The News By Me

Samsung has revealed to TechRadar that it has big plans for the OLED TV market and it will be releasing other, possible smaller versions of its 55-inch television in the future.

Speaking to TechRadar, Robert King, head of consumer electronics at Samsung, explained how important OLED was to the company and that it wanted to make a statement with its 55-inch television, which was announced at CES 2012.

"55-inches was the largest size we could get on to one sized sheet, so we decided to focus on this size – OLED has been around for a little while, but getting out a big-screen was key for us," said King.

Sound advice

When pressed on whether more OLED TVs coming, King commented that Samsung's focus was on its present television but "the range will grow - there will be design developments going forward and OLED will build in the years to come".

This seems to confirm the news that Samsung is set to go on a massive OLED push, eventually superseding its LCD TV line-up with the technology.

One of the problems with OLED is that because the panel is so thin, the audio quality can be compromised but King isn't too worried about sound problems.

"We always try and get the best sound out of a TV but the physics behind this means that an external surround sound kit can improve on this.

"We do strive to get the best sound we can in each category, however."

Samsung has hinted that it may sell off its LCD TV making arm in order to focus on the more lucrative world of OLED TVs.

The news jives nicely with Samsung's earlier public mulling over the possibility of bringing its OLED display business, Samsung Mobile Display, in-house.

Play it off, keyboard cat

If you're staring sadly at your Samsung LCD TV and wondering where it all went wrong, we'll tell you: money.

LCD TV prices have steadily fallen over the past few years thanks to a flooded market and falling demand for LCD – it means that Samsung makes a loss on each LCD TV sold.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Samsung's LCD unit sales fell 10 per cent in 2011 due to lacklustre demand as well, so selling the entire unit off would make a lick of sense.

Much more enticing is the brave new world of OLED displays. Currently the darling of the smartphone and tablet world, OLED TVs are slowly but surely infiltrating the living room.

Samsung itself has a very lust-worthy 55-inch OLED TV heading to the UK in the second half of this year.

However, it is worth mentioning that Digitimes thinks Samsung will keep the LCD business and pump $6 billion into it in a bid to make it work. But, you know, Reuters v Digitmes. Who do you believe?

Now watch our video of the Samsung 55-inch OLED TV in all its glory while you mull that conundrum over:

Samsung will bring its impressive 55-inch Super OLED TV to the UK this spring, the company has revealed.

The Korean tech giant confirmed to CNET UK that the set which caught the eye of the tech world at the recent CES expo last month, will soon be making an appearance in Blighty.

The super high-end display, fashioned from a single sheet of glass, will come loaded with Samsung's Active 3D tech, the Smart TV connected apps ecosystem.

There's also a HD webcam, which will pack motion-sensing and facial recognition tech.

Head to head with LG

A spring launch for the Samsung OLED solution would likely beat LG's similar offering to the market.

Reports last month suggested that LG's own 55-inch OLED TV, also announced at CES, would launch in the UK in the second half of 2012.

There's still no word on an exact release dates, or how much they'll cost when they do arrive, but neither the Samsung or LG sets are likely to be affordable for the majority of us.

Beyond the remote control: using gestures

Who needs buttons and onscreen menus when our hands and feet lay idle?

It was the Nintendo Wii that first got us moving, before augmented reality apps and games-stuffed smartphones had us waving them in a ridiculous figure-of-eight, but so far the humble television has remained stoically still.

As the dust settles on CES 2012 that's all set to change, with the big TV brands revealing in Las Vegas that motion sensors will be embedded in upcoming smart TVs of the very near future.

The rise of new two-way IPTV services on both smart TVs and set top boxes looks set to bring not just point-and-click Wii-style remotes, but gesture recognition to control web surfing, app-based games, and to navigate TV schedules.

Smart TVs already exist, of course, but the jury is out on exactly how clever they really are. Many TVs can be networked, though the viewing of videos on YouTube and BBC iPlayer, perhaps with a virtual remote app on a smartphone, is about as interesting as most of them get.

Basic gesture control

Content is ever-changing, but it's the way we use TVs that will change most in the next five years. Hand gestures require only a cheap webcam, while voice control is becoming more accurate; the dashboard of an Xbox 360 fitted with a Kinect can now be controlled with spoken instructions after virtually no training, and it's coming to Windows PCs soon.

Samsung and LG revealed their new ranges of TVs will indeed feature 'intuitive' control. That used to mean a well thought-out remote, but now requires a conversation with a TV.

