The biggest bet for TV makers this year – 3D – is taking longer to take off than expected, despite fast becoming a mainstream feature, said Korean electronics giant LG, at the IFA electronics show in Berlin, Germany.

Sales have been slower than anticipated, due to high prices and a lack of 3D content to watch on these newfangled TVs that started shipping earlier this year, said the number two TV maker.

“It will be mainstream (in future), but sales have been slow so far,” said LG’s vice-president for marketing for home entertainment, K. S. Lee, at a blogger forum, on the sidelines of the yearly electronics expo.

Avatar, arguably the most popular 3D movie so far, is only to be out in discs in November, he pointed out, adding that consumers were waiting to see more 3D content before splurging on a new 3D-enabled TV set.

Another problem, he said, was the need to wear clunky 3D goggles. “Imagine watching the World Cup for 90 minutes… it’s painful.”

On a more positive note, though, he added that glasses will be made lighter and more comfortable in future, and with more content, users might be more encouraged to take up the new technology.

LG is expected to ship 25 million LCD TVs (including LED TVs) and 4 million plasma TVs, making it the number two TV maker after fellow Korean electronics maker Samsung.

(NOTE: Look out for more IFA updates from this goondu, as he checks out the halls a little belatedly at the yearly home electronics fest in Berlin)

As the World Cup got underway last month, I finally succumbed to a long-suppressed itch to buy a new TV – one that could be mounted on the wall to free up my TV console and one which provided better contrast and clarity over my entry-level Full HD screen.

Thus began a long afternoon at Audio House, where I tested and re-tested several TVs, changed my mind a few times, before finally settling on a 55-inch Samsung C7000 (UA55C7000WM).

The C7000 is part of Samsung’s new Series 7 entry-level 3D LED TVs and it comes with your usual array of Internet-based features, such as the ability to watch YouTube (over a wired Ethernet link or optional Wi-Fi dongle).

More importantly, for me, the C7000 provides excellent contrast and smooth, natural motion.

But first, why 55 inches? In terms of screen real estate, the Samsung 46-inchers are not a huge leap over popular 40- and 42-inchers, which are significantly cheaper (think S$1,000 to S$2,000 less). After getting the measurements of my humble apartment (about 3.6 metres wall-to-wall), I decided to go for the bigger screen.

With Samsung’s ultra-thin wall-mount, the 2.65cm skinny screen is a mere 3cm from the wall and is literally hung like a painting using a thin but strong steel cable. This means the screen doesn’t look big at all, even in a living room that is typical of a three-bedroom apartment in Singapore.

Now, after a month with C7000, I am glad I went with the 55-incher. HD videos – whether they are in broadcast TV’s 1080i or Blu-ray’s 1080p – all look sharp. Surprisingly, SD videos look great too, possibly because my C7000 is hooked up to a Denon AVR-2310 that does a little upscaling to keep things looking sharp and in focus.

The dynamic contrast, which enables very deep blacks, and the vibrancy of colours are what attracted me to the C7000 at the showroom. One step down was the C6900, which I also liked, but which comes with a less aggressive sports/action mode (Clear Motion 4o0 versus the C7000′s Clear Motion 600) and no 3D.

In the end, the C7000 caught my eye, and I just had to have it after looking at it for half a day at Audio House. After all, I’d been quite impressed by Samsung’s excellent B7000, which I reviewed last year.

Like the older model, the eye candy in movies such as Avatar (non-3D) and Pearl Harbor is very impressive on the new C7000.

If you prefer the theatre experience, dim the lights and run the Movie mode on the TV. This way, the screen’s a little dimmer and “yellow” in colour temperature, replicating what you see in the cinema.

I personally prefer something with more impact and punch, so the C7000′s Dynamic mode does it for me with the extra brightness and contrast. And no, even after a couple of movies like Terminator Salvation and Pearl Harbor, the eyes don’t tire. They want more.

Blacks really look black, even when compared to LG’s excellent SL90 series from last year (which I considered as an alternative to the Samsungs). And how fast motion is portrayed can also be easily adjusted, whether you prefer the “computer-like” super-sharp/in-focus feel or one that seems more “natural”, so there’s no argument on whether the details are too soft or hard.

What impresses me too are the colours, which really come alive in a movie like Avatar. Here, you never fail to get a good sense of the beauty – and savagery – of Pandora because you are easily drawn into its multi-coloured world.

Details are extremely fine as well. You tend to take more seriously Colonel Quaritch’s safety brief early in the Avatar movie, when you see the battle scars etched on his skull in a stark close-up.

