The Super Bowl is a major economic force and should cause 2.6 million HDTVs sold this year – or so says the CEA. After all, it is the biggest football game of the year and people love an excuse to gather. No doubt some used the digital switch or so-called liquidation sales as an excuse to plop down money on a swanky new HDTV. → Read More
The Boston Herald is reporting that, here in my home state of Massachusetts, “The cash-strapped and over-crowded prison system spent a mind-boggling $76,958” on 117 new flat-screen HDTVs. → Read More
It’s not quite a price cut, but it’s the next best thing. Walk into your local Best Buy and you should be able to pick up a 32-inch 1080o Sony Bravia and an 80GB PS3 for $1,100. That’s about $300 less than you’d pay for the two items separately. → Read More
That’s a lot of… brightness. Or darkness. I’m not sure. Either way, I think there must be something wrong with the scale if LG can just increase contrast by a factor of 10. To be honest, I’m thinking it’s along the lines of the many Hz measure, which many TV makers are taking seriously these days. 120Hz? 240Hz? 600Hz like this one? Your eye can only really detect maybe 120. And the billion-to-one contrast ratio — if your numbers are in the billions, your number has ceased being useful. If, except for a minor “I guess that one looks a little better,” the average consumer cannot tell the difference between 10,000:1 and 100,000:1 contrast ratio, there’s something fishy going on. → Read More
The Daily Mail (now home to the best sports columnist writing in the English language, Martin Samuel) has a healthy reminder for those of you about to take the plunge into high-definition: be sure to have your vision checked. Vision Express, an optometry chain in the UK, found that 60 percent of Britons haven’t had an eye exam in the past two years—breaking that number down a bit, as much as 79 percent of Scots haven’t see the ol’ eye doctor in two years. This matters to us because even a slight vision deficiency can prevent you from fully appreciating HDTV in all its glory. → Read More
3D movie technology, as it stands, is a load of go-nowhere rubbish. If Hollywood thinks that the tech will convince moviegoers to leave the comfort of their homes, filled with HDTVs and Blu-ray (or upscaled DVDs), it’s got another thing coming. → Read More
Ha! The green-crazy European Union is looking to ban energy inefficient TVs, including large plasmas, in the interest of saving Mother Earth. Nope, not joking. → Read More
Let’s strip this information of all unnecessary fluff. Samsung makes Blu-ray players, among other things. Its “big one” this year is actually two models, the BD-P4600 (above) and BD-P3600. You can mount the BD-P4600 on your wall, and the BD-P3600 is the top-end traditional set-top model. Have a peach.
Update: Live pics after the jump. → Read More
Oh, Blu-ray. Is this your year—wasn’t last year supposed to be your year?—or will you wallow in relative obscurity while the world falls apart all around you? → Read More
Just a few weeks ago we were all excited to see Netflix streaming makes its way to the Xbox 360 and Series 3 TiVos. Ha, that’s already obsolete, as LG plans to release a TV with the service built-in. And yes, this is the first deal of its kind. → Read More
Looks like California is doing everything in its power to destroy the consumer electronics industry. That is to say a batch of newly proposed regulations would bar retailers from stocking energy inefficient TVs. The worst offenders? Plasma TVs, the kind popularized by very talented singers and athletes on shows like MTV Cribs. → Read More
As I recall we had an issue a few months back with another big box store but someone just caught Best Buy also using HDMI cables and comparing them to component cables. Consumerist just found another example. While this is obviously a massive fraud it might have been the only way the Best Buy folks could think to stream the same signal from the Blu-Ray player to both TVs – besides, obviously, using two Blu-Ray players. → Read More
Good God, the $80 special edition of Street Fighter IV is absolutely tremendous. → Read More
Oh God, yes! Velocitystore.com has released the second video featuring America’s favorite person from one month ago, Joe The Plumber. It’s so great, I’m literally ready for a pap smear. “Joe” unboxes a DTV converter then installs it on a terrible TV. This is more absurd than anything else. Factual, but still absurd. Remember, everyone, apply, buy and try! → Read More
The last Sony TV manufacturing plant in the U.S. will cease production by February 2009, closing completely one year later. It’s located in Westmoreland County in southwestern Pennsylvania, and some 560 people are expected to lose their jobs. A manufacturing facility in Mexico will supply the U.S. with Sony TVs following Westmoreland’s closure. This is part of the huge restructuring that Sony announced several days ago. Changing market conditions, people losing their houses, etc. Rotten news all around. → Read More
Blu-ray is now officially more popular than plain ol’ DVD in Japan. Wait, let me rephrase that: there are now more Blu-ray disc recorders in Japan than there are DVD recorders. More than 50 percent of disc recorders in Japan are now of the Blu-ray variety. → Read More
How were the crowds at your local Best Buy, Circuit City and PC Richards yesterday? Good? Great? Grim? (My local Best Buy was pretty crowded yesterday, to say nothing of the mall itself; parking space was at a premium.) To be sure, if there’s one item these retailers hope to sell this holiday season it’s HDTVs. Lots of them, preferably. Like it or not, but HDTVs have become the great bellwether for this terrible economy: if retailers can sell a few of them all may not be lost. But if Best Buy & Co. has boxes upon boxes of them stored “in the back” it could be a sign that consumers are hoarding cash and aren’t going to spend their way out of this recession. Then we’re reduced to fighting each other with pointy sticks. → Read More
Well this is shocking news. Apparently some 18 percent of HDTV owners can’t tell the difference between high-def programming and standard-def programing when viewed on their screens. That’s what Leichtman Research Group concludes based on a survey of 1,302 households. That’s a telephone survey, mind you; there’s some controversy surrounding that type of poll these days. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
