The rumors, frankly, sound extravagant, even fanciful:

• 60″ Apple HDTV
• 9.7″ Apple mini iTV for second screen experiences
• Apple iRing to wear and control your TV with gestures
• View content on your mini iTV up to 200 meters (656 feet) from your Apple HDTV
• Add up to four iTVs for each Apple HDTV
• Home security applications and integrations
• Video conference (FaceTime) and phone call integration
• Siri integration
• And yes, lest we forget, iWatch integration
• $1,500-2,500

Source: YankoDesign

An iPhone-controlling ring

They also sound very very cool and compelling, and perhaps just the thing Steve Jobs was talking about when he told biographer Walter Isaacson that he had “cracked” the essence of the TV experience.

According to White, who says he learned this information at least partially by checking with component suppliers in Asia, “the ‘iTV’ ecosystem represents a major innovation for the $100 billion LCD TV industry that will revolutionize the TV experience forever.”

That’s a mark in the rumor’s favor, actually, in two ways.

Apple needs to revolutionize something, soon. After the computer (arguable, I know), the phone (not so arguable), and the tablet, Apple needs new device markets to reinvent. While still huge and critical, the phone and tablet markets have major competition at lower price levels and similar sophistication levels, meaning that profits are going to be drained from that swamp.

With Apple stock at year-long lows and analysts attacking the company almost daily, Apple needs something to reinvigorate itself.

And, Apple needs to approach markets with an ecosystem point of view. That’s exactly what won it the smartphone market and tablet market, and that’s the only way to build a somewhat defensible moat against the competition that inevitably arrives in any hot new space.

That all said, there are major challenges here.

TV is a massive market, with massive competitors — including Apple arch-rival Samsung. And it depends heavily on wealthy, entrenched enterprises with interests in content creation and transmission … and interests in maintaining control of those activities. Even more of a challenge, the TV market is commoditized, with little profit on the device side.

In addition, these rumors have been coming for so long that an Apple HDTV is almost a joke. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, for one, has been predicting the Apple TV since 2009, continuing in 2012. We have yet to see the product, and it’s a challenging one to anticipate, not least because Apple has an Apple TV set-top product, which tends to cloud the waters in conversations with suppliers and analysts.

So a good dose of skepticism is well-advised.

But where there is smoke, there’s often fire. And, of course, Apple has done this before. The above description of the TV market would have been a pretty good view of the mobile market before iPhone. And, as someone who wants to see Apple tackle massive challenges and innovate hidebound industries, I hope the rumors are true.

Certainly the timing is right for a 2013 Black Friday and Christmas shopping schedule.

Image credit: YankoDesign; Hat tip: 9to5Mac

The upcoming PlayStation 4 could serve as one of your first gateways to 4K video content — just as the PlayStation 3 helped bring Blu-rays to the living room, and the PlayStation 2 did the same with DVDs.

Sony Electronics president and chief operating officer Phil Molyneux (above) hinted that the 4K service would make its way to the PS4 in an interview with the Verge last night. While it’s not exactly a confirmation, we can’t imagine Sony would keep a flagship video service off of its much-hyped new console. Molyneux announced Sony’s intention to create the first 4K distribution service at CES back in January.

4K offers four times the resolution of 1080p HD video, which is currently the highest resolution supported by TVs and Blu-rays today. The technology was one of the stars of CES — likely because the industry seems ready to move on from promoting 3D in the home. Broadcom announced a 4K gateway chip at CES that could make it easy for devices to manage massive 4K data streams.

Sony has already confirmed that the PS4 supports 4K resolution videos and photos, so the announcement doesn’t come as a huge surprise.

What is surprising, though, is how Sony is approaching the service. According to Molyneux, 4K movies will be around 100 gigabytes in size, depending on their length. In comparison, 1080p HD videos streamed via Netflix and iTunes are typically around 4 GB to 8 GB. He told the Verge that huge file sizes and typical broadband speed are “challenges that we have to work through. … We’ve got some very good ideas that will make that a comfortable consumer experience.”

He could be referring to overnight downloads for the 4K movie service, which the PlayStation 3 already offers when downloading large games. But that’s still a significant difference from the instant access consumers are expecting with services like Netflix and iTunes. A 100 GB download could take eight to 12 hours to download, and it could also quickly eat up your ISP’s bandwidth cap. It’s even less convenient than hopping in the car and finding a Redbox kiosk.

