Do you enjoy the convenience of shopping in your BVDs at any hour of the day or night, but still feel a little queasy about sharing your credit card information on the Interwebs? Are you the type who thinks that “left pocket, right pocket” is all you need to know about domestic bookkeeping? Do you still prefer to use old-fashioned “folding green” to pay for your purchases?
If so, here’s a back-to-the-future innovation from Walmart that you’re going to love: pay for your online purchases with cash! No, they don’t come out to your house and install a tiny reverse-ATM on your computer. Instead, you place your order online, and then you have 48 hours to get to any store to pay for your purchase. Walmart will then ship your order; you can choose to have it shipped directly to your home or to the nearest store.
According to the Walmart press release, the FDIC reports that about a quarter of U.S. households do not have access to a credit card or bank account. For these people, cash is the most convenient payment option. Until now, however, this has left them shut out of the larger product selection and special discounts available through online shopping at Walmart’s website.
So when you’re shopping for your next consumer electronics device — or perhaps even an HDTV — you now have the option to shop online and still pay with cash.
Once again, Panasonic has move the goalposts in the “Mine Is Bigger than Yours” contest. The latest is a 145-inch diagonal plasma television; that’s more than 12 feet from corner to corner. According to a news report by Tech-On, the behemoth was a joint effort with NHK (Japan Broadcasting System) and was produced in one of Panasonic’s idle plasma panel fabrication lines. It’s not a big surprise that NHK is involved, because they have been at the forefront of higher-than-1080p resolutions for a long time.
There are several points of interest about this demonstration. First and foremost is the resolution; the panel has 7,680 by 4,320 pixels. I’ve done the math for you already, and that is the equivalent of sixteen 1080p resolution panels tiled together. The tiled panels would be only about 36-inches diagonal apiece, which is on the small size for current plasma products. As a result, the display has a pixel pitch of 60 ppi, which is smaller than a typical 42-inch plasma. This means that each sub-pixel is smaller and has less surface area for phosphors, which would mean that the panel can emit less light per pixel. This is one of the limitations of plasma technology.
One detail that is a surprise is that Panasonic engineers have come up with a way to divide up the scanning signals for these panels. Apparently they scan multiple horizontal lines at the same time, in order to refresh the 4,320 lines without flickering.
Finally, the article quotes Yoshio Ito, director of Display Devices Business Group and senior vice president at AVC Network Co, Panasonic: “It is possible to experience video with realistic sensations from a distance of 1.6 meters, which is the optimal viewing distance.” That’s just over five feet, folks. (That’s just about the distance that I’d recommend for a 36″ 1080p screen, which would have the same pixel size.) So I don’t want to hear any more complaints when I recommend a bigger screen for your viewing distance; here’s the SVP from Panasonic saying that five feet from a 12-foot diagonal screen is “optimal.”
According to a report by Leichtman Research Group, Inc. (LRG), 24% of U.S. households had a television connected to the Internet in 2010. By last year, this rose to 30%. LRG’s latest research shows that this share has jumped to 38% this year.
The survey includes video game consoles, Blu-ray players, network media players (such as the Roku and Western Digital boxes), and Internet TVs. One of the most interesting results of the survey is that 28% of all households use a video game console to connect the TV to the Internet. That’s nearly three out of every four. While this may signal the video game console’s move from the teenager’s bedroom to the living room, I suspect that it is more likely a measure of young adults in college and living on their own who have chosen to include the video game console in their living room entertainment system.
Whatever the cause, online viewing of long-form content is clearly catching on. The survey indicates that 16% of all adults now watch full-length TV episodes and movies at least weekly, up from 12% last year and 10% three years ago.
According to LRG, traditional linear television services including cable, satellite, and broadcast still dominate the average viewer’s time. The total time spent watching TV has remained fairly constant, and the online services are slowly getting a growing share of that total. So far, however, it appears that few households are “cutting the cord” and dropping the traditional services entirely in favor of streaming video. That is not to say that it won’t happen in the future, and it would appear that the video game console may be the gateway device to that transition.
We’re a society that is joined at the hip to our technology: literally. With smartphones in holsters and ebook readers and tablets in our shoulder bags, we now take our digital connections with us wherever we go. But you may be in for a shock when you try to read your indispensable device when you’re out and about, wearing your favorite shades.
I made this discovery years ago, the hard way. Our sailboat has a GPS that doubles as a depth finder, and as we sail on the Chesapeake Bay, knowing how much water separates you from the bottom is essential information. I was making a tricky approach to a creek when I glanced down at the LCD screen to see what the depth was, and I saw a black screen. In a moment of panic, I thought the power had gone off on the device and I whipped off my sunglasses to start troubleshooting the problem. And the image on the screen magically reappeared.
