Featured Articles & Reviews

This week we're reviewing an Acer S271HL LED Monitor. At Audioholics we've looked at a lot of televisions and projectors, but we're finding that more and more, it's the flat panel monitor that's making it's way into bedrooms and dorms across the country. Given the lightweight nature of these new flat panels, and the ever increasing quality with which they're made, it's no wonder that thousands of consumers are reaching for monitors instead of TVs.

There are three things I honestly look at when shopping for TVs: picture quality, features, and the TV's overall look. If you can find a TV that has the features you need, looks good and, well... looks good, then you're really in good shape - of course, you're typically going to have to pay for it as well. Sony's XBR series TVs have always been fascinating to us because they represented the best the company has to offer. Back in the day you simply couldn't find a better TV than an XBR Trinitron. Nowadays Sony has a lot more competition, but the XBR line is still their cream of the crop.

Acer has been doing some remarkable things lately in the world of laptops, but this week they announced five new ultra slim LED-backlight displays. While they've been in the display market for some time, these new displays, available in 20-, 23- or 27-inches and with adjustable tilt bases, offer incredibly slim profiles and sleek contemporary designs. They're also packed with top-of-the line features and technologies. Designed with viewing family photos and videos in mind, the displays are perfect for both watching the latest DVDs/movies, as well as for business applications that require excellent resolution, contrast ratios and graphics performance.

Wanna buy a $40,000 42" LCD display? Dolby's got one for you with their PRM-4200 Professional Reference Monitor. Now before you get all bent out of shape and assume Dolby just designed a TV with monstrous markups, realize that this is a super-accurate monitor designed for use in reference video houses across the country... not your living room. Dolby uses a patented dual-modulation display technology to produce images of the highest quality possible on this flat-panel monitor. They are so confident in its abilities, in fact, that they are dubbing it as "the first flat panel to surpass the CRT". Dolby is hoping that its Professional Reference Monitor is destined to become the industry-standard reference monitor. Given the lack of competition, it probably will, though there won't be a whole lot of them out on the market.

While the 55", 4k, glasses-free 3d, back lit LED display stole the show, Toshiba is looking to catch the attention of those without $10,000 burning a hole in their pocket with their new LED lineup. The edge lit displays should impress with their thin profile, the back lit LED with its deep blacks, and the new Aero Family aesthetics and Audyssey Sound Enhancement features should give consumers reason enough to give Toshiba another look. While none of the features of the LED line up are all that spectacular (120Hz, no 3d, etc.), if the prices are right, they may be big sellers. We'll have a wait a few months to find out.

LG finally jumped into the Google TV bandwagon at CES 2012, bringing the familiarity of Google's Android OS to the convenience and tiled interface of its 3D and Smart TVs. Together, the combination offers consumers a new and attractive home entertainment option, not to mention a ton of streaming media and online content options. Possibly the nicest aspect of LG's implementation of Google TV is the mixing of its Android-based user interface with the Magic Remote Qwerty. LG's Google TV user interface and main screen have been designed for convenient browsing and content selection and the latest iteration allows for multitasking, so search, social networking and TV functions can be run simultaneously. The user interface can be directly accessed using the Magic Remote Qwerty which, as the name implies, combines the user-friendly benefits of LG’s Magic Remote with a QWERTY keyboard.

LG Electronics is touting its new Cinema Screen design at the 2012 CES and it is, in a word: fabulous. I don't think I've ever used that word in a sentence before, but I don't know how else to describe a 1mm thin bezel that truly gives a flat panel LED backlit TV the appearance of a true edge-to-edge display. This is something really new and it's got people all riled up and really interested. What's really exciting is that several of LG's high end 2012 Cinema Screen Smart TV models are going to look like this. In fact, so far there are three models that include the 1mm thin bezel, but more are certain to come. All of these TVs are 3D and the company has also released new Cinema 3D glasses for 2012. There are three models and they are 20 percent lighter than previous Iterations. Now if only they could "lighten" the obligatory 3D headaches...

LG Electronics unveiled "the future of home entertainment" - and you know what, we'd have to agree. I know, OLED has been rearing its head for years, but both LG and Samsung have all but promised large-format models that will come out this year. The 2012 CES was where LG chose to reveal (literally at the very end of their press event) their new 55EM9600 55-inch OLED HDTV. The new TV is incredibly thin - just 4mm, in fact and is powered by LG’s TRIPLE XD Engine. Picture quality has been pretty advanced with LED backlit TVs - and it's only been getting better, but OLED ups the ante, with self-lighted organic pixels. This means that OLED TVs can exhibit precise color, absolute contrast and blazing clarity. LG gives the 55EM9600 OLED TV a contrast ratio of over 100,000,000:1, claiming it is fifty times greater than that of LED/LCD display panels. Honestly, the point is that the pixels, when of are, well... OFF. So the contrast ration is actually infinite - in which case they might as say the ratio is a google-to-one (I mean, why not?)

OLED is here... well, almost here. Samsung and LG have both released new OLED televisions. Of course, since LG released OLED, Samsung has released/announced "Super OLED". That's super better than plain-old OLED, we suppose. The OLED TV will be produced from a single pane of glass and uses Samsung’s Super OLED technology to deliver the ultimate in picture quality and thinness. And it is super thin - just around 1/4" thin at it's smallest point. In all seriousness, there is an element to the "Super" designation in Super OLED. Samsung's version has apparently eliminated the need for a color filter as the OLED pixel unit comprises self-emitting RGB sub-pixels laid directly on the display panel.