Perhaps Sony will come up with some method to alleviate the huge downloads. Molyneux said that work on new compression was in “active progress.” But even then, you’ll likely be looking at files around 50 GB to 70 GB.

I can’t imagine consumers will suffer through such an arduous process to view 4K video, especially when its benefits are difficult to see on TVs smaller than 60- to 80-inches. So not only will you need to buy a new TV to watch 4K content, it’ll also have to be somewhat massive (unless you opt for a projector setup). That’s why Samsung is so focused on its 85-inch and 110-inch 4K TV sets.

4K content certainly looks great, from what I’ve seen. But given that most people can’t even see the difference between 720p HD and 1080p on typical TV sets, 4K seems destined to be ignored by consumers. The headache around Sony’s 4K service certainly won’t help.

Photo: Dean Takahashi/VentureBeat

Beyond LCD, there’s OLED. The new display technology boasts brighter colors, thinner panels, and allows for longer battery life than LCDs — benefits that LG Display clearly has in mind as it ramps up its OLED HDTV panel investment.

LG Display announced today that it’s investing $655 million (706 billion won) on a new eight-generation OLED manufacturing line in a South Korean factory. The investment will kick off in the first quarter of this year, and LG Display expects mass production to begin in the first half of 2014, building 26,000 input sheets every month.

OLED display technology has been around for years, but so far difficulties in building the panels have relegated it mostly to mobile device screens. Being able to mass-produce large OLED panels would be a pretty big win for LG Display, as the OLED display market is expected to reach $19 billion by 2019, according to research firm DisplaySearch.

LG already offers a 55-inch OLED HDTV for around $12,000, but more steady production should drop the price of future OLED TVs. At CES over the past few years, we’ve seen OLED TV prototypes from competitors like Sony and Samsung.

LG Display will be using WRGB OLED technology in the new plant, which has a longer lifespan than other OLED tech.

LG Electronics owns 38 percent of its LG Display subsidiary, which was originally part of a joint venture with Philips Electronics.

Via Engadget

Drool now or drool later, but LG just announced more details about its 2013 TV lineup, which it will unveil at CES in a week.

For 2013 the Korean company is focusing on smart TV enhancements like Smart Home, melding TV and web with quick access to apps, content, news sites, and weather; and Magic Remote, which enables you to control your TV by pointing, Nintendo Wii-style, or scrolling, or gesturing, or simply talking to your TV to change the channel or search for programming.

LG is also enhancing what it calls Smart Sharing, which enables owners to transfer, mirror, or share content to and from smartphones, tablets, and other devices; and LG Cloud, which enables streaming content from just about anywhere.

All of which is interesting. But the real lust-worthy item on display is its 84-inch Ultra HD television, which just launched in late October.

This TV isn’t just room-dwarfingly gargantuan — it’s also got four times the resolution of standard high-definition TVs, with 3,840 horizontal pixels combining with 2,160 vertical pixels to provide a very sweet 8,294,400 pixels of silky-smooth video pleasure. That’s 3.1 million pixels more than in an Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display (although, of course, on a much bigger screen).

But get ready to hit up the boss for a raise — that 84-inch Ultra HD TV will set you back a budget-busting $20,000.

To drive all this wealth of pixels and new intelligence, LG is updating the brains of their TVs, boosting CPU speeds by 120 percent and GPUs by 300 percent, which it says will translate to clearer images.

You’ll need that extra power, since the new Ultra HD resolution is completely unsupported by any content recorded at such high quality, so the TV depends on upconverting to provide a semblance of what higher high-def would look like.

A couple other welcome notes: LG’s new “Cinema Screen” design ethos means smaller bezels, providing more TV with less frame, and a better 3D experience with less flicker.

We’ll have more on all the latest CES announcement as the VentureBeat team CES team hits the road for Las Vegas shortly.

IAC-backed television service Aereo recently announced that it’s reached a deal to bring the Bloomberg TV cable network to its lineup of available channels, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Aereo lets New York City residents watch free, locally broadcast HDTV channels (from local affiliate stations for ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CW, and others) on smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers. Aereo uses a tiny HD antenna the size of a dime to pick up the broadcast signal for each of its users, which makes it legal in the eyes of the law — much to the outrage of major entertainment companies. There’s also a DVR in the mix that lets users record up to 40 hours of content that can be streamed later.

