Samsung showed off lots of fresh new gear today at CES, including smart TVs, sleek laptops, Wi-fi-enabled cameras, and an absurd connected refrigerator.

While the event wasn’t the most exciting (we would have liked more phone and tablet announcements), it at least showed some of the latest things Samsung has been cooking up.

Here’s what the Korean electronics giant showed off:

New Samsung Smart TVs, including a 110-inch Ultra HD 4K TV

The biggest announcement by far at Samsung’s press event today was the introduction of powerful new smart TVs with quad-core processors and improved voice controls. It also showed a 85-inch Ultra HD 4K TV and talked about a 110-inch 4K TV that will be available for viewing tomorrow on the CES show floor.

Verizon Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 with LTE connectivity

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet added LTE connectivity via the Verizon network and will be sold at Verizon stores. Samsung said the device will be available this month.

Wi-Fi-enabled cameras and camcorders

Samsung launched a line of updated cameras and camcorders than can be connected to Wi-Fi and automatically upload your latest photos and videos to the Web.

T9000 smart refrigerator

This $4000 refrigerator includes an LCD panel with an Evernote app for keeping track of important things. THe LCD display also shows apps for calendar, weather, and more. Oh yeah, it also has super fancy temperature and humidity controls. I rather like Gizmodo’s reaction piece to this absurd appliance.

Sleek Ultrabook laptops

Samsung also showed off some Ultrabook laptops it recently announced. This includes the refreshed Series 7 Chronos (pictured) and the Series 7 Ultra.

Photos via Michael O’Donnell and Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

As expected, Korean electronics titan Samsung has unveiled a series of feature-filled smart televisions with voice controls, a 110-inch Ultra HD 4K set, and a powerful 55-inch OLED TV.

Samsung has been a major player in the Smart TV race, and last year’s Samsung CES conference was filled with TV models that helped build a connected home with tablets and smartphones. Now it’s upgrading those experiences with the latest tech like 4K TVs, which are incredibly expensive but deliver stunning visuals.

Samsung showed off a variety of new TV models, including a number of LCDs and plasmas. The highlight was easily the announcement of the 110-inch ultra HD TV, which sounds like a concept but it’s still crazy. There’s also the 85-inch ultra HD TV set (pictured above), which was shown onstage and looks similar to the Toshiba 4K TV set we saw last night.

Samsung also showed off its 55-inch OLED TV, which it showed last year at CES but never released it to the market.

It notes the following features as highlights on its latest TVs:

Samsung Smart Hub: Five intuitive panels help consumers manage and navigate different types of content, which are displayed as thumbnail images for the first time so it’s even easier to select and watch the content on the big screen. With a light hand gesture (flipping), you can discover five totally different experiences in Smart Hub, as if you have five new TV sets.

S-recommendation: Quickly and easily search for TV programs, premium video-on-demand, apps, social content and locally stored content on personal devices. The special recommendation engine also offers customized content recommendations for the most personal TV experience ever.

Advanced Smart Interaction: Use everyday language and casual gestures to find content or command and control the TV.

Content and device convergence with multiscreen features: Samsung’s Smart View allows you to move your content seamlessly between devices in real-time; AllShare connects the TV to compatible mobile devices and home appliances wirelessly and creates a smart center for media and whole-home automation. You also can mirror your TV content on compatible Samsung Galaxy tablets and phones.

Evolution Kit: Owners of flagship Samsung 2012 TVs will be able to update their TVs with the latest Smart TV features simply by slotting in this Evolution Kit without having to buy a new TV.

Check out the photos below for more from Samsung’s event today:

Even though I have a terrible track record for predicting the future, I find making predictions irresistible. It’s such an exciting time in the game industry that just about anything can happen. Things that I never thought would occur — such as Apple dominating in the sheer number of games on its platform — have now come to pass. The industry is full of disruption and change, from the smallest startups to the biggest companies, as the digital revolution sweeps through the industry. We are, after all, in the crossover era, when game companies invade new platforms. With so much change, the predictions become harder, but they’re also more fun to make.

We’re looking forward to announced games like Grand Theft Auto V and unannounced (but likely) titles such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. But many of these predictions below go beyond the impact of single launches. (Check out how I did with last year’s here). I have tapped some of our staff for help with them. And please vote for your favorites in our poll (in the web version of this story) and leave comments. Also, check out where we’ve been in the past in our predictions about the road ahead in gaming.

Mobile gets bigger

This trend isn’t a bubble. The growth of smartphone and tablet gaming is an inexorable trend. It’s a no-brainer that it will gather momentum in 2013. Mobile games account for 42 percent of all new game investments, according to investment bank Digi-Capital. Mobile devices are growing fast throughout the world, and we’ll soon have multiple billions of devices that are capable of playing games. Every company is adapting to this change by launching new versions of mobile titles, and many startups are focused on a “mobile first” or “mobile only” strategy. So far, nobody dominates this market.

Hardcore online games will match the quality of console games

Games like League of Legends and Hawken have shown that it’s possible to create great free-to-play hardcore online games as downloadable titles. Soon, you might be able to play these without downloads thanks to better browser technologies (such as WebGL or Chrome Native Client), which make use of 3D graphics hardware on a computer without the need for plug-ins. When the better rendering technology gains traction, then one of the last quality barriers will fall between online games and console titles. The ability to play high-end web games without delays will neutralize the advantage that console companies have had in the home. It will lower the cost of distribution and democratize gaming further. But once this new web publishing platform is more evenly distributed across the development community, the focus will have to be on making better games, not shoveling more out.

