Hasta La Gadget!

Eye control is all well and good, but what Haier was really pumped about at this year’s IFA was its new 55-inch OLED set. And, granted, the set is nice and thin at four millimeters, with a 1.5 millimeter bezel. What the company was really excited about, however, was the built-in stand. Yep, it’s a four millimeter thick TV that can stand on its own, making it really difficult to push over in one direction, at least. We appreciate the sentiment, but we’ll be more excited when we can start controlling the thing with our brains.

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Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Haier had a pretty formidable booth here at CES, so naturally, we had to swing by and cast our eyeballs over anything and everything there. A wall of TVs greeted us, which turned out to be the company’s 2013 Roku-ready HDTVs and Android-packing smart models. Screens were everywhere, but there was also a table with some finger-friendly equipment like 9.7-, 7- and 5.3-inch HaiPads, as well as a Windows 8 laptop, touchscreen all-in-one and tab / laptop slider. The slider looked pretty nice, but all the aforementioned hardware was set up in Chinese, so we lost interest pretty quickly. A central hall booth wouldn’t be the same without a 4K TV, but not to worry, Haier had a couple on display — unfortunately, glare from all the other screens dotted around kind of dampened their impact.

What we were most interested in was all the prototype technologies on show, but all the Haier reps were from the US sales department, so not a soul could talk about the demonstrations. The eye-controlled TV we saw at IFA last year was getting quite a lot of attention, while the mind-controlled set we’ve also seen before was almost certainly playing a looping video to give the illusion something was happening. There were also several gesture-controlled models, but one wasn’t working and the other was hosting a very basic Kinect-type game. A ping-pong game played with a “Sensory Remote” was also up on one TV, but looked unresponsive and therefore, unfun. A multi-view demo using dual 3D specs did what it was supposed to, and a glasses-free 3D TV prototype showed nice depth as long as you were 12+ ft away (the camera can’t really replicate the effect, but there’s a quick video of it below anyway).

The booth also had a household section which we thought was safe to ignore, until a “wireless blender” caught the eye. “It’s just a blender with a battery in it, surely?” this editor asked. “No, there’s an inductive coil built into to the underside of the counter,” was the reply. Thus was our Haier experience at CES, and to revisit it through our eyes lens, check out the gallery below.

Kevin Wong contributed to this report.

Continue reading A look around Haier’s CES 2013 booth: HaiPads, plenty of panels and a wireless blender

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Displays, Household, Laptops, Tablets, HD

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[CES 2013] CES 2013 is a hotbed for new releases, and Haier does not want to miss out on all the action and fun, having announced their 2013 range of TVs that will feature new designs such as an ultra-thin frame, enhanced sound solutions, and other features including Roku streaming. Roku streaming is made possible on select models thanks to the use of the new Roku Streaming Stick that will deliver instant access to movies, television shows, music, casual games and other forms of entertainment.

All you need to do is plug the Roku Streaming Stick into the MHL port of a Roku Ready Haier HDTV, and it will get to work right away. Haier is not only focused on video quality, but also intends to deliver an enhanced audio experience by incorporating a 2.1 channel built-in audio solution into select models. Some of the models at store shelves which you might want to look out for this year would include the Core Series LED, the Encore Series, and the Encore+ series. [Press Release]

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Outdoor Technology Announces CHIPS Wireless Drop-in Audio System , TP-LINK Wireless N Mini Pocket Router,

At last year’s CES, Haier showed off a transparent TV, which never took off for the obvious reason that nobody needs or wants a transparent TV. Today, a great leap forward: a neon, see-through washing machine. This is. The. Future. More »

Okay, okay, the transparent TV was neat, but will it actually change the way we watch television? Not likely — not any time soon, at least. And while the mind-controlled set we saw last year was certainly cool, it didn’t offer much in the way of accuracy. This Eye-Control TV, on the other hand, certainly takes a step in the right direction. To use the set, you sit in front of a black rectangular sensor positioned at chest height. There’s some calibration involved when moving from person to person, chasing a circle around the screen with your eyes. Once calibrated, you’re good to go.

You use your eyes for basic TV controls — changing channels, adjusting the volume, things like that. Switching involves looking at an element of the screen and giving a big blink to select — the display seems adjusted in such a way that normal blinks won’t trigger it, so you’re less likely to accidentally set something off. You look down to adjust the volume. A control panel will show up, and from there, you can move the slider left or right by looking at the volume up and volume down icons — you can also select mute from here.

To change channels, look at the top left-hand corner of the screen and blink. That’ll bring up a UI featuring large pictures of videos. Look at one and blink at it to select it. The system can also be used to view and toggle between still images. The use of pictures certainly seems the most intuitive method for navigating around videos — there’s a definite learning curve here, and it’s hard enough to select pictures — we couldn’t really imagine toggling through small text. As with the transparent television, this doesn’t feel quite ready for market — it’s a compelling concept, none the less. And using the human eye to control a display that you’re already staring at anyway does seem to have some merits. Check out an eyes-on video, after the jump.

Continue reading Haier’s Eye-Control TV set, we go eyeballs on (video)

Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment

Haier’s Eye-Control TV set, we go eyeballs on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Aug 2012 06:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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