Aereo’s deal with Bloomberg is significant because it’s the first cable channel to come to the service. Also, if more cable channels — such as those owned by Viacom like Comedy Central, MTV, and Spike –  sign deals to appear on Aereo, it could represent a new pay TV business model that costs consumers less money than cable and satellite TV while offering nearly all the same perks.

The average cable or satellite television subscriber pays over $100 per month, an amount that’s estimated to double by 2020. The bulk of those subscription fees are due to the forced inclusion of live sports programming that some people don’t even watch.

By contrast, Aereo has a flexible pricing structure that includes a $1 daily pass, $8 and $12 monthly passes, and an $80 annual plan. Those prices may rise as Aereo adds more cable channels to its lineup, but it’ll still be far less money than what most people are paying to their TV service provider right now. If Aereo did begin offering more live sports channels like the cable TV providers (something it hasn’t yet discussed), it could easily do so by offering a separate programming package for more money.

And although I doubt Aereo will ever offer channels in an à la carte pricing model (where you pick only the individual channels you want to pay for), the company does have plenty of potential to offer better programming packages than what’s offered by the likes of Comcast, DirecTV, Time Warner Cable, and AT&T Uverse.

Aereo’s Bloomberg TV deal may be a huge win for the service, but it still has some important legal hurdles to jump before it can truly become successful. Media company’s like News Corp./Fox, CBS, Walt Disney/ABC, and Comcast/NBCUniversal are currently suing Aereo, saying its use of  local HDTV broadcast signals (which provide free access to many TV channels if you have an HD antenna on your television set) is unfair and illegal. So far, both federal courts and groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation aren’t buying that argument, but a final ruling is expected in 2013.

The good news for online retailers is that a third of shoppers plan to spend more, according to FatWallet’s consumer survey of 600 consumers across the U.S, while 54 percent are planning to spend the same amount. And most shoppers — 62 percent —  believe they’re going to get the best deals of the holiday season at the beginning of next week.

(One caveat on those numbers: they’re based on a subset of consumers who plan to shop on Cyber Monday, so they likely de-emphasize those with skinnier wallets to begin with. On the other hand, of those who plan to shop online this Cyber Monday, only three-quarters said they did the same last year.)

50% of people are looking for toy deals on Cyber Monday

But it’s a bit surprising to see what people are looking to buy on Cyber Monday. It’s not technology, at least primarily. Here’s what people will be shopping for next week:

• 70%: clothing deals
• 50%: toy deals
• 34%: appliance deals
• 32%: tablet deals
• 32%: laptop deals
• 26%: HDTV deals
• 23%: smartphone deals
• 26%: other deals

Clothing, toys, and appliances. Ignoring the fact that the main point of Cyber Monday is online shopping, there’s not a lot of technology showing up … especially the traditional technology purchases such as computers, smartphones, TVs, and home stereo systems.

Which I guess is the good news for online retailers: online shopping is now truly widespread.

photo credit: Kevin Marks via photopin cc, spieri_sf via photopin cc

Forget “4K.” The next-generation high definition standard will be officially called “Ultra High Definition” when it hits homes, the Consumer Electronics Association announced yesterday.

Current HDTV displays top out at a resolution of 1080p, also known as “Full HDTV.” 4K is a standard currently being used in theaters, and from my experience it provides an almost film-like image quality to the big screen. When it comes to the home, though, it looks like the CEA is aiming for a more marketable and less technical term for the next big HD upgrade.

So what goes into Ultra HD? According to the CEA, it will sport a resolution of at least eight million active pixels, with a minimum size of 3,840 by 2,1060 pixels. Displays also need to maintain a 16 by 9 aspect ratio (the widescreen format that’s already required for HDTVs). Ultra HD devices have to include at least one digital input that can handle 4K video without upconversion.

For most consumers, though, Ultra HD may be more than they need. Current 1080p HDTVs work well up to 80 inches — so unless you go beyond that size, 4K isn’t really worth it for most viewing distances. Home theater gurus, for the most part, also feel that the idea of 4K TVs in the home is “stupid, stupid, stupid.”