The battle royale for gaming will commence

To deal with the invasion of hardcore online titles, console makers will have to respond with something exciting and new. It’s going to be a world war of gaming in 2013 as big players duke it out. Traditional console makers Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft will go to war with the likes of Apple, Amazon, Samsung, and Google. Microsoft has already set up a broader entertainment network on Xbox Live, but it could lose that position if it maintains its current high subscription fees and a dearth of free-to-play titles.

Apple and Google in particular may not launch “consoles” per se. Rather, if they compete in gaming, it will be an accidental byproduct of a strategy to compete for the hearts and minds of consumers on whatever platform they use. Those companies haven’t designed specifically for gamers, but their platforms have been ideal for developers and publishers trying to reach larger audiences. An Apple television would naturally be a platform for games. The newcomers will use free or 99-cent titles — as well as technologies that transfer images from a smartphone or tablet to a TV — as their wedge into the console space. We’ll see a battle for the living room like never before. And this battle royale will happen on all platforms wherever they’re used.

Microsoft and Sony will both announce and launch their next-generation systems

Chasing the Nintendo Wii U, Microsoft and Sony will announce their new consoles at E3 2013 in June, and at least one of them will introduce the new machine in the fall of 2013. Microsoft may not launch in 2013 since it has a leadership position now. But it shouldn’t try to milk that position and should instead get out ahead of its new challengers such as Apple and Google. Sony has more motivation to get into the market sooner since it came in third place in units sold in the last generation. But developer activity suggests that Microsoft is moving ahead faster with a broader group of allies.

Introducing a new console isn’t just a matter of willpower. It’s the result of mobilizing a whole ecosystem of suppliers, partners, developers, and publishers to support the effort. So while it may be a no-brainer to introduce sooner, the console makers may be forced to wait until 2014. They will also have to build their consoles around a new innovation, such as much better gesture controls, to make the gameplay more magical than it is today.

And if Sony and Microsoft know what’s good for them, they’ll embrace cloud gaming to reduce the cost of their consoles and deal with backward compatibility. And they will give users plenty of options for free-to-play, platform-agnostic gaming. (GamesBeat writer Kat Bailey is a fan of this idea.) They will both embrace free-to-play and cloud gaming. Any new console will thus have to be a hybrid of tradition and the new digital platforms. (Dan “Shoe” Hsu, the editor-in-chief of GamesBeat, fed me a version of this prediction.)

Nintendo’s Wii U console will fail

So far, the Wii U is selling out, but not in astounding numbers. And while games such as ZombiU are fine, they’re getting weak reviews on Metacritic. In fact, the highest rated game on the Wii U this season is Mass Effect 3: Special Edition, a retread of a game that has already been available on the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. This isn’t the right way to launch a brand new console. While initial supplies may sell out, what will happen three months or six months from now as the novelty wears off and gamers await better-looking titles on the upcoming consoles or the PC?

Nintendo embraced the consumer love for tablets with its tablet-like controller, but that hasn’t put a dent in demand for tablets. In the context of a more competitive industry with multiplying choices, I don’t see the Wii U as a survivor. The best thing Nintendo can do is cut the price, and that’s never been a winning formula for long-term success. I’m hoping Nintendo surprises us, but I am not counting on it.

Smart TV games will finally become a reality

This prediction crystallizes several of the trends already mentioned. Apple still hasn’t introduced its television. If and when it does, apps will come to the connected TV, nicknamed the Smart TV, in a very big way. But while Apple may eventually validate this trend, the market won’t wait for one company. In the meantime, Google will keep pushing on Google TV. Manufacturers like LG, Samsung, and Vizio are pushing hard on cloud gaming on the TV, where all you need to play is a web connection and a game controller. Ouya hopes to enter this market with a $99 box in the spring that will move Android games onto this same screen.

The business model enabled by apps on the TV is very attractive for consumers. Free-to-play or 99 cent apps may be good enough for a lot of players, particularly if there is a path to high-end hardcore games as well. Gesture or voice-recognition technologies will add novelty to the Smart TV gaming experience. Given the option to forgo the expense of $60 games and $300 consoles, many consumers are likely to prefer playing unified apps on TVs that can also be played on tablets and smartphones. That could ignite a huge wave of gaming consumption.

Gesture technologies will take off

Motion-sensing technologies like the Nintendo Wii remote, Microsoft’s Kinect for the Xbox 360, and the Sony PlayStation Move were just the start. Intel calls the new era of gestures “perceptual computing.” Controlling a game or computing device with your hands, body, or voice could become much more accurate in the next generation. Kinect’s accuracy trailed off if you got too close to the TV. But startups such as Softkinetic have demonstrated that gestures work well just inches away from a laptop’s webcam now. This helps make general computing easier just as touch screens do with Windows 8. But the possibilities for gaming become much more interesting with precise technologies that can detect small finger movements as well as the activity of everyone in a room. And these gestures don’t have to be limited to PCs or consoles. They could also be integrated over time into smartphones and tablets. Intel itself promises to launch perceptual computing in 2013.

First-person shooter games will grab market share on tablets

Based on what I’ve seen so far of The Drowning (pictured right), which is being developed by Scattered Entertainment and will be published in 2013 by DeNA’s Ngmoco, I’m convinced that first-person shooter games will finally take hold on tablets. The Drowning has a clever gesture-based user interface that works with touch screens — something that shooters haven’t done well so far. If you tap two fingers on the screen, your weapon will fire at the midpoint. Tap one on the screen, and your character will move to where you tap. And swipe the screen to turn your characters head. It’s simple, and it is just one example of how the multibillion-dollar shooter business could make its way onto tablets. And it means that mobile games will be playable without a game controller.

