If you ask anybody, “What’s the hottest thing you’ve seen at this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas,†you get a distant look or uncomfortable head-scratching. There are enough iPhone cases and Bluetooth speakers to overflow every landfill in America. But without Apple, Google, Microsoft or Facebook on the premises, what’s left to exhibit
TV sets, I guess.
The 3-D television push of the last two years is, thank heaven, pretty much dead. The industry learned after only two years that consumers have no desire to put on $100 glasses just to watch TV. And consumers learned early on that there was very, very little to watch in 3-D. You can sit through “How to Train Your Dragon†oly so many times.
This year, 3-D is still around, but only in dark corners of the enormous, glitzy, stadium-sized, multimillion-dollar electronics-company booths.
But that doesn’t mean the TV industry has quit trying to get us to buy new TV sets. This year, the push is “4K,†called Ultra HD by some companies. It means more pixels â€" four times as many as HDTV. I’ll be writing more about the 4K push later this week, but for now, here’s a hint: the sets cost tens of thousands of dollars. There’s not a single cable TV show broadcast in 4K, and not a single movie available on disc in 4K. So what you may watch mostly on your 4K TV is the reflection of your own “I’ve been scammed†expression.
There’s all kinds of experimentation going on. Sony and Samsung both have big, hyper-expensive, not-yet-available flat-panel OLED sets on display that can show two 3-D shows simultaneously. (Viewers must wear special glasses that “tune in†to one or the other, and play the au! dio through the earpieces.) The Samsung can also play four 2-D shows simultaneously. Everyone on the couch can be watching a different program. Or two youngsters can be playing video games while their parents are watching a movie.
Samsung’s also exhibiting the world’s first curved TV set. I know, right What the heck
But sure enough, it has a slight bend to it, as though it were sliced from a circular wall around you.
I wasn’t aware of the general populace complaining that their TV screens were too flat. So why did Samsung bother
The company says that the curve provides more viewing angles where the picture looks dead-on. Which I find to be nonsense; the curve is so subtle, it can’t possibly make any difference.
The real reason Samsung made this screen Because it can, I guess.