The Ultra HD name is even more confusing considering that Japan’s NHK just received approval for “Ultra-High Definition TV” to describe 8K TVs. (Yup, you guessed it, 8K is the next step beyond 4K.) Now it seems like NHK may have to come up with a new way to describe its next-next gen technology.

We’ve dropped a line to CEA, asking them to explain some of this naming confusion.

Update:  A CEA representative clarified the UHD confusion, saying that the group was aware of the other next-gen HD names. They noted that CEA found market research for the Ultra HD name tested well with consumers, and that they understand the technology as something superior to current HD standards. They also added that manufacturers can add modifiers to clarify their products.

ITU chose the term Ultra High Definition for both 4K and 8K. NHK uses the brand Super Hi-Vision to refer to its 8k technology, a long term project not expected to be fielded until after 2020. Our UHD working group was aware of both of these terms.

CEA’s terminology is for consumers and manufacturers are free to add an additional modifier to our UHD nomenclature, such as UHD 4K, should they chose.

Sony, meanwhile,  is saying it will still use the 4K label alongside UHD. A Sony spokesperson sent us the following statement over e-mail:

Sony lauds the CEA’s efforts to come up with a common language to describe the next generation high-definition technology. However, to ensure clarity for consumers and delineate between today’s and tomorrow’s technology, Sony will continue to use the 4K moniker for its products and will market its future products as 4K ultra high-definition (4K UHD).

Above: LG’s 84-inch 4K TV.

Even though the next major successor to current HDTV technology is likely the 4K standard, which is currently being used in many digital theaters, an even higher quality standard has just been approved: Ultra-High Definition TV.

Japan’s NHK has been spearheading UHDTV with its 8K technology, and yesterday the International Telecommunication Union approved NHK’s standard, the Verge reports.

UHDTV sports an eye-blistering resolution of 7680 by 4320, a 120fps frame rate, and a wider array of colors. In comparison, modern HDTVs max out at 1080p quality (1920 by 1080, slightly lower than the 2K standard), and the 4K standard supports resolutions up to 4096 by 2072.

Basically, UHDTV is calling for an insane level of picture quality, and it will likely be years before 8K content is even available. It’s also arguable how necessary 8K resolutions will be in the home, where even the 4K standard may be overkill. At average viewing distances, current HDTV sets work well up to 80 inches, and the benefits of 4K sets will only be apparent beyond that size. That leaves little practical use for 8K UHDTV (unless you happen to have a movie theater in your den).

In the words of CNet’s TV reviewer Geoffrey Morrison, 4K TV sets are just “stupid, stupid, stupid.” That may make 8K TV sets downright idiotic.

Uppleva went on sale June 14 in Sweden and is set to go on sale in Berlin, Germany on July 2, GigaOM reports. Ikea has said select stores in Italy, Poland, and France will also get the TV, but it won’t reach the U.S. until 2013.

Ikea released a few more specs on the TV as it went on sale for the first time. It offers full 1080p HD video, is compatible with MP3, MP4, DivX HD, and JPEG files, and comes equipped with video-recording capabilities.

An eight gigabyte drive records videos DVR-style, so you can fast-forward and rewind live TV. It doesn’t have nearly as much room as a TiVo, but it’s a handy feature when you want to briefly pause a show. An optional wireless adapter that connects the smart TV to streaming services and Internet apps is sold separately for now but may become a standard feature in future models.

While the TV’s specs are all well and good, most of us want to know if the TV is an impressive electronic, or a hunk of junk. It looks like Uppleva falls into the latter description.

The TV’s quality is poor, with reviewers complaining of a noisy image and bad black levels, according to Swedish tech publication M3 (parsed by Gizmodo). The TV’s “smart” interface is slow and clumsy, and it struggles to respond to the remote control.

M3′s overall score for Uppleva is a five out of 10, not great for a TV and furniture set that costs $1,000. For $1,000, you could buy a much nicer TV and a decent piece of furniture to place it on, M3 and Gizmodo both point out.

Uppleva isn’t a complete disappointment though; the furniture piece is sturdy and easy to assemble. M3 also points out that the sound system is quite good. But sound without a clear picture is like Ikea meatballs without gravy and mashed potatoes — it’s not as complete or satisfying.