On Samsung's upcoming top-of-the-line Smart LED 8000 series launched this Spring – as well as on its 55-inch dual core Super OLED TV due later this year – we'll see a built-in high definition camera that's able to recognise movement in the foreground, with two unidirectional microphones that can, claims Samsung, accurately recognise and interpret voice instructions even amid high levels of background noise.

COMING SOON: Movea's MoveTV gesture remote tech is being used by remote control makers

Saying 'Hi TV' will activate voice control, for example, while uttering 'web browser' will … well, you get the picture. Gestures will play a part too; just pointing a hand at the TV can change the volume. We expect it not only to work with the TV's main user interface, but with specific apps, too.

"The TV is the heart of our homes and is the central device that connects our family at the end of a long day," said Robert King, Head of Consumer Electronics at Samsung UK & Ireland. "For Samsung this means providing the future of Smart TV now through new TVs that recognise and respond to you."

Lucky us. If Samsung's gesture tech uses a camera akin to the Xbox 360's Kinect, it appears that the other big hitters are concentrating on keeping the remote control firmly in play. Sony's Bravias will have a voice in this new market with a hard-button remote control – just the thing Samsung and Microsoft are trying to ditch – that carries the microphone, alongside a QWERTY keyboard.

Sony's Chairman and CEO Sir Howard Stringer recently spoke about 'a new kind of television', but he was probably talking about Crystal LED – a new screen tech rather than a way of interacting with content. LG is also pinning its hopes on an upgrade of its Nunchuk-style Magic Remote, which in Las Vegas was revealed to now feature voice recognition tech, and there are others busily innovating new handsets.

Already in use

Movea's MoveTV system, a point-and-click remote control that also deals in gestures, is being used by FREE in France, the largest IPTV provider in the world, as well as other remote control designers and makers. The user draws virtual circles, squares, lines, numbers and letters in the air using the remote to control various functions on the TV.

"The future of TV and home entertainment is changing dramatically, with a wide variety of content now all becoming available to the large screen in the lounge – DVDs, set-top boxes, the web, and cable," says Dave Rothenberg, the Worldwide Marketing Manager at Movea.

"The traditional design of remote control, with four directional control buttons, is being replaced with a new generation of motion-enabled remotes that provide not only pixel-accurate cursor positioning to rapidly navigate through menus, but also motion-enabled interactivity for gaming without consoles." Now that does sound interesting, though we're sure Sony and Microsoft are a step ahead in terms of their next-gen consoles.

Those concentrating on hand movements rather than voice will, we suspect, have more success; anyone who's used a Nintendo Wii will have no problem with hand gestures, but talking to a TV? The novelty soon wears off; in our experience on the Xbox360 that happens just after it becomes apparent that only five or six stock phrases can be used.

CLASSIC MOVES: Does the Wiimote point to the future of TV remote control?

Why are the big TV manufacturers suddenly embracing voice and gesture control, despite the tech having been around for a while? The answer is Apple; press talk about the high possibility of what's being called its Apple iTV smart TV product has sent shockwaves throughout an industry that fears it could soon be severely degraded by the appearance of a smart TV that truly lives up to the name.

So far, the only thing that's saved the rather conservative TV manufacturers has been that, unlike a smartphone, people don't change their TV very often – about once every six or seven years, in fact.

Details are light, but it's thought that Apple will offer voice and gesture control, and strike content deals around the world to offer domestic customers their TV diet exclusively over a broadband Internet connection. Already the owner of the rights to NHL, NBA, and MLB in the US, it's been reported that Apple could bid for rights to Premier League footie. In the long run might satellite dishes and TV aerials disappear from city skylines?

Probably, and though debut efforts will be expensive, gesture tech seems essential if the truly smart, connected TV is to take-off.

LG's indisputably beautiful 55-inch OLED TV will arrive in the second half of this year, the Korean manufacturer has confirmed.

The pencil-thin Smart TV-enabled set wowed the masses of onlookers and indeed TechRadar at CES 2012 in Las Vegas earlier this month.

While LG had been coy about when the Cinema 3D telly would land in homes, reports this week suggested the company may be going into production in July.

Pressed for comment by TheVerge LG said that although "it's really difficult to predict exactly when" that 55-inch beasts "will start rolling out sometime in the second half of 2012."

