LG Electronics (LG) announces the global rollout of its new Smart Cam (model VC23GA). A Full HD (FHD) video camera with built-in dual microphones and multi-view function, the Smart Cam seamlessly integrates with LG's webOS-powered smart TVs to provide enhanced user interaction with a host of premium apps and services. The pairing offers convenient video calling and conferencing, an elevated home fitness experience and much more to cater to the diverse needs of customers as they enjoy various services offered by LG Smart TVs.

Compatible with many of the services available on LG TV's webOS platform, LG Smart Cam opens up a range of diverse and compelling interactive experiences. For example, users can now conveniently connect with co-workers, clients, family or friends via RemoteMeeting, an innovative web-based video conferencing service that also works across PCs, laptops and smartphones. The FHD resolution (1,920 x 1,080) Smart Cam provides smooth, crisp video that looks remarkably clear and lifelike when displayed on LG's large screen TVs, which are known for their excellent picture quality. Setting up the RemoteMeeting app on LG TV is fast and simple and conveniently eliminates the need for a laptop or PC connection. Moreover, the Smart Cam's built-in mics mean no extra peripherals are required.

Sony has announced that Zoom Video Communications, Inc. will be coming to Sony's BRAVIA TVs that are compatible with BRAVIA CAM. This partnership will allow users to easily connect with friends, family, and colleagues for video calls and meetings from the comfort of their living room. Sony's BRAVIA is the first TV brand to support the Zoom for TV app on Google Play Store.

With Zoom on BRAVIA TVs, users will be able to take advantage of all the features that make Zoom one of the leading video communication platform. This includes video communication on a TV screen, screen sharing, and collaboration tools. Users will also be able to use BRAVIA CAM's advanced features - it recognizes where you are in the room and how far you are from the TV, then adjusts sound and picture settings so they're just right. All of that is possible with a very simple setup - when using a compatible TV with a BRAVIA CAM, it only takes downloading the Zoom app from Google Play and launching it with the TV's remote.

According to a newly published study, by market analysts at Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC), TV OLED panel production costs are set to fall consistently over the next two years. Thanks to increased efficiency and improved yields at key manufacturing facilities, premium TV models could drop in price within a few months (maybe in time for Christmas) - according to FlatPanelsHD. The DSCC report indicates that production costs per 55-inch OLED panel are predicted to decrease by roughly 20% (when compared to data from 2022), with the same percentage reduction lined up for 2024. LG Display's "white OLED" panel is the given example here - it is featured on many 2023 TV ranges including LG's own C3 and G3 models, as well as units from competing brands: Sony, Panasonic, Philips, Hisense, etc.

Samsung's proprietary QD-OLED TV technology is also forecasted to become cheaper to produce - by 30% - according to the market analysts at DSCC. The Display division's South Korean factory lines are capable of pumping out 65-inch QD-OLED panels at greater efficiency this year - with a reported higher overall yield when compared to 2022's results (from 68% to 84%). Samsung's quantum dot panels are usually reserved for flagship level TV models, but lower production costs could lead to more mid-range televisions adopting the high-end display technology.

It's been a little more than a year since we launched games on Netflix to bring even more entertainment to our members as part of their Netflix subscription. In this short time, we've released 55 games, with about 40 more slated for later this year and 70 in development with our partners. That's in addition to the 16 games currently being developed by our in-house game studios. Our goal is to develop a broad portfolio of games - in different genres and formats - because we believe everyone can find joy in games if they discover the one (or many!) that is right for them.

This year we're going to continue building our portfolio - and that means new games every month. Members will discover indie darlings, award-winning hits, RPGs, narrative adventures, puzzle games and everything in between, and we're working with the world's leading studios to bring you these games.

Presenting NextPowerUp, our sister tech-publication in the works, designed with a bigger canvas. TechPowerUp established itself as one of the top PC hardware publications thanks to our pursuit for quality reviews and relentless news delivery. We decided it was time to put these core ideals to use, in addressing the much larger consumer electronics and gadgets markets, without disturbing TechPowerUp's focus on PC enthusiast content, one of its hallmarks.