Ikea’s furniture is getting a nice new set of televisions built right into your living room set. The company released a video of the HDTVs in action today, saying it will help consumers envision their electronics in the home, and better hide cables.

Ikea announced this new product line, called Uppleva, early last month. It’s expected to hit the US sometime after this summer’s debut in Europe. At the time, Ikea was said to be working with Chinese Electronics manufacturer TCL Multimedia to create the HDTVs. Francis Cayouette, the designer for Uppleva, says that mounting the devices to the furniture allows the designers to be able to hide lots of the cumbersome burdens that come with electronics, such as cables. The furniture also has places for speakers, and hideaways for gaming consoles and DVRs.

A piece of furniture like this will run you 1,400 euros, or $1,700.

Cayouette also had a hand in designing the user interface on the television itself. Very much like Ikea’s design, it is minimalistic, with a row of icons on a home screen to control sound, image, and a number of other options. The remote has also been reduced to the most used buttons, with a flip out pad that houses buttons for less-used functions.

My biggest concern is how long the television’s life will be. I don’t know about you, but I’ve found Ikea furniture doesn’t survive moving homes very easily. Maybe there’s a way to take the television with you and leave the particle board behind?

Check out the video below:

via TechCrunch, Photoshopped image via Sean Ludwig

There’s still plenty of buzz surrounding a potential Apple TV set, and now Forrester analyst James McQuivey is offering his own speculation: Apple should avoid taking on the big-screen HDTVs already in our living rooms, and instead offer a complementary smaller screen

“Apple should sell the world’s first non-TV TV,” McQuivey wrote in a blog post yesterday. While I’ve seen more than  enough Apple television speculation for this lifetime, McQuivey’s report is particularly intriguing to me since it aligns with my predictions from last summer.

“An Apple television would most likely serve as a secondary television set — under 30 inches, and ideal for bedrooms, kitchens and college dorm rooms — instead of elbowing for attention in the living room,” I wrote, based on the fact that it would be easier for Apple to compete in the small TV arena, and that it wouldn’t compete directly with the existing Apple TV set-top box (which remains Apple’s gateway to large TV sets).

Now, McQuivey’s take:

Instead of selling a replacement for the TV you just bought, Apple should convince millions of Apple fans that they need a new screen in their lives. Call it the iHub, a 32-inch screen with touch, gesture, voice, and iPad control that can be hung on the wall wherever the family congregates for planning, talking, or eating — in more and more US homes, that room is the dining room or eat-in kitchen. By pushing developers to create apps that serve as the hub of family life – complete with shared calendars, photo and video viewers, and FaceTime for chatting with grandma – this non-TV TV could take off, ultimately positioning Apple to replace your 60-inch set once it’s ready to retire.

While we’ve seen reports pointing to Apple readying some sort of large-screened television, there’s still nothing concrete yet. That’s a good thing, since I still think a big-screen Apple television set would be a huge mistake. With Sony and many other electronics giants bleeding money from their HDTV businesses, it doesn’t make much sense for Apple to jump into that maelstrom.

Photo: Heather Kelly/VentureBeat

Citing low sales from its flat-panel TV business, Sharp announced a loss of $4.7 billion during the 2011 fiscal year – the largest net loss in the company’s history.

Sharp expects things will get worse before they get better, and predicts a further 18.7 percent drop of its TV business in the current year. However, the company expects to see growth and larger profits from its mobile-display business and is trying to focus its efforts on small screen sizes for mobile devices instead of large screens for HDTVs.

“In the second half, we think that we can become profitable again mainly through expected improved results in our displays for mobile devices,” Executive Managing Officer Tetsuo Onishi told reports at the Wall Street Journal.

In order to stay flush with cash, just last month Sharp jumped into bed with Hon Hai which bought a 46.5 percent of Sharp’s display business and 50 percent of LCD production at Sharp’s Sakai, Osako-based plant, for around $800 million.

Sharp is not the only Japanese consumer electronics manufacturer that has been struggling with profitability; Sony and Panasonic have both alluded to posting similar record annual losses when their reports come out next month. South Korean giants Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics dominate the market.

Image via Danijel Šivinjski/Flickr

The pressure is building on new Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai to shape up the electronics giant. The company announced this morning that it will see a record $6.4 billion loss for the 2012 fiscal year (which ended in March) due to a tax hit, double its past projected annual loss of $2.9 billion.

