Best Buy recently had a holiday sale for LG LCD HDTV’s. It was finally time to replace that old analog television with a digital television. Part of the deal was that it came with an LG BD300 Blu-ray player. Of course, we had to go out and rent the latest Batman movie. Impressive does not even begin to describe the experience! One of the options I noticed on the player was a Netflix icon. It seems that I could stream Netflix movies direct to my player with an appropriate Internet connection. Quite cool!
LG is poised to extend that capability direct to their HDTV’s. To be announced and demonstrated at CES 2009 is their lineup of Netflix capable units. The announcement:
LG Electronics and Netflix are at it again, extending their partnership with Broadband HDTVs that have built-in Netflix streaming software.
The Broadband HDTVs come as LCDs or plasmas and need no external device to stream Netflix. And, yes, HD Netflix content will be available.
“LG Electronics was first to embrace Netflix as a streaming partner a year ago, and was first in 2008 to introduce a Blu-ray disc player that streams movies from Netflix,” says Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.
“So it’s fitting that LG is the first to introduce Netflix instant streaming directly to the TV with these next-generation HDTVs.”
LG first brought Netflix streaming to Blu-ray on its BD300 and will release the Broadband HDTVs this spring.
Netflix members with an $8.99 per month subscription or higher can use a PC to queue up their choices, and then use the remote control to scroll through them on the TV screen.
The companies didn’t release pricing or screen sizes. We’ll have to find out more at CES 2009 where LG and Netflix will demo the Broadband HDTVs at booth 8214 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
LG will also show the following at CES 2009:
This seems to be the year where companies are looking to extend connectivity of your viewing experience to the Internet. Quite nice!
