If you thought there wasn’t much more manufacturers could do with HDTV after 3D TVs basically crashed and burned, then check out this video from Crave Online of the Top 5 TV Innovations at CES. We;re definitely seeing new features being added for “smart TVs” and also some interesting shapes to make the viewing experience more natural.

These new TVs are pretty amazing:

The biggest buzz so far at the Consumer Electronics Show comes from the new OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) televisions from the giant South Korean manufacturer Samsung.

Production costs had previously limited the size of OLED screens, which is why consumers mostly found them in cellular phones, and the only commercially available OLED television model had been the Sony XEL-1, an 11-inch model that debuted at the 2007 CES with a price of $2,500.

Samsung’s new televisions feature a 55-inch screen, an absurd 0.6-inch width, and a richness of color never before seen in commercial displays.

Check out the video and see for yourself. 3D TVs were a huge bust, but now these new super-thin TVs should generate some serious buzz.

The biggest technology and gadget show, CES, just kicked off in Las Vegas, and as usual much of the talk surrounds Apple:

Apple is the only company that consistently gets big buzz out of the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas — without even attending.

This year will be no different.

Connected TVs — TVs that connect to and can access content from the Internet — will be a big part of CES this year. And just about everyone in tech expects Apple at some point to launch such a television — an iTV — that easily consumes and shares with other Apple devices content served from the company’s media-storing iCloud.

Microsoft made news earlier by saying this was the last year they would attend CES/ Why attend if Apple gets all the buzz anyways? Maybe Microsoft should focus on new products instead of protecting its Windows/Office cash cow? Or maybe not . . .

One of the most expected tech releases at CES this year was USB 3.0. It wasn’t really a release in the typical sense of the word, but it was the first time the public had a chance to see the transfer tech in action. And it’s fast. Really fast. Fast enough to make using an external hard drive to run anything from your operating system to your games completely viable.

Consider the numbers. As Engadget tested, USB 3.0 supported passthrough of 135 MB/second on a platter drive. That’s incredible. Hook up an SSD and things only getting better, reaching transfer speeds of 200 MB/second or greater. Basically you’re looking at a transfer tech that, for the time being, is limited only by the media on either end of the cable.

For now, USB 3.0 support is extremely limited. As you can see from the connectors, things get a little bulky on either end, so you won’t be using 3.0 cables on 2.0 devices. You can, however, plug that thumbdrive you’ve got into a 3.0 port, just don’t expect 3.0 speeds.