Smart TV is the buzz word for 2011 in TV’s – however LG yesterday hit the ball out of the park with their 2011 product launch.  You see it wasn’t JUST about ‘Smart TV’, it wasn’t a few simple innovations, they had some real concepts of worth on show.

When the announcements began and the death by powerpoint was started, it was all doom and gloom – telling us how bad 3D is (or now was), but as a user of an LG TV which is 3D I found this quite off putting.  Fortunately, I won my TV so don’t have price remorse, but people in the last year have shelled out thousands of dollars for these screens and now we’re being told they realise how bad it was?

Click Continue Reading for my thoughts on 2011 for LG TV…

But to LG’s credit, they are just being honest.  People thought the 3D was headache inducing, dull picture and the glasses were stupidly expensive.

How on earth do you fix that then?  Well it seems LG have jumped into the Cinema’s around the world and realised there was a revolution going on – people there were watching 3D with these cheap plastic glasses – how was this possible?  LG engineers must have worked hard and discovered that they too can produce a 3D picture within cheap plastic glasses.

So what can you expect from a 2011 LG ‘Cinema 3D’ set?

  • Stunning pictures – the brightness and colour is noticeably better in this new 3D than in last years model.
  • No flickering – it’s funny how much you notice it when you put those battery powered $199 glasses to watch ‘old 3D’ – the flickering (which is how it achieves the 3D effect) is just what causes the headaches!
  • CHEAP GLASSES – $19 for 2 pairs to be precise.

The glasses question is what will put LG at the top of the tree for 3D in 2011 – a family buys a 3D Tv to share, not to hog to them selves.

Plus, with the benefit of a better wider viewing angle for 3D you can have 10 mates around watching the footy or a movie in 3D all for $100 worth of glasses, that’s half the price of ONE pair in the old scale!

And I haven’t even mentioned the advance in 2D upscaling – It’s so good you might just want to watch 3D more often!

I can’t overstate how impressed I was with this technology.  I’m a 3D hater!  And a little bit of me died inside knowing this COULD actually be a mass market consumer technology.

Added to the 3D announcements yesterday, LG launched their new ‘Smart TV’ dashboard which is clean, easy to use and keeps the TV you’re watching in picture while you choose your app.

NRL and AFL Game analyser apps have been added, along with some on demand content from Fox Sports.

But wait, there’s more.

Two things.

The magic remote – well that’s what I’m calling it – is a wand type device with just 7 buttons, and you just point it at icons to click them on your screen – impressive and easy to use.

and Secondly, the ‘set top box’ for Smart TV – so no matter what TV you have, you can add the LG Smart TV options to it with a simple Set Top Box.

All impressive stuff, and a real challenge to Market leader Samsung.