consumer electronics

The Ray Super Remote wants to declutter your coffee table and become the central nervous system of all of your home entertainment systems. The touch-screen device, released Tuesday, is designed to control TVs, cable boxes, DVRs, video game consoles and Internet streaming players such as Roku and Apple TV. What’s more, it runs on software that learns viewers’ preferences so it can list programs suited to personal interests.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co. has started domestic sales of high-end televisions powered by its Tizen operating system and plans to add washing […]

Traditional TV is far from dead, but these days viewers care less about watching shows live and even prefer saving certain series to watch all at once in an evening or weekend of binge-watching. Online video will account for a third of all video viewing in 2020, up from about 10% in 2013, predicts The Diffusion Group, a research firm that specializes in Internet video. So how to keep the television set, that focal point of the American living room for decades, relevant? Design for online video.

Forget the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Netflix said today at the International CES consumer electronics confab, that it will start to endorse TV sets “to help consumers identify televisions built for a superior Internet TV experience.”

CES 2015 kicked off on Sunday afternoon with an overview of the state of the consumer electronics industry given by Shawn Dubravac, CEA chief economist, and Steve Koenig, CEA, director, industry analysis. Koenig focused on the economic side of things, announcing that the global tech marketplace rose about one percent in 2014 to just above $1 trillion. As for 2015, expect mature markets to be down 9% and developing markets to be up 11% and simply lead spending as a result of population growth.

After 10 years and more than $7 billion in losses, Sony Corp. ’s television unit is poised to again post an annual profit. But the question remains: Is the once-proud business really worth keeping? Masashi Imamura, who oversees the TV division, says there is still value in it for Japan’s most famous consumer-electronics company, even at a time when traditional television viewing is losing out to other kinds of digital content, and low-cost upstarts like Vizio Inc. of the U.S. and Hisense Co. of China have undercut established TV manufacturers.

TiVo and SlingTV can add to the TV watching experience. Here’s a look at what each does — and why you might want both.

Shipments of 4K televisions jumped more than 500% last quarter as overall global TV shipments rebounded, according to a new report from DisplaySearch. More than 3 million 4K televisions, also called Ultra HD televisions, shipped to retail outlets during the third quarter, bringing total shipments for 2014 up to 6.4 million

TiVo is expected to unveil on Tuesday a new DVR that can record 26,000 hours  — or three years’ worth — of standard-definition TV programming. It can record about 4,000 hours in HD. The DVR is called TiVo Mega and will cost interested TV fans $5,000

The world’s largest electronics chain has teamed up with Samsung and Sony to open in-store showrooms staffed with Blue Shirts trained to tout the merits of ultra-high-definition, or 4K, technology, which generates a picture four times sharper than existing HDTVs. The question for Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly is whether the pricey innovation will jump-start a wave of home-theater upgrades the way flat-panel TVs did last decade — or wind up a flop like 3D sets.

The new SlingTV is identical to the Slingbox 500 currently on the market, but with new software to recommend things to watch. On the living-room TV, you can see scores and stats for games currently on TV, along with a guide to what’s exciting at the moment, such as a team making a comeback. The new software will also give you more information on movies and TV shows. Because the box still can’t record shows, the Slingbox’s biggest appeal will likely remain in remote viewing — both when traveling and on devices in other rooms.

This universal remote is shaped like a Star Trek phaser, complete with authentic sounds from the show.

Americans increasingly are replacing their once-enviable 50-inch TVs with even bigger screens. Think: 65 inches and up. People are snagging big screens — pushing sales of them up 50% in the past year while overall TV sales have faltered. As prices fall, hardcore TV watchers and video gamers are finding sets affordable that a few years ago would have been playthings for wealthier people.

Samsung and Sony are escalating their fight for the attention — and dollars — of TV buyers. Both electronics giants will open up special areas in Best Buy stores to showcase 4K TVs and other home entertainment products. Sony arguably has home-field advantage, given its long legacy as a premium TV manufacturer. Samsung, however, is the No. 1 TV vendor in the world, and this new partnership can only help cement that position.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Sony Corp. says it is closing about two-thirds of its U.S. Sony Stores is part of a wide-ranging company restructuring it announced earlier this month. It […]

Manufacturers do their best to fuel excitement over 4K TVs at International CES — with decidedly mixed results.

It’s the first TV format to be driven by the Internet video-streaming phenomenon, and at the International CES gadget show this week, major streaming players Netflix and Amazon said they’ll offer movies and TV shows in the format, and Sharp introduced a relatively inexpensive TV with near-Ultra HD quality.

New Internet-based entertainment services, including a streaming game service and a cloud-based TV service, highlighted Sony’s Tuesday morning keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show.

There’s a battle being waged for that much-maligned piece of furniture we all end up in front of sooner or later. Call it the Idiot Box, the Boob Tube or whatever you want — the majority of media consumption still happens in front of the television, and whether it’s gaming, movie watching, Netflix or just listening to the stereo, tech giants are fighting tooth and nail for a seat on your couch. Here’s what they’re bringing to the party.

Netflix exec Reed Hastings says 4K streaming is “very practical with HEVC compression.”