Is Sony's television future Crystal clear?

Is Sony's television future Crystal clear?
Crystal LED - OLED rival impresses

Sony has had a year it would rather forget so it is no wonder it spent most of CES 2012 looking forward to the future and teasing some new television technology.

Sony's press conference is always the highlight of CES. Even when the company has little to show off – and this year isn't exactly plentiful in new product announcements – it manages to bring a bit of glitz and glamour to the tech show by bringing out one of the stars from Sony's latest blockbuster movie.

This time around it was Will Smith who managed to grin his way through his contract obligations and make the most of being on the CES stage.

But Smith wasn't the star of Sony's show – instead it was its new TV technology Crystal LED. This new fusion of OLED and LED and is said by Sony to be the next big step in television technology.

Smith sony

The television works by packing six million LEDs into the display which offers brightness on a par with OLED.

With both Samsung and LG announcing big-screen OLED displays, Sony looks to be changing tack and focusing on its own Crystal LED technology. At the moment it is in concept stage but if this technology turns out to be cheaper to produce than OLED then Sony may well be on to something big.

Sony led

Sony's press conference this year didn't have the wow factor but it did feel like it was doing the best job possible steadying its ship and focusing on the vast range of product areas Sony is involved in.

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.