120Hz is for suckers

The intro music to the TV section of the CES press conference was “It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine).”

While they surely meant to concentrate on the end of that line, the irony was perhaps a little hidden.

Regardless, they had a bunch of TVs to announce.

The interesting ones (as in not those that were tiny or pregnant with DVD players), were the ZV series and the SV series.

The ZV series has 240Hz Effect, which is a 120 Hz display with a scanning backlight to create a pseudo-240Hz display. This is a great idea, and like other similar technologies we’ll see at the show this week, this should go even further to minimize the motion blurring with LCDs.

The ZV series will also be the first with Dolby Volume, that is like a fancy volume limiter, keeping commercials at the same level as programming. In addition, it brings up the volume of soft programming, and at lower volumes, changes the EQ so that lower volumes sound as good as higher volumes.

These will also have an Expert mode for calibrators. This mode will have gain and bias controls for RGB, as well as control of the backlight.

The SV series will have an “Infinity Flush Front” which has the screen flush with the bezel. This model line also has “FocaLight” which is Toshiba’s local dimming technology. They claim something like a zillion to one contrast ratio, which like all marketing contrast ratio numbers, is something of an exaggeration.

No prices were available.

ZV650 Series
42ZV650U (April)
47ZV650U (April)
52ZV650U (April)

SV670 Series
46SV670U (May)
55SV670U (May)

CONTACT: tacp.toshiba.com