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Panasonic TVs have been much loved by many for a while, and now the company is looking to refresh its smart TV interface.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
Firstly, however, let’s look at Panasonic’s tablets. The company has revealed not only a 20-inch tablet with a 4K display, but also the new seven-inch Toughpad FZ-M1, running Windows 8 on an Intel Core vPro processor.
Panasonic’s “Tough” heritage is definitely on display, with the company calling it the “toughest tablet on Earth”. During the press conference, the device was thrown around the stage with great abandon, garnering nary a scratch.
The 4K love continued with a new projector promising “beyond 4K” resolutions and something called the 4K OLED Video Wave. This is a business and enterprise product that consists of that consists of a 6.4-metre long selection of panels that are both convex and concave. According to Panasonic it will be “very affordable”.
Panasonic’s HX-A100 entered the wearable space in a slightly bizarre fashion. It’s a wearable action video camera with 4K recording, although we’re not sure how much action is could handle — the ear mounting doesn’t look totally dependable.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
In TVs, Panasonic surprised a few people by only announcing one 4K Ultra HD range, the TC-AX800U, in 58 and 65 inches. This is the successor to its 2013 UHD line-up.
The aforementioned new interface for TVs is Life+ Screens. Our colleague David Katzmaier had this to say after seeing the press conference:
The company’s biggest talking point for TVs at the show is its latest Smart TV interface design. Dubbed Life+ Screens, it seems destined to make Google+ seem like a raging success. Said to learn individual or family viewing preferences with the aid of a “My Button” on the remote control, it “uses program metadata together with advanced algorithms to present more appropriate recommendations”.
The system apparently presents the results in “My Stream,” an “individualised channel of content seamlessly personalised just for you, including content from different sources. This means that recommended films and shows from cable, terrestrial broadcast, and VOD are all presented within the same interface”. Samsung and LG both offered similar services last year, and in my reviews I found they were hardly game changers.