Breakthrough

The arrival of LG's 55-inch OLED TV at CES proved a breakthrough for the technology which has threatened to eventually eclipse LCD for the last few years.

Until CES, where Samsung also launched a living room-sized OLED display, the sets on offer had been far too small to be considered the number one viewing device in the home.

No news yet on how much LG intends to charge for this super-slim device, but one thing's for sure; it's not going to be cheap

In the meantime, check out our 55-inch LG OLED TV hands-on.

CES 2012 round-up

It's digital Christmas! For the tech industry, January's Consumer Electronics Show is more exciting than waiting for Santa to come down the chimney: it's when the big names of consumer technology show off their biggest and best products - and by "biggest" we mean "smallest", because this year thin is in.

Tech firms usually boast about power or pixels, but this year they sounded more like supermodels who haven't eaten anything but air for six months.

Take LG, for example: its 55-inch OLED TV wasn't remarkable for its screen size, but for its thinness: it's just 4mm thick, which means it's thinner than any of LG's phones. Marc Chacksfield has an important warning, though: "it's not as light as a phone".

Bang & Olufsen's doing the skinny thing too. Its BeoVision 12-65 "ultra flat" 3D plasma is "very thin indeed", says Kate Solomon, and comes with typically B&O pricing: "it's likely to be high - now take that price you're thinking is high and double it. About that."

Samsung's been at the skinny-TV game too. It's own 55-incher is millimetres-thin and made from a single pane of glass, delivering 2D, 3D, motion sensing and voice recognition, dual-core processing and a whole bunch of apps. Hang on, doesn't that mean it's a PC?

On the subject of PCs, they've been on the Slimfast plan as well, courtesy of Intel, who showed off a whole bunch of Ultrabook laptops and convertible tablets that are just 18mm thick, with even thinner models on the horizon.

Our intrepid correspondent Dan Grabham was particularly impressed by the "incredibly thin convertible Windows 8 Ultrabook-tablet hybrid" the IdeaPad Yoga, which is "like Microsoft's vision for the tablet PC from 2002. Only good."

It's an impressive bit of kit not just for what it is, but for what's coming in its wake: "What's most exciting is that we'll be seeing plenty more devices like this during 2012," Grabham says. "We cannot wait."

Thin phones and cameras

Is there anything else we can slim down? How about smartphones? Motorola's Droid 4 is "the thinnest LTE QWERTY phone in the world", which sounds awfully like band website claims such as "we're the most popular six-piece Welsh language jazz-funk fusion band in Scunthorpe".

Nevertheless, at half-an-inch thick - 7.1mm in proper measurements - it's certainly quite thin, especially if you compare it to things that are thicker.

"This is getting silly now," Gareth Beavis writes about the 6.68mm thick Huawei Ascend P1 S. The P1 claims to be the thinnest smartphone on the market, although "it will be interesting to see how thick that lip at the bottom is, as that's the part that will stop it from being able to tout any records in advertising should it be fatter than the iPhone 4S."

There's another Ascend, the P1, but at 7.69mm that one's so thick Huawei should call it the Ascend Porker, or something.

Anyone else been to fat camp? Yep: here comes Toshiba with "something that has made us genuinely excited". It's a tablet! Huawei should take note: the Toshiba Excite X10 is just 7.7mm thick, and that's for a full tablet, not a wee smartphone.

The Excite X10 isn't just a thin tablet: it'll make your wallet thinner too, because the entry level 16GB version's pegged at a hefty $530.

Fancy a thin camera? There's a new bunch from Olympus, some new Kodaks and some rather nifty all-weather cameras from Fujifilm, while Samsung tells us it's considering "producing a more advanced compact system camera... in order to attract enthusiast photographers".

Last but not least, you're getting thinner too: Kinect is coming to Windows next month. "Prepare to gesture at your PC like a loon", Kate Solomon says.

CES 2012 was the show where OLED finally made it into the big-screen market, with both LG and Samsung announcing 55-inch televisions using the screen technology.

The reasons OLED is superior to LCD are myriad, but it really boils down to the technology managing to offer brighter colours but also use less power.

The TVs can also be produced really thin and this is what Samsung has achieved.

You only have to look at our Super OLED TV pictures to see how skinny the TV is.

Samsung has also managed to get the TV's bezel down to mere millimetres.

Each TV is created from a single pane of glass and it will also playback 3D. Oh and there will also be motion and voice control on board.

