking around a room filled with 3DTVs, or maybe a display of 15 stacked 3DTVs, all of these TVs will have turned 3D. In mass, the effect is a giggle-filled novelty ever so reminiscent of Jaws 3D.

Animation is, by far, the most impressive demo you will see. Impossibly crisp and colorful, the effect is extremely lifelike…for a cartoon. More simply put, there’s a perfect front to back gradient. Every object looks, well, like an object, like something round that takes up real physical space. When, during a clip of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge’s oily, porous nose protrudes from the screen ever so forcefully, you can’t possibly imagine the moment done justice in 2D. The sense of flesh far outweighs what you see in the illustrative lead shot, because truthfully, these scenes have been designed and rendered with information that our displays have been incapable of showing us. With 3D animation, 3D is no gimmick—it’s 2D that’s the lousy undersell. And your eyes will be able to tell as they savor looking as deep as they can into the frame.

Sports are a vastly different, inferior experience. Basketball, for instance, is interesting in 3D but also indicative of the format’s limitations. For one, the court has depth, but the players are quite flat, like a few paper cutouts are dribbling a ball back and forth instead of fully corporeal, 6′6″ titans. Your mind can’t quite reconcile the image, as it’s somewhere between 2D and 3D, meaning it looks more fake, in a sense, than the simple 2D presentation we’ve always seen (the term “uncanny valley,” though not quite suitable in this context, certainly comes to mind). I assume such is a result from the use of telephoto lenses, which are notorious for flattening even 2D images. The effect is even more pronounced in 3D, meaning that stereoscopic 3D shouldn’t (and can’t) be the end game for sports no matter what ESPN tells you. I could easily imagine a multicam arena setup which these blank (flattening) information spots could be filled, and an actual 3D image (a la Pixar) could be piped to consumers, rendered in real time. The effect in sports could truly be something we’ve never seen before (Madden 2010 crossed with real textures, essentially). As of now, it feels more like we’re playing with paper dolls.

Live action film, specifically Avatar, is something I haven’t seen on a 3DTV beyond a few 3D previews. The fast paced trailers—as opposed to the long, expansive shots of Pixar-style animation—don’t lend themselves as well to the illusion (the 3D planes constantly break), and it’s quite difficult to really assess or describe an effect that your eyes can’t chew on for a while. On an IMAX 3D screen, I’ve mentioned that Avatar showed me textures I’d never seen before. On a plasma, Avatar looks far more like a cartoon, and its depth gradient is somewhere between the 2Dish sports and the all-out 3D animations (probably because Avatar itself is much a combination of the two). In the theater, I opened my eyes as wide as possible to take in the bioluminesence of Pandora. On the small screen, a light flicker distances you, almost unconsciously, from the content. But then again, Avatar never looked nearly as impressive in trailers as it did in final cut form, and 3D missiles firing straight at you will always be awesome.

But when things go really bad…

…watching 3D is nothing but pain. Before checking out an LCD or OLED, you put on the shutter glasses, as if all is well and good, and the lights again dim instantly. Each actual frame of the video are just as colorful, sharp and Y-axis-deep as those you’ve seen on better displays. But the frame rate seems to drop, with your favorite Pixar hero moving without smoothness or extreme subtlety. And of course there’s a flicker on top of the odd frame rate, causing the already subpar image to strobe. The overall effect is akin to playing Crysis on an underpowered GPU along with some monitor that goes dark several times a second. It’s sour stacked on sour, an experience with so little redeeming quality you should cease to even consider it.

That annoying CES line I described at the start of this piece? It was at the LG booth, right before I took a look at their 3D plasma prototype, which is slated to be released later this year for $200 over a 2D model. And right when I was ready to give up on glasses, gimmicks and eyestrain, the experience wiped my memory of it all as I stood there transfixed for at least 5 minutes, disregarding the line behind me and watching the same remarkable animated clips over and over. I thought of a new era of filmmakers speaking in an updated cinematic dialect, and I knew that words couldn’t quite describe the sensations—we simply hadn’t decoded them yet.

(Oh, and if you think all of this is too lovey on 3D, read all of my technological caveats here.)

CES 2010 Wrap Up Podcast!

