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Fancy firing up Android apps on your telly? You could do just that with the LG’s Google TV, the first
telly to use the system announced for the UK.
Google TV puts Google in your gogglebox by using Android — Google’s mobile phone and tablet software — to run your telly. Sadly, although it’s the first to be officially confirmed for Britain, it won’t actually land in living rooms until 2013.
The TV features an Android-based user interface that you control with the Magic Remote Qwerty remote control. As the name suggests, it has a Qwerty keyboard so you can type and search easily on the web or social networks while still watching television.
LG is adding 3D to its Google TV range too. It’s the passive kind, which means you don’t have to charge the glasses, and the glasses themselves are much cheaper if you want to buy extra pairs. The TV will even convert normal programmes to 3D, although we’ve never seen that feature work properly.
LG’s Google TV takes a bow next week at the Consumer Electronics Show, the international gadget extravaganza in Las Vegas. LG is also preparing to show off a 55-inch OLED TV at the show, pictured above. TVs powered by organic light emitting diodes are thinner, brighter and easier to see than today’s TVs, even if you’re way off to one side, which LG claims is improved even further by adding a white pixel to the usual red, green and blue.
LG also reckons the telly will be the world’s largest OLED TV at 55 inches, but such claims are generally meaningless at CES: with so many manufacturers unveiling TVs in such close proximity you can’t throw a brick without hitting three “world’s largest” something-or-others.
OLED screens are shockingly thin and can be used for clever feats like bendy or even transparent displays, but they’re so pricey they’ve been limited in previous years to sizes closer to photo frames than actual watchable televisions. Now, LG claims the extra white pixels make the TV cheaper to produce. Still, while it’s good to finally see OLED televisions you could actually have in
your house, prices are expected to be as much as $10,000 in the US.
We’ll be at CES in Las Vegas gobbling up the latest gadgets and gizmos for your gratification. Keep your eyes on ces.cnet.com for videos, news, previews and more!
