LAS VEGAS (AP) - TV makers are adding sexy new features like streaming Internet movies and 3-D capabilities this year, betting that they can keep consumers away from basic, no-frills sets, even in a weak economy.The manufacturers are fighting an unhappy trend. DisplaySearch, a research firm, forecasts that global sales of LCD TVs, the most popular kind, will fall 16 percent in 2009 to $64 billion. That would be the first sales decline since the technology debuted in TVs in 2000.

To entice consumers to come back, manufacturers are touting relatively inexpensive advances. One is that many top-line and even some value-priced TVs will connect to the Internet.

Such TVs started appearing a year ago with limited functions, like being able to display news stories and weather reports. Now, back-end systems and partnerships to provide streaming movies are coming together.

For instance, LG Electronics Inc. and Vizio Corp. announced this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show that some of their TVs will be able to show video from Netflix Inc.’s streaming service. LG said the service would add $200 to $300 to the price of a TV. Panasonic Corp. and Sony Corp. TVs will show videos from Amazon.com Inc.’s Unbox service.

Yahoo Inc. is emerging as the leading provider of other Internet data services to TVs, through something it calls the Widget Engine. Sony, LG, Toshiba Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. all plan to introduce TVs that can grab Flickr photos, YouTube videos and news stories through a broadband connection.

Two other new features cut across the top-tier TV models: improved handling of fast-moving scenes and a reduction of power use.

Last year, manufacturers touted sets that display 120 frames per second, for sharper and smoother action and panning scenes. TV signals and discs have only 24 to 30 frames per second, so the sets compute more frames to stick between the existing ones.

This year, most manufacturers are raising the bar to 240 frames per second, but not by computing more new frames. Instead, the backlight will switch on and off very quickly, fooling the eye into perceiving even smoother movement.

Manufacturers have also jumped on the opportunity to get their sets certified under the new, much tougher Energy Star requirements set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In November, the agency introduced limits for the power use of switched-on TVs. The old Energy Star rules only specified the power that TVs could use in standby mode, with the screen off.

The goal for the Energy Star program is to recognize the most energy-efficient 25 percent of a product category. But most new TVs announced at the show will meet the requirements, so the EPA will likely have to raise the bar.

Sony introduced what it called its “first green line” of LCD TVs. The “Eco Bravia” models will use 40 percent less power than last year’s models, exceeding the latest Energy Star requirements. Samsung and Panasonic announced TVs with similar cuts in power consumption, without branding them as “green.”

Samsung, the world’s largest maker of TVs, is making a big push in LCD TVs that are backlit by light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, rather than the standard fluorescent tubes. This is less radical than dispensing with LCDs altogether to use a different technology known as organic LEDs, yet it promises power savings and eye-popping colors and contrast. LED sets have been on the market in very small quantities, held back by their higher cost.

“We are going to create the market” for LED TVs, said Jong Woo Park, president of the Korean company’s digital media division. He didn’t say what the new sets would cost.

These energy-saving touches give the new TVs a more subdued tenor than the industry offered last year at CES. Then, there was an emphasis on bigger screens and expensive emerging technologies like organic LEDs, which promise ultra-thin, ultra-bright TVs in the future.

“You can’t be too thin. But will people pay extra for it in this economy?” asked Scott Ramirez, vice president of marketing for TVs at Toshiba America Consumer Products. “I have yet to find a person who will say that their flat panel is too fat.”

Ramirez also said that while the industry likes to brag about screens with diagonal measurements as large as 150 inches, very few people buy sets costing more than $2,500. That means that practically all sets sold are 55 inches or less. The only major manufacturer that pushed the size envelope at CES this year was Sharp, which introduced an 82-inch screen to fill a gap between its models at 65 inches and 108 inches.

Perhaps the strangest development in TVs is this year’s focus on sets capable of showing three dimensions. This idea has been touted since the 1950s. But interest has faded every time, and 3-D viewing has never quite moved beyond the gimmick stage, though the latest generation of digital cinema projectors has enabled widespread 3-D releases of some films.

This time there’s a concerted effort from TV makers to make 3-D viewing in the home happen.

“I believe 3-D is the next big wave coming to the consumer electronics industry,” said Woo Paik, chief technology officer at LG.

Panasonic Corp. is pushing the hardest, and wants the industry to unite on ways to get 3-D content to TVs. Many TV sets are already capable of showing 3-D images that can be viewed with special glasses. But there are no discs or disc players for 3-D content, nor are there 3-D broadcasts.

Panasonic wants to solve that problem by working with the Blu-ray Disc Association and other bodies to set standards for 3-D delivery systems, resulting in commercial products by next year, according to Yoshi Yamada, chairman and chief executive of Panasonic North America.

