New TV Has Bells, Whistles and WiFi

• November 16th, 2007 | HDTV

They have cell phones with wifi, Secure Digital flash cards with WiFi, why NOT have a TV with WiFi? What good is WiFi on a TV? First things first. To begin with, LG has a new 52 inch LCD TV called the 52LG71 and it comes with the bells and whistles you’d expect–OK, all you care about is theWiFi-part–fine, but what will that WiFi connectivity do? What is the point of a TV with WiFi ? Ironically, it has nothing to do with surfing the Web on the TV, though that would be the logical ability it should have. In fact, what it does do with thatWiFi capability is target our old friend the Apple TV.

Like Apple’s long-time nemesis in the marketplace, Archos, has already done, LG is planning to take a bite out of Apple TV’s business, only LG is also going after the business of anyone else selling streaming media servers in the form of set-top boxes (Pinnacle, this means you). Really, if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. If you don’t want to design a TV set with space on top for a set-top box? Then design a set with the box built in–and that’s just what LG has done.

All the gadget blogs are abuzz about this thing but none have the full deets on what kind of 802.11 WiFi network the 52LG71 will support. Since this TV can stream high-def video from computers on the same network, it’s probably safe to assume that this thing will roll with the 802.11n-crowd since “g” might be too slow and “b”–who uses “b” anymore?