Just like the LG OLED TV we have already fallen in love with Samsung's debut in the big-screen OLED market.

We will have to get the TV into testing before we propose but on first impressions the picture quality is outstanding and it has looks that outshine Kate Moss.

Unfortunately the Samsung 55-inch Super OLED TV UK release date is pencilled in for October so our relationship with the TV will have to be long distance for the time being.

CES 2012 was the show where OLED finally made it into the big-screen market, with both LG and Samsung announcing 55-inch televisions using the screen technology.

The reasons OLED is superior to LCD are myriad, but it really boils down to the technology managing to offer brighter colours but also use less power.

The TVs can also be produced really thin and this is what Samsung has achieved.

You only have to look at our Super OLED TV pictures to see how skinny the TV is.

Samsung has also managed to get the TV's bezel down to mere millimetres.

Each TV is created from a single pane of glass and it will also playback 3D. Oh and there will also be motion and voice control on board.

Just like the LG OLED TV we have already fallen in love with Samsung's debut in the big-screen OLED market.

We will have to get the TV into testing before we propose but on first impressions the picture quality is outstanding and it has looks that outshine Kate Moss.

Unfortunately the Samsung 55-inch Super OLED TV UK release date is pencilled in for October so our relationship with the TV will have to be long distance for the time being.

LG's 2012 TV line up is out of the CES 2012 gates, and it's looking pretty tasty with diminishing bezels and growing screens and ever-better image quality all round.

The top of the 2012 TV tree is the LG EM9600, a 55-inch OLED TV that LG is claiming as the world's largest.

It's a mind-blowing 4mm thin, comes with "unrivalled" 3D picture quality and comes in the LG Cinema Screen design that we told you about earlier (meaning bye-bye bezel).

We should see the LG EM9600 UK release date land in the second half of this year. We'd tell you to start saving up but, to be honest, we don't think six months' of saving is going to do it.

Get thee to the bank

Size is everything to LG this year, it seems, as it's also busted out what it's calling the world's largest Ultra Definition 3D TV – it's a ridiculous 84-incher with 3D and Smart TV connectivity, known as the LG LM960V.

That Ultra definition promises picture quality of 8 million pixels – that's four times the resolution of existing full HD TVs (3840x2160). Yikes.

You can also tinker about with the 3D depth as you watch and play on the set, while 3D Sound Zooming takes care of the tri-dimensional audio layout – the UD TV is heading to market in the second half of 2012 as well.

And the rest...

The rest of the range – you know, the TVs you might actually be able to afford to buy – seem to pale in comparison to all that world's ultra largest excitement.

The LG LM660T, LM669T and LM670T all fall into LG's Cinema Screen range, which means they'll rock the 1mm bezel and come with Cinema 3D (4 pairs of 3D glasses and 2 pairs of Dual Play glasses will be included). The LM660T comes in a 32-inch edition, while all three will be available in 42-inch, 47-inch and 55-inch flavours.

The LG LM760T is equally catchily-named, and will come in 42-, 47- and 55-inch editions, what with its LED display, Cinema 3D glasses, stupidly thin bezel and magic remote.

Not had enough product names thrown at you yet? Good news, there's more LED goodness in the form of the LM860V with 3D capability, Wi-Fi, magic remote and a dual-core processor to power Smart TV premium.

And that's your lot – now check out our first look at the LG EM960V OLED TV stat.

LG has finally shown off its newest flagship television to the world, revealing its 55-inch OLED TV for the first time at CES 2012.

Considering OLED TVs are usually confined to the small screen, it is great to see the technology finally get the big-screen treatment and we have to say the results are more than impressive.

The TV has been described by LG as a 'a significant step forward' for the screen technology and we have to admit that the company is right.

As it uses OLED, LG has managed to make the TV thinner and brighter than most on the market.

To put it into context, the LG 55-inch OLED TV is just 4mm thick, which is thinner than any of LG's phones. It's not as light as a phone, though - but weighing in at 7.5 kg it is light for a television of its size.

LG is hoping that the TV will hit the mass market, so this is not just a screen for the minority – as OLED has usually been pegged as such – LG is hoping to keep the price down enough so that it is at least attainable.

LG is using some new tech in its OLED panel. It has Oxide TFT technology built in to reduce cross-talk.

When it comes to price and release date, LG is keeping a little tight-lipped but it is ensuring the world that it is affordable – whether that's affordable to an A-list celeb or Joe Bloggs remains to be seen.