LCD vs. Plasma: Which HDTV Is Right for You?

LCD TVs may be sexy, but our lab tests show that plasma screens still have an edge--and you can get a surprisingly pleasing picture without splurging.

Looking to buy a flat-panel HDTV? Most people want big, of course--the bigger the better. But a 50-inch set could set you back a pretty penny. While a 40- or 42-inch display won't give you the 50-inch home movie theater sensation, it will provide a good-size screen at a considerably lower price. About as high as standard-shape 34-inch sets, but considerably wider, TVs in this category don't feel like much of a compromise.

We examined twelve of the latest 40- to 42-inch flat-panel TVs we could find to determine which ones give you the most for your money. Our test group consisted of five plasma sets (Hewlett-Packard's PL4272N, Panasonic's TH-42PZ700U, Pioneer's PDP-4280HD, Samsung's HP-T4264, and Vizio's VP42) and seven LCD sets (HP's LC4276N, LG's 42LB5D, Philips's 42PFL7432D/37, Samsung's LN-T4061, Sony's KDL-40V3000, Toshiba's 42HL167, and Vizio's GV42LF).

Our jury watched recorded television broadcasts as well as clips from DVD, Blu-ray, and HD DVD discs. We found that most of the the sets produced superb pictures most of the time. Because the sets' image-quality scores didn't vary much, the word "Good" appears frequently in our Top 10 chart for HDTVs.

But we also considered design, setup, on-screen menus, inputs, and extra features such as picture-in-picture and USB or memory card support. And of course, price is a significant variable: TVs have become an extremely competitive market. And since image quality wasn't a major point of differentiation with the sets in our roundup, price and features were much bigger factors in determining the sets' overall scores; those elements caused some low-priced sets to land high on the chart.

There were no standout winners, but Samsung's sets--one an LCD and one a plasma--captured the top two spots on our chart. They didn't give us the best pictures, but their sensible design, variety of options, and reasonable prices lifted them above the rest.

But if you're looking for the best picture regardless of cost, Panasonic's TH-42PV700U is the set to get; it's the first 42-inch 1080p plasma set. Still, Vizio's VP42 finished a very close second in image quality, and it costs just over half as much as the Panasonic.

It may well be that calibrating the sets using professional equipment connected to their RS232 or USB ports would have improved their output quality substantially. But who wants to pay $400 to calibrate a $1000 set? Most people won't do it--and that's why we adjusted the sets for our tests using only their on-screen controls.

Update: Apple plays hardball: Upgrade 'bricks' unlocked iPhones

The iPhone firmware update released Thursday by Apple Inc. has disabled unlocked iPhones and wiped clean any evidence of unauthorized third-party applications, users and developers reported.

On Monday, Apple warned customers that unlocked iPhones might be crippled, or "bricked," by the new upgrade. From reports posted by bloggers and iPhone owners, as well as at least one group of unlock hackers, it appears the company made good on its promise.

Before the update installs, it displays a security message -- the first time Apple has done this on iPhone upgrades -- that essentially repeats the Monday caution:

"Warning: Apple has discovered that some of the unauthorized unlocking programs available on the Internet may cause irreparable damage to the iPhone's software," the message read. "If you have modified your iPhone's software, applying this software update may result in your iPhone becoming permanently inoperable."

Owners of unlocked iPhones who proceeded with the update have filed somewhat conflicting reports, but the most credible accounts conclude that their devices are incapacitated. Jim Dalrymple, the news director of Computerworld sister publication MacWorld.com, reported that staffer iPhones restarted after the update with the message "Insert an unlocked and valid SIM to activate iPhone." Only the iPhone's ability to make emergency calls remained intact, Dalrymple said.

Other reports, including one filed by the Gizmodo Web site, essentially reached the same conclusion. "The update will work OK in unlocked iPhones, but it will return your iPhone to the activation screen," Gizmodo said. "From there, no activation is possible." Even inserting a legitimate, never-before-used SIM from AT&T does not bring back a post-update unlocked iPhone, concluded Gizmodo. "The phone isn't bricked, but if it can't read a SIM, it can't dial. So it's partially bricked."

iPhoneSIMFree, a group of unnamed developers who created the first commercial unlock hack, confirmed the bricking, but also contradicted the Gizmodo account on one crucial point. "If you are using an original activated AT&T SIM, you can activate and use the phone with no issues at all," the group said on its Web site today. "Unfortunately, currently there is no way to jailbreak/reactivate the phone for use with a SIM card other than the original AT&T card."

