CES 2009 Video: LG TV ExtravaganzaCES 2009 Video: LG TV Extravaganza

Was it me, or did it seem like LG has taken over half of the space at CES? Its TVs and giant walls lined the inescapable booth at the Las Vegas Convention Center. If it's true that there were 130,000 attendees at CES, then I saw most of them in the LG stand, nearly got trampled a half dozen times, once getting stuck behind Yahoo founder Jerry Yang's entourage (undoubtedly trying to find him a job) and some suits from CBS. An LG PR person told me there had been an altercation earlier. OK, the LG HDTVs are superb, but not worth fighting over.Here's the video.

CES is always the place for major HDTV announcements, and this year the trend is toward thinner, sub-1-inch screens. LG was showing off a nice 55-inch version, among many other TVs. This version is backlit by LEDs for brightness and energy efficiency. LG said there are almost 3,000 of these lights across the entire panel, divided into segments, and can be controlled individually. The company claims that others just use LEDs to light the edges, making the picture inferior. The TV is also wireless, so you can put the TV anywhere (well, 30 feet away) and not worry about messy wires.

The TV that gets me most excited is the broadband version, which has an Internet connection and lets you download Netflix videos directly to the TV. The Internet connection is crippled (in their words, "it's not a browser") and only lets you access some Yahoo widgets defined by LG (weather, news, etc.).