Perfect visual experience

The range of innovative audio-visual products on show at Gitex reflects the future of television viewing

Over the decades, TV has been subject to many developments including innovation of colour, launch of cable and satellite, the move to digital, and much more.

In recent years, this pace of development has been more rapid, and further progressions in technology are bound to follow.

A glance at the new audio-visual products being showcased at Gitex this year is indicative of the future changes that are already surfacing in the world of television viewing.

Focusing on its range of 32" to 42" LCDs and 42" plasma televisions at the show, Toshiba has introduced Meta Brain, its new TV technology that combines five core picture enhancement technologies to give an added dimension in visual experience, says M.U. Ganapathy, National Sales Manager, Consumer Electronics Division, Al-Futtaim Electronics, Dubai.

"These include active picture enhancement to create an almost 3-dimensional depth and clarity; total digital noise reduction; optimal luma enhancement that reproduces clearer images with natural contrast transition; motion adaptive de-interlacing for smooth, fluid results; and a one-step digital process for both analogue and digital inputs," he says.

Aesthetic designs

"Samsung's chief attraction at Gitex will be the world's largest production plasma at 80"," says Ashraf Sajid, Senior Manager, Sales and Marketing, Samsung Gulf Electronics, Dubai.

"The brand will also feature its DLP sets ranging from 42" to 67" where state-of-the-art technologies combine with a perfect aesthetic design to provide harmonious space settings."

"The newly launched Samsung models - 42", 50" and 63" - in the plasma segment boast a number of enhancements such as 549.8 billion vibrant colours, 1,500cd/m2 brightness, 10,000:1 contrast ratio, a horizontal viewing angle of more than 175 degrees and theatre-quality surround sound experience through a seamless integration of five speakers and a sub woofer system," says Sajid.

Samsung also offers 63" and 50" versions of its wide-screen plasma HDTVs that feature high-definition progressive resolution, superior colour vividness, and precise video playback.

In its new line-up of next-generation LCD TVs, Samsung offers a choice of eight sizes ranging from 15" to 46".

"These use an extensive composition of 3.2 billion colours thereby offering consumers a more natural and vivid picture that is much closer to the original source image," says Sajid.

"The new line-up also includes HDMI inputs to eliminate any signal loss for an exceptionally good picture quality."

Samsung has taken yet another step forward in technology advancement with the launch of the SlimFit CRT (cathode ray tube) television.

"This new wide-screen HD ready television offers the ultimate combinations of screen size and picture resolution. Aesthetically, it is similar to an LCD or plasma TV that are capable of displaying at resolutions of 1080i images.

"It also gives 150mm space benefit with a depth size of 412mm as compared to a current colour TV which has a depth of 561mm," says Sajid.

"Hitachi will unveil four new models of plasma television and five new models in the LCD range at this Gitex," says C. Patra, Deputy General Manager, E&A Business Group, Eros Group, Dubai.

"The Hitachi 42" model 42PD8800 A3 ALIS PDP TV with 68.6 billion colours offers a 1024x1024 pixel resolution. Other distinctive features of this model include a panel brightness of 1400cd/m2 and two HDMI signal inputs."

Attractive prices

The Hitachi 42" VGA PDP TV, on the other hand, has a pixel size of 852x480 with a brightness level of 1,500cd/m2, 16.7 million colours, and a contrast ration of 10,000:1, he says.

"We are quite bullish about BenQ at Gitex this year, and have a line-up of 20", 26" and 32" LCD TVs. We will be launching a BenQ 37" LCD too at very attractive prices," Patra says.

LG's 71-inch plasma display TV is a high-definition TV with an aspect ratio of 16:9 and an embedded picture-enhancement chip XD engine.

With a stunning resolution of 1920x1080 (full HD), the TV boasts a brightness of 800cd/m2 and contrast of 1200:1, view angle of minimum 160 degrees and 16.7 million colours.

The unit comes with six speakers and produces an incredible sound output of 15W x 2, with four different options for sound mode - flat, music, movie, and sports.

Additional features include an auto/manual clock, child lock, auto configuration and scre