LG to unveil new curved-screen, 'organic' LED televisions

Televisions are reliable products for the annual International Consumer Electronics Show, which starts next week in Las Vegas. Top manufacturers such as LG and Samsung Electronics always show up with their latest and greatest products for the living room - often with dimensions and features that make confirmed couch potatoes drool.

This year, television makers aren't boasting big new features. Instead, there's more of a focus on the sets themselves, by pumping up the size and changing the shape of the screen.

LG will show off five televisions with OLED screens - OLED refers to the sets' super-sharp organic light-emitting diodes.

The cream of the crop will be the firm's 55-, 65- and 77-inch ultra-high-definition, curved OLED sets, which it promises has a "whole new level of picture quality". The curve is supposed to improve the viewing angle, and each television will sport software based on WebOS, the system used to power Palm and Hewlett-Packard smartphones and tablets. LG bought the rights to WebOS from HP early last year.

The company is also showing off a 55-inch flat OLED television and a 105-inch curved Ultra HD set with liquid-crystal display technology, which is cheaper to produce than OLEDs.

Meanwhile, Samsung is releasing new smart televisions that can be controlled by "finger gesture" to change the channel and adjust the volume. It is also increasing the sophistication of its voice-control features.