Geeky Drunk

Sorry about your luck Sony, because Samsung completely outdid you this year at CES 2008. Although there are no plans yet to take these units into production like Sony’s smaller OLED TV, the Samsung CES booth had 14-inch and 31-inch OLEDs. They recently stated they do not believe Sony will be able to deliver on its promise to begin consumer sales of OLED screens this year. So either Samsung knows something about the current supply of new OLED technology, or they’re mad that they can’t introduce the first OLED TV to market.

Samsung introduced the thinnest non OLED monitor available, well not commercially available yet. The 52-inch LCD HDTV is only 1-inch thick, which is still 4 times as thick as the Pioneer 9mm thick Kuro we featured.  The Samsung picture quality is amazing, as it is on the 31-inch and 14-inch OLED TVs they also announced. Samsung also had a cool boxing game you could play with just your bare hands, so they were obviously using some type of camera possibly built into the screen.

Samsung also has a new feature called INFOLINK which they will add to all of their higher end TVs and will include an integrated Ethernet port. It is basically a menu overlay (so you can still watch TV) and it shows you rss feeds and other types of widgets. You can browse through the rss feeds during commercials, select a certain news story, and see a nearly full screen view of the complete feed in the transparent menu while the commercial is in the background.  Widgets for your TV! It sure didn’t take them long.

The new Samsung HT-X810 Soundbar has a touch screen interface, integrated DVD player that scales up to 1080p via HDMI, wireless Bluetooth / 5.8 ghz subwoofer for streaming audio, a USB port for external drives and simulated Dolby 5.1 surround sound. It is an all-in-one speaker boasting 300 watts of power that you mount on the wall, and will probably cost a pretty penny.

To top it off, Samsung also announced the new 3D ready plasma TV which requires geeky looking glasses, but gamers would probably love it. Them Samsung folks sure were busy, and this is only a sample of what they announced at CES 2008. More to come…

Filed under: CES, Home Theater