The 1.1.1 update also disables third-party applications installed on the iPhone using the popular Installer.app hack, numerous users said. Others noted that non-iTunes ring tones, also added to iPhones using end-around software, would not work.

For those who haven't unlocked or modified their iPhones, the 152MB update presented few problems. Among its prosaic components are access to the new iTunes Wi-Fi music store, a fix for the low speakerphone and receiver volume problem many users have reported, and the ability to view e-mail attachments in both portrait and landscape mode. Also included in the update are patches for 10 vulnerabilities, seven of which involve the iPhone's built-in Safari browser.

As of 8 p.m. EDT, the iPhone Dev Team, a group of developers who earlier this week called out Apple, saying that it would come up with a way to salvage any disabled iPhone, had not issued any statement on its Web site or on the Hackint0sh message forum.

It may be some time before the full impact of the 1.1.1 update on unlocked or "modded" iPhones is known, and if iPhoneSIMFree's take is any indication, an even longer time before a way around Apple's block is discovered.

"The thousands of open source developers who have put a cumulative 10s of thousands of man hours into various apps and tools now have no way to get them onto the phone as well," iPhoneSIMFree said today. "We are all looking into the jailbreak issue as it affects us all, and we will keep updating our site as well as the open source community at large with any information we can about this."

Hitachi may sell stake in hard drive unit, sources say

Japan's Hitachi Ltd. is mulling options for its ailing hard disk drive business, including bringing in a strategic investor to turn the business around, sources close to the matter said.

Hitachi, Japan's biggest electronics conglomerate, has not posted a profit in its hard disk drive business in any year since buying it from IBM for $2 billion in 2002 (see "IBM to consolidate hard drive business with Hitachi").

According to several financial industry sources, investment firm Merrill Lynch has sounded out private equity funds that may be interested in the unit.

The Carlyle Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Bain Capital LLC and Silver Lake Partners are among the funds cited as possible investors, the sources said.

Hitachi may seek a fund to buy an equity stake in the hard disk drive business and then work with the fund to help revive it, one financial industry source said.

It was not immediately clear whether Hitachi would look to sell the entire business or just part of it.

"The negotiations have just started. It is unclear what the outcome will be," said one source.

Merrill Lynch Japan Securities spokesman Tsukasa Noda said he could not confirm whether the bank was involved in any such deal.

A Hitachi spokesperson declined to comment.

Hitachi's hard disk drive unit lost $375 million in 2006, a 60% bigger loss from the previous year, hurt by sliding prices for drives as laptop makers turn to flash memory drives for cooler and faster storage.

The Tokyo-based company, which holds a little less than 20% of the global hard disk drive market, trails industry leaders Seagate Technology LLC and Western Digital Corp., which have been profitable despite aggressive notebook computer pricing.

Hitachi has promised its hard drives would be profitable this year, and has said it would close a hard disk drive parts factory in Mexico and cut 4,500 jobs by the end of 2008.

Hitachi, a sprawling conglomerate whose products range from nuclear turbines to washing machines, has vowed to sharpen its focus to ensure long-term profit growth in the wake of a $285.8 million group net loss in the past business year.

Its announcement in March that it would sell its stake in Japan Servo Co. to precision motor maker Nidec Corp. had fueled speculation among investors that it might do the same with other struggling units.

But Hitachi had said just a few months ago that it had no plans to withdraw from hard drives or from flat TVs, which have also been losing money because of tough price competition.

"We are not raising a flag of surrender," Toyoaki Nakamura, Hitachi's chief financial officer, told a news conference in May.

"We haven't given up on returning these businesses to profitability. We are not considering withdrawing from these businesses," he said.

Talk of a possible deal involving Hitachi's hard drive business comes as consolidation within the industry gathers pace.

Japanese electronics parts maker TDK Corp. agreed earlier this year to take over rival Alps Electric Co.'s business in hard drive heads, which are used to read and write data on the disks.

Alps decided to exit the market when orders dwindled from customer Maxtor following its acquisition by Seagate last year.

