Sony Unveils New Flat TVs, Aims to Boost Share
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Electronics conglomerate Sony Corp.  unveiled eight new flat-screen televisions on Thursday in a  product push it hopes will help it secure a leading 35 percent  of the domestic market in the key month of December.
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By Kyodo News International, Tokyo  Feb. 20--OSAKA -- Sharp Corp. said Tuesday it will release five high-end  models in its Aquos family of liquid crystal display televisions featuring  double-speed panels that display even fast-moving images smoothly and clearly.
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Sony will release a version of its LocationFree TV system on December 1 in Japan with support for high-definition.
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JVC  on Sunday unveiled an  LCD TV less than 3 inches thick, calling it the world's  thinnest flat-screen television, as the Consumer Electronics  Show began.
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Japanese manufacturer Sharp on Wednesday demonstrated a new LCD flat panel that allows for three different images to be viewed on a screen depending on the angle. The company introduced a dual-view LCD last July, which is already being used in cars.
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The devices, which will be available soon, will offer better picture quality than earlier models.
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(InfoWorld) - lTwo of the world's biggest flat-panel display makers, Sony and LG.Philips LCD Co., unveiled flexible full-color displays at a display industry show in California this week. Sony took the wraps off its prototype on Thursday and released an impressive video showing the display being bent to form a semi-circle while still displaying a moving video image. The 2.5-inch display has a resolution of 160 pixels by 120 pixels making it a little larger than the typical cell phone screen and a little lower resolution. The screen from LG.Philips LCD is larger at 4 inches in diagonal width and has a higher resolution of 320 pixels by 240 pixels. In contrast to Sony's video, LG.Philips LCD released only a photo that showed the display curved at a slight angle. Typically flat-panel displays are built onto thin sheets of glass but the Sony and LG.Philips screens are made on thin sheets of plastic and metal, respectively. That allows them to be bent but also introduces a range of other problems such as keeping everything aligned and working while the panel is flexed. Indeed the video of Sony's prototype showed several bad pixels and other problems. Neither company has said when it thinks the displays will be ready to go on sale but early customers might be attracted to them for reasons other than their flexibility, said Paul Semenza, an analyst with iSuppli, who attended the Society for Information Display conference where they were announced. "What tends to get forgotten is that these displays are also rugged and lightweight," he said. "Those are valuable properties." Sony sees OLED technology as important for its future products and is putting a lot of research and development resources behind screens like that unveiled this week. The screens are different from today's LCD (liquid crystal display) and PDP (plasma display panel) screens in that OLED pixels use an organic material that emits its own light, so no backlight is needed. That means the screens consume less power and can be made thinner. OLEDs also handle fast-moving images better and offer good color reproduction. At theÂ Consumer Electronics ShowÂ in Las Vegas in January the company showed off prototype televisions based on larger, non-flexible 11-inch and 27-inch OLED panels. Thanks to the lack of a backlight the 11-inch prototype was just 11 millimeters thick but displayed a vibrant, colorful image. Sony plans to have its first OLED TVs on sale in Japan this year. Last week in Tokyo Sony unveiled its latest OLED TV prototypes, which appeared to be close to commercialization. The sets had an integrated digital TV tuner and could also accept a high-definition input via an HDMI (high definition multimedia interface) connector. Â
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Sony said Thursday that it would begin selling eight new television models outfitted with semiconductors designed to produce sharper images, including two with a lighting system that the company says is the world&#39;s first.
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Sony Corp  on Sunday unveiled  a next-generation super-thin television and a robot-like music  player, and an executive said the economy had not hit U.S.  consumer sales -- yet.
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Sony is dropping its money-losing rear-projection TV business to focus on two flat panel technologies -- liquid crystal display and organic light-emitting diode.
