U.S. consumers are expected to spend $29 billion on televisions this year, up 13 percent, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.

Unless they decide to wait for some of the cool new models on display at CES this week. Here's a sample, including images of some of the things I've written about the last few days.

Sony's betting this is the future - ultrathin, ultrabright organic light emitting diode panels such as this 27-inch concept set, a size that won't be available for at least a year:

The Sony from a slightly different angle:

Panasonic still favors plasma displays, which it's making thinner as well. Here's an inch-thick, 50-inch diagonal display coming in a year or two:

Panasonic also showed a 150-inch plasma, the world's largest (until next year's CES, when someone will probably bring a 152'' model ...):

Here's the widgetized Internet TV, the Pansonic IPTV Viera going on sale this spring:

As long as the TV and PCs are merging, why not give the TV touchscreen capability as well? Check out LG's 52-inch touchscreen display, shown here running Google Maps:

It will be a few years, or more, before we've got big, flexible television screens using the thin-film technology LG Philips is displaying at the show. It has a 4-inch color OLED display with VGA resolution, but larger versions won't be out until after 2009. Meanwhile 12-inch monochrome versions - the dimensions of a letter-sized piece of paper - will enter mass production in the fourth quarter of 2008. Here's a 14-incher with the dimensions of a sheet of legal-sized paper:

Just for fun, there's the R2D2 digital video audio and video projector from Nikko America. It has a built-in DVD player, iPod dock and DLP projector that outputs 1024 by 769 video onto a wall or ceiling. Unfortunately this guy was unable to get this one to play audio from his iPhone; a sales rep said it was a display model and might not have been fully charged.