CES 2011

LG opened the "press day" by announcing its line of "Smart" products. Smart appears to be the company's new go-to word for many of its new products, ranging from Smart washers, dryers, ranges, and refrigerators ("Honey, the fridge says we need milk and ice cream"), to HDTVs, with cell phones and other devices occupying the vast middle ground in between.

To touch briefly on that middle ground, there was prototype of an LG mobile 3DTV that can be viewed glasses-free (autostereoscopic—easier to do for a single viewer). And there's a new LG smart phone, the Optomus 2X, said to do full 1080p. Better sit close.

But it's LG's TVs that interest us most. There are 31 new LG LCD sets, 10 of which are 3D. The Cinema 3D sets employ LED edge lighting. Three "Nano" 3D sets have full LED backlighting with local dimming. Nano technology, which is new this year, employs smaller LEDs imbedded in a membrane that also incorporates the required diffusion, making the entire structure thinner and, presumably, more easily and efficiently produced.

There are also 12 new LG plasmas, 8 of them 3D.

LG's Smart TV technology, used in many of the higher end models, is a new menu layout that simplifies use of the sets' extensive Internet features. In addition, the new LG ST600 module/set top box, available separately, can bring SmartTV to any HDTV with an HDMI input. Another approach to adding this feature to your existing HDMI HDTV is the new BD690 3D Blu-ray player, which includes an on-board 250GB hard drive plus the SmartTV platform.

But the big LG story is the use of passive glasses in many of the company's new LCD 3DTVs, rather than the active shutter glasses now employed in most current 3D sets. LG calls its passive glasses technology FPR, for Film Pattern Retarder. The sets in the LG lineup that will continue to use shutter glasses include all of the Nano models (and all of the plasma sets as well). There are many upsides to passive glasses, but downsides as well (see the following blog entry).

No prices were quoted, but all of the new sets should begin shipping by early spring.