A new player in town? Haier announces two new LCD models at CES 2009

Haier has been a company with a weird identity lately; they’re the official HDTV of the NBA, but yet you rarely see them in stores like Wal-Mart and the like, and they’re not known as a “big name” in the flat panel biz. They’ve shown up on shopping channels like QVC lately, but now they’ve announced 2 new models at this year’s CES, and they hope to become a force in the HDTV market.

Both the 47-inch HL47XT1 and the 42-inch HL42XT1 have very nice specs, each including 1080p HD, four, count ‘em four, HDMI inputs, LED backlighting and 120Hz refresh too.

These sets also include hidden Sound Chamber speakers and SRS Surround circuitry to really make these sound better than most competing models do. Sounds nice indeed, and the specs are very competitive.

No pricing info was made available, and the only availability info was “2009″, which doesn’t say much. You would hope these two models don’t throw up bricks like the last few efforts of this company. Hope springs eternal with each new year. We’ll keep an eye on this for you, of course.