LG just launched a new line of televisions at CES today. The Infinia line are all LED backlight and feature local-dimming (a must for all LED TV’s). The top end LE9500 has 240 local dimming segments while the LE7500 and LE5500 have 16.

Pricing is not yet available.

This is probably the ultimate TV right now. Arguably better than Sony’s XBR8 which also featured LED backlighting with local dimming. Remember, not all LED backlights are created equal, and the XBR8 and Samsung’s 8500 have the local dimming feature for the blackest blacks on LCD. The full review is at AVGuide.

Too bad this set didn’t come in 50″ or 52″. 55″ is a bit too big for my living room.

You can’t miss them, those bright white lines that denote Audi’s new lighting scheme. Every single car in Audi’s lineup now features them. From the single strip in the A6, to the bracket shaped ones on the Q7. Those bright LED strips now define Audi’s image as much as the yellow “corona rings” defined BMW’s for a decade. With the new Audi A8, unveiled today, Audi takes another leap – a full cluster of LED’s for lighting. No conventional bulbs in the housings at all. No xenon or HID units either – it’s all LED for daytime running lights, turn indicators, low beams and high beams. Fantastic! Soon light housings will be merely thin strips where the beams come out from.

There’s no such thing as an LED TV, at least not a mainstream TV you and I would buy at the store. However, Samsung has been advertising their new line of TV’s as “LED TV” and confusing many customers. Flat panel displays are either plasma and LCD. There are more fringe technologies like OLED but in reality at your local electronics store only those two are offered. The reason “LED” is used is because LCD TV’s can be backlit with either CCFL or LED technology.

CCFL, cold cathode fluorescent lamps, are your basic fluorescent lightbulb. They have been used as a LCD backlight for decades. Arriving on the scene two years ago, LED’s are used instead of a CCFL to light up an LCD TV. These LED-backlit TV’s have many advantages, including a bright, consistent backlight, low power consumption and the ability to make LCD’s even thinner than they are.

Causing more confusion are the two LED backlight configurations. Traditionally the LED backlight is behind the screen, lighting the screen from behind also allows a new technique called local dimming. This shuts of LED’s that are behind the black areas of the image, leading to “blacker blacks” which have always been a weak spot for all LCD TV’s. However, a cheaper version of LED backlights have been introduced called “edge lit”. Picture quality is not as good as backlit LED, but edgelit LED TV’s can be made remarkably thin.

Be on the lookout for these types of technologies when buying your new TV. The best LCD picture quality will be from an LED backlit LCD with local dimming.

Do these laptops look familar? They should, the design is almost entirely stolen from Apple’s Macbook and Macbook pro line. HP has leveraged the “Envy” brand from in-house gaming laptop maker Voodoo to market it’s new, sleek, aluminum/magnesium chassis laptops. Available in both 13″ and 15″ versions, these will probably be very hot sellers. With the slim (just 0.88″) 13″ for the portable market, and a Quad-core Core i7 processor in the 15″ for computing power, these two models will be on the top of everyone’s wishlist this Christmas.

They are not due to be available until October. Priced at $1699 USD for the Envy 13 and $1799 USD for the Envy 15. Canadian pricing is not available.

Jalopnik lists the 25 most useful car technologies and I tend to agree with all of them, save one:

• Rain-X (there is Rain-X wiper fluid now, which refreshes the treatment when you use power washers)
• Airbags
• Anti-lock Brakes
• Traction and Stability Control
• Muffler Valves
• Clean Diesel
• SynchroRev Match (found on the Nissan 370z)
• iPod/iPhone integration
• Variable valve timing, event and lift systems
• Radar/Laser detectors (illegal in Ontario)
• Heated Seats (my last car didn’t have these)
• Lightweight materials (carbon fiber)
• Crumple zones
• Stop/Start Engines
• Satellite Weather and Traffic Reports (I don’t think any of these systems work in Canada)
• Pushbutton locking differentials
• Turbocharging (woohoo!)
• LED lights
• Torque vectoring differentials
• Direct Fuel Injection
• Real power outlets
• Folding hard tops
• Hood scoops (wtf?)
• Adaptive headlights
• Regenerative Braking

I’m not sure about hood scoops, but the rest of the list is pretty cool. Recently I bought a new car, and it was nice to have features that my old car didn’t have, like adaptive lights, turbocharged direct-injection engine, heated seats and iPhone integration. Technology is wonderful.

LG has announced that the LH90 series of LCD televisions is coming to North America. Not only that, but it comes with THX certification.  One of the notable features, besides the local-dimming, LED backlight, is the ability to play DIVX movies from a USB port on the TV – as well as JPGs and MP3s. It comes in 55″, 47″ and 42″ sizes.

• • 2,000,000 : 1 MEGA Contrast Ratio
• • 1080p Full HD Resolution – TruMotion 240Hz
• • 24p Real Cinema
• • HDMI 1.3 with Deep Color

Sharp has been very quiet on introducing new television models featuring LED backlight technology. First LG debuted theirs, and Samsung and Sony soon followed. Sharp followed with some limited edition models, but nowhere near the full range that their rivals demonstrated over the past 12 months.

Now, Engadget, reports that Sharp has taken the cover off their mainstream LED models. The new E700UN series TV’s come in 52, 46, 40 and 32-inch sizes. Dubbed “AQUOS LED” by Sharp, they make use of an LCD panel called “X-Gen Panel”. There’s no mention about the LED backlighting’s specific implementation – does it mirror LG’s single color (white) backlight LED, or does it ape Sony’s three- and four-color LED backlight technologies?

More details will follow but what’s surprising is the low price of these LED backlight sets. Below are the US MSRP’s:

LC-52LE700UN $2,799.99
LC-46LE700UN $2,199.99
LC-40LE700UN $1,699.99
LC-32LE700UN $1,099.99

When buying a new television, be careful about picking TV’s with LED backlighting – not all of them are what they appear. LED backlighting is one of the newest technologies used to improve picture quality and power efficiencies in flat screens. They’re used in LCD TV’s to produce the light that shines through the screen. Until the last year or so, all LCD’s were backlit using cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL), which are similar to flourescent lights.

Samsung was one of the first television manufacturers to offer LED’s to replace CCFL’s as the main backlighting source. The main advantage was a much brighter and smoother backlighting – no more “bands” or “waves” of brightness when the LCD is showing a dark picture. Moreover, the first LED backlit televisions had “local dimming” or the ability to turn off portions of the backlight to produce very dark blacks – always a weakness with LCD’s compared to plasma TV’s.

Originally, Samsung’s  950 and Sony’s XBR8 models both included LED backlighting with local dimming. However, things changed this year – Samsung introduced new televisions that had LED backlighting, but introduced in a cheaper, less featured package.

These are called “edge lit” LED backlit televisions and make up their 7000 and 8000 series televisions. The LED backlighting has moved from behind the TV to the edges. This has two detrimental effects on picture quality – the backlighting is not as uniform throughout the screen, and the backlight is incapable of local dimming. However, this type of backlight does produce VERY thin televisions, and are cheaper that full LED-backlit TV’s.

Be aware of this change, and make sure you know what you are getting. Samsung is rumored to launch a 9000 series television which features a full local-dimming LED backlight.

I love focused blogs. My favorites are on the right hand column but they include Autoblog, Engadget, Gizmodo and Boy Genius Reports (mobile phones). My lastest favorite is DisplayBlog who have just moved over to their dedicated URL www.displayblog.com. If you’re interested in a new TV or new monitor, definitely check it out.