The game controller will become the king maker

Startups like PrimeA (maker of Moga controllers) and Green Throttle Games want to turn the humble game controller into something more important. They can do so if the above trend doesn’t work out so well and gamers prefer to play their mobile games with traditional handheld controllers.

Green Throttle is creating a cool user interface app that allows you to use its controller to play Android apps on a TV, connected to your smartphone or tablet via a HDMI cable. (If better Wi-Fi technology comes along, this will get easier to do.) With controllers used in this way, Android games can invade the realm of the $60 console game. The controller could blast a hole through the barrier between two segments of the game market.

The barriers will come down between real-money gambling and social casino games

Likewise, the barriers are coming down between real-money online gambling and social casino games, where the winnings are merely virtual casino chips.

Startups like Betable enable social casino games to be converted to real-money online gambling in territories where it’s legal. Zynga is counting on changes in U.S. laws to enter the real-money gambling market, but it will launch in the crowded United Kingdom market first. Facebook has also embraced real-money gambling by allowing Gamesys to launch such games in the U.K.

This will set up a clash. The social casino game operators have the biggest games like Zynga Poker but the lowest revenues per paying user. Online gambling firms make a lot of money from relatively few heavy gamblers.

But marrying the two businesses will make it much easier for the online gambling firms to recruit potential high rollers for low costs. Meanwhile, U.S. states and the federal government are loosening the restrictions on online gambling. This trend may take years to play out, but it will gather more momentum in 2013.

eSports will take off

Gaming has been a professional sport for a while, but with releases such as League of Legends from Riot Games, it is gathering momentum. Rising in parallel with this trend is the livestreaming of games enabled by Twitch, which has been integrated into the online shooter Planetside 2 (pictured right). Community has also become a much bigger deal in ensuring the success of a game, according to gamer social network Raptr. That’s because the improved engagement that comes with promoting the community around a game leads to higher awareness, revenues, and profits.

ESports have been growing in countries such as China and South Korea, but Major League Gaming, WCG, and other leagues are offering bigger prizes and more venues for gigantic tournaments. And it’s no surprise that Activision built livestreaming, shoutcasting (narrated games), spectating, and league play into Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Gamemakers should already know that you don’t just milk your users. Give them what they want, and they will pay you back many times over. Let’s hope that more companies are going to learn the lesson: It’s the community, stupid. (GamesBeat writer Rus McLaughlin suggested a version of this prediction.)

Gamification will continue to spread the influence of games

Gamification, or the use of game mechanics to increase engagement in nongame applications, is the path to spread game thinking far and wide. It has applications in everything from fitness devices that encourage you to exercise to enterprise applications that reward you for completing tutorials.

Badgeville, Big Door, and Bunchball are providing the services for all kinds of companies to embrace gamification, either by rewarding consumers and employees with achievements or leading them to compete with rivals through leaderboards. A lot of these efforts will fail as many games do. But the ones that are done right could lead to a big expansion in engagement and usage. Gamification is in its hype stage, but the reality will start setting in during 2013 as to what works and what doesn’t. And it will carry the flag for gaming into all circles of business.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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One feature that’s been noticeably absent from Google TV, Google’s connected-TV platform, is something akin to Apple’s AirPlay,  which allows iPad and iPhone the ability to stream content directly to Apple TV. But the little-known Taiwanese manufacturer Honeywld is working to change that.

Its upcoming Google TV set-top box will be able to receive streaming content directly from Android tablets and smartphones, the company told IDGNews. This will allow users to very easily move content from smaller screens to their televisions.

Alongside video, the device will also be able to synchronize other media content like music and pictures. To do this, users will have to install a special app onto their smartphones and tablets that will allow the streaming. Honeywld says the app is still in development.

On the hardware side, the device comes equipped with 1GB RAM, 4GB flash storage, a MicroSD card slot, and HDMI and Ethernet ports.

There are some complications, however. First, Honeywld is a tiny, tiny company, and its staff of 40 people won’t be able to bring the box’s production up to a global scale. To solve this, the company told IDG that it hopes to get a larger company to buy it from them and resell it globally.

There’s also the very real chance that Google will include the streaming functionality in the next version of the Google TV OS, which will make whatever Honeywld rolls out pretty superfluous.

Google’s response to this notion was, predictably, pretty vague. ”We see lots of potential in having all of your living room devices work together, whether that’s from us or from our growing developer community,” a Google TV spokesperson told VentureBeat. What this means for the future is anyone’s guess, but it still seems pretty likely that Google would introduce the streaming feature in the future.

There’s also the matter of price. Honeywld plans to sell the device for somewhere around $100, which seems like a lot to ask for a device that only has 4GB of flash storage.

But what’s good news here is that manufacturers, even the tiniest of ones, haven’t yet given up hope on Google’s television ambitions. With some high-profile failures, it’s been a tough road for Google TV, but if the recent resurgence on support is any indication, the platform could be on its way back up.

Design is determining the winners in everything mobile. The most successful players are focusing on one thing: How to make products, services, and devices as compelling and delightful as possible – visually, and experientially. MobileBeat 2012, July 10-11 in San Francisco , is assembling the most elite minds to debate how UI/UX is transforming every aspect of the mobile economy, and where the opportunities lie. Register here.