We wanted to do something special for the end of CES 2010, so we’ve recorded a nice little wrap up of most of the mobile content we saw as well as some other good stuff like home entertainment, TV’s, etc.…

I’m Sold On 3D TVs…And I Kind of Hate Myself For It

I’m a skeptic who’s seen every consumer-grade 3D TV in existence from manufacturers like Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony. I’ve seen OLED 3D, plasma 3D, LCD 3D and LED LCD 3D. And I’ve finally made up my mind on the matter.

Even though every technology coming to market this year requires glasses, even though 90% of 3D implementation is unwatchable, even though the tech will inevitably be dated within the next few years…

I would buy a 3D TV this year.

(Now realize there are about a thousand caveats to that statement, which is what this entire piece is really about.)

I wouldn’t buy any old 3D tech.

There is only one TV I’ve seen—out of very, very many—that captivated me like Avatar on IMAX. While most of the time I couldn’t wait to pull the glasses off my face, LG’s 60-inch plasma prototype, slated to be a real product later this year, sort of rocked my world with nearly flicker-free performance. Panasonic’s Viera V Series TVs, using similar methods on paper (plasma with shutter glasses), was a close second, as it strobed more. And I’m still curious as to why that was the case—whether it was shutter glasses, the lighting environment, the source material (the LG showed more animation, which looks great in 3D) or the display itself that made the difference.

Not trusting my own eyes, I sent two other members of Giz to look at each set as well. They didn’t see a difference. So I’m willing to call Panasonic and LG a tie.

As for OLED and LCDs—what you see from companies like Sony, Toshiba and Sharp—the image strobes AND the motion is choppy (imagine a low frame rate video game on top of flickering film). Those techs are a complete pass. (I know, OLED is supposed to be great. In 3D, it most certainly isn’t.)

I wouldn’t buy anything but a BIG 3D TV.

Without fail, the bigger the 3D, the better the illusion. Anything under 50 inches is basically a joke, unless it’s your computer monitor or something. And I will say, even though Vizio’s XVT Pro television wasn’t my favorite experience (it’s an LCD and thereby less smooth), the fact that it was 72-inches meant that a plane’s wing almost hit me in the nose.

I wouldn’t pay much more for a 3D TV.

LG told me that the 3D-capable version of their plasma set will only be a $200 premium over the non-3D version. I’m willing to pay that extra cost as an idiotic early adopter, knowing that the television is a nice HDTV when it’s not showing 3D. Of course, to be completely fair, that $200 premium applies to a premium set to begin with, not a bargain bin TV that many of us settle for out of sanity.

I wouldn’t watch 3D all the time.

Even in some content utopia where I could watch everything I ever wanted in 3D (right now, we’re limited to promises from Blu-ray, select broadcasters and some DirecTV), I wouldn’t choose to with the current glasses/TV setup. Even the best experience I had was tiring, and unless I’m really getting something special from meticulously produced media (like movies, or maybe even video games), I’m going to do what I do best when watching television: be lazy. For hours. Eye strain is a major concern.

Back to that content point for a moment, every movie that Pixar is making from here on out promises to be in 3D. Video games should be somewhat turn-key to make the 3D transition as they’d like. And Hollywood is definitely pushing 3D. But within 2010, it’s tough to envision a lot more than extremely limited broadcast and yet another viewing of the inevitable Avatar Extra Special Edition Blu-ray.

I wouldn’t replace my 2D TV.

If I weren’t looking for a new TV already, 3D alone wouldn’t sway me to plop down a few grand—at least not today—a decision influenced by both the imperfect experience and the limited media. It’d be nice to have, sure. But most people can and will wait, I’d bet.

I wouldn’t TOTALLY overlook an LCD curveball.

One manufacturer let me in on a secret—the LCDs on the CES show floor are mostly refreshing at 4ms. But by the time these TVs ship, they’ll be refreshing at 3ms, thanks to an industry-wide chemical-based update in LCD panels. Plasma is on top for the moment, but 3D LCDs shouldn’t be quite as bad by the time the TVs actually ship in Q3. (Though, they may still be noticeably inferior to plasma.)

So that’s my view. Go ahead, heckle me and my glasses that will look stupid and dated, well, they look stupid and dated today. But watching the best 3D TVs—namely, top tier plasma—is actually a pretty amazing experience…one that might be worth the sometimes literal headaches.

And these chicks in bikinis totally agree with me.