Vizio

Vizio's next-gen Google TV set top box, the Co-Star, may be the most highly anticipated Google TV device to date, especially given its competitive feature set and price point. Next gen Google TV devices have been slow coming to the market, but the Vizio Co-Star is nearly here. Vizio is taking pre-orders for the Co-Star on their website for up to two units with an expected ship date of August 14. I've gone on record as being less than enthusiastic about Google TV, but the Co-Star may be the first device to spark a serious interest in giving Google's take on the future of TV a shake since the Logitech Revue went on fire sale, especially with its included support for OnLive's game streaming service.

With the buzz around the VAP430 having been maintained right through the first half of the year, the time has now come to officially open the pre-orders. The unit will initially be available for order through Vizio's own online store starting today. The cost of the unit is $99.99 with free ground shipping while supplies last.

Anandtech

Samsung's decision to spin of their LCD unit into a separate company earlier this year was prompted by falling panel prices amid a worldwide component glut. The problem wasn't just the abundance of manufacturers pumping out lower quality, inexpensive panels, but falling demand for LCD TVs. That falling demand became even more evident in a recent NPD DisplaySearch report that showed LCD HDTV sales fell year-over-year for the first time ever. The market shrunk by a bit less than 3% from 2011 to 2012, and the market shrinkage seems to be accelerating with a drop of 8% in the first quarter of 2012. Samsung and Vizio were able to make lemonade out of the lemons that NPD was handing out thanks to another report from iSupply that showed Samsung holding onto its top spot as the global sales leader and Vizio leading specifically in the U.S. market. With margins and sales continuing to drop, it will be interesting to see at what point maintaining those sales leads actually become a drag on their bottom lines.

Global TV shipments fell by eight percent in the first quarter of 2012 and, compounding the bad news, total LCD shipments fell for the first time, by 2.53 percent. This time last year, total TV shipments had grown by one percent and LCD by eight percent.

The Verge

Google tried to keep Google TV out of sight during last year's CES, but not his year. Hot on the heels of Marvell's announcement that it was building chips to support Google TV's transition to ARM comes the announcement that LG will be showing off their own Google TV-powered smart TV at CES this year. LG will be joining Samsung, Sony, and Vizio who had already announced that they would be offering Google TV products. LG's Google TV offering will allow users to switch between the standard Google TV UI and a custom UI that LG has put together, presumably using their LG Magic Remote QWERTY. Similar to the Magic Remote that LG announced recently with voice and motion control, the LG Google TV version will include a QWERTY keyboard for text input. It should be noted that LG is not planning on using the freshly announced Marvell chips for their Google TV products. LG will be using their own L9 SoC, which is presumably the first fruits of the ARM license that LG picked up earlier this year.  

The second round of Google TV hardware will be in full swing at CES 2012, and the folks at Mountain View just officially announced LG is joining the list of hardware partners at the show. While we know Logitech was taking a pass on the latest hardware, previously announced partners Samsung, Sony and Vizio are still in and the latter two will have new hardware to show next week. 

Engadget