When we first learned LG would be launching its crop of Google TV sets this month, I asked “will anyone care?” — now after seeing LG’s G2 series in action, I’m surprised to report that plenty of consumers just may.

With slick motion control technology and a speedy dual-core CPU, LG’s G2 sets are certainly the most powerful Google TV devices so far. LG also has the privilege of offering the first 3D-capable Google TVs. Even better, the sets are passive 3D, so you can use cheaper plastic 3D glasses instead of the expensive rechargeable variety.

The Korean TV-maker debuted its G2 Google TVs today at Internet Week New York, an annual event where NYC celebrates technology and digital culture. I chatted with Georg Rasinski, director of LG’s home electronics brand management, who was kind enough to demonstrate the G2 series for us (see below).

What truly differentiates LG’s Google TV entries is the company’s motion-control “Magic Remote.” Waving LG’s remote around felt smoother than using Sony or Logitech’s Google TV trackpads, and it was surprisingly accurate. The remote uses technology from Hillcrest Labs called Freespace, it uses built-in inertial sensors to capture motion without any external sensors.

The Magic Remote itself feels nice, with a rounded portion that makes it comfy in your hand. There is a scroll wheel on the front, along with the most commonly used Google TV buttons, and a full QWERTY thumb keyboard on the back.

LG’s Google TV interface also looks dramatically different from the GTV devices I’ve used from Sony and Logitech. They’re running Google TV 2.0, but LG has also heavily customized the home screen with a 3D interface. It gives you quick access to a variety of apps and bookmarks.

The Google TV experience was noticeably faster on LG’s sets, which I mostly attribute to the company’s fast dual-core CPU. The G2 series is powered by LG’s custom ARM-based L9 processor, the first dual-core chip in a Google TV device. Eventually, the L9 will make its way to LG’s other flagship sets, but it’s making its debut on the G2 series.

Rasinski said that Internet Week ended up being perfectly timed for the Google TV launch. Last week, an LG exec announced that the company would begin building the sets this week, with retail availability to follow next week. That’s a fast turnaround for any company, but Rasinski tells me that LG wanted to roll out its Google TV offering as quickly as possible.

LG’s G2 Series Google TVs will be available in 47-inch and 55-inch models beginning next week at $1,699 and $2,299 respectively.

After announcing that it’s jumping into the Google TV fray at CES in January, an LG executive said today that it will begin building and shipping the sets later this month. But, with Google TV’s lukewarm welcome by consumers, and a non-existent Apple television set grabbing headlines, will LG fare better than Google’s first round of partners?

Ro Seogho, an executive vice president in LG’s TV business, told Reuters that the company will start building the Google TV sets on May 17, and that consumers will be able to buy the sets starting the week of May 21.

Google TV launched in late 2010 as Google’s attempt to bring web video to TVs. The Android powered-platform brings Google search, web browsing, and most recently apps, to your television screen. But despite plenty of promise, it failed to take off initially due to sluggish speeds and lack of support from TV networks. Logitech famously gave up on Google TV last year after blaming it for a $100 million loss.

LG isn’t offering up any other details, like screen size or pricing. But from the report, I gather that Seogho isn’t referring to the “Nexus” Google TV set LG was rumored to be working on (which would run a much newer version of Google TV than existing devices). Without that Nexus designation, though, there doesn’t seem to be much to differentiate LG’s sets from Google TV products already available from Sony and Logitech.

I’m also not sure why LG is in such a rush to bring GTV sets to market. Google TV hasn’t been updated since last Fall (though that update offered some significant improvements), and it doesn’t give LG much time to promote the new sets. Wouldn’t the No. 2 television maker in the world have something to say about a significant new product line?

It could be that Google has a big Google TV update that it’s going to debut with LG’s sets, or LG is just bringing the sets to market without much effort to fulfill a contractual obligation.

At CES,  we also learned that new Google TV sets would be coming from Samsung, Vizio, and Sony.

Flingo, one of the largest smart TV app publishers, has received another $1 million in funding from entrepreneur Mark Cuban, bringing its total first round to $8 million.

As the company tells it, Cuban first learned about Flingo while strolling by its CES booth earlier this year. After catching a glimpse at the company’s social TV platform, Cuban quickly struck up a conversation with Flingo CEO Ashwin Navin and wiggled his way into the funding round. He’s leading the additional funding together with Gary Lauder, managing director of Lauder Partners. In February, Flingo announced that it raised $7 million from August Capital.

“I’m excited to be part of the Flingo experience,” Cuban — owner of the arthouse cinema chain Landmark and Magnolia Pictures, and chairman of HDNet — said in a statement today. “I truly believe the future of TV is social TV and Flingo will be one of the companies out front.”

Flingo has developed a technology, dubbed SyncApps, that can detect what you’re watching in just a few seconds and communicate that information to your television, smartphone, or computer. Think of it like a location-based service for what you’re watching. SyncApps eliminates the need to track down hashtags or other content related to what you’re viewing, allowing you to seamlessly interact with content while you’re watching it.

The company says it will use the funding to expand its presence among smart TV and device makers. It already has partnerships with Samsung, LG, Vizio, and Western Digital. Navin calls Cuban’s support a “tremendous validation” of the company.

Flingo was founded in 2008 by former early Bittorrent employees Ashwin Navin, Alvir Navin, and David Harrison. The company currently has offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and other cities.

