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HP Unveils New TVs and Entertainment Centers

April 28th, 2005

HP is bidding to move out of the office and into your living room as it announces 3 new digital entertainment centers, devices that you to personalize and manage their TV viewing, movies, music, photos and videos, all from one remote control, and 10 new Pavillion TVs.

The new HP z555 and z557 High-definition Digital Entertainment Center series include three tuners: One ATSC OTA high-definition TV tuner for the ability to pause, play and record HD over-the-air programming and two NTSC tuners for recording two standard definition shows simultaneously. The z555 model comes with a 250 GB 7,200 rpm Serial ATA hard drive, and the z557 model comes with two 300 GB hard drives, one being a personal media drive to deliver over half a terabyte of combined storage.

Both units offer high-performance TV quality with the Nvidia GeForce 6600 PCI-Express graphics card. This product enables digital entertainment enthusiasts to combine entertainment features with the ability to surf the web or instant message friends, all in the convenience of their living rooms by fusing the best of PC and audio-video elements. All HP Digital Entertainment Center models are available for purchase now in North America, Sweden and France.

HP also unveiled a line of 10 newly branded HP Pavilion TVs, including four high-definition microdisplay rear-projection televisions, three high-definition plasmas and three high-definition LCDs.

Introduced at the Home Entertainment Expo, all of the TVs include new HP Visual Fidelity technologies, which provide enhanced image quality and brilliant color by, depending on the model, gauging a room’s ambient lighting and doubling pixel resolution among other innovations.

HP’s microdisplay TVs also feature a lighted front-connection panel designed with a special slot under the TV so audio/visual cables can easily be connected from the front and then hidden from view. The microdisplay TVs additionally enable viewers to quickly and easily select an input source, such as a DVD player, by touching a button on the remote control to view on screen how all input sources are being used.

“HP’s logo says ‘Invent’ and that’s exactly what we’ve done with our new line of televisions, all designed with ease of use in mind,” said Stephen J. Nigro, senior vice president, Imaging and Printing Technology Platforms, HP. “We’ve been able to leverage our expertise in imaging and data processing to figure out innovative ways to enhance color, reduce video noise and double the resolution, setting our TVs apart from the competition.”

Entry Filed under: Digital Home, Home Theater / Cinema