Toshiba Unveils Cell-Powered REGZA 55-inch LCD TV

Toshiba has unveiled its first cell-powered LCD TV ‘Cell Regza 55X1′ for the Japanese market. This new 55-inch widescreen TV uses the same Cell Technology as found in the Sony PS3 for delivering outstanding picture quality. It also offers a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, 240Hz scanning, 1,250 cd/m2 brightness, 5,000,000 contrast ratio, an internet browser made by Opera Software, DLNA support, a 7-speaker sound bar, an SD card slot, HDMI and USB ports and a tuner box that includes a 3TB of storage space, with 2TB of that is dedicated to time-shift recording (recording up to 26 hours of programs for up to eight channels). The Cell Regza 55X1 will go on sale in Japan in December for unannounced price yet. [TCMagazine]

As Japan approaches the end of analogue broadcasting in 2011, the digital TV market has entered a period of diversifying customer needs.

“In order to meet demand for more vivid reproduction of high contrast, high definition images, simultaneous viewing and recording of multiple programs, along with access to broadband content,” as they say, Toshiba just unveiled newly developed CELL REGZA TV and the CELL Platform.

CELL REGZA 55X1 is the new flagship of the company's REGZA line-up and will be available in the Japanese market from the beginning of December.

The heart of CELL REGZA is Toshiba's CELL Platform - a combination of the high speed parallel processing of the Cell Broadband Engine, specially developed for demanding multimedia applications, and Toshiba's image-processing algorithms.

According to the company, the CELL Platform achieves an arithmetic processing capability approximately 143 times that of the current top-of-the-line REGZA TV, allowing it to support unrivaled image-enhancing capabilities.

It offers a dynamic contrast ratio of 5,000,000:1, and supports this with ultra-high-speed processing and recording, enhanced navigation and seamless network interactivity.

In the new Toshiba’s TV, the eight-window multi-display is divided into 512 distinct areas, each with individually controlled lighting. Luminance is pushed to an 1250cd/m2, 2.5 times the level of typical TVs.

The CELL REGZA consists of a slim monitor and a tuner that also integrates the 3-terabyte hard disk drive. Two terabytes of capacity are dedicated to the "time-shift machine," which can simultaneously record up to approximately 26 hours of programming for up to eight channels of digital terrestrial broadcasts.

It combines the 120Hz scan rate of ClearScan 240 with its new Backlight Scanning technology, and now achieves 240Hz scanning. The new double backlight scanning function divides the display into 16, against eight for current REGZA models.

Toshiba states that optimum picture quality is achieved by automatic fine tuning of multiple control settings: 1024 steps in color temperature, a 128 scale dynamic gamma range, 100 brightness settings, 32 settings each for color saturation, color sharpness, and adjustment of super resolution, plus control of the LED backlighting.

CELL REGZA comes with the Opera-based browser with full HD support (e.g. enables displaying Youtube HD content), co-developed with Opera Software, and also supports broadband service, DNLA streaming and display of JPEG digital photographs.