Friday, August 01, 2008

LG bows next-gen products


I've been a little slack on re-reporting new product announcements, since I'm up to my eyeballs in projects lately. But with LG's latest announcement, I can kill two birds with one stone, and both play to two of my particular peccadilloes: LED illumination and digital delivery.




In TVs, LG unveiled its 47LG90 1080p LCD TV with TruMotion 120Hz frame-rate processing and LED backlighting. The unit, which ships in September at a $3,599 suggested retail price, has a 47-inch screen size and uses an array of 1,536 individual white LEDs. LG has developed local dimming technology to control the lighting of each individual LED to vary between full brightness or full shut off, enabling a 1,000,000:1 mega contrast ratio, the company said. The set also features a new teardrop design, blue color accents and a “high-gloss” black finish.


In addition, and perhaps most importantly, LG showed a 3rd gen Blu-ray player that incorporates download technology via NetFlix:



The highlight of the showcase was LG’s third-generation Blu-ray Disc player, model BD300, which is slated to reach market this fall. It will be only the second set-top device compatible with the Netflix instant-streaming offering. The first was a dedicated $99 Roku player introduced earlier in the year. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 will also add the capability this fall.
The Netflix instant-streaming video service offers more than 12,000 movies and TV episodes in standard-definition format online for virtually instant playback. Users will be required to register for a Netflix subscription membership, allowing its traditional mail-delivered disc rentals and now streaming video services via a broadband connection.


It may seem incongruous to incorporate downloads into an optical media player, but hey, why not? Think of it as a bridge for consumers from one format to the next. Clever.

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