CES 2009: Toshiba press conference 18.00 GMT
It’s Wednesday morning CES 2009 time and it’s Toshiba’s turn to wow us with their wares for the coming year. The company themselves admit 2008 was a bad 12 months for them, so I’m hoping today will be their time to show the world that the wound licking time is over.
It’d be good to see more than just the AV announcements they gave us at IFA but I’m not holding my breath. Whatever they unveil, we’re still not expecting any Blu-ray players.
18.48 That appears to it minus a few pleasantries and sicaphantic questions. So, the Tosh watchwords for 2009 are New Regza and Cell TV. I’ll lay down a closer look at the products shortly.
18.45 The box will record six HD channels simultaneously and offer internet content access as well.
18.43 Cell TV is next on the list. It has a processor better than any today apparently. It’s a set top box and seperate panel with the best Regza panels they do, but the box will give it clean picture performance at far higher speeds. The cleanest picture with far better control, we’re told.
18.38 SV670 Series next. A “stunning” inifinity flush deisgn. It’s very shiny basically. Tech-wise these premium screens will come with local LED dimming backlighting.
18.29 ZV Series Regza with Deep Lagoon hidden speaker design and Clear Scan 240Hz frame rate to reduce blur – not true 240Hz but a 240 effect from Back Scanning tech. They’ll also include Dolby Volume for balanced audio and Expert Mode for those who have TV set up experience or those who just like to tinker with the colour settings. There’s an added USB port for any kind of video file playback as well as an SD card slot for all your digi pics.
18.27 Pixel Pure 5G technology with 4,000 levels of gradation at the heart of new Regza with Resolution + upscaling backing it up. Resolution + will bring 4K x 2K clarity to larger TVs. I’m sure we’ve heard a lot of this before.
18.25 AV600 Series 19″ & 22″ 720p gaming screens. AV502 – RV525 40″ and 46″ 1080p, 3 HDMI new Regza screens.
18.23 Trends for for 2009 are as follows are 1) Gradation is the new black, 2) 240 is the new 120, 3) Will people really pay for super thin TVs, 4) 55″ is the maximum viable size.
18.17 Ok, he’s starting to make sense now. Naturally, he wants all homes to have a Tosh TV and his plan is for affordability with Regza at a cheaper price and new Regza the premium.
18.16 VP of TV marketing taking the stage – Scott Ramirez. He’s giving a rather patronising lecture on the credit crunch. This is properly cheesy.
18.15 New Regza LCD’s available in second half of 2009
18.14 First network AV products which will offer platforms and widgets from Yahoo! Intel and Microsoft – streamed video, downloadable movies and internet TV with sports news and weather with more and more widgets available as time goes by. The programming will then be able to be stored on the built in Toshiba PVRs. We’re talking about full media centres here.
18.12 2009 is all abouit LCD combo designs with speakers hidden around the back and the sides of the cabinet which looks a little ugly with the DVD player lumped on.
18.09 Senior VP for AV taking the stage now. He’s now pretending last year was successful. Apparently this all based on the growth of their LCD sales.
18.07 They’re going to announce network AV devices today. Ok then. Let’s have it.
18.06 They’re going to continue to focus on breaking barriers in picture quality and connectivity. In fact, that’s the third time this guy’s used the phrase pciture quality in his first three minutes.
18.03 CEO of Toshiba America taking the stage.
18:02 Toshiba takes the stage and they’re telling us about their tech heralding the coming of the new year at Times Square a few days ago.