Rubbing salt into its wounds even further, a recent study by ABI Research has found that Samsung has toppled Sony when it comes to U.S. consumers looking to buy new HDTVs. 20 percent of consumers surveyed said they were eyeing Samsung televisions, while 19 percent were looking at Sony sets (down from 27 percent).

Sony reportedly plans to slash 10,000 jobs (6 percent of its work force) in an effort to regain profitability. Those planned cuts likely led to the sunnier side of today’s announcement, with the company forecasting an operating profit of $2.2 billion for the current year (ending March 2013).

It seems that this year will be a major transition period for Sony, as it tries to correct the mistakes of the past. The company tapped Kazuo Hirai as its new CEO back in February, who quickly laid out a plan to save Sony. Hirai unveiled his new One Sony restructuring last month, which aims to streamline the company’s innovation and focus it on gaming, mobile devices, and digital imaging.

It’s unclear how Sony will combat Samsung’s new lead in HDTVs, as the Korean company has focused heavily on creating quality displays and building the connected experience in its sets. Sony is looking to streamline its display efforts, but its Google TV partnership could lead to some interesting sets in the next year.

Sony missed out completely on the iPod era of portable music devices, so now it’s aiming to make up for lost time with a stronger lineup of smartphones, which it announced at the Mobile World Congress in February. Gaming is still a cash cow for the company, and it remains one of the better digital camera companies (I love my Sony NEX-5N), so the choice to emphasize its business around the company’s three hottest product categories seems wise.

Via Reuters; Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

The electronics company first debuted a 46-inch HDTV Boxee TV at CES 2011. The set was scheduled to hit retail stores by Q2 of 2011. Viewsonic cited high costs and lack of consumer interest as its rationale for pulling the plug on the product, reports Gigaom.

“Smart TV’ has not achieved the consumer acceptance or market expectation that was forecasted over the last couple years. Our current strategy is to stay involved with the various technology developments and consider them in the future as they become available,” Viewsonic said in a statement about its decision.

The elimination of a Boxee TV set is a minor setback for the company, which is striving to get its media center software on more devices. And while the HDTV-integrated product is dead, the Iomega Network Attached Storage (NAS) device with Boxee integration is still scheduled to debut in October 2011.

Recently, Boxee beefed up its desktop computer software in the latest upgrade and added an iPad app to its line up of connected devices. The company will also continue producing its streaming video set-top box product.

Image via Engadget

Best Buy, the nation’s largest gadget retailer, hopes to capture more margin in the increasingly competitive electronics business by selling its own equipment under Best Buy’s house brand, rather than selling more gadgets under a manufacturer brand name such as Sony or Samsung. It’s a strategy that has been working for a while.

This TV will be the first to use Tivo’s design interface, giving Best Buy’s customers a user interface that is well-known as a good way for browsing for shows and watching TV, without a TiVo subscription.

The TV will be available in 32-inch and 42-inch models for $499 and $699 respectively at BestBuy.com and Best Buy stores nationwide. The TVs offer a variety of ways to access movies over the web, such as Netflix, CinemaNow and YouTube. It also has applications such as Pandora, Napster, Facebook, Twitter and Photobucket.

Minneapolis-based Best Buy developed the Insignia TV from the ground up, focusing on the ease of setting it up and ease of use, said Patrick McGinnis, vice president of exclusive brands at Best Buy.

“We’ve heard from customers that smart TVs can be intimidating,” McGinnis said.

Tivo, which once focused on selling or licensing its own digital video recorders, is now licensing its user interface to other parties. Jim Denney, general manager and vice president of product marketing at Tivo, said his company collaborated with Best Buy on the design. The Insignia Connected TV also comes with applications from the popular Chumby content platform, which is used in gadgets like Sony’s connected alarm clocks.

Chumby is the way that the TV accesses apps such as Twitter, Facebook, Photobucket, Accuweather, Reuters News and Sports, stocks and traffic. People can customize their experience by selecting additional content from the Chumby network, which supports hundreds of applications.

The TV has a light-emitting diode (LED) screen running at 1080p (high-definition) resolution and 120 hertz. It comes ready for Rocketboost wireless digital audio technology (another Best Buy in-house brand).

The last American space shuttle, STS-135, lifted off this morning, bringing to a close a remarkable era in U.S. technological dominance.

