By Philip Wong,Ian Morris, CNET.co.uk
29/08/2008
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/home_av/tvs/0,39037594,62045529,00.htm

Panasonic puts plasma TVs on a diet

We had inklings that thin is in for the HDTV business this year after Consumer Electronics Show (CES), but the sets being shown off at IFA in Berlin this week confirmed it.

Panasonic showed off the 50-inch version at CES in January, but brought out 58-inch and 65-inch versions of the startlingly thin TVs at the Berlin tradeshow.

Not surprisingly, Panasonic is saying that the sets will not be as heavy as normal plasma TVs. Plus, the prototypes are being integrated with WirelessHD onboard, which means fewer pesky wires. Keep in mind though, that this is not a real TV. It's just a prototype for the gadget hounds at IFA to drool over.

But, it'll likely happen eventually. Plasma is actually one of the last of the HDTV technologies to go super skinny. Sony set the standard with its ridiculously slim OLED TV, and Hitachi showed up at CES with a 1.5-inch thick LCD.

Now Sony's trying thin LCDs on for size, we've found out.

Sharp also has its Aquos LCD TV on a workout regiment. The XS1 is a mere 23mm thick, and comes in 52-inch or 65-inch panel sizes.

This one's actually a real product, but for now only available in the UK beginning this fall.

Hands on with new TVs from Sony

After Sony's press conference at IFA, we took a quick look around the company's booth and snapped some of the new Bravia TVs expected to be delivered throughout the UK by this holiday season.

The most interesting product is the ZX1, a 9.9mm-thick LED "backlit" LCD TV, which takes a new approach to TV design, and means that there's plenty of scope to reduce the depth of the TV. This is achieved by having the backlight at the side and using some clever and top-secret jiggery pokery to diffuse and distribute the light.

The announcement that Sony would be producing a "Motionflow" 200Hz television in the near future, called the Z4500, was an interesting one, too. Here in Berlin there's a huge and mysterious advertisement on the side of the Sony Center claiming that "everything would be clear". In reality, we don't see much of an advantage to 200Hz over 100Hz, especially given the magic number is 120Hz anyway--because this is the rate to properly do 5:5 pull down frame rate conversion.

Philips goes LED and rehashes Aurea lineup

The Dutch company is going head on against Sony with its own 8mm-thick concept LCD TV. But since it's pretty much a prototype, let's take a closer look at some of its upcoming flat panels debuted in IFA. At the top of the echelon is the 2,000,000:1 dynamic contrast 42PFL9803, a 42-incher LED backlit model with a motion-enhanced 100Hz engine and its Ambilight technology.

And then, there is the streamlined 42PES001 which joins the ranks of the existing ultra-thins with a petite 38mm-thick chassis. This employs an external media box and has a single interface cable which carries power, audio and video to the panel. Lastly, there's also a fresh development for its existing Aurea range, upgraded with a judder-free 100Hz processing and offering a stepped-up 30,000:1 contrast.

Source: Engadget.

Toshiba Regza 40ZF575D: Improving bog-standard video

Toshiba began its press conference at IFA by denying that it would be announcing a Blu-ray player--this didn't come as much of a surprise, as the company is still hurting from a very expensive loss in the great HD format war of 2007.

But credit to Toshiba, instead of crying in a corner licking its wounds, the company is making new products that improve standard-definition pictures, and its new TV range will feature a picture-processing mode known as Resolution+. Toshiba claims that the system can make SD material look "almost high definition".

Resolution+ is based on what Toshiba calls the "Spurs Engine", which has surprisingly little to do with English football, and much more to do with the integration of the Cell processor into Toshiba's TVs. Because of the processing power of Cell, it's able to pump out a picture far more quickly than previous technologies. And as it's essentially a computer chip, software updates can improve the products further at any time, including picture-quality improvements as algorithms get better.

Interestingly, there's an MPEG-4 decoder built in, too. This is presumably to take advantage of some of the HD services that are available in countries such as France, but this decoder probably won't be much use in the UK. If Britain is to adopt MPEG-4, it will be alongside DVB-T2, which will require whole new receivers.

All the high-end picture processing is present and correct in the 40FZ575D, too, with 5:5 pull down and 120Hz picture modes to reduce motion judder on movies. You also get the requisite four HDMI sockets and all the analog connection options.

Some people will criticize Toshiba for its reluctance to move into Blu-ray, but this TV is designed to help people make the most out of their existing content, and that can only be a good thing--current estimates suggest that 99 percent of all viewing is from standard-definition sources.

No one is pretending that this is the future, but Toshiba is at least helping people get the best out of their DVD collections and low-quality free-to-air broadcasts.

200Hz Samsung LCD and other TV treats

Given the relationship that Sony and Samsung have with LCD panels, it didn't come as a surprise to see Samsung announce a 200Hz TV at the IFA trade show in Berlin, barely a day after Sony made a big deal about its own model. Fortunately for Samsung, this 200Hz panel technology isn't the only TV innovation it has at the moment.

The company was keen to push its new RSS-capable TVs under the banner Infolive--something we spotted at CES where it was called Infolink then and which we were told not to photograph--with included widgets for stock prices, weather and other information. You know, the same things you install on your PC, look at once, feel better about your life and then never look at again.

A more impressive technology is Wiselink pro, which is a follow-up from the original system built into many Samsung TVs that enables you to look at digital photos on your TV stored on a USB memory stick. What this new variation adds though has to be seen to be believed. Apparently, you can now manipulate the images, listen to music with a beautiful user interface and even watch video.

Of course, as much as Samsung and Sony need each other for LCDs, when it comes to new panel technologies, the battle continues to be intense. After Sony announced yesterday that its OLED TV will be making its way to Europe, Samsung was quick to point out that it would be releasing its OLED screen, which is slightly larger at 14.1 inches, with a 31-inch model promised in the near future. Samsung has even promised to start producing larger screen sizes in the next couple of years.

There is also a push towards higher TV resolutions, with Samsung introducing what it calls a "Quadruple full-high definition" TV which offers a resolution of 3,840 by 2,160 pixels.