Sony announced at CES that it is putting 3-D on just about every visually related product it makes, with a full line of 3-D point-and-shoot cameras, 3-D camcorders, 3-D laptops and someday 3-D screens that sit inches away from your eyes.

The electronics giant touted its product line for 2011, "a year in which 3-D becomes personal," with presentations by Sony executives, led by Chief Executive Howard Stringer at a news conference at the Las Vegas Convention Center as a part of the Consumer Electronics Show.

And Sony isn't just hoping you'll buy its 3-D movies and watch its 3-D TV channel -- called 3Net and launching in three months with assistance from the Discovery Channel and Imax -- it's hoping you'll make some 3-D content of your own, with its products of course.

Glasses will be required to see the 3-D images on Sony's Vaio F Series laptop, as well as the video and photos captured by its Cyber-Shot cameras. 

However, on the back of its Flip cam rival, the Bloggie 3-D, is a glasses-free 3-D screen 2.4 inches big, which plays back the depth-added videos and photos a user shoots. And one model of Sony's 3-D camcorders, the HDR-TD10, has a glasses-free 3.5-inch display.

The HDR-TD10 records in full high definition, with a 1080p resolution, and 3-D videos a consumer makes can be viewed on a 3-D TV via an HDMI cable. The camcorder will ship in April for about $1,500, Sony said. It will feature two lenses, two processors and two image sensors to record the 3-D images, and the camera packs a 64-gigabyte hard drive.

The 3-D Bloggie, which also records in full 1080p HD, will sell for about $250 and feature an 8-gigabyte flash drive and a 5-megapixel resolution and arrive in stores in April as well.

A Vaio laptop with a 3-D-compatible screen, dubbed the F Series, will arrive in stores later this year for about $1,700. The F Series will feature a full 1080p HD screen of 16 inches, with a TV-style 16:9 aspect ratio. Other features include a built-in Blu-ray drive and an Intel Core i7 processor. Pre-orders are being taken for the 3-D laptops at www.sonystyle.com/fseries.

Sony displayed a glasses-free 3-D screen on a portable Blu-ray player, but that was just a prototype, as was a 3-D head-mounted display that looked somewhat like the eyepiece worn by the comic book character Cyclops from X-Men.

The head-mounted prototype is made up of two OLED displays that send a unique image to each eye to create the 3-D effect.

Sony also showed off -- at its CES booth and not onstage -- three prototype glasses-free TVs for home use: a 24.5-inch OLED screen and a 46-inch and a 56-inch LCD set.

Kazuo "Kaz" Hirai, head of Sony Computer Entertainment, made some non-3-D teases, saying PlayStation-related products in the mobile space would be arriving later in the year, and he said Sony was working on a tablet.

But Hirai and Sony offered no details on the tablet, what it would look like or when it would arrive, just that it was being worked on.

Sony also announced a monthly subscription music streaming service called Music Unlimited, which will be offered this year through its Qriocity streaming media platform on its Internet-connected TVs and PlayStation 3. Just how much the service will cost, or an official release date, wasn't disclosed.

Aside from 3-D, Stringer said Internet-connected TVs were Sony's other main consumer push, estimating that more than 50 million TVs will be Internet-enabled worldwide through Sony's PlayStation 3, Wi-Fi Blu-ray players and Internet-connected TVs.

"This is a significant base of connected products," he said. "Size does matter."

Before getting into the flurry of 3-D-related announcements, the presentation was started with a scene in 3-D from the Sony Pictures movie "The Green Hornet," which hits theaters Jan. 14.

After the preview, which the crowd watched with 3-D glasses, a rotating platform on the stage showcased the Black Beauty car from the movie, with Stringer and "Green Hornet" stars Seth Rogen and Jay Chou.

Standing alongside the two Hollywood celebrities, Stringer said with little laughs, "You've got to think that this car makes James Bond's Aston Martin look sissy, doesn't it?"

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles
twitter.com/nateog

Photos: Top, the Sony HDR-TD10 and, bottom, the Bloggie 3-D. Credit: Sony

The U.S. LCD television market is expected to end up shipping fewer TVs this year than last, resulting in the first annual decline since the display technology debuted in 2006, according to a research firm.

The economic weakness and a year of slow price declines have led to retailers selling fewer and manufacturers shipping fewer TVs this year than last, according to a report from the iSuppli research firm.

The research firm is expecting a total of about 31.9 million LCD TVs shipped in 2010, down 1.2% from 32.3 million in 2009.

A decline of 1.2% may seem insignificant, but if things turn out as iSuppli is forecasting, it would mark the first time annual shipments of LCD TVs haven't increased year-over-year.

The decline would be a reversal for what has been a steadily growing market for consumer electronics makers, iSuppli analyst Riddhi Patel said in a statement.

"Year after year, in both good economic times and bad, U.S. consumers always have found a way to devote more of their disposable incomes to purchasing sleek, new flat-panel LCD TVs," Patel said in her statement. "However, in 2010, the realities of the economy finally caught up with the LCD market."

Unemployment stayed high and consumer confidence remained low in 2010 and LCD prices didn't decline fast enough to bring consumers into stores to buy TVs, iSuppli said.

LCD TV makers also shifted strategy in 2010, moving away from the traditional market-growth approach of cutting prices to stimulate sales and toward a tactic of adding more features to TV sets, such as LED backlighting, built-in Internet access and 3-D displays, iSuppli said. That strategy, so far it would seem, hasn't been as effective in growing sales as price cuts were, the firm said.

Other consumer electronics items -- including Apple's popular iPad tablet computer, e-book readers and portable media players -- all vied for the same discretionary income that LCD TVs did, Patel said in the statement.