NextPowerUp is designed to keep you up to speed on the latest in over 20 markets (and growing), each with its own content channel, and editors hand-picked for them. These include Audio (personal, home, professional, concert), Business, Cinema (filming, production, exhibition), Desktops (pre-built desktop PCs), Displays (signage, projectors), Gadgets, Gaming (games, game development, gaming industry, consoles), Internet (the business of WWW), Networking (social networking), Notebooks (notebooks, Ultrabooks, netbooks), Phones (of all shapes and sizes), Photo & Video (cameras of all shapes and sizes), Politics (industry soap-opera), Robots (outside assembly lines), Science (popular science, space exploration), Software, Storage, Tablets, Televisions (TVs and technologies built around them), Transportation (wheels that don't run on fossil fuels), and Wireless (Cellular carriers, commercial WiFi).

As the Pirate Bay administrators get closer and closer to their court appearance for conspiracy to break copyright law, one of them decides to speak out for his views. Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, otherwise known as Anakata, has plenty of choice words regarding piracy and The Pirate Bay. The full clip can be found at the source link in a handy YouTube video. Since most news outlets only post what the RIAA/MPAA and their equivalents tell them to, the views of a man who calls himself the brains of The Pirate Bay are quite refreshing. Anakata claims that The Pirate Bay is really "the battle against greedy corporate America." In his spot, he assures viewers that under Swedish law, the Pirate Bay administrators have committed no crime. Anakata also proclaims that his site is "the scourge of the film and music industries", and claims that the actions he facilitates through The Pirate Bay are "not stealing, morally or legally".

For those of you that still subscribe to analog television services, and still use old-fashioned "analog" televisions, you finally have a legitimate excuse to go to your local electronics store and splurge: by February 19th, 2009, all analog broadcasts to consumer televisions will be prohibited in America. All broadcasts from then on will be all digital. Consumers with analog televisions can approach this two ways. They can buy a digital-to-analog converter box, which should cost about $70. Or, the consumer can buy a brand new HDTV. Best Buy is hoping that consumers will do the latter. To help sway consumers in favor of dropping large amounts of cash to a brand new television, and to make sure that their new television customers will be satisfied for years to come, they've stopped selling analog televisions altogether.

Customers can now be sure that any television they purchase at Best Buy will be fully compliant with the digital television transition. And for customers who aren't in the market for a new television, we can help you find the best solution to meet your needs

Created by the founders of Skype and Kazaa, a free internet TV service known as Joost has just been launched after first being announced nine months ago. Joost allows users to choose from a selection of different shows and channels on their PCs, which are supported by advertising in similar to normal way TV commercials. In a blog, Joost said:

For us at Joost, we are exhausted, but excited. Many of us have put as much as two years of our lives into this little 'project,' and owe a great deal to our families for supporting us, to our friends for not ignoring us, and to all the beta testers who cheered us on and helped with ideas, feedback and lots of bug reporting.

Joost 1.0, which can be downloaded here for both Windows and Mac, is still in the beta stages, but from a quick look it seems fairly stable and is worth a try if you want to watch TV on your PC but don't have the necessary hardware.

The infamous South Park episode that satirized the Blizzard game World of Warcraft, titled "Make Love, Not Warcraft", recently won an Emmy at the 59th Creative Arts Emmy Awards ceremony. Executive Producers Matt Stone and Trey Parker, also writer and director on the episode, were honored, along with producers Frank C. Agnone II, Anne Garefino, and Kyle McCulloch, as well as Eric Stough, director of animation.

At the same ceremony, Justin Timberlake, Andy Samberg, and others were honored for their Saturday Night Live skit "D*ck in a box".

The BBC is releasing a digital content player, called "iPlayer". However, the Open Source community got very upset when they found out iPlayer was only compatible with Windows XP. And so, after asking the BBC to remedy this (and threatening to go to the European Commission), the BBC has made the iPlayer compatible with multiple operating systems. All the owner of the operating system has to do is pay the BBC for a license, and the player will be made compatible with the operating system.