From The Times
February 5, 2009

The new ‘opt-in’ feature available in Google Maps pinpoints the exact location of loved ones, but has been met with sharp criticism from privacy campaigners
Murad Ahmed, Technology Reporter

Millions of people will be able to track each and every move by friends and family through their mobile phones, thanks to a new feature launched by Google yesterday.

The new system dubbed “Latitude” uses a digital map to show automatically exactly where a loved one is at any time, sometimes pinpointing their location to a few metres. Worried parents will be able to check up on where their children have got to after school, friends can meet for a quick drink if they see they are nearby and spouses will be able to see if their partners really are working late at the office.

Google said that Latitude was an opt-in feature, meaning that both parties have to consent to being spied on. But privacy campaigners said they were appalled by the idea, and children’s groups said the Government should intervene and look into whether the system was fully secure.

The feature was made available immediately on millions of mobile phones that can access the web, such as the BlackBerry. Within weeks Google hopes to release a version that will also work on computers as well.

“Once you’ve shared your location, you can hide it from individual friends or all of your friends at once, or you can turn off Google Latitude completely at any time.” said a Google spokesman. “You can adjust your privacy settings in Latitude so that you share as much or as little about your location as you want, with whom you want.”

Google said that it had tested the product with thousands of people to make sure that the system was secure, but experts were not so sure. Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, said the security was appalling and said Latitude would open up a “privacy minefield”. “Google is naive if it thinks there are adequate controls on this feature,” he said.

Others were concerned that even though you could, in theory, bar anyone from spying on your location, in practice peer pressure would mean it would be difficult to reject their suggestion to follow you, even if it was not in your own interests.

“It’s about the little white lies. You might be skiving off work, and now your boss might be able to see that you’re at Twickenham instead of at home,” said Ian Angell, an information expert at the London School of Economics. “You’ve already got mobile phone technology where husbands and wives track each other in secret. Google is so pervasive that this will become the rule rather than the exception.”

Google said that people always had the option of adjusting how much about their location they wanted to give away. Colleagues could merely know what city you were in, whereas other more trustworthy friends could find out what street you were walking down. How much each individual wanted to reveal was always up to them.

The technology is likely to be greeted enthusiastically by a younger generation hooked on social networking websites such as Facebook. In testing, the feature was quickly adopted by people to locate friends in crowded areas, and by families to give themselves a rough idea of when loved ones would be returning home.

Children’s groups said that, though the principle of being able to check up on the whereabouts of a child may bring peace of mind to many parents, problems would arise when children became teenagers and sought more responsibility and independence. “Is a mobile phone becoming an electronic leash on children?” said John Carr, the secretary of the Children’s Charities Coalition on Internet Safety. “You can see situations where this kind of thing might be useful, but it is also kind of imprisoning children even more.”

Mr Carr called for the Government to look into the security of the system, and said that any company that wished to offer or sell tracking software such as this should be required to get a licence.

The Information Commissioner’s office said the opt-in nature of Latitude indicated that the feature satisfied data protection laws, but said it would monitor the system closely.

3click.TV - a new shining star in the streaming TV world.

The most comprehensive collection of today’s popular TV shows is a tall order but when we are talking about complete seasons of most every show on television at the click of a mouse or right on your iPhone 3click.tv Streaming Television network delivers. Some liken it to an online Tivo that automatically saves all your shows, removes the commercials, and neatly indexes and describes every episode ever made from hits like Heroes, 30 Rock, Weeds, Sopranos, 24 and about 140 other prime time shows from both network tv and cable.

Unlike the Hulas of the word, 3click.TV is available everywhere with users in Europe Australia, UK, South Africa and Canada.

It’s even more impressive the speed and reliability of the service. It is worth noting that to watch tv shows on the iPhone requires a very strong wifi or 3G signal that may not be available in most areas but 3click.TV work extremely well on the typical Mac or PC desktop.

We signed up for a 3click.TV trial and found the service to be simply amazing and all dealings with the support staff to be prompt and professional. What really set 3click.TV apart from other streaming services is the appearance of new shows often within hours of their debut so you always have the newest episodes.

They are so certain that you will love the 3click.TV service that a 100% no questions asked refund is offered within the first 24 hours if you are’nt completely happy.

We passed it on to a few of our friends to rave reviews. In short, 3click.TV, for a low monthly subscription will save you tens of hours searching dead links and downloading until your harddrive burns up just to watch the nearly 8500 shows that 3click.TV has in its collection. All you have to do is have a look at the streaming tv episode showlist to see these guys mean business!

So you can drop that expensive cable bill and toss the Tivo in the trash, for the TV junkies of the world 3click.TV is just what the doctor ordered. “