HDTV

Pioneer's long-awaited announcement regarding its 2008 Kuro-branded plasmas, the successors to our favorite TV of 2007, the PDP-5080HD, includes a total of six new models. The company is claiming that the 2008 HDTVs produce "five times deeper" black levels than the 2007s, and during a side-by-side demo that included both 2007 and 2008 models, the new display certainly appeared a bit darker in the blackest areas--although it couldn't muster the essentially absolute black we saw demonstrated at CES and during our review of Sony's OLED TV. We have recently reviewed the 50-inch model, and while it did impress us with its extremely deep black levels, find out why it still didn't make the cut for our editor's choice award this year. Here's a rundown of the company's new line.… Read more

Leave it to Bang & Olufsen to break the mold once again, this time with a TV under-screen speaker. While other manufacturers toil away with boring rectangles and cylindrical designs, the B&O wizards have gone a completely different geometric route: a triangle.

The "BeoLab 10" is a center speaker designed to work with the "BeoVision 4" HDTV. Mounted beneath the plasma, according to Audio Junkies, it uses its "Acoustic Lens Technology" to disperse sound 180 degrees with twin amplifiers.

And never leaving anything to chance, B&O is also planning to … Read more

There have been various efforts to bring YouTube to the TV and other devices that bypass the computer, from Apple TV and TiVo in the living room to Archos on the road. But most of these have centered on boxes made by third parties and not the TV makers themselves.

Hewlett-Packard is trying to fill that void with its "MediaSmart" products, which include an HDTV receiver that allows viewers "to create multiple playlists from anywhere they watch TV." There's a hefty price to watch those homemade cat videos on a big screen, however, as the … Read more

There was a time, somewhere back in the Dark Ages before cable and satellite, when the television set needed only to have a single connection--plug it into the wall outlet, and it was good to go. That day may finally have returned for Sharp's newest line of ultra-thin LCDs with the help of Amimon, an Israeli company that developed its first chips for wireless HDMI connections last summer.

The technology--known as WHDI, for "Wireless High Definition Interface"--can send 1080p signals up to 100 feet and "through four or five walls," according to Dvice, which … Read more

In our longstanding tradition of featuring gadgets that do yoga, Crave is pleased to announce a first in the illustrious category: a contortionist television set.

Westinghouse has created a "flip-style" HDTV that can actually be folded, to a degree, to fit into the most cramped areas and corners of any given abode. The front bezel of the dual-hinged "Flexible Lifestyle Display" can be rotated 180 degrees on a tabletop, according to Electronic House, or the TV can be suspended from the wall or bottom of a cabinet, trapeze-style.

The PT-16H610S must maintain a petite frame to … Read more

HDMI has certainly had its growing pains, but the connection is finally beginning to deliver on its original promise: a single-cable solution for delivering high-bandwidth, all-digital HD video and multichannel audio. HDMI is nearly universal in the home video market, present on all current HDTVs and Blu-ray players, as well as nearly all HD-capable cable and satellite set-top boxes; DVRs; game consoles; AV receivers; upscaling DVD players and recorders; and network video streamers such as the Apple TV. In fact, you realize just how convenient HDMI is when you come across a product without it--I'm looking at you, Nintendo Wii--and then have five cables (three component video wires plus two-channel stereo) instead of one crowding the back of your home entertainment system.

But one aspect of the HDMI promise remains unfulfilled: wireless HDMI. It's an attractive idea, especially for anybody with a wall-mounted flat-panel TV or a ceiling-mounted projector: have all of your HDMI-capable gear running into an AV receiver or HDMI switcher with a wireless HDMI transmitter, and have the TV equipped with a matching receiver--thus allowing you to have all your AV sources across the room from the actual display. We've been hearing about it for years, but to date, there are few--if any--products that you can actually buy. Here's a quick update on the wireless HDMI products we've heard about to date--including when (or whether) we can expect to see them: … Read more

Open memo to our bosses: Crave needs to schedule an expense-account trip to Milan.

Last week we wrote of a Fujitsu laptop made of cedar that was showing at the Salone Internazionale Del Mobile exhibition (that's "International Furniture Fair" to you Philistines out there). And now we learn that Samsung and Armani--which have already collaborated to produced the designer's exclusive phone, of course--have debuted a jointly marketed HDTV at the event yesterday.

The LCD features 1080p resolution, 100Hz technology, and "a special 4-mode lighted power switch that customizes the display of the two companies' logos … Read more

KMPlayer lacks a help file but makes up for it by being one of the most powerful freeware video players we've seen. It includes a vast array of video- and audio-capturing options, as well as skins, a plethora of playback controls and tweaks, and broad DVD support. You'll have to learn the ropes yourself, but if you're familiar with where things ought to be, and willing to patiently wait for the mouse-over label to confirm your suppositions, KMPlayer has the potential to be immensely rewarding.

It supports nearly every file format we could think of testing. It … Read more

Verizon is running an ad implying that CNET gave its Fios TV service's picture quality a positive review, calling it "near-flawless." The reality is that a CNET Networks property did use that phrasing in a news story, not a review, and the words are taken out of context.

Adding to the confusion, CNET itself bears some of the blame.

Here's the all-important context: a series of Fios TV spots running in the New York metropolitan area and possibly elsewhere uses a couple of words clipped from a June 21, 2007, CNET News.com piece on Verizon's Fios service. The commercial flashes a quote on the screen that says "near-flawless" along with the CNET logo, while a voiceover proclaims: "Your HDTV doesn't want cable. Give it Verizon Fios, for picture quality the experts call 'near-flawless.'" Another, more-recent ad is also running with a slightly expanded logo-backed quote that reads: "A near-flawless TV experience." Check out the video, which CNET uploaded to YouTube, for the original spot.

Those words did appear on a News.com story (News.com and CNET Reviews are sister sites published by CNET Networks). But the context of the original News.com piece, titled "Verizon's fiber-optic payoff," reads quite differently from how Verizon is using it:

… Read more