On the Christmas Day next year the highly anticipated next Star Trek movie will be in cinemas Paramount Pictures announced yesterday! After cancelling the Star Trek: Enterprise series in March 2005, the mediocre space combat game "Star Trek: Legacy", which even die-hard trekkies found to be a bitter pill, and more than 4 years without a movie it was about time for someone at Paramount to make a decision.
And like this another one decided to take the opportunity and to direct the upcoming motion picture: Jeffrey Jacob Abrams. J.J. Abrams, known for directing and producing Mission: Impossible III and the very famous and successful Alias and Lost series, teams up with the writers and producers Bryan Burk (Lost, Alias), Damon Lindelof (Lost, Crossing Jordan), Alex Kurtzman (M:i:III, The Legend of Zorro) and Roberto Orci (M:i:III, The Legend of Zorro).
With all these experienced people working on it I am really interested if Star Trek XI will meet my expactations.

For a while, there have been rumors of a Battlestar Galactica game. Sierra Online confirmed this yesterday morning. The Battlestar Galactica video game will be a first-person shooter, and will be for the PC and Xbox360 in Autumn 2007.

NBC Universal is working closely with us so that players will be able immerse themselves in the Battlestar Galactica universe and re-live their favorite missions from the TV series.

Auran Games, an Austrian developer, is developing the Battlestar Galactica game, and will distribute it exclusively online through Sierra Online. Auran Games is working hard to try and get the voice talent from the actual show into the game.

About a week ago, Turner broadcasting tried to promote Aqua Teen Hunger Force in Boston. However, this creative advertising, which involved hiding blinking electronic devices around the city, went dreadfully awry. The devices were misinterpreted as a terrorist attack, drawing a police response similar to 9/11. Public transportation, including entire roads and rivers, effectively halted as the city descended into a panic. At the height of the alert, Boston authorities mobilized bomb squads, federal agents, the coast guard, hundreds of officers, and emergency crews. Red faced, Turner broadcasting and marketing firm Interference agreed to pay $2 million USD as compensation for the disturbance.

NVIDIA Quadro solutions improve creative workflow, as well as the delivery of real-time photorealistic graphics, for an upcoming super bowl ad.

Visual effects studios dream of rendering photo-real images in real time. SWAY Studio of Westwood, Calif., realized the dream by integrating NVIDIA Quadro based solutions from NVIDIA Corporation, the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies, into its production pipeline for the creation and delivery of a :60 commercial for GM, which will debut during Super Bowl XLI on Sunday, Feb. 4, 2007.

The commercial follows a small robot that accidentally drops a bolt while working on the GM vehicle assembly line. The mistake causes the line to shut down, and the robot is ultimately banished from the company premises. Forlorn and uncertain of his future, the robot does his best to move on with life.

Looking for a Valentine's day gift for that avid sci-fi watcher? Look no further than Firebox in the UK. While the four-port hub doesn't exactly rip a hole in the space-time continuum, and doesn't rip a hole in your wallet at 20 quid, it does have some cool lighting effects. It's shaped like the famous telephone booth Doctor Who fans have grown to love. And of course, it makes that "ripping-a-hole-in-reality take-off sound".

The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) is set to launch its on-demand download service later this year after receiving the initial approval form the BBC Trust. Assuming that the rest of the proposal goes to plan, viewers will be able to watch or download popular TV programmes for up to a week after they are broadcast. The application it will use is called iPlayer, which will let users chose what to download and will allow users to watch the programmes for up to 30 days after they are downloaded, or seven after they are first watched. It's not clear who this service will be available to, presumably it would be aimed at license payers but that would be difficult to enforce. Examples of programmes available for download include Planet Earth and Doctor Who.