Of course, the C7000 is far from perfect. Quite a few folks on AV forums have complained about backlight bleed issues, especially at the edges where they could see “clouds” forming in place of a solid colour. I personally have not seen this, so either I am lucky or I have not been concentrating hard enough to find the problem.

Plus, some serious video buffs are still a little underwhelmed and are looking to the more precise dimming offered by the more expensive Samsung C8000 and C9000 (going at a cool S$12,888). But those models were surely out of my budget.

For me, a bigger issue I had with the C7000, until recently, was HDMI sync’ing problems with my Denon AVR. With my old Samsung 40-inch LCD, I could turn on my devices in any order and things would just sync up and I’d get sound and video within a second or two.

With the C7000, I actually had to apply a software patch from Samsung to solve persistent sync’ing problems, which a number of Onkyo AVR users have also raised. This mostly solved the problem, even though the occasional failure to sync still happened until I found a workaround.

The simplest way to ensure everything works is to turn on my AVR and source (StarHub set-top box, Sony Playstation 3 or HTPC) before turning on the TV. With this, I’ve never had a problem.

Since I’m at it, here’s another tip for fellow C7000 users. This is for folks running a set-up like mine  - I know there are lots of you out there who bought a Denon AVR in the past year and also use a Sony Playstation 3 as a Blu-ray player.

When playing Blu-ray movies, I had problems sync’ing a character’s dialogue with his lip movements, possibly because I’ve turned on the motion-enhancement settings on the C7000.

To get past this, try setting the Denon AVR’s audio delay to match the video on your Blu-rays. I set mine to more than 100ms and the problem went away immediately. I don’t see anymore out-of-sync lips now.

On the whole, the C7000 has been a big leap over my previous TV. With a list price of over S$6,000 (I got it cheaper after trading in my 3D glasses and 3D Blu-ray player), it had better be.

To be honest, I’m not blown away by the newfangled 3D feature. Going by shop demos, some content are hit-and-miss when upmixed by the TV’s 2D-to-3D converter.

But on regular 2D TV, I’m pretty impressed by the C7000. Great contrast and excellent colours make it an impressive screen for Blu-ray movies and even everyday pay-TV content. Well worth checking out if you are looking for a slim LED TV that packs in the goodies.

“Usually the June show is quieter than the March event, because people have already used up all their bonus money from the Chinese New Year,” said a PC hardware distributor friend, when I met him at the PC Show today.

Sure enough, if you walk around this quarter’s IT bazaar at Suntec City, which runs until this Sunday, you’d notice that there aren’t the usual big Sony booth or telecom operators taking up entire sections of a floor. These guys are still at PC Show today, but the show just seems smaller than the one in March.

So, what are the bargains?

LED TVs galore

The LG Infinia series of high-end, near-borderless LED TVs that I’ve been eyeing for a while now are finally hitting the show stands. Problem is, the best price I’ve been quoted is about S$5,700 for a 47-incher. Nice as it is, and with 3D feature which I don’t need, that’s a crazy price to pay. The next best LG – the older but still excellent SL90 is sold at S$2,800 for a similar 47-inch size.

At Audio House earlier this week, I even saw the price go down to S$2,400 (S$800 off the usual price)  if you charge the purchase to your DBS credit card (subject to you spending S$18,000 a year on the card).

And there are other new LED TV models from Samsung which are pretty impressive as well. A similar model from Samsung, the UA46C5000 46-incher, is going for S$2,799. Normal price is about S$3,000.

If you don’t need such a big screen, the popular 40-inch size comes with good bargains too. Samsung’s LA40C530, a 40-inch Full HD LCD (not LED-enabled, so not so thin) is going for an attractive S$999. TVs offer some of the best deals at shows like the PC Show, because the savings are usually in the hundreds of dollars.

Core i3, i5 and i7 laptops rule

Basically, old Core 2 Duo laptops are now in the sub-S$1,000 range, like with Compaq’s Presario CPQ321. Pay a bit more – from about S$1,300 – and you get a newer Core i5 chip in your next laptop. Even more, say, S$1,599 for HP’s Pavilion dv3-4036TX, and you get a zippy Core i7 processor.

Intel’s new chips are pushing into mainstream notebooks and the prices are indeed attractive.

Western Digital My Passport Elite

For just S$10 more than the regular WD Passport portable drive, you can buy the nifty My Passport Elite 500GB at S$119.90, which to me a good deal. Not just a nicer finish and a dock, the Elite version comes with encryption for your data when you carry them around. I bought one to backup my corporate data. One of the deals of the show.

Telcos

No spectacularly solid deals from these folks when I was checking out the SingTel, StarHub and M1 booths, which were all out in force at PC Show this week. In fact, SingTel recommends that you buy online and get the phone shipped to you instead of queueing at the show – good advice!

