CES Product Announcement: Toshiba's Cell TV Takes Center Stage

A number of companies have taken advantage of CES (News - Alert) in Las Vegas to launch new products and Toshiba did not disappoint. As PC World reported today, Toshiba (News - Alert) brought out its latest HDTV – the Cell TV. Expect to see this latest creation on the market in third or fourth quarter 2010.

Along with its companion media center set-top box, this new TV offers significant improvement in picture performance due to the product’s new proprietary eight-core processor, the Broadband Engine.

According to Toshiba officials, the Cell TV, offered in 46-, 55- and 65-inche models, has 10 times the processing power as most personal computers and is 143 times faster than most LCD TVs available on the market today. For the end user, these changes can offer a visual difference.

The 2D to 3D conversion is touted as one of the biggest benefits. The Cell TV is designed to take everything from 2D gaming and home video, process it, fill in the missing pixels and turn it into video that looks just like 3D.

At the same time, the TV uses its processing power to up-convert all video to 1080p 3D, while also connecting to the Internet to receive net video sources such as VUDU and Netflix. Noise canceling technology applied to the content enables the clean up of the noise and image distortion that is common to net video.

Toshiba’s announcement includes the claim that the Cell TV offers more brightness than any other TV and also offers 512 different zones that can separately adjust black and white levels while it is being watched.

Sensors built into the Cell TV analyze the light in the room to automatically set the contrast, brightness and other levels that contribute to the viewing experience. The “new” element to this feature is the detection of the “color temperature” to make the necessary adjustments.

The set-top box will also include a 1 terabyte hard drive for video storage, as well as a built-in Blu-ray disc player. After organizing all the video content on the home network, the box will communicate wirelessly with other devices in the home through 802.11n and DLNA.

In other Toshiba news, the company announced in November a new “entry level” unified messaging system geared for SMBs that allows companies to get their “feet wet” with unified communications at a more affordable price.