Photo via Steven Rosenbaum/Flickr

The deal is similar to one LG recently made with cloud gaming service Gaikai and is all part of the company’s plan to market its line of products as all-in-one multimedia systems.

Unity Technologies is the creator of the Unity development platform, which allows users to create and distribute interactive 3D and 2D content to mobile phones, app stores, tablets, set-top boxes, connected TVs and more. The company boasts a thriving community of 750,000 registered developers, including large publishers, indie studios, students, and hobbyists, and says it plans to make numerous games available on upcoming LG models in the near future through its business division Union.

“The television technology LG is introducing this year is very impressive and offers an incredible opportunity for the developers under the Union umbrella to reach a new market,” said David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies. “Our goal with Union is to create new avenues of distribution for developers using Unity, and LG smart TVs are creating a massive and new gaming audience.”

LG’s 2012 HDTV models feature the ability to play video games without the need for a console through a powerful video processor and the Magic Motion Remote, a gyroscopic motion controller. LG Head of Content Division Sang-Woo Lee says adding Unity’s huge catalog of titles to the lineup already available on his company’s TVs will boost their value to consumers looking to choose a HDTV model and help make them the most comprehensive platform for entertainment on the market.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Flingo has developed a technology, dubbed SyncApps, that can detect what you’re watching in just a few seconds and communicate that information to your television, smartphone, or computer. Think of it like a location-based service for what you’re watching. SyncApps eliminates the need to track down hashtags or other content related to what you’re viewing, allowing you to seamlessly interact with content while you’re watching it.

For example, Flingo recently launched a service that lets you share what you’re watching on TV with Twitter or Facebook with a single click. While TV check-in apps like Miso are popular among techies, Flingo offers a way for mainstream users to share their viewing habits with friends without much effort. Flingo’s technology could also serve to improve apps like Miso by making it easier to find the content you’re watching.

Flingo already has partnerships with A&E and the History Channel to use its social TV framework , but the company expects to use its new funding to reach every network in North America. The company’s technology is already available on over 7.8 million screens in 118 countries worldwide.

Flingo was founded in 2008 by former early Bittorrent employees Ashwin Navin, Alvir Navin, and David Harrison. The company currently has offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and other cities.

TV image via Shutterstock

While Sunday was the unofficial start to CES 2012, the real fun began on Monday with press conferences and announcements from heavy hitters like LG, Intel, Sharp, Samsung, Nvidia, Sony and Microsoft.

At the end of that incredibly busy day, fellow VentureBeatnik Dean Takahashi and I decided to chat about how the events unfolded and what stood out from the pack. Notably, smart TVs for home and business, thin-and-light Ultrabook laptops, the upcoming Windows 8 operating system and a jarring, funny performance of tweets by a choir were what made the most impact on us.

The day’s major CES events officially concluded with the final Microsoft keynote, where a choir sang tweets about Microsoft products. But after that, Dean and I made our way to the Pepcom showcase of products that ties into CES. We walked the floor and saw few interesting things, including fitness technology from Striiv and an iPhone-controlled toy from Sphero.

Watch the video above for more on CES Day 2, and look for more CES stories coming at you this week. Plus, here’s a shortlist of Monday’s biggest CES stories:

• LG debuts HDTV with built-in Google TV and a new Spectrum Android superphone
• Intel: More than 75 Ultrabooks coming in 2012
• Sharp intros 80-inch touch displays for businesses, ultra-lightweight TVs
• Samsung’s Smart TV evolves with motion, voice controls and upgrade slots
• Nvidia shows Microsoft’s Windows 8 running on a Tegra 3 tablet
• Sony aims to deliver 300M connected devices in the next 3 years
• Xbox 360 surpasses 66M sold and Kinect passes 18M units
• WTF CES: Choir sings sweet tweets at Ballmer keynote (video)

For more news out of this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, be sure to check out VentureBeat’s live coverage from CES 2012.

Sony kicked off its CES press conference today with a stunning montage of 3D projected footage, which not only set the tone for the electronics giant’s presentation, but also made this writer desperately want a new 3D projector.

Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer didn’t waste any time with bold proclamations when he stepped on stage. He said that Sony will deliver more than 300 million connected devices to consumers in the next three years, which includes everything from smart TVs to the upcoming PlayStation Vita handheld.

Kaz Hirai, Sony’s PlayStation boss (and potential replacement for Stringer), discussed how the company is intertwined with the connected media world, starting with its Video Unlimited and Music Unlimited streaming media services. Hirai announced today that music unlimited now covers 13 countries, including recent additions like Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.

Shockingly, Hirai also said the Music Unlimited will be available at launch for the PlayStation Vita in the U.S.

Hirai showed off a new service called PlayMemories that will work across multiple Sony device to share photos and video. Basically, it looks like Sony’s version of Apple’s iCloud Photostream, with the big benefit of being accessible on the PlayStation 3.

On the topic of games, Hirai said that 6.5 million units of all PlayStation systems were sold to users worldwide. As of January 5th, the PlayStation Vita has sold more than 500,000 units since its December 16, 2010 launch in Japan. Hirai also assured the audience that Netflix is working to support the Vita when it launches in the U.S.

Following Sony’s buyout of Ericsson from their joint mobile venture, the company is now renaming its mobile arm Sony Mobile Communications, Hirai announced. Future smartphones and tablets from the company will bear the Sony brand, not surprisingly.

Hirai unveiled two of the company’s new smartphones: the Xperia Ion, its first 4G phone (which AT&T announced this morning as an exclusive), and the thin Xperia S. The Ion will be available on AT&T in Spring, and the Xperia S will launch globally in March.

