Displays & Projectors News - Page 52

LG Electronics grabbed headlines when it announced its 55-inch curved OLED HDTV in 2013, which originally sported a $14,999 retail price tag. Early into 2014, LG decided to issue yet another price cut so the TV can be found for $6,999 at major North American electronics e-tailers.

Prior to the 2013 Christmas holiday shopping season, LG cut the TV's retail price from $14,999 down to $8,999 to draw interested buyers with deep pockets. It's no surprise to see the price drop even lower in early 2014, but seeing it slide down to $6,999 in such a short amount of time may be all that is needed to entice some consumers to pull the trigger.

LG's price cut will also make it more competitive with Samsung's rival OLED HDTV that started with a price tag of $8,999.

Just a few hours away from the Super Bowl between the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks, TV viewers will have the ability to watch the game in standard definition, high-definition, and ultra-HD (4K). FOX Sports will use six Sony 4K cameras to broadcast the game in UHD, utilizing five F55 and one F65 cameras, which will be used for the FOX "Super Zoom" technology.

The cameras will be position down each sideline and in both end zones, along with one located above the field, providing overall field video.

"It's all about the clarity of the replay and giving viewers the best possible look at a play, and that's what we can do with these cameras," said Jerry Steinberg, FOX Sports SVP of Technical Operations, in a statement. "Since we're starting with such a high-resolution image, we can zoom in multiple times on a shot and still get a completely clear picture with zero pixel degradation. You see everything in extreme detail, in fact with an extra amount of detail you wouldn't see in a traditional replay."

It looks like AMD is preparing an impressive "native" 16-core processor, with all sixteen cores sitting on the same die. This technology will reportedly surface sometime after 2015.

All of this will begin in AMD's server processor range, with its multi-core Opteron processors for high-end servers using multi-chip-module (MCM) technology. These chips use two six- or eight-core dies onto the same piece of substrate to create a 12- or 16-core solution. This tech will roll down to the consumer side of things, where we should expect a new 16-core processor from the chipmaker sometime in 2015-2016.

As this year continues, AMD will release an Opteron processor codenamed "Warsaw". Warsaw will feature 12 or 16 cores on AMD's Piledriver architecture, and should arrive toward late 2015. The company should also be capable of making a 32-core, multi-chip-module for high-end servers by slapping together two 16-core dies onto a single substrate. 32 cores aren't far away!

CBS plans to use six Ultra High Definition (UHD) cameras to broadcast Super Bowl XLVII, able to capture video up to 500 frames per second, providing a very clear, HD picture.

During the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) earlier this year, many high-definition TV manufacturers showed off UHD providing a whopping 3840x2160 resolution to TV viewers.

"We're using an unprecedented array of technology," said Ken Aagard, CBS Executive VP of operations, in a statement. "This year, we'll be using an innovative native 4K camera replay system we're calling 'Heyeper Zoom,' and given the right moment, we're hoping we can show something that will be really special."

Consumers searching for high-definition TVs have a lot of affordable choices to choose from, though organic LED (OLED) technology will still take a few more years of development for prices to drop. The technology has looked quite impressive due to a higher resolution and is brighter than rival TV formats, but the technology is still too expensive to roll out in mass production.

"I'm really, really terribly sorry to say this, but it will take more time... I believe it will take around three to four years," said HS Kim, Samsung VP for visual display, during a recent interview.

During the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), HDTV and 3DTV technologies were on full display all over the Las Vegas Strip. Many companies demoed impressive OLED technology, but most product launch dates and price tags will keep casual customers thinking of other options. However, as Kim predicts, a lower price tag and further technology advancements over the coming years will help drive demand in the future.

4K was a huge draw card to this year's Consumer Electronics Show, and one of the company's standing proud with Ultra HD was Samsung. The South Korean giant is confident in the high-resolution TV business.

The executive vice president of the company's visual display business, HS Kim, has said that pricing on 4K TVs will drop, and consumer adoption will rise much quicker than we think. This time last year, Samsung had three 4K TVs, but now the electronics giant has 10 models ranging from 50 inches, to an insane 110 inches.

Industry experts estimate that we will see under 500,000 4K sets sold this year, versus just 60,000 last year. Kim noted that the TV upgrade cycle is around six years right now, but his company wants to bring more value to its TVs, so that consumers will be tempted to replace them every 4-5 years instead.

CES 2014 - Even though I wasn't at CES 2014, I kept in touch with DisplayLink's Director of Marketing, Andy Davis, all the way from my house in Australia, where he bought me up to speed on some of the technologies his company was showing off at CES 2014.

One of the more important things Displaylink showed off was its new DL-3950 USB 3.0 docking chipset. The new chipset contains fully integrated dual-head video, which can support two full 2560x1600 displays. Not only that, but we also have Gigabit Ethernet, 5.1-channel sound, and DisplayLink's magic: dynamic compression.

DisplayLink also unveiled its new DL-5000 family of chips, with the DL-5500 launching at CES 2014. The DL-5500 allows users with existing DisplayLink-enabled setups to add a 4K monitor to their setup. This helps immensely going into the future, with 4K being a massive dot point of this year's CES. DisplayLink can run this technology over USB 2.0, which goes to show just how impressive its technology really is.

CES 2014 - BenQ has announced a new monitor that will have serious gamers interested, the new RL2460HT. BenQ's RL2460HT monitor features the company's RevolutionEyes technology, which helps gamers' eyes during massive gaming sessions.

The new display is specifically optimized for real-time strategy (RTS), and first-person shooters (FPS). BenQ specifically mentions Call of Duty: Ghosts, MOBA-style games like StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, League of Legends, and of course, Defense of the Ancients 2 (DotA 2), and even Mortal Kombat. Let's move onto specs, with the BenQ RL2460HT starting off as 24-inch monitor, which comes courtesy of its TN-based panel with "virtually no input lag" and "industry-leading 1 ms response time".

We have integrated speakers, two HDMI inputs, DVI, VGA, and SmartScaling for pro-gamers, which allows them to customize their screen viewing area for optimal viewing performance. BenQ has an ETA of Q1 2014 for its new RL2460HT, and a retail price of $249.

CES 2014 - LG has just unveiled the world's first flexible OLED TV, coming in at a massive 77 inches. What is good about a flexible TV? Well, you can use the included remote control to bend, and unbend the TV - pretty incredible.

LG has offered us an OLED display here, compared to fellow South Korean rival Samsung, who have only used LED - and even then, it was just a prototype from Samsung. LG's flexible OLED is production-ready, and will be hitting store shelves soon. Hyun-hwoi Ha, President and CEO of LG's Home Entertainment Company says: "LG's Flexible OLED TV is a product that has to be seen to be believed because it defies description. What curved is to flat, flexible is to curved. LG continues to lead the evolution of televisions into the next generation."

CES 2014 - Vizio is expanding its line up of 4K-capable TVs, with its first consumer-grade 4K TV. The new Vizio P Series of TVs will arrive in sizes between 50 and 70 inches.

Vizio says the P Series "is the culmination of advanced picture quality, powerful performance and a beautifully simple Ultra HD experience." What this translates to, is the P Series featuring advanced local dimming, a backlight that has 64 Active LED Zones, and Vizio's custom silicon.

Better yet, there's another set of TVs that Vizio will be pushing, the Reference Series. Vizio's Reference Series TVs are the best TV panels that the company has ever produced. With Vizio's Reference Series aimed at videophiles and "custom integrators". The Reference Series are also 4K-capable, but with High Dynamic Range (HDR) tech.