While the U.S. market is expected to show an annual decline, the global LCD TV market will continue to expand in 2010, rising by 20.3%, iSuppli said.

"The global LCD TV market continues to grow on the strength of emerging markets like China, parts of the Asia Pacific region and Latin America," Patel said. "These regions are seeing strong growth as LCD TVs become more affordable."

Despite the projected shipment setbacks in the U.S. this year, Patel and iSuppli are expecting only a one-year dip.

"Shipments will resume their growth in 2011 as consumer confidence rises again," Patel said in the statement.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles 

Photo: Aurel Borcea, from Harbor City, shops for HDTVs in Torrance on Sept. 30. Credit: Ricardo DeAratanha/ Los Angeles Times

Vizio knocked Samsung out of the No. 1 spot for LCD television shipments in the U.S. in the third quarter, but Samsung retained its top position for overall flat-panel TV shipments, according to the research firm ISuppli Corp.

For the three-month period ended Sept. 30, Vizio shipped 1.6 million LCD TVs to retailers, up 14.9% from the 1.4 million in the second quarter, ISuppli said.

The increase was enough to propel the Irvine-company to a 19.9% share of the American LCD TV market, passing Samsung as the leader.

Samsung's shipments of LCD TVs during the third quarter dropped 1.5% to 1.4 million units, leaving it with it a 17.7% share, ISuppli said.

The South Korean tech giant's small production of plasma TVs helped it hold on to its first-place overall spot for flat-panel TV shipments in the U.S. in the third quarter. The overall category consists of both LCD and plasma sets.

Samsung shipped 1.82 million flat-panel sets in the third quarter, up 0.2% from 1.81 million in the second quarter, earning Samsung a 19.3% share of overall shipments, ISuppli said.

Vizio -- which doesn't make plasma TVs -- came in second for overall U.S. TV shipments during the same period.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Correction: The previous version of this post said incorrectly that Vizio was based in Costa Mesa. Vizio is based in Irvine.

Photo: Vizio XVT553SV 55-inch television. Credit: Vizio Inc.

Sony will begin selling televisions with Google's much-touted Web-surfing program Saturday. The high-definition sets will have LCD screens ranging from 24 inches to 46 inches, with retail prices ranging from $599 to $1,399.

Sony unveiled the TV sets in New York on Tuesday. The sets will first go on sell online Saturday, and they should be available in Best Buy stores by early next week. For more details, read Alex Pham's Company Town blog post.

-- Peter Pae

Photo: A Google TV-powered Sony television set with a QWERTY keypad remote control. Credit: Sony Electronics

Sharp promo image featuring "QuadPixel" four-color technology. Courtesy Sharp Electronics Corp.

While other TV manufacturers were focusing on a third dimension for their pictures, Sharp homed in on a fourth color.

Company executives unveiled today their "four primary color" technology, Sharp's hope for a new edge over its rivals. LCD makers have traditionally relied on pixels in three colors -- red, green and blue -- to generate a broad palette of colors on screen. Sharp is adding a fourth, yellow, which increases the number of colors on screen to more than 1 trillion. That's about 1,000 times better than the previous approach, Sharp executives said.

Technical advantages are hard to maintain in the consumer-electronics industry, where innovations are quickly replicated and leapfrogged. And at the Consumer Electronics Show, often the breakthroughs amount to little more than clever marketing. So while it stands to reason that adding a fourth color to the mix will make a difference, I'm not sure that will translate into a great leap forward in the viewing experience.

Sharp helpfully put one of its older LED models next to the new ones with the "four primary color" technology, and the new models looked distinctly better. The colors -- all of them -- were warmer and richer. I can't say whether the same results could have been achieved, however, just by expertly adjusting the older TV's settings.

Anyway, the technology will be available this year on about a third of Sharp's flat-panel TVs -- typically, the larger LED-backlit screens. The new technology carries a premium of about $200. If it really is the next big thing in picture quality, expect to see similar moves by other manufacturers next year. It's also safe to predict that the price premium will drop rapidly over time.

And just in case four colors aren't as important to consumers as three dimensions, Sharp also plans to have a 3D TV on the market later this year. Just like the rest of the pack.

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division. Follow him on Twitter: @jcahealey

Does it really matter that the LCD TV has a contrast ratio of 40,000:1 or that the digital camera has a 12-megapixel resolution?

David Colker gets to the bottom of these befuddling questions ahead of the holiday shopping season. He offers an in-depth gadget guide that doesn't make suggestions about what to buy but about how to buy.

--Peter Pae

Sharp LCD TVs could get an image-boosting improvement in contrast. Photo: Bloomberg.

Ever since LCD flat-panel televisions became popular, videophiles have complained they lack one major thing -- true black.

The technology can't, like old-fashioned tube TVs, display an absence of illumination that can be part of a night scene or other apt situation. Plasma TVs come much closer to showing true black, as the experts call it, but with LCDs there's always a hint of gray, and this throws off the image contrast.

But this week, Sharp Corp. said it had developed an LCD technology that eliminates "light leakage," according to a company release, "making it possible to display extremely deep blacks." The new regimen, which Sharp calls UV²A technology, is so precise that it can control the tilt of liquid crystal molecules only about two nanometers in size. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. 

Also, Sharp says the technology is more efficient and will save energy while still producing bright images with vivid colors.

No word on prices or when televisions using UV²A will become available, but Sharp says it will start making the new LCD panels at two of its plants.

It's far too early to know how much real-world difference the technology will make our living rooms, if any.

-- David Colker