On the TV front, the company has a new Google TV set-top box with Blu-ray capabilities in the works, as well as a stylish new Google TV remote with a built-in mic for voice commands. To make Internet content look better on big screens, Sony’s new Xreality Pro engine will process web video to get rid of compression artifacts. The company also has new ultra-light 1.3 ounce 3D glasses on the way made out of titanium.

Changing gears yet again (this happens a lot in big company press conferences), Sony discussed 4K technology, which it touts as having “more than four times” the resolution of 1080p HD content. The company’s projectors are powering 4K screens in over 10,000 theaters worldwide.

Sony then trotted out Men in Black III star Will Smith and director Barry Sonnenfeld. (Putting on my movie critic hat for a second, this movie doesn’t have a chance folks.)

For more gadget news, be sure to check out VentureBeat’s live coverage from CES 2012.

A year after Google TV’s middling launch, Google is finally ready to take another stab at its ambitious smart TV platform.

The company announced today that the long-awaited GTV update, which brings with it a revamped interface, Android apps, and more, will start to roll out next week.

I was a bigger fan than most of Google TV — I’m actually still using it daily — but the platform’s problems have become increasingly grating over the last year. It’s slow, the interface is ugly and hard to use at times, and it has a surprisingly small number of available apps (especially compared to other TV platforms from Samsung, Vizio, and others). The lack of Hulu support also burns, especially since Hulu Plus apps are available on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and elsewhere.

Still, I’m a believer in Google TV’s potential to reshape the way we watch television. With this latest update, GTV’s biggest one yet, it looks like my hopes for the platform are one step closer to reality.

The update brings Android 3.1 Honeycomb to Google TV (although by this point, Android 4.0 is all the rage), which alone should make the platform faster and more stable. GTV will also finally get access to the Android Market — though Google says apps that require touchscreens, GPS, and telephone access won’t show up. That means there will be a small number of apps available at the start (Google says over 50 developers have apps ready to go), but it’s still an improvement over the the current handful of apps on GTV. One of the new apps is AOL HD, which is made up of HD content from AOL sites like Engadget and the Huffington Post.

Google TV’s interface is now much smoother and less intrusive than its first iteration. The home screen is now customizable and relies on icons, instead of archaic text menus. There’s also a new “TV and Movies” app that makes it easy to find content across cable or satellite, Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, and other sources. It also takes advantage of Google TV’s recommendations engine to suggest new content.

The YouTube experience on Google TV also appears to be vastly improved. Google unveiled its gorgeous HTML5-powered YouTube Leanback interface last year, but it was always a bit slow on Google TV. The company says it now has a YouTube app built specifically for GTV, which should be faster to navigate and should better handle high-definition videos.

The Google TV update will begin to roll out to Sony GTV televisions and its Internet TV Blu-ray player next week, while the Logitech Revue box will receive it later. The company also hinted that we’ll see even more updates over the next few months, as well as new devices sporting better hardware.

PlayJam is known for producing games on internet-connected TV platforms from Samsung, LG, Sony and Panasonic. The company says it’s seen over 6 billion game downloads on those platforms alone.

However, with the increase in devices that give televisions web connectivity — like Blu-ray players, game consoles and set-top boxes — PlayJam has the opportunity to start producing games that are independent of any one distribution platform, especially now that it has money in the bank.

The Smart TV gaming market is just getting started, but PlayJam is poised to become the market leader. The company said half of  customers that download and play free games eventually buy a premium game. Also, its consumers spend an average of 23 minutes per session. (I’m guessing that session is the time it takes someone to start and then stop playing a game without any pauses or breaks.)

The new round, PlayJam’s first, includes participation by GameStop Digital Ventures, Adobe Ventures, Endeavour Ventures, London Venture Partners and others. Founded in 1999, the London-based startup has over 550 games in its library to date.

The move allows MOG to spread its brand further, following rival streaming service Pandora in moving outside of PCs and mobile phones to find new customers. Samsung’s 2010 and 2011 Smart TVs or Blu-ray players will work with the service.

Samsung Smart TVs and Blu-ray players offer downloadable apps that add more content and abilities to those connected devices. MOG’s app will be placed in the What’s New and Lifestyle sections of the application store as a free download, but you’ll have to pay for the service to start playing your favorite tunes.

Access to MOG using Samsung Smart TVs and Blu-ray players or its desktop app costs $4.99 a month. If you pay $9.99 a month, you can use the service via the iPhone and Android platforms as well.

MOG is one of the best streaming music services available today and competes with the likes of Spotify and Rdio for the crown of the best U.S. music service. MOG’s biggest asset is that it has best-sounding catalog, with music streaming at an enviable 320 kbps.

What do you think of MOG?

The service will test whether there is a market for casual video games played via remote controls on smart, internet-connected TVs. If it catches on, it may prove that people who don’t buy video games may still want to play light, family-friendly casual games. And it may show that the long-predicted world of interactive TV has finally arrived.

Gaming is spreading everywhere from the consoles to social networks and mobile devices. TransGaming is betting that games will also spread to smart TVs.  In this case, French broadband operator Free is adding GameTree TV to its Freebox Revolution set-top box, which brings web-connected entertainment to TV viewers. Games on such platforms are more like snacks, played for a short time.

