Hasta La Gadget!

We first caught wind of Angry Birds‘ impending arrival on Samsung Smart TVs earlier this month, and now the war against pigs is available as a free download on some of the company’s silver screens. Thanks to a built-in camera and the firm’s Smart Interaction tech, which typically help users navigate menus and browse the web, gamers can smash through swine defenses using gesture controls. In order to download the app from the Samsung Smart Hub, you’ll need a television in the Plasma 8000 range or a 2012 LED 7500 or higher. If your TV’s not as intelligent as Samsung would like, however, the avian protagonists can already stage their skirmishes on your tube with a Roku, and come this holiday season, they’ll be soaring on the Xbox 360 and PS3.

Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment

Angry Birds with gesture controls collides with select Samsung Smart TVs originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Jul 2012 02:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As Apple‘s Q3 earnings unfold this week it’s become clear that the Apple TV is the unsung hero of the day with massive sales compared to this same quarter last year. Apple TV sales have risen 170% over last year at this time, with 1.3 million units being moved here in Apple’s fiscal Q3 2012. Apple on the other hand is still calling this product a “hobby” as sales are nowhere near what the iPhone and iPad have racked up for the quarterly report.

To further drive the point home, Apple didn’t release information on the Apple TV inside their normal sales report, relying instead on the question and answer section to allow the facts appear on their own. Asking what Apple was planning on doing with the Apple TV and what their “updated thoughts” on the system were, the response was simple.

“We sold 1.3 million last quarter, up more than 170% year over year. That brings our fiscal year to 4 million units. This is pretty incredible. It’s all still at a level that we would call a “hobby”, but we’ll continue to pull the string to see where it takes us. Apple is not one to keep around projects that we don’t believe in. There are a lot of people here that believe in Apple TV, and we’ll continue to invest.”

Past quarters yielded numbers such as 100,000 units sold in the first month of sales of the Apple TV back in 2007, with well over a million units sold by the holiday season of that year. The fourth quarter of 2008 had unit sales tripling the fourth quarter of 2007, and the first quarter of 2009 again tripled sales compared to the same quarter the year before as well.

Stick around as Apple’s investment in the Apple TV continues, and check the timeline below to keep up to date with the last few blips on the system as well.

Apple TV sales boom 170% as “the hobby” gets serious is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

While NBC has already shown off its official Olympics apps for mobile devices, Yahoo is readying an onscreen companion app for connected TVs built on its widgets. While smart TV platforms and boxes are practically everywhere, Yahoo’s is built into HDTVs from several manufacturers, and the app is available for TVs from Sony, Vizio, Samsung and Toshiba. It gives users access to Yahoo Sports coverage with video, news and analysis including daily updates on the games and a real-time medal count. If you have a TV with the Yahoo Connected TV store, it should be just a few clicks of the remote away, and content updates are scheduled to start coming in early next week. We’re still waiting to see the second screen action we previewed at CES put to use, but maybe this event is just the reminder the world needed that this is on more TVs than Google’s effort and actually exists unlike the often-rumored Apple HDTV.

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Yahoo shows off Beyond Gold Olympics app for its connected HDTVs originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Jul 2012 06:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It looks like LG is actually going to sell that sweet 84-inch ultra-definition TV we saw at CES. With a resolution of 3,840 x 2,160 (UHDTV) it will maintain a full 1080p picture for 3D movies even with LG’s FPR Cinema 3D passive glasses technology, and also includes the standard suite of Smart TV features. Of course, the launch is quite predictable, considering there’s no way LG could let Korean rival Samsung rule the roost with its 75-inch ES9000 that’s on the way. While we’ll wait for an English language PR for all the details on the 84LM9600, native speakers can scrounge some won together and hit the source link below for more information.

Update: We’ve checked with LG and confirmed that this LCD has a price of 25 million won ($21,925 US) for anyone preordering the 84 units that will be on sale for the first month, and it has a 2.2 channel “3D sound” system. It’s only going to be available in Korea for now, so lining up outside your local big box store might be going a step or two too far, for now — that 4K content isn’t really available yet could be another reason.

Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment

LG 84-inch ‘ultra definition’ 4K HDTV going on sale in limited quantities in Korea originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Jul 2012 22:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung already announced that it will be bringing Rovio’s Angry Birds game to its line of Smart TVs this month. At the Samsung SpaceFest today, the South Korean behemoth finally made it official by introducing not just an Angry Birds app with gesture controls, but a new 75-inch Smart TV as well. The new 75-inch ES9000 LED Smart 3D TV features a rose/ gold-colored finish and a curved bezel that’s 0.31 inches thin. It will retail next month for $9,999.

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By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Angry Birds coming to Samsung Smart TVs this month, Samsung Smart TVs arrive in the US,