I stayed home and watched the launch on TV, just as I watched the very first shuttle launch on TV in 1981. Both events were deeply tied into the computer era.

In 1981, I watched the launch of Columbia on the only television in the house, which normally was only used as a monitor for my Apple II+. As a no-television house, I had to get special permission to use the monitor as a TV, tuning in to a grainy broadcast signal coming over the rabbit ears.

In 2011, I watched the launch (with my family) on an HDTV which we connected to a laptop, using the computer to display the high-definition video signal from NASA TV. In other words, we repurposed the family TV as a monitor.

Both times, the hair on the back of my neck stood up as I watched, transfixed. As BoingBoing’s Xeni Jardin commented, “This is the closest, emotionally speaking, that science gets to church.” I agree.

The space shuttle-PC connection is not just a personal thing. The arc of the shuttle program parallels the history of personal computing, and American technology, in other ways.

In 1981, the personal computer revolution was just getting underway. Tandy and Apple had successful PCs, but the most successful one of all the IBM PC, was only months away from its debut. Graphical user interfaces and the internet were known in the halls of research labs and computer science departments, but few had direct experience with either. Onboard the first shuttle was one of the first computerized flight control systems used in a spacecraft. And a few years later, one of the earliest laptops, a GRiD Compass, flew in a shuttle orbiter.

The link between the space program and the commercial technology industry goes back even farther. In the 1960s, the space program drove forward spending on electronics, since the rockets and electronics that controlled them often needed custom creations from the early semiconductor companies. That custom work helped the chip makers refine their designs and eventually ship them for commercial purposes. Michio Kaku pointed out in his book Physics of the Future that an ordinary musical birthday card has a chip in it these days that has more computing power than NASA used to put a man on the moon.

In 2011, the personal computing revolution is over: Computers are everywhere now, and no one even calls them PCs much anymore. Computing is nearly as ubiquitous as electricity: It’s in our pockets, in our cars, on our wrists and may soon even be in our clothes, shoes and cereal boxes, if near field communications and RFID tags become more ubiquitous. The new technology revolutions are focused on mobile technology, mobile payments and social media, not to mention biotech and cleantech. Fittingly, there was even an iPhone aboard the final shuttle mission.

I can’t help but feeling that this closes a door on an era of American inventiveness overall. With the end of the shuttle program, the only way for humans to get into space — for now — is aboard an aging fleet of Russian rockets. Space startups like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are pushing towards commercial spaceflight, but so far the private sector has nothing even close to the scale, power and range of the shuttle program.

And in the broader, non-aerospace field, American ingenuity no longer dominates the tech world the way it did in the 1980s. Silicon Valley has been joined by Silicon Alley, Israel, Russia, India, Japan and countless other hubs of invention and innovation. Taiwan, which was known for making cheap plastic goods in the 1980s, has turned into the dominant manufacturer of computers and technology equipment (with much of the actual manufacturing outsourced to China), and does a good deal of design and invention work as well.

The world is more interconnected, more technologically enabled than ever before, and for the most part that’s been an overwhelmingly positive development.

I just hope that Americans can hold on to that spirit of technical ambition, and continue pushing technology forward in new and ridiculously ambitious ways. I’d hate for the shuttle to be the final chapter in that journey.

Photo: STS-135 lifting off on NASA TV, as seen in the living room of my house. Photo credit: Dylan Tweney.

Got your own photos of the shuttle launch? Post them in the comments or tweet links to @venturebeat, and we’ll add them to this post!

Photo by @enaplito

Screen grab from NASA TV by Ramakanth Dorai

The Skype service will be delivered through HDTVs through a Comcast adapter box (meaning anyone without an HD set is out of luck) and will require a high-quality video camera as well as custom remote control that enables texting capabilities, according to Comcast.

Subscribers will be able to use full screen video calling and instant messaging from Skype. However, voice calls to and from outside phone numbers won’t be included in the integration, since those options would compete against Comcast’s telephone services.

While Comcast didn’t mention how much the Skype integration services would cost customers, the company is likely to see a boost in revenue through additional subscription costs.

For Skype, which was recently acquired by Microsoft, the partnership with Comcast gives it an advantage over other video calling services, including Apple’s Facetime.