Toronto, Canada-based TransGaming chief executive Vikas Gupta said in an interview that the new service kicks off the “connected living room era” for games. Free launched its new set-top box on Dec. 14, and it says that the set-top box transforms any TV into a fully-connected Smart TV, allowing users to instantly play on-demand games via the cloud, or web-connected data centers.

GameTree TV is backed by Intel, which has an investment in TransGaming. And Free’s Freebox Revolution uses Intel’s consumer electronics system-on-chip processor.

“We see a bright future for on-demand gaming on Smart TV,” said Lance Koenders, director of worldwide marketing, Intel Digital Home Group. “TransGaming has put itself ahead of the curve with the GameTree TV platform, which is a great example of the enhanced entertainment experiences that Intel CE-based devices can deliver.”

Maxime Lombardini, chief executive of Free’s holding company, Iliad, said that GameTree TV adds a compelling new dimension to entertainment on the TV. GameTree TV will have 25 titles on the Freebox Revolution, including Bejeweled 2, Garage Inc. and World of Goo. New games will be added weekly.

Users can download games via a variety of pricing models and the bill will show up on the consumer’s monthly bill from Free. Iliad, a publicly traded company, has more than 4.5 million subscribers to its broadband services via Free and Alice.

Gupta said he expects more platforms to launch GameTree TV in the future. GameTree TV runs on set-top boxes and other Smart TV devices powered by Intel’s consumer electronics chips, which load and run games directly on the device, with no need for extra hardware. Game controllers are optional, and all you need to play is a remote control.

TransGaming was founded in 2000 and it announced the GameTree TV platform in partnership with Intel in 2009. TransGaming is traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, and Intel Capital is one of its private shareholders. Games cost 99 cents for one day, $2.99 for a week, and $9.99 for unlimited play.

Rivals include the game consoles as well as other game-streaming companies such as OnLive and Gaikai.

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With TVs, LG is following in the footsteps of many companies this year with an increased emphasis on apps. LG’s new Smart TV line will feature premium apps like Netflix, Hulu Plus, Vudu and Amazon on-demand streaming. There are also more apps for viewing shared content, like Picasa, Flickr and Youtube. The TVs will also support streaming of local content from USB storage, as well as over the network using DLNA sharing. The TV apps will use a card-based interface, which allows you to easily switch between apps.

The company also announced its Smart TV Upgrader, a set-top box that will let anyone bring its app ecosystem to any television.

When it comes to 3D TVs, LG announced that its upcoming 2011 units will feature brighter screens, less flicker, and most importantly, won’t require battery-powered active 3D glasses. Instead, the TVs will process 3D inside of the set — allowing users to rely on cheaper glasses like those you use in most movie theaters.

LG also briefly hinted at some prototype TVs that it’s working on: A thin, bright display using OLED technology, and a 3D display that doesn’t require glasses at all.

When it comes to phones, LG showed off its dual-core Optimus 2X Android smartphones, which it launched earlier this month. The company says the 2X uses the world’s brightest display and that the display is also 15 percent more efficient than the company’s previous panels.

Perhaps the most interesting thing LG showed off was its extensive smart appliance lineup, which includes washers, dryers, ovens, and refrigerators with network connectivity. LG’s smart ovens have the ability to download recipes and send you texts when your food is done cooking.

How “quiet” the revolution is depends on whether you pay any attention at all to the media, which is rife with coverage of the rise of network-connected (and otherwise “smart”) televisions. But quiet or loud, DisplaySearch says the category will continue to grow at a fast clip – from 2.5 million sets on 2010 to more than 10 million in 2014.

Total TV shipments grew by a “staggering” 17 percent in 2010–to more than 247 million — representing “the best growth seen since the start of the flat panel TV transition,” DisplaySearch reported.

Sales in North America, however, were nearly flat as those screens, rising by just 0.4 percent through 2010′s first three quarters. Much of the growth came in Japan and in emerging markets. Part of the problem in North America (besides continued skittishness among recession-battered consumers) is that prices remain relatively lofty as features are added to TVs: LED backlights, 3D, Internet connectivity. Prices fell by 22 percent in 2009, compared with a drop of just 6 percent in 2010. LED-equipped sets will continue to increase their market share in 2011, rising to about a fifth of all sets sold as prices fall.

About half of all the sets sold worldwide were LCD TVs.

The “quiet revolution” could get a lot noisier once the market for smart TVs settles down and leaders emerge. For now, there is a baffling array of options, from simply buying an Internet-connectable set to buying a Google TV or Roku box to relying on Hulu, iTunes, or Netflix, or any number of combinations of those. Programmers, cable companies, and Internet upstarts are waging turf wars, the outcome of which is hard to predict.

Fortune’s Jessi Hempel writes today that there is great promise in the smart-TV world, but “for the moment, all that promise translates into a proliferation of new boxes and services that are impossible to compare.” For now, we have “a Web TV experience that feels a bit like the Internet circa 1998, before publishing companies embraced the Net and Google arrived to help us find and instantly consume the stuff we’re looking for.”

I recently talked to Lovefilm’s chief digital officer, Lesley MacKenzie, on the expansion of the digital business. Lovefilm is the top DVD-rental subscription service in Europe. As with Netflix, users sign up for a subscription online and then request DVDs which are sent by mail. Its biggest markets are the UK, Germany and the Nordic countries.

In May this year Lovefilm launched a streaming service on PCs in the UK. The company expects to expand it soon to other European countries, and sees itself at the early stage of a transition from physical to digital delivery, according to MacKenzie. But the speed of that transition will depend on the level of broadband access in various European countries. Users also need to start to value the digital service as highly as a physical DVD.