Fox Entertainment Group gave YouTube a very nice subpoena. This subpoena demands the full identity of mister "ECOtotal". Fox wants this information mainly because "ECOtotal" had posted a bunch of Simpsons and 24 episodes, some of which were posted before they were released on television. The VP of Fox Entertainment Group feels that "the uploaded material could cause Fox irreparable harm". Ecototal's YouTube account has been suspended.

Warner home video may just have the answer buyers have been waiting for. If you have been holding out on buying a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player, because it is not yet set which will prevail - wait no more. Warner is now offering "Total Hi Def" discs, which combine the Blue-Ray and HD-DVD discs on one disc. So no matter what player you own, the movie will play in HD. First movies using the format will be released in the second half of 2007. The buyer only needs to pay the extra licensing fee for both technologies, as Warner will not charge more for the special discs themselves.

Although this was launched yesterday and briefly mentioned in our news, the news about Apple's Apple TV was largely overlooked due to the iPhone. The Apple TV itself is intended to be a wireless link between your PC (specifically iTunes) and your TV, and was originally referred to by many sites as iTV. Using the latest wireless technology, 802.11n, users can download their music and TV shows (presumably this doesn't have to be directly via iTunes) onto their computer, and then synchronise it with the Apple TV much like you would with an iPod, with the media being transferred to the built in 40GB hard drive. The unit will be plugged into your TV using either a HDMI or component video cable and you can watch whatever you want, with a remote control to allow you to select what you want to watch. The price will be $299 and it should be released in February.

Microsoft is continuing to develop its latest console, this time with an IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) update. Microsoft itself will not be providing the content that is available, this responsibility will instead fall upon existing providers, with AT&T rumoured to be one of these. Websites first started to report this last Saturday, but it has only just been confirmed by Microsoft, and they have not yet announced which providers will to be used. If the company chooses to allow users to record the content or uses video on demand, the rumoured 120GB hard drive now seems all the more likely. The Xbox 360 was already capable of streaming high definition video from a PC, but the console will now be capable of HD TV programmes directly through a broadband connection.

AMD today unveiled the ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner - the industry's first and only device that enables users to watch and record premium HD digital cable content, such as HD ESPN and HD HBO, on their PCs. The ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner turns a PC into a Personal Video Recorder (PVR) with easy to use Microsoft Windows Vista Media Center menus and interfaces. It is scheduled to be available starting January 30, 2007 inside desktop and notebook PCs from the industry's top PC manufacturers.

BBC Worldwide has announced that it plans to release many of its programmes for free viewing via file sharing. Anyone living in the US and using Azureus' Zudeo software will be able to download titles such as Little Britain, Doctor Who, Monty Python series and Red Dwarf. Zudeo is Azureus' version of YouTube (Zudeo it offers high definition videos), although they are most famous for their controversial BitTorrent software. The BBC said this move is part of a drive to reach the largest audience possible.

The TVPC is basically a laptop chassis built into a widescreen television. The flat panel, measuring 72 x 47 x 10cm, uses a 1.73GHz Celeron M 430 processor from Intel, 1GB of DDR2, a 160GB hard drive, and an Intel 945M chipset which uses the GMA950 for onboard graphics. It also has wireless internet built in, as well as a 14-in-1 memory card reader. The product should be available in South Korea for KRW1,850,000 ($2,004/£1,027/€1,533).

Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom - the founders of Skype, one of the largest companies in VoIP calling - are planning for a peer-to-peer IPTV service. About 6,000 users are already beta testing this service (codenamed the Venice Project) which is intended to allow people to share any videos that they own the copyright to, almost like a peer-to-peer YouTube. Although this is an interesting idea, many connections will be unable to handle the upload speeds that would be required if thousands of people were looking to stream the same video from a few users.

YouTube is both loved and hated in the corporate world. While some media companies threaten to sue YouTube for having pirated content hosted on it's site, others have struck deals with YouTube. Fox, Viacom, CBS and NBC Universal have decided to take a different route entirely. They will start their own website, and place on it all their various television shows. There is no mention whether the viewable content will be free to users or if these media companies will charge for the use of their website.