Superfast USB 3.0 spec races toward 2008 debut

A group of major technology vendors last week unveiled the USB 3.0 Promoter Group, which will oversee the development of specifications for Version 3.0 of the high-performance Universal Serial Bus (USB). The consortium was announced at Intel Corp.'s annual Developers Forum in San Francisco.

The USB 3.0 standard is expected to be finalized in the first half of 2008, according to members of the group, which includes Intel, Microsoft Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., NEC Corp., NXP Semiconductors and Texas Instruments Inc.

Jeff Ravencraft, USB 3.0 Promoter Group chair and a technology strategist at Intel, said the group hopes the new version of the standard upgrades USB performance by up to 10 times. For example, Ravencraft said that he expects that USB 3.0 will enable a 27GB high-definition movie to be downloaded in roughly 70 seconds, a dramatic improvement over the 14 to 15 minutes it takes to download the same size movie using the current USB version.

The new specification will be backward-compatible with USB 2.0, he noted.

Ravencraft said the group plans to take several steps to boost the performance, including the creation of a new architecture that would replace the current polled-device technology, which continually polls devices to determine whether traffic exists. The architecture for USB 3.0 will let a device remain in an idle state until traffic appears on the network, he said.

The design plan of USB 3.0 will also include a focus on maximizing power efficiency to ensure longer battery life, Ravencraft added.

Ravencraft said the upgrades are vital due to a surge in the use of portable mobile devices and to the exploding demand for the ability to share content. The new specifications will aim to help IT vendors satisfy emerging storage formats and to keep pace with high-speed data delivery expectations, he added.

"There are emerging applications in flash areas that will benefit from higher-performing capabilities," he said. "We're looking to see where technology is going, and we need to start building a highway to intercept that, because we don't want USB to be the bottleneck."

In a statement, USB standards group executives said they expect work on products that meet the new standard to begin shortly after work on the standard is finished early next year, with products expected to start coming out by late 2009. Broad deployment of USB 3.0 is targeted for 2010, the executives said.

Seagate: Vista OS requires 250GB to 1TB of storage

September 24, 2007 (IDG News Service) -- Looking to change computer storage from a commodity to competitive differentiator, hard drive manufacturer Seagate Technology LLC launched a new set of tools today to help its channel partners change the way they take storage to market.

The vendor sees an increasing demand for storage driven primarily by two trends: the increased storage demands of the Windows Vista operating system and the advent of the digital pack rat, who stores ever-increasing amounts of songs, pictures and videos.

Consequently says Pete Steege, Seagate's senior marketing manager, storage is playing an increasingly larger role for system builders.

"We're seeing a couple of trends in the market adding up to real opportunity for solution providers that we're taking advantage of," said Steege.

The hard drive has gone from an afterthought, says Steege, to the heart of the machine. Calling Vista the "poster child for storage" he says users need 250GB to 1TB of storage to fully leverage the operating system. And with the need for backup, that becomes 500GB to 2TB. Seagate's offering in this higher-end space is the Barracuda 7200.11, its new 1TB drive (see " Unfashionably late: Seagate, Samsung unveil 1TB hard disk drives").

"We want to equip solution providers with some solution-selling tools and a program they're used to getting from longer-term vendors like Intel, AMD and Microsoft," said Steege. "We now see the opportunity to help them like that from a hard drive perspective."

Seagate's goal, he said, is to provide partners with tools to help them sell higher-value systems by offering the right storage option for the intended use.

Dubbed "Learn, Market, Sell" the program is a comprehensive set of tools to help partners assess their customers' storage needs and offer them storage options that will meet those needs. It also includes marketing tips, support and collateral to help them go to market more easily.

"It gives them a chance to use storage like they really haven't before -- to use it as a differentiator," said Steege.

In the Learn category, partners will have access to white papers and case studies, training webinars and a solution guide to help them choose the right product for the right scenario. The scenarios feature various types of users -- including the power user, the mobile user, the videophile and even IT professionals who need officewide deployments -- with appropriate hardware recommendations for each.

The Marketing category includes e-mail templates, print ads, Web and banner ads, direct-mail materials, flyers and other customizable marketing materials.

The Sell category includes call scripts and sales and technical support as well as targeted promotions.

"This isn't rocket science. We understand other firms have done this in the past," said Steege. "We believe we're the first in the hard drive industry to do this, though, to take advantage of the new value of storage."