Lovefilm supports Sony and Samsung smart TVs, which support Internet connections and can display Web videos and other services, but MacKenzie told me that Europe is 18 months to 2 years behind the US in that area. The company has noticed that smart TV users are 3 times as active as PC users. Mackenzie also said, for more recent movies, if users are given the option to order a DVD as part of their subscription or pay extra to stream it immediately, a large proportion of customers will pay.

Netflix plans to launch a European service in late 2010. I asked MacKenzie about the threat posed to Lovefilm. She pointed out that Netflix pulled the plug on a previous UK rollout in 2004. In her opinion, Europe is not ready for a mainly digital service from a brand largely unknown in Europe.

Lovefilm is based in London and was founded in 2003. Its backers include Amazon.com, Index Ventures, Arts Alliance Media, Balderton Capital, and Esprit Capital Partners.

And GameTree TV runs on the set-top box, allowing you to download games to your box and play them on your TV set. The fact that it runs on a next-generation set-top box, with a 1.5-gigahertz processor and a PowerVR graphics capability, means that you will be able to play some pretty cool casual games. Lewin showed you could play a game such as PopCap’s Plants vs. Zombies or World of Goo. These games are like snacks for the family to play before they watch a movie. You could rent or buy the games as you like. It’s a lot like the Netflix video streaming service offered on a wide variety of set-top boxes.

Lewin showed off the user interface for the service. It is intuitive. You can use a wireless remote control to navigate through the selections of games and then play them with the remote control.The control is a lot like a wireless computer mouse, allowing you to maneuver a cursor on screen. Transgaming has a software development kit that will let publishers bring their PC games to the TV.

Transgaming is licensing the GameTree TV digital game download service to entertainment providers such as cable TV companies or telephone companies, who can offer it as one more service above and beyond music and movie services. Lewin said the company has a European customer but can’t say who it is yet. Intel, which invested in Transgaming, is introducing the company to distributors. There are 30 or so games launching this fall and 50 in the near future. If Transgaming can sell lots of games for low prices, then it could be one more force disrupting the console game business. But keep in mind that this is just one of many different kinds of “smart TVs” that are emerging in the new future. Rivals range from Samsung to Boxee. Check out our video below.

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Samsung Electronics is going ga-ga over apps. The Korean electronics giant plans to spend $70 million marketing its Samsung TV apps for internet-connected TVs and other devices.

Building on Apple’s success with apps, the whole tech industry, from Intel to Samsung, is obsessed with creating app platforms now as the way to reach consumers who increasingly want personalized content wherever they are.

For three years, Samsung has been selling internet-connected TVs. In January, it announced it would create an apps platform for not only those TVs, but for all Samsung connected devices, including smartphones, Blu-ray players and other gadgets. Samsung calls the web-connected TVs, which can surf the web with the click of a remote control, smart TVs. About 17 percent of its TVs shipped this year will be connected. By 2014, the figure will be 70 percent.

“We are determined to accelerate smart TV adoption in 2010,” Tim Baxter (above), president of Samsung Electronics America, said today at the company’s app developer day event in San Jose, Calif. “People want choice and control. With our apps, we can change how they choose, discover, and access content on the TV.”

Besides spending the $70 million on marketing, Samsung is also giving away a prize of $500,000 in a Free the TV contest for developers who make the best apps, said Eric Anderson, vice president of content and product solution at Samsung Electronics America. The company enlisted Entertainment Tonight host Samantha Harris (right) to emcee the event and invited luminaries such as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and ESPN’s Charles Pagano to talk.

In five months, the company said the number of apps has doubled, though it is still small. By the end of the year, that number will hit 200, Anderson said. They include apps such as ESPN’s Next Level app for sports fans.

Other TV makers are scrambling to create app platforms, which have become fashionable ever since Apple created the highly successful App Store for the iPhone just a few years ago. Samsung says it is the first TV maker to create a developer-friendly software development kit, or SDK. The platform enables paid apps. And it lets developers decide how much to charge for their apps, what countries to launch them in, and what devices they will be on.

Anderson said the focus will be on delivering quality apps that look good on a big screen and can be adapted for small screens on smartphones. B.K. Yoon, head of Samsung’s display division, said that apps on TVs will be the biggest change in the TV experience since the introduction of the digital video recorder.

“The linchpin of the strategy is the TV,” Baxter said.

Turning couch potatoes into app users doesn’t sound easy. But Samsung says 50 percent of the consumers who have bought internet-connected TVs this year have activated their Samsung apps. Samsung also says it has a lot of cloud to make apps on TV and other devices happen. The company sells 45 million TVs a year and more than 227 million mobile phones. In 45 days, it has sold 1 million Samsung Galaxy S smartphones in the U.S. Samsung says it has been the No. 1 TV brand in the U.S. for the past five years with 37 percent of the U.S. TV market share in 2010. About 30 models of Samsung TVs are now web-connected.

Tim Westergren (right), founder of online music service Pandora, said at the event that his decade-old company is activating 100,000 new users a day on mobile devices for the company’s internet radio app. Pandora is now available on 32 Samsung devices. A number of those are custom apps, but over time the point is to create one app that runs on all devices. Westergren said the noise in the ecosystem is clearing out and the platforms are becoming solid.

“This is all happening in a hurry for the devices that are going into the home,” Westergren said. “You could make an app that is part of this massive sea change, across tens of millions of TVs at some point.”