What happened was that the polarization of the display and my sunglasses cancelled each other out. Polarizing films only transmits light waves that are oriented in a specific direction. This helps eliminate glare, and it creates a dimmer image because it blocks the light waves that are not in the correct orientation. You can witness this for yourself; look through two pairs of polarized sunglasses, and then rotate one until it is at right angles to the other. All the light should be blocked and you’ll just see black. (This is also a handy way to check to see if the lenses are really polarized.) You also can demonstrate the same effect using a pair of hair combs. When they are aligned so that their teeth line up, you can see through them. Rotate one to right angles, and your view will be blocked where they overlap.
So much for the science lesson; what does this mean in the real world? As I mentioned already, LCDs rely on polarized light to create their image. So it is possible that the light will not be correctly oriented to view when wearing polarized sunglasses. And that’s exactly what happens.
Take an Apple iPad and look at it in landscape mode while wearing a typical pair of polarized sunglasses, and the image will just look a little dimmer. Take that same table and turn it to portrait mode, however, and it goes black. You might think that OLED displays would not have this problem since they are emissive and do not rely on polarization to create the image, but some models like the Samsung Galaxy S actually go dark when held at a 45-degree angle because it uses a polarizing film to reduce internal reflections.
These observations were made by Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate, who also points out that there is a readily available solution for the manufacturers. They could use a “circular polarizer” — which is what is used in the 3D glasses at your local cinema — that will not block the image. Instead, there is a small color shift. According to Soneira, both the iPhone 4 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 use this technology to eliminate the sunglasses problem.
So if you’re planning to catch up on some Netflix movies or other video on your next picnic, be sure to make a test run while wearing shades. You don’t want everything to go dark when you go outside.
Did you ever hear the squeal of feedback in a public address system? It occurs because a sound coming from the amplified speakers finds its way into a microphone, where it travels to an amplifier that makes it louder. This louder sound comes out of the speaker and goes back into the microphone louder than before, where it gets amplified again. And the cycle repeats until someone turns down the amplifier or the equipment reaches its limits. Or it breaks.
This is called a positive feedback loop, because each time the sound passes through the system, it gets louder. A negative feedback loop does the opposite; it causes the sound (or signal or whatever you’re measuring) to decrease with each cycle, until it finally disappears. We also call this a “death spiral”.
A story in the Washington Post reports that by the third quarter of 2011, we were down to just 5.8 million U.S. homes that rely solely on free, over-the-air broadcasts for their television content. That’s a decline of more than 7% from the 6.25 million of just one year earlier. Many of these viewers are elderly, poor, living in sparsely-populated rural areas, or some combination of those three factors. And from a marketing perspective, these are not demographics that appeal to major advertisers.
It is the advertisers that drive the “free” broadcasts, but smaller television stations have found it increasingly difficult to attract advertising dollars. Companies are already dealing with constraints on their revenues as a result of the down economy, and at the same time, their marketing budget is being stretched to cover new media channels such as the Internet.
Larger stations have been able to replace some lost revenues by demanding larger retransmission licensing fees from subscription television services — though this is coming under increasing scrutiny from Washington D.C. and other quarters — but smaller stations often don’t have this luxury. In fact, many have to forego any retransmission fees at all, trading them instead for a guaranteed slot on the local cable system’s channels which increases their reach and helps improve their appeal to advertisers.
Should we allow the free broadcasts to simply spiral down into oblivion? This is a national question, and one of many similar thorny issues such as preserving the US Postal Service or subsidizing rural air transportation. What would be the impact of a national broadband plan? Is it time to replace the 1930s mandate for free television with a 21st Century mandate for free access to broadband? Six out of 10 U.S. consumers now get their news online in one form or another, according Nielsen. Would free broadband service be enough to provide access to streaming audio and video, replacing current over-the-air radio and television broadcasts?
These are not easy questions, but it’s clear that change is going to come whether we plan for it as a society or not. And we certainly won’t have a plan if we don’t start discussing it.
Have you seen the new IKEA Uppleva television? It apparently is designed to make it easy for consumers to choose a new HDTV that fits in with their Scandinavian decor. The set hasn’t been released in this country yet, so we don’t know what the price will be. Without this detail, it’s hard to assess the value of this new product, but it clearly marks some interesting changes in the market.
First, if you don’t think that the LCD TV has reached the commodity stage, this should convince you. Here’s a television branded not by any consumer electronics giant, but a furniture maker. This also conveys a message that this set will be as easy to install and use as the IKEA furniture (or with any luck, even easier). It bundles everything for you, including a Blu-ray player.
It is also interesting that a furniture maker should decide to market its own TV. I remember when Magnavox made a big deal about the furniture surrounding its massive cathode ray tube console sets, but I can’t remember another case where that was turned around.
