Gadgets and just Gadgets

Hitachi’s LCD TVs: Wooo UT-series with UWB wireless

At this point, we’ve certainly seen thinner LCDs announced by Sharp, Samsung, and LG.Philips. However, Hitachi is first — the world’s first — to roll their relative 35-mm (1.37-inch) fatties out for production. The Wooo UT series announced this morning in Japan features a pair of 1080p sets measuring 42- or 37-inches with a lowly 32-incher throttling things back to a 1,366 x 768 pixel resolution. All feature just a single HDMI input, D-Sub 15 analog-in for your legacy PC, at least a 450cd/m2 brightness, 178-degree viewing angle, and 120Hz IPS panel wrapped in a bezel just 35-mm thick.A 768-line 32″ and 1080p 37″ and 42″ models all measuring 1.5″ thick will be shipping in the US next year, the little one appearing in the spring, while the other two will hit stores in the second quarter. Hitachi won’t talk specs or US pricing, though they say it’s a luxury, early-adopter product, so think expensive. There are some sexy features :

• Hitachi used automotive technology to build the radiant beveled edge with a translucent back-coating of metallic paint. In Japan the metallic paint may be red, blue, white or other colors; in the US, it will be silver.

• Ventilation engineering came from Hitachi’s mainframe division: the system is called “airflow analytic design” and it helps the TV achieve ultra-quiet no-fan cooling.

• The bulb in the Ultra Thin series is an external electric fluorescent light (EEFL) which is apparently more efficient than CCFL and can provide a better color range than white LEDs.

Tags: hitachi, ultra thin TV, TV, luxury, HDMI input, LCD, Wooo, UT series