LG Product Update

LG has just tapped Sir Mark Levinson to engineer the acoustics behind its latest bundle, the HB954SP. Packing a 5.1-channel sound system that includes 1,000 total watts of power, a quintet of oval drivers and a ported subwoofer, the system gets direction from a BD-Live-enabled Blu-ray player that's actually a fair bit more stylish than the tried-and-true black rectangle. You'll also find a pair of HDMI inputs, an iDock function for charging and controlling your iPod / iPhone right from the BD deck, 1080p upscaling of traditional DVDs, touch sensitive controls, a USB port for loading up external media and an optical audio input. There's nary a mention of price, but it should splash down this November for a hefty premium.

With LG's 15-inch OLED TV coming to stores in December it can't be long until LG's mid-sized TV's start showing up for retail right? After all, Samsung and Sony are on record with claims of producing mid-sized OLEDs as early as this year and no later than mid-2010. Not so fast, literally. Although LG had previously targetted 2011 for the mass production of its 32-inch OLED TV, CEO Kwon Young Soo now says that LG plans on producing 30-inch OLED panels for TVs in 2012. Of course, all those earlier OLED projections were made before the global economic collapse so delays have to be expected, however upsetting it may be.

We've already got a pile of evidence taller than the BL40 itself that told us LG's latest Black Label device was that ultra-wide, glossy red and black slate we've seen floating around -- but now, for the very first time, it's totally official. The company has just released the first fully-revealed press photos of the phone that it's calling the "New Chocolate," an homage to one of the phones that brought it to the dominant industry position it enjoys today. So, is the BL40 going to help it continue that dominance? At a glance here, yeah, we'd say there's a pretty good chance.