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(InfoWorld) - As in previous years, the IFA international consumer electronics show in Berlin has been a platform for manufacturers to launch innovative gadgets aimed at tech-savvy consumers. This year's event, which runs through Wednesday, is no exception. Texas Instruments Inc. introduced an enhancement to its DLP (digital light processing) projection technology that enables HDTV sets to display 3D (three-dimensional) images. Viewers, however, need to wear special "shuttered" glasses that allow each eye to see only alternate images. Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV demonstrated a 42-inch 3D display that can be viewed without special glasses. The prototype is equipped with a dual-mode control that allows users to display HD content in both 3D and 2D formats on the LCD (liquid crystal display) screen. DisplayLink Corp. showed how its network display system can be used to connect up to three wide-screen HD monitors to a single PC over a USB (Universal Serial Bus) 2.0 connection. The ability to connect up to six monitors is planned, the company said. Digital photo frames appear to be in demand, judging by the number of new products unveiled at IFA. Toshiba Corp. launched the seven-inch DPF7XSE digital photo and video frame. The aluminium plate frame contains an 800 x 480 pixel display that can show MPEG-4 and DivX video files or photos accompanied by sound from MP3 or WMA audio files played through a pair of one-watt speakers. It is also equipped with 256M byte of internal flash memory, a USB 2.0 port and a multi-format card reader. Philips showed seven- and ten-inch digital photo frames powered by integrated rechargeable batteries. The frames have USB ports and slots for an array of cards formats, including SD (Secure Digital), Compact Flash, Memory Stick and Memory Stick Duo. Parrot SA's DF7220 digital photo frame can display pictures transferred by card, USB or via a Bluetooth wireless connection. Sandisk Corp. unveiled several new memory cards in Berlin, including a 4G-byte Ultra II SDHC Plus card and the 8G-byte Ultra II Memory Stick Pro Duo, featuring read and write speeds of up to 10M bits per second. The SDHC card will retail for around $80 and the Memory Stick for $160. Worldwide availability is planned for October. For mobile phones such as those from Sony-Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Sandisk announced an 8G-byte Memory Stick Micro (M2) card. It has begun shipping the card to phone manufacturers and mobile phone network operators for evaluation, and plans to sell it in the fourth quarter. Pricing has not yet been determined. For mobile phone users who need to use two different mobile phone networks, Matsunichi Communication Holding Ltd. in Hong Kong unveiled a GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) mobile phone equipped with two SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) slots. Both can be active at the same time: dual-SIM adapters for other phones simply select one of two SIMs each time the phone is powered off and on again. The D620 also comes with features found in most higher end phones, such as a camera and media player. For consumers on the go, Philips introduced a new range of slim rechargeable power packs to power up MP3 players, notebook computers and other portable devices. The Power2Charge line of chargers, which use USB (Universal Serial Bus) sockets to connect the devices, can provide up to 15 hours of portable power for applications up to 5 volts. The chargers are designed with folding plugs and LED (light-emitting diode) indicators. The Power2Go range includes a charger that can provide 60 hours of backup power for applications up to 20 volts.
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(InfoWorld) - Even if you bought a TV in the last several months you may already feel like it's out of date. Your shiny new flat-screen arrives, you hook it up to the antenna and the first thing you see is a commercial for a bigger, better model. It might even have a cheaper price. It's the way things seem to work these days in the world of TVs. Things aren't likely to change any time soon. The latest buzz is around "100Hz" or "120Hz" technology, which relates to how often the image on the screen is refreshed or redrawn. The technology is already appearing in TVs, and if you haven't seen promotional stickers for it yet you probably will soon. Most TV sets today refresh the picture either 50 times per second (50Hz) or 60 times per second (60Hz) depending where in the world you live (different regions use different color formatting.) That rate is fine for most images, but when it comes to fast moving shows like sports events the images can appear blurry on an LCD (liquid crystal display) TV. Doubling the rate at which images are displayed, to 100 or 120 frames per second, makes for a better, more high-definition picture. The need to improve LCD TVs has been especially acute because their chief competitor, PDP (plasma display panel) TVs, don't have the same blurring problem. Compounding the issue is that screen sizes are getting bigger, so any imperfections are more noticeable, said Mina Naito, a spokeswoman for Sony. PDP makers have trumpeted their advantage for some time, but things may be about to change. Compared to previous LCD panels, the new 100Hz and 120Hz models are "a big improvement," said Hisakazu Torii, a TV industry analyst with DisplaySearch in Tokyo. Prototype panels with the faster refresh rate began appearing last year. At the FPD International 2006 show in Yokohama in October, Samsung ElectronicsÂ demonstrated images and text scrolling across just such a panel, and they appeared to move more smoothly than on existing LCD TVs. Then at theÂ Consumer Electronics ShowÂ in Las Vegas in January, Sony announced a 120Hz model with the Samsung screen for the U.S. market. The 70-inch LCD TV is launched this month and carries the hefty price of $33,000. Samsung plans a 70-inch set, also based on the Samsung panel, which will go on sale in the first half of this year. Competitors including Victor Co. of Japan (JVC) and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (Panasonic) are also promoting 120Hz sets in Japan. The latest company to join the party isÂ Sharp, which last week said it would put five sets in its Aquos range on sale in Japan from March. The price runs from Â¥500,000 for a 42-inch model to Â¥1 million for a 65-inch model.
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Sony said that it was dropping its money-losing rear-projection TV business worldwide to focus on flat-panel technologies.
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TOKYO - Japan&#39;s Sony Corp. will begin selling a computer and home-server system in Japan with 1,000 gigabytes of hard-drive storage â-nough to record six TV channels for a week straight â - company said.
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Sony has a 27-inch OLED TV prototype. Didn't we see this last year?
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The days of the large black television in the sitting room are numbered, according to the latest retail figures. Sales of stylish flat-screen televisions have doubled
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Yesterday, Sony launched the next stage in a comeback campaign to reposition itself, not only in its key markets but in the public mind. The campaign involves some controversial moves, including expanding its high-end Bravia brand to smaller and less expensive HD displays - some of which are not 1080p.