Hasta La Gadget!

Loewe has staked its success in the TV market on personalized designs, and it’s taking that concept to its logical extreme with the upcoming Reference ID. First shown at IFA last year, the LCD set is now due to reach the UK in July with progressively wilder customization options. Owners will only have a choice of covers for the built-in 160W speaker at first, they’ll get frame selections later in the summer, and full customization of materials and patterns this fall — if they want a set housed in leather and gold, it can happen. Conformists might still be happy with the Reference ID between its 3D-ready 400Hz panel, media streaming and a dual-channel DVR with 1TB of space. Loewe’s adaptable design won’t be cheap for discerning Brits, however: 40-, 46- and 55-inch variants will respectively cost £4,500, £5,500 and £6,500 ($7,007, $8,564 and $10,121), and that’s before applying a personal touch.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Via: Pocket-lint

Source: Loewe

Watching TV has gone beyond sitting in front of your television screen to watch a show as it is aired as the inclusion of DVRs and online streams have made it possible to watch a new episode of your favorite show at any time. That’s why the Wall Street Journal’s report of Nielsen possibly launching a digital program to cover Internet streaming makes complete sense.

According to the WSJ, Nielsen’s TV ratings system will soon be able to count Internet views through its “Nielsen Digital Program Ratings” pilot program. The program will launch with participation from NBC, FOX, ABC, Univision, Discovery and A&E and will be able to track their respective shows’ viewership through streaming video that is posted on their respective website. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Netflix Ditching Microsoft Sliverlight For HTML5, Short Film Starring Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates Wants Kids To Learn To Code,

LG has revealed launch plans for its 55-inch curved OLED TV, the gently-flexed überset the company showed off back at CES in January. The LG 55EA9800 will go on sale in South Korea in the next month, though at a healthy premium over the standard, non-curved 55-inch OLED set the company has offered for a few months now.

The flat OLED TV is priced at 11 million Korean won, and went up for preorder in January 2013 with shipments beginning the following month. As for this flexed variant, it will command a 50-percent premium, with LG pricing it at 15m won, or around $13,500.

Beyond the privilege of being at the cutting-edge of hardware, LG says early-adopters of the new TV will benefit from some technical advantages too. Because of the curved screen, the company claims, the distance from all points of the TV to the viewer’s eyes are the same, reducing distortion and blur. That also has an effect on 3D, LG says, with a better quality image than a flat screen can manage.

As for the design, the 55EA9800 is embedded in a carbon fiber reinforced clear plastic stand which weighs in at 17kg, with a minimum thickness of 4.3mm. LG has used transparent thin-film speakers, too, spreading the TV’s audio abilities across the front of the stand but without spoiling the looks.

Samsung, meanwhile, is yet to announce availability of its own curved OLED set, which it also demonstrated back at CES in January. Each of the TVs runs at 1080p Full HD resolution, which means that if home entertainment fans want Ultra HD resolution, they’ll currently need to stick with LCD technology. However, that’s likely to be a gap LG is looking to fill; the company announced it would invest more than $650m into OLED production this year.

LG pips Samsung to market with 55-inch curved OLED TV is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Samsung has hinted at a potential OLED partnership with Google, with chatter from within the company of a deal on OLED TVs after CEO Larry Page visited one of Samsung’s South Korean OLED facilities. “During the meeting with the Google CEO, I proposed the expansion of our business partnership to him” Samsung Electronics vice chairman Lee Jay-yong told The Korea Times, describing Page’s reaction as showing “interest in our OLED business.”

Exactly what stage the talks – if there are, in fact, any at all beyond Page showing interest in where his Korean hosts took him to visit – are in is unclear, though sources inside Samsung suggest that if anything it’s very early days. “We don’t rule out the possibility to enter a new business partnership with Google in OLEDs” one unnamed official told the Korean paper, “but more time will be needed for further details.”

Interestingly, while Samsung has previously made use of OLED panels for Google-branded smartphones, such as the Galaxy Nexus, the chatter between Lee and Page is apparently now around larger displays. Sources within Samsung claim Google wants to increase its collaboration in OLED TV, mimicking some of the relationship the search company has around Google TV and LG.

The ongoing relationship between Samsung and Google has been the stuff of concerted rumor over the past year, with Samsung’s enthusiastic reskinning and general modification of Android – as well as the best-selling nature of the Galaxy series of smartphones – being seen as a challenge to Google’s driving role in the mobile OS. However, Samsung has also been facing issues from Apple, with whom it shares a difficult supplier/competitor relationship.

Samsung continues to supply Apple with many of the components the iPhone maker uses in its smartphone and tablet line-ups, not to mention memory for its Macs, but the two have found themselves frequently at odds in the courtroom over allegations of patent infringement and design copying. More recently, Apple is said to have been diversifying its supply-chain, in what’s believed to be an attempt to reduce its reliance on Samsung components.

How Google’s involvement in OLED production might shift that power dynamic again is unclear, though there remains talk of both Google and Apple having smart TV ambitions yet to be revealed. Last year, tenuous rumors of an LG-made Google Nexus TV circulated, for instance, borrowing the Nexus branding from mobile and extending it into the living room.

[via AndroidBeat]

Samsung and Google chatted OLED partner potential spills VP is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It looks like Amazon is getting ready to enter the set-top box market. If so, the online retailer needs to go big or go home, because the competition is simply too intense for anything less than amazing.