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Panasonic ZT60 Plasma TVs Now Available

Panasonic ZT60 plasma

Via Electronic House comes news that Panasonic’s ZT60 plasma is now shipping in both 60- and 65-inch varieties. If you recall, the ZT60 is one of two new plasma displays — along with Samsung’s F8500 — that quenched my thirst for market-ready OLEDs at this year’s CES in Las Vegas. Black levels? Practically perfect. Contrast? Superb. more »

Best Buy Starts Pushing 4K This Weekend

Best Buy soon selling Sony XBR-55X900A

The AP is reporting that Best Buy will begin carrying Sony’s 55″ & 65″ XBR 4K Ultra HD TV starting this Sunday, “in an effort to shake up the stagnant TV category.” The displays will be available for demo and purchase in 700 Best Buy and Magnolia Home Theater locations, and interestingly enough, won’t be more »

NHK Makes Major OLED Advancement

NHK iOLED

One of the major problems that has held OLED manufacturing back at large scales is the need for the panels to be literally perfect. If they are not properly sealed, the panels degrade quickly, losing half their brightness in under four months. Researchers at NHK think they’ve found the solution: By inverting the anode and more »

4K Google TV on the Horizon

TCL MoVo UD Google TV 4K

Google TV has been called everything from a flop to a really hard flop to a mega-flop (why not a petaflop? one wonders), but the “Smart TV Platform that Could” keeps chugging along with OS updates and a continued attempt to be the cool kids’ alternative to Apple TV. And now, it seems, Google TV wants more »

Cheap Seiki SE50UY04 4K TV Finally Gets a Full-On Professional Review

Seiki SE50UY04 4K TV

My buddy Geoff Morrison — former editor-in-chief at Home Entertainment; contributor to Sound+Vision, CNET, and Wire Cutter; author of last year’s sci-fi romance novel Undersea (edited and executive produced by yours truly) — has written what I think may be the consumer electronics industry’s first professional review of the most talked-about TV of the year: Seiki’s more »

TV via Internet Continues to Rise

Internet cable TVs like Samsung's Smart TV offerings are becoming increasingly more popular

Fortune has a brief but interesting new piece  exploring the increasing prevalence of the internet as a source of entertainment on living room TV screens, with a few facts and figures that, when taken together, reveal just how how much trouble the traditional linear cable industry is facing. Intriguing figures taken from a report by Diffusion Group entitled Defining the more »

CBS Threatens to Leave the Airwaves if Aereo Doesn’t

CBS

If you haven’t been following in the ongoing saga of Aereo, it’s an interesting one. The broadcast networks — especially CBS and Fox — are irate at Aereo’s practice of “renting” antenna usage to mobile users, and re-broadcasting over-the-air content via the interwebs… for a fee. Lawsuits, it goes without saying, have been filed, but more »

Curved LG OLED Up for Pre-Order in Korea… But Is It Curved Enough?

LG curved OLED vs hypothetical curved OLED

Via Digital Trends comes the news that LG’s 55EA9800 55-inch curved OLED TV is available for pre-order in South Korea as of yesterday. First shown at CES as something of a novelty or proof of concept, the TV is nonetheless an actual thing for South Koreans now… or at least it will be when it ships. more »

BDA to Announce 4K Blu-ray This Year

UHD TVs like Samsung S9 will soon benefit from a 4K Blu-ray format

In a statement made to CNET, the Blu-ray Disc Association has revealed that they have received proposals for extending the Blu-ray Disc format to support the new UltraHD “4K” standard. Here’s what we know so far about this proposed new 4K Blu-ray format: As part of its ongoing responsibility to maintain Blu-ray Disc as the premium platform more »

How 4K TV Makers Can Avoid the Marketing Mistakes of 3D

Paul Gray of DisplaySearch on how 4K can avoid the mistakes made with 3D

Our colleague Jeff O’Heir has a new article up at Dealerscope, summarizing a presentation by DisplaySearch’s Paul Gray on the mistakes made with the introduction of 3D into the home market, and how consumer electronics manufacturers need to work to avoid those same mistakes if 4K “Ultra HD” is going to make it in the more »