Toshiba Reveals Cell TV at CES

Thursday 08th January 2009, 11:32:00 PM, written by Carl Bender

For several years now Toshiba has been performing technology demonstrations at industry events highlighting the applicability of the Cell BE architecture to the consumer electronics space, with the promise of a future Cell-powered television a frequent refrain.  Originally, the technology was associated with the debut of Toshiba's SED flat-panel sets, but legal troubles surrounding the licensing of SED ensured that such a product would never materialize.

More recently in 2008, Toshiba launched their SpursEngine Cell-derived co-processor, as well as a slew of upscaling initiatives under various names across several product lines, including Resolution+, XDE, and Super Resolution.  Where the SpursEngine has seen use in the high-end Qosimo line of laptops, the upscaling features in the XDE line of DVD players and the US-bound SRT Regza's have been implemented thus far by non-Cell derived LSI's.  With CES 2009, however, Toshiba has finally unveiled their vision of a true Cell-based TV, aimed in their eyes at capturing the top-end of the HDTV market by offering several unique feature advantages over 'conventional' sets.

Driven by a wireless set-top box where the Cell processor is contained (and A/V sources received), the platform as presently spec'd will be capable of recording up to 6 HD streams simultaneously across 3TB of storage.  A Cell powered 3D UI will be used to access this stored (and other) content, with recorded programs appearing as video thumbnails suspended in space.  The Cell will additionally be used across all aspects of video processing in order to achieve what Toshiba is hopeful will be top-tier results in the space. 

For the LCD panels themselves, Toshiba is using locally dimmed LED backlighting, with their flagship 65" Cell TV set to feature a massive 4K resolution (4096x2160).  Featuring an advanced version of their Resolution+ algorithms, Toshiba highlights that the Cell TV will do an excellent job upscaling 1080p content to the full 4K resolution of the panels in question, and touts the strong abilities of the platform when handling SD material. 

Similarly to other TVs on display at CES this year, the Cell-equipped Toshibas include support for Internet-enabled Yahoo! TV widgets, as well as DLNA compliance and the ability to serve as Windows Media Extenders.  Pricing on these sets is presently unannounced, with a stated launch timeframe of Fall 2009. 

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