Big News at CES (Literally): Sharp announces a new 60″ LCD HDTV model

Sharp has gotten into the HDTV game at the latest CES by showing off their latest and greatest upcoming unit, the ‘LC-60E88UN’. It’s gigantic, energy-sipping, and has lots of advances for smooth action pics.

You start off with a huge 60″ screen, and if that isn’t enough, it includes Sharp’s X-Gen panel technology with 240Hz Fine Motion circuitry for a smooth picture with action-oriented entertainment content like movies and sports.

And your electric bill will appreciate the advances too; the unit will be ENERGY STAR 4.0 standard compatible and feature a range of ports built-in, including 4 HDMI and a component connection. It’ll be released in February, and price hasn’t been released yet. Expect around $3-4K or so, in our estimation.

Let The Drooling Commence: The Panasonic 152″ Plasma HDTV

It’s been said common sense is overrated at times. This is one of those times.

The 152″ Panasonic plasma HDTV displayed at CES this year is the stuff dreams are made of.  Yes, it’ll be expensive ($10-15K mark probably) and its probably too big for most living rooms, but hey, why let that stop anyone? We want it, you want it, and hopefully soon, it’ll be within everyone’s reach to own a TV like this (or perhaps one just south of 100″, if your place is small).

The pic here was taken by Engadget, and its truly a marvel to behold. It even supports 3D if you should ever find yourself wanting that as well. As far as the death of plasma as a technology goes, perhaps its death has been exaggerated just a tad bit.

OLED Sighting: Sony shows off new 24″ model at CES

OLED has been the promised land of HDTVs for awhile now, and Sony is taking it quite seriously based on reports at various blogs. They’re proudly displaying their 24.5-inch OLED television at CES with built-in (optional) 3D as well, and many writers have reportedly been blown away by the color and clarity of the picture, something we were both anticipating and expecting.

Sony was being hush-hush with prices or release dates for these babies, but personally we expect these before the end of the year, and it’ll make a nice jump from the 15″ OLEDs that are available (rarely) on the market right now.

Watch for this one in the near future.

Breaking: Toshiba debuts ZX900 series of HDTVs in the US

Engadget HD is reporting that Toshiba has announced a series of new HDTV units with tons of great features, a 480 Hz refresh rate, and built-in Net apps, including Netflix streaming and the like. We love the sound of this so far:

Toshiba claims that it’s packed 143 times the processing power over existing televisions. That processing makes way for Toshiba’s Resolution+ upscaling, a 480Hz frame rate (completely ready for 3D), and some home media server capabilities as well. The centerpiece is the Net TV applications, which include Netflix, VUDU, CinemaNow and Pandora, and there’s 802.11n WiFi and 1TB of HDD for streaming and storage….The 55-inch and 65-inch displays use KIRA2 LED-backlit displays with 512 zones of localized dimming, and just in case this was wasn’t enough, the sets have built-in Wireless HD and to connect the Cell-packing set-top box to the display wire-free.

Now the price/availability wasn’t mentioned, though we expect it to go quite high initially as far as the dollar amount goes. The 65″ will probably be around the $4-5K mark, in our estimation. Well worth it also, in our humble estimation.

Look Ma, No Wires: Netgear to release new wireless HD gadget

It seems Netgear has a secret, and it’ll change the way wireless HD is broadcast, if the rumors are true. It’s a field begging for a masterful piece of gear to kick it into overdrive, and this may just be it.

Quantenna (their partner) has announced a little ahead of time of CES the 4×4 MIMO 802.11n WiFi HD Video bridge, which swears it can deliver Full HD video streams across “100 feet or more, regardless of signal interferences and dead zones.” That makes our mouth water, if the promises hold up.

That’s roughly 5x the distance of traditional and existing wireless HD gizmos, and we can’t wait to hear more about it when its announced properly at CES in the next little while; it could change the wireless HD game permanently.

Full press release here.

Wide Open Spaces: Sony and Panasonic try to expand storage on Blu-Ray discs even further

Seething at only 25GB per layer on a Blu-ray disc for storage? Not enough for your HD pleasure? It’s appearing Sony and Panasonic agree with you, and have been busy working on ways to boost capacity on discs in a never-ending quest for more, more, more that seems to be the normal operating procedure for tech companies nowadays.

They’ve come up with a way to perhaps do so (not a surprise) called Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation (or i-MLSE — the “i’ is just because its cool to put i in front of things these days, it seems), which is a way to avoid and predict the way discs are read to prevent errors, which in turn allows for more space on the discs themselves.  You’d have to be an engineer to understand it, we’d guess.

Sony and Panasonic are saying the ultimate payoff is that this method may allow up to 33.4 GB per layer, and it may only require a firmware update to allow the feature to work on current Blu-Ray players. Rollout hasn’t been given any sort of date, but expect the technology on discs to begin appearing “soon”, according to both companies.

Sunday’s HDTV Deals

Yet another installment of our famous HDTV deals is coming your way:

OneCall.com – You all know how we love our LG HDTVs and this is a steal for their latest and greatest: The LG 42LH55 42” 1080p 240Hz LCD for only $933.77, and free shipping is included. Feel free to check it out!

Newegg has one of the better rated Toshiba models out there for a song (50,000 DCR doesn’t lie): The Regza 40XV645U 40″ 1080p 120Hz LCD for $680, and free shipping. Don’t tell us we don’t find the best deals out there.

Thanks for reading and follow the links to save money on some great HDTV units.

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