This article was originally published on www.display-central.com.
TV set makers from China were at CES in force, determined to take more of the North American market – not only with sets sold under private labels but, increasingly, under their own brand name. This trend has been visible for the last couple of years, but this year it was dramatic, with elaborate exhibits laid on by TCL, Haier, HiSense, Konka, and Changhong. We could add Westinghouse Digital, which, as usual, showed its line-up in a suite at the Las Vegas Hotel. (Although Westinghouse isn’t a Chinese company, it’s sets come from the same set of contract manufacturers.)
And the Chinese set-makers weren’t just showing generic me-too products. Among their offerings were 4Kx2K sets, very large screens, smart TVs, and 3D-TVs. Although LG got a lot of attention for its short-throw laser TV that could be positioned just 22 inches from the screen onto which it was projecting, Hisense showed one that worked with its front edge virtually in line with the plane of the screen!
Here are a few highlights. For more details, see the coming issue of Insight Media’s Large Display Report.
TCL showed an extremely broad line-up, including a 110-inch 4Kx2K TV, a voice-control TV, and the TCL MOVO Google TV box. TCL’s Jianpeng “Conan” Jiao told Display Daily that the MOVO box will be the first TCL product to appear in the U.S. market under TCL’s own name rather than a private label. Incidentally, the MOVO box has a handsome and distinctive design. Among the TV sets TCL showed was a 55-inch 4K that is eventually headed for the U.S., but Conan had no information on when that might be.
In addition to its almost-zero-throw laser projection TV, Hisense showed an 84-inch 4K, and 110-inch 4K, a Roku-ready TV, and a Google TV, among others.
Haier introduced 25 TV models. Among the demos was the “Gaze” eye-control TV and an autostereoscopic TV with an image so pixelated it could have been using MasterImage 3D technology. (To be fair, MasterImage was demonstrating its technology in its own booth on a 4K set, which was a vast improvement over FHD.) Haier also joined the TV makers – which seemingly includes most of them – showing a variant of 3D technology that allows two viewers to each watch a different show on the same set. Yawn. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. More interesting was the award-winning pizza maker who was flinging pizza crusts around Haier’s booth. (The company is a major manufacturer of kitchen appliances.)
Konka was showing a touch TV, its own 84-inch 4K, and a transparent TV. Transparent LCDs have obvious application in retail signage and merchandizing, but if you can figure out why anyone would want their home TV set to be transparent, please let me know.
Mark Twain once said of a dancing bear that the wonder is not that the bear dances poorly, but that it dances at all. That was not at all the case with the Chinese TV manufacturers at CES. The Chinese dragons were dancing with energy and grace.
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