One of the most talked about things at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show was that manufacturers are apparently about to revolutionize television. By the end of the year, TV experience may be totally different from what we’re used to. Be prepared because big companies are planning on combining this old device we thought was fading away slowly but surely with something as up to date as possible: social networking, gaming and many others.

After hearing about giants such as MySpace, Google or Apple trying to replace TV, it seems that others are looking to bring it back to life. If you were skeptic about such a project coming to life after the still unachieved May 2010 promised by Google to launch Google TV, don’t worry. Samsung, LG, Sony and even Lenovo, among others, are here to tell us it’s going to happen. No matter what one would like to say, television has evolved a lot this century, from mechanical sets to Internet TV.

Smart TV, Preparing the Transition Towards Smart Homes

While competition will consist in whether companies will be able to bring high quality application straight to the TV set in your living room and whether TVs will support tablets, Samsung appears to be on the right track: they are planning to make TV experience much easier by working on a way to change the channel or the settings by speaking or simply by moving our hands. And that’s not all. Samsung may have been keeping all this on the low so they can strike back and hit hard: the company is planning to release its transparent Smart Window.

It’s an LCD screen which allows you to browse through your friend’s Facebook pages, find out what the weather’s like, set different background pictures such as an exotic island or a vacation cabin in the mountains, or you can just close the blinds by a mere hand gesture if you feel like getting some z’s. Not many technical details were given at CES this week but LG has stated they will launch 2 Google TV sets by the end of 2012 and that both will use a homegrown quadcore ARM chipset.

Out of all the names set out to release the smart TVs, we must admit that Lenovo is the most surprising one. One doesn’t really think of Lenovo when talking about television, don’t they? Well, believe it or not, Lenovo’s Android based K91 may just be the most promising of them all, even though we’ll probably have to wait a little before we get our hands on it since it’s originally planned to be released exclusively in China. We can all agree on the fact that all of this is nothing short of amazing, but let’s face facts: if you thought manufacturers were laughing all the way to the bank off of your new LED high definition TV or your new plasma, just wait and see what one of these babies will cost…

via WashingtonPost