What makes me happy though is that StarHub has boosted speeds for its cable modem service by about two times. Its 8Mbps service will now offers 16Mbps max, while the 12Mbps will support up to 30Mbps. Sign up for a two-year deal and you get a free HP Pro Book laptop (with the 30Mbps service) or a free Lenovo netbook (with the 16Mbps service).

Finally, one note of caution if you are driving there. Get there early – maybe an hour or two – before the show starts at noon. I was there today at 10.30am and the carpark around the convention area was already almost filled up. By the time I left at 3pm, the carpark was full.

Tell us what you bought at the show!

Like many shoppers who’ve been to an electronics store lately, I’ve had a look at Samsung’s incredibly slim B7000 LED TVs (also known as its Series 7 LED TVs) and been pleasantly surprised.

With a depth of under 3cm for the 40-inch model, these svelte beauties never fail to get a reaction when you stare at them from the side – even my parents, non-techies that they are, were shocked to see how thin a screen has become these days.

Yet, looks aside, I never expected to be wowed by the equally stunning image quality on the B7000, which I had a chance to check out closely when Samsung sent us a 40-incher.

Watching regular TV on it, you get the sense that the clarity, sharpness and smoothness of the image are, at most, a small notch up over a good Full HD TV you can get for a third of the price. Sure, the blacks are blacker, the depth is natural, and clearly, with StarHub’s HD programs at 1080i, the B7000 looks pretty sharp, but this is still “just TV”.

What really earns the Full HD B7000 its S$5,399 price tag is Blu-ray movies. I was blown away when I watched Pearl Harbour on the 40-incher, which has 4 HDMI ports to hook up to your PS3, DVD player and other gear.

The sharpness and clarity were the best I’ve seen lately. I’ve had an old Samsung Full HD TV for almost a year now, and seeing the same movie on the B7000 was like doing so with a new pair of glasses for my astigmatism. Characters seem a lot more lifelike, with a sharpness and depth that are not seen on other screens. The same can be said for scenery, which really draws you in with fine detail, such as grass and metal, on-screen.

I suddenly find myself noticing details I never noticed before, like a US soldier running across the screen as a fireball erupts from an aircraft hangar, or the small, desperate sailors rushing on deck as a battleship begins to sink.

Even when a camera tilts up along a tower, as in a scene in Pearl Harbour, or when a plane zooms by in a split second, there is none of that annoying trail of blur. The B7000′s 100Hz engine apparently takes care of that, and your suspension of disbelief is well retained.

Usually, I’d keep a TV’s image settings to “natural” or “standard”, but with the B7000, I actually turned it to “Dynamic” and enjoyed Pearl Harbour tremendously. There’s little of the over-saturation on most other TV’s dynamic settings – here, the more aggressive tuning up actually works.

Yes, Pearl Harbour’s sky was bluer and the mountains greener, but if you’ve been to Hawaii, you’ll know how it all looks when the sun is up – the B7000 re-creates that lushness stunningly well.

To have a second look, I then fired up the Batman Begins Blu-ray. Again, the sharpness impresses, as does the contrast. In dim scenes, and there are many in the movie, you can make out outlines of a character better than on regular TV sets.

I’ve praised Pioneer’s plasmas in years past for their natural depth in movies, and Sharp’s LCDs for amazingly fine lines, particularly for games and animation features, say, A Bug’s Life.

But I’m happy to say the B7000 is the king of the hill now if you are looking for everything in a screen. Not just slim. Not just sharp. Not just deep blacks. Not just smooth motion. It’s got them all.

Yes, the B7000 also has as many frills as you’ll find on a TV today – there’s a second, egg-shaped remote, network connectivity, and photo viewing. But ultimately, it’s the image quality that really stands out. Even its slimmess becomes easily forgotten when you see what’s on screen.

If there is an argument against the B7000, it would be that motion can at times seem a little too “computer-like”. That is when a moving object stays very sharply in focus – more so than our eyes and brains are used to. I personally prefer this, up to an extent (I’d say no to Philips’ old PixelPlus, for example), though there are some who prefer a more “natural” image, say, in a plasma.

It’s one of those arguments nobody wins – like whether sound from a set of speakers is warm enough. With the B7000, though, I’d think a large part of its audience – folks used to sharp LCD screens and video games – will welcome the sharpness.

Of course, with a list price of S$5,399 (or over S$4,000 on the street), this is one expensive screen, especially as prices are falling like mad for other Full HD models. All I can say is go to a shop and demo it with a Blu-ray movie, preferably with lots of fast action and explosions, and be prepared to be impressed.