Toshiba’s focus at CES was glasses free 3D displays, but it highlighted more conventional HDTVs today at an event in Rome. Its new TVs and laptops all tie in to Toshiba Places, which sorts out access to different types of apps for video, social networking, music and other areas and is ready to launch this month. Separating Toshiba from the competition is a slew of new technology and the top of the line 55ZL1 model checks all the boxes: Seven core CEVO CPU for image processing, a Pro-LED512 panel that is the world’s first with 512 zones of dimming among 3,072 LEDs, Personal-TV facial recognition that picks up on which user is watching then personalizes to their preferred settings and active shutter 3D glasses. The edge lit LED VL863 series will come in 47- and 42-inch versions featuring LG’s FPR passive glasses 3D and four pairs of glasses, while the 32- through 46-inch UL863 drops 3D for built-in WiFi and Personal-TV. The SL863 series is the final step down, nixing built-in WiFi.

Prices? Nope, not part of the story here, but we expect fairly competitive prices considering Toshiba isn’t usually any higher than most of the comparable technologies from other companies. The Pro-LED512 panel in particular excites us as leading edge LED technology that should bleed into other designs in the future.

CES’s premium 3DTV crop is preparing to ship out, with Sony’s HX929, HX820 and HX720 series of LED LCD screens and LG’s Infinia PZ750 plasmas now priced at Amazon for pre-order and they look really good.

3D-Display-info.com reports that Sony’s local dimming Bravia TVs start at $2,099 for a 46-inch HX720 with the famous Gorilla Glass we’ve written about, all the way up to $3,799 for the monster 55″ XBR-55HX929 with a LED backlight. Quite drool-worthy.

Meanwhile, the 50″ LG PZ750 with built-in Smart TV tech starts out at a decent $1,599, while a gigantor 60″ version of the same set will go for $2,100 or so (also reasonable). Watch for these to appear for purchase quite soon.

That we didn’t spot a successor to Mitsubishi’s well-received line of Unisen LCD HDTVs at CES 2011 should have been a signal, but now the company has made it official — it is downsizing TV operations, closing some offices and leaving the LCD TV business entirely. As the only company still selling rear projection sets to consumers, a letter from senior VP Cayce Blanchard (included after the break) indicates the plan is to focus on selling DLP and Laservue TVs in sizes above 73-inches where its flat panel competitors rarely reach.

We like the fact they’re focusing a bit more, it should help them dominate the huge rear projection market they’re shooting for pretty easily.

We’ve seen some interesting patterns among the top sellers of late. Mostly LG and Samsung (the former title holder for Amazon top seller) have jockeyed for the top position on the popular merchant destination on the web, and its only this week that finally LG has claimed the crown for top seller.

Here’s the link to the site to check out the sale, grab it while its hot!

Industry analysts will reveal all the numbers later this week but according to Vizio its LCD HDTVs have outsold all others, again. Specifically, it has again rated as the #1 seller of LCDs in North America according to DisplaySearch and #1 seller of LCDs in the US according to iSuppli by carving out a 27.6% share of the market, the largest for any seller since 2004.

Among some of us in the home theater community there’s still, deserved or undeserved, a perception of the company as simply a cheap, low end manufacturer that’s not as reliable as others but with results like these it looks like the rest of the market will be the ones with something to prove in 2011.

Our early gut feeling tells us 2011 won’t be that different really, as Vizio’s solid quality/low price combo continues to dominate the marketplace in sheer units moved.

The flat-panel company announced at the most recent CES that it was separating from other TV makers to implement its own FPR technology for 3DTVs and now they’ve started shipping in Korea, starting with the LW5700 pictured here. Here’s a quick breakdown of the technology, and it could mean a bit of a new approach for the 3D medium at home.

Their new approach involves putting a special film over the LCD screen (sorry, no plasmas, Panny fans) which allows users to grab up their cheap “flicker free” passive 3D glasses and not the much more expensive active shutter 3D glasses. This could cut the cost of owning a 3D TV quite a bit.

LG’s gambit will migrate to the US in mid-March or so, and we’ll see how well it does. No prices or details released as of yet.

Amazon has, for example, a really cool deal on a 40″ 1080p Toshiba HDTV with a USB connection and loads of good features, well-rated on the site as well: $440, brand new? Pretty amazing indeed, as our predictions of pricing sliding downwards is coming true pretty rapidly. We only hope this spurs slightly lagging sales into the new 2011 model year, as technology and TVs are looking better overall than they ever have.

It’ll be curious how many more deals like this will pop up as vendors seek to clear inventories following the big Super Bowl push.

Panasonic’s found time to show off its latest series of HDTVs in Japan, including the new top 3D-capable VT3, GT3 and ST3 generation plasmas, and DT3 LCDs, . As one might expect, the feature list is predictably similar to the US models with the next iteration of 3D panel technology, including a few Japan-specific features like VOD services and recording TV to USB drives.According to AV watch it looks like the starting prices have gone down slightly YoY as well, with the new 50-inch VT3 predicted to arrive March 18 for 380,000 yen ($4,654) down from 430,000 yen ($5,267) last year. The lower end GT3 series and new DT3 3D LCDs should arrive a week earlier on March 11, though we’ll probably have to wait until much closer to launch again to find out precisely what the predictably lower US pricing will be this time around.

We’ll of course cover any new notable releases individually if warranted. These new models look pretty cool overall.

It was a dark day when Pioneer announced its mighty Kuro HDTVs would be no more, but the Pioneer Elite brand still has significant cachet and will return in 2011 on new high end TVs. The bad news? They will be LCDs, not plasmas, manufactured by its partner Sharp, a not entirely surprising move since this was actually the original plan for the Kuro brand back in 2008. Apparently both see potential as Sharp will gain access to higher-end AV salesrooms and integrators for its products, while Pioneer will have TVs to match its continuing Pioneer Elite Blu-ray player and receiver lines. Despite an impressive local dimming demo at CES we’re still not sure Sharp can create enough new pixels to replace what we once had, but we should find out for sure when the new models arrive the end of the year.

We’re unsure if Sharp can make a TV like Pioneer could, but seeing is believing. We’ll report if the Sharp models are up to snuff.

It will feature 14 Sony TVs, and its good from January 23 to January 29, 2011. Prices are decent for the type of units they are, indeed. Here’s more info from the source:

During the promotion, Best Buy is offering discounts on 14 different Sony sets, including:

* Sony Bravia 60-inch, 1080p 120Hz LED HDTV for $1,998 ($1,001 off the regular price)
* Sony Bravia 55-inch, 1080p 120Hz LED HDTV for $1,499 ($800 off the regular price.)
* Sony Bravia 55-inch, 1080p 3D 240Hz LED HDTV for $1,798 ($1,401 off the regular price.)
* Sony Bravia 46-inch, 1080p 60Hz LCD HDTV for $763 ($86 off the regular price.)
* Sony Bravia 46-inch, 1080p 3D 240Hz LED HDTV for $1,499 ($1,000 off the regular price.)
* Sony Bravia 40-inch 1080p, 60Hz LCD HDTV for $599 ($50 off the regular price.)

We always appreciate sales, so we thought we would pass this one on to our fair readers.