Comcast said it expects to begin testing the integrated Skype services for some of its 23 million internet subscribers in the next few months.

Hulu Plus is heading to Sony Bravia HDTV’s today, and it will be available to all Playstation 3 users next week, the company announced today.

Previously, only paid subscribers to Sony’s Playstation Plus service could access Hulu Plus. The company has also added new titles to the premium service, including new shows like Raising Hope, No Ordinary Family, and The Event, as well as past seasons of shows like Monk and Battlestar Galactica.

Sony, in addition to producing consumer electronics, is also a major producer of movies and TV shows, some of which it has licensed to Hulu.

Hulu Plus will eventually make it was to other Bravia devices, like Sony’s Blu-ray players, home theater systems, and even the forgotten Sony Dash “Personal Internet Viewer.”

While it’s nice to see Hulu Plus on more devices, Hulu needs to be working double-time to actually make users want to pay $9.99 a month. The fact that Hulu Plus doesn’t play certain content on home theater devices is infuriating, and the company needs to land more content deals to justify the subscription price. If it can’t accomplish that, then Hulu may be better off making the rumors of a cheaper $4.99 Hulu Plus plan a reality.

The company has four Google TV sets on the way at 24-inches ($599), 32-inches ($799.99), 40-inches ($999), and 46-inches ($1,399). Thankfully, Sony’s official pricing is much more reasonable than the leaked prices revealed last week, which ranged from $1,000 to $1,899. The Google TV-powered Blu-ray player will retail for $399.99.

The 32-inch and up sets will feature LED backlighting, which enables brighter screens and thinner displays than traditional LCDs. While I previously assumed Sony would be charging a premium for its Google TV HDTVs, its official pricing is on-par with LED HDTVs available today. All of the TV sets will feature WiFi, and will come with the typical pre-installed Google TV apps, including Netflix, Pandora, Napster, and more.

Sony will also be packing its monstrous new remote with all of the Google TV sets. Judging from multiple hands-on reports, the remote isn’t a complete nightmare, but it will take some getting used to. Engadget’s Paul Miller writes:

Although both of your thumbs rest naturally on the controls up top, you’re not supposed to use them at the same time — you can either arrow around the UI with the left thumb or control the mouse with the finicky optical pad under your right. The two things are totally separate, so you’re using the arrows and you accidentally click the right button, you end up selecting whatever’s under the mouse cursor and going off in a totally different direction. It’s weird, especially since it’s supposed to feel like a PS3 controller — a controller that generally uses both thumb controls together very effectively.

Miller also confirms that the controller’s overabundance of buttons doesn’t make much sense — something that anyone with a working pair of eyes could tell at first glance.

Sony’s Google TV-powered HDTVs and Blu-ray player will be available at Sony Style stores on October 16 and at Best Buy on October 24. They’re also currently available for pre-order at both the Sony Style and Best Buy websites.

Veebeam

As I’ve written previously, Veebeam’s product consists of two parts: A USB antenna inserted into your PC, and a wireless receiver that plugs into an HDMI port on your HDTV. The two units establish a secure wireless connection and are capable of streaming HD files up to 1080p resolution from 5 to 10 meters. The system relies on Wireless USB (WUSB) to make the connection — a short-range wireless standard that offers more bandwidth than Wi-Fi and also experiences less interference.

The Veebeam SD is available for $99, and the HD version is slightly more at $139. Both support PCs and Macs. The HD product is one of the only wireless streaming solutions that can push out 1080p high-definition video. Veebeam is competing directly with Netgear’s Push2TV technology (which only works with select PC laptops), and indirectly with streaming solutions like the Roku Box, Apple TV, and the upcoming Google TV.

The big benefit of Veebeam is that it lets you see on your TV exactly what you’re seeing on your computer. It won’t have issues streaming content from Hulu’s website, for example, which Google TV and Boxee are still having trouble with. While it’s seemingly no different from hooking up your computer directly to your TV with a video cable, Veebeam offers a wireless solution that should be less fuss than constantly rigging up your laptop to your HDTV.

The company has offices in San Diego, Calif., and Cambridge, UK. Thus far, it has raised $22 million in funding. This latest round was led by Amadeus Capital Partners, Intel Capital, and Oak Investment Partners, who were joined by Bay Partners, Formative Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and Vision Capital.