Sony earlier announced the pricing and release date for their new 55-inch and 65-inch 4K LED televisions, but you might also want to check out their new 4K FMP-X1 media player if you are planning to fully experience one of the newly announced displays.

As you might remember, Sony showed off a prototype of the media player at CES back in January. Now, at NAB 2013, they have announced that the device will be available sometime this summer with a price tag of $699. The device will arrive bundled with 10 films: Bad Teacher, Battle: Los Angeles, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Salt, 2010′s The Karate Kid, Taxi Driver, That’s My Boy, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Other Guys, and 2012′s Total Recall. Those are certainly not too exciting for that price.

As for the company’s 4K video distribution service, Sony says that FMP-X1 owners will have to wait until fall. When its available customers will be offered a whole library of 4K movies, with titles from Sony Pictures and “other notable production houses”, and there will be a fee of course.

So, are you interested in getting an LED TV along with the FMP-X1? Or does the staggering price tag of $4,999/$6,999 for the TV and $699 for the media player turn you off?

The post Sony FMP-X1 4K Media Player Coming This Summer appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Intel will be introducing a television set-top box later this year to compete against giants including Apple and Google. The chip maker is preparing for the launch and has begun recruiting experienced people for various departments of their upcoming service.

According to spokesman Jon Carvill, Intel Media plans to add 60 people to its staff of over 300. Headed by former BBC executive Erik Huggers, Intel Media is searching for engineers with experience in cloud computing, user interface design and security.

They are also looking for specialists in Hadoop, which suggests they might give importance to analyzing viewing habits of customers. Interested people can apply for the post of “audience representative”, who will have to communicate with customers through phone, chat, email, and video, and apparently the qualification for this particular job also includes “Must be weird”.

So, Intel is certainly very serious about their TV debut, but the question is whether they will be able to compete against all the heavyweights on the market. They surely are going to go further than what is currently being offered by Apple and others. The hard part will be signing deals with content providers, but Carvill says that they are in talks and are confident that the service will be launched later this year.

What do you think about Intel’s new venture? Will they be able to survive?

[Source]

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LG has just unveiled an OLED TV at CES that is a bit different than what you have seen before. What’s so different? The TV has curved OLED screen.

The LG EA9800 is a 55 inch TV with a curved display that uses proprietary WGRB technology with not only the standard red, green and blue pixels, but also an added white pixel.

President and CEO of LG’s Home Entertainment, Havis Kwon said “LG is the first to launch the 55 inch OLED TV, we believe our new OLED TVs offer the ultimate viewing experience, surpassing anything seen before.  The new curved model complements our core OLED TV family with a unique design that capitalizes on the thinness of the screen and the aesthetic beauty of OLED TV.”

At this time we have no details on when the LG EA9800 will become available or the price tag, but it can be assumed that it will be a high high end device upon its launch.

[ source ]

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Samsung is apparently planning on revealing a television at CES 2013 that will take TVs to the next level: see through.

Yesterday, on the Samsung blog, the company showed a picture of a vertically sitting television.  In the picture is a landscape type background which you can see directly through the TV.  While Samsung didn’t give any details about the TV, it did a it did say  “A true innovation of TV design is coming up with an unprecedented new TV shape and timeless design”.

So the questions that will have to wait until next weeks Consumer Electronics Show are, is this tv going to attempt to convert TV to portrait viewing?  Is this truly a see through set, or are they just showing off the realism of the display?

Last year if we recall, Samsung did show off a transparent LCD panel  designed for store windows and kiosks, so this wouldn’t be that much of a stretch considering they did hint that a 46 inch version was in the works.

Check the picture, what is your opinion? If a see-through TV did exist, what practical implications does it have? Would you want one?

[ source ]

The post Will Samsung Release a Transparent TV at CES Next Week? appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

LG has announced it will release a brand new line of Google TVs with 3.0 software starting in 2013.  These very sleek and slim TVs will come in sizes ranging from 42 inches to 60 inches.

According to LG, the new Google TVs will have a “beyond simple voice input” voice recognition system and run Google TV integrated right into the panel itself.  You will be able to watch TV and search for different content simultaneously.

Also included with the new TVs is a remote with a built in microphone, as  well as a QWERTY keyboard and gesture input controls.

Looking to get into some gaming action? The next generation LG Google TV line will have OnLive cloud gaming built-in with a detachable controller that connects directly to the TV set.

LG has plans to unveil the new line at CES 2013 and is shooting for a US launch in the first half of 2013. These new TVs sound awesome, and I hope they are at an affordable price so I can pick myself up one! What do you think?

[ source ]

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Running out of storage space won’t be an issue with the new Boxee TV. It’s been proclaimed as the first DVR to offer virtually unlimited storage. They do this by uploading your videos to the cloud, rather than storing those recordings on a local drive. In fact, there’s no on-board storage at all.

In addition to the more traditional DVR function of recording live television, the new Boxee TV also lets you enjoy several streaming services, like Netflix, Vimeo, VUDU, YouTube and Pandora. The Boxee TV is a dual tuner unit too, so you can watch one channel while recording another. By uploading your recordings to the cloud, it means that you can watch your recorded TV shows on screens other than your living room TV. Go ahead and watch Big Bang Theory on your laptop and Game of Thrones on your smartphone.

That’s the good news. The other good news is that the Boxee TV will retail for a very reasonable $99 when it ships next month. The bad news is, because you’re using the cloud, you’ll have to pay the monthly subscription fee of $14.99. Ouch! The initial launch is also being limited to just eight cities: New York, LA, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Philly, and Washington, DC. They’ll add more markets next year.

[Source]

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Decades ago, no one would have thought that the idiot box would evolve into something smarter. We are in the era of the smart TV, and companies like Apple and Samsung are already heavyweights in this segment. The latest machine to enter the market is from Lenovo, who have just launched their Android powered K91 smart TV in China.

The 55” K91, which was shown off at CES earlier this year, is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor and runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. It’s coming with facial and voice recognition, and you will get access to video on demand and the company’s Le Store. If interested, the K91 is now available along with the smaller 42” K81 and K71 smart TVs for 14,999 yuan (around $2,378) and 6,499 yuan (about $1,030) respectively.

But unfortunately it’s only available in China, the country where smart TVs have been slow to catch on because of content restrictions, and no hints about an international release.  Lenovo selected their home turf to launch the K91 as it is easier for them to negotiate content deals in China. They will certainly try to catch up with the big players in other markets, but content will be a big hurdle for them to sell smart TVs in other parts of the world.

Head here if you want to take a peek at a demo video of the K91.

The post Lenovo Android Smart TVs Now Available in China appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

A few physical keys will still be there on the remote, but that’s not a problem especially when we compare it to previous remote designs. With the touchscreen, which is located at the top of the remote, you will be able to change the settings of the TV or search the Internet.

The voice recognition feature that’s coming with the device is basically the same one that was used for the company’s ES8000 Smart TV, which was shown off at CES 2012. You just have to speak into the remote’s in-built mic to change the volume and channel. This functionality will also be very useful when logging into streaming accounts. You will just have to say your user name and login.

And to make the interaction with the TV faster, the remote uses Bluetooth and infrared at the same time.

The touchscreen remote will be available with a smart TV that the company plans to release in the coming months. It will also be compatible with different set-top boxes and media players.

The post Samsung’s New Touchscreen Remote Understands Your Voice Commands appeared first on Mobile Magazine.