And you don’t have to worry about being overwhelmed by a lot of choices. The Uplevva comes in three sizes; that’s it. You don’t have to deal with a lot of the specifications that you might encounter in an electronics store, such as lcd vs. plasma tv, or whether the screen is 120 Hz or not, if it supports 3D TV, or how the contrast ratio compares. Just pick the television that fits your space and you’re good to go.
Is this the start of a trend? Will you be able to buy a television branded by Sterns and Foster that is designed just for your bedroom? Maybe the major supermarket chains will offer their own television brands; buy one at Thanksgiving and get a free turkey. The price of a flat screen tv has fallen to the point where they could be sold by retailers other than the traditional consumer electronics, shopping club, and discount chains. IKEA could be the bellwether for a whole new approach to selling televisions.
You can be sure that the Uppleva experiment will be watched closely to see if it is a strategy worth emulating. Of course, the company may have to endure a little rib-pocking before the new HDTV can be deemed a success, as has already been ably demonstrated by late night television host Conan O’Brien:
An article by Stacey Higginbotham for GigaOM cites a fascinating statistic from the Sandvine Global Internet Phenomena Report. According to last fall’s version of the report, half of all our Internet use is related to video. Netflix and YouTube alone account for more than 37% of the total traffic. And according to the recently released spring update to the report, when you include audio streaming the total “entertainment traffic” accounts for 64.5% of all Internet downstream traffic on fixed networks in North America, and 51.6% on all mobile networks in North America. Sandvine predicts that entertainment traffic will consume more than 60% of all mobile downstream traffic by 2014.
Should we be worried? Are we going to start getting the data equivalent of a busy signal when we try to send or receive email on our phones and tablets? Or even on our connected computers and other devices?
Fortunately, there are a number of factors that suggest that we’re not headed for a crisis. New technologies keep coming along that increase the amount of data that can be carried by the fiber optic backbones of our nation’s Internet system, with the result that capacity increases anywhere from two to 100 times. All that has to be changed are the encoding devices at the end of the existing cables; the labor-intensive and costly laying of new cable is often avoided.
Also the data itself is becoming more intelligent. For example, some video codecs support “adaptive bitrate streaming” which adjusts the quality of the image based on the bandwidth available in the connection.
All the same, there is the possibility of unintended consequences that could arise from broadband shortages. Already, we see the imposition of data caps on mobile device plans, even though it is a small minority of users who consume the largest share of bandwidth. And we’ve also see the rise of favored treatment for some data over others, which threatens the concept of “net neutrality” that most people appear to favor.
It would appear that the correct reaction at this point is to remain optimistic but vigilant. Watch out for changes from your mobile data or broadband service providers that could cost you more for your Internet service, or limit or slow your access to certain types of content.
Are you curious about how your local television station charges for political advertising? If the FCC has its way, you won’t need to guess much longer. On Friday, the commission passed new rules that require stations to post the information on a public website.
At first blush, this may seem to be a strong blow for transparency in our political process, but I have to wonder if it will ever be implemented. First, it singles out television broadcasters. The rules do not apply to radio, newspapers, billboards, or even cable and satellite television networks. Just those stations that broadcast free over-the-air television.
In addition, only 10% of the stations will have to comply with the new requirements, at least at the start. The rules will apply to just the 200 largest stations that are affiliated with the major networks: ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox. The other 1,800 stations will not have to start making their disclosures for another two years.
I recognize that I’m treading a fine line here, but I believe that this issue transcends political party divisions that have polarized the discussion of many issues in the country. However, I believe that there are many people to the left and the right who have grave concerns about the amount of money spent on political advertising, and that more transparency could be a safeguard against abuse. On the other hand, I am a business owner and I would be distressed to have to put this much detail about my company finances in the public view. According to some reports, the television broadcasters offered to provide aggregate figures about total time and costs broken down by candidate, but the FCC apparently was not interested in this compromise. They want the specific rates paid to be posted online. I can see how this could lead to complications with commercial advertisers, once they see what the politicians got to pay for airtime.
On the other hand, the television stations already have to make this same information available for public inspection at their offices, so how much difference does it make that they also have to post it online?
I’m not sure what is fair in this dispute, but the one prediction that I can make with confidence is that the television networks will make sure that this ends up in court before it takes effect. And I hope that the final outcome will result in a positive change in television that has become a political battleground.
If you have a smartphone or tablet, chances are good that there’s a version of the MLB At Bat 12 app available for your device. And it appears that baseball fans are discovering the free program in unprecedented numbers. The free At Bat Lite version gives you scores, video highlights, news reports, and more. The full-featured version costs for the whole season, and delivers pitch-by-pitch animation of live games, radio coverage, and more.
Is it a popular feature? According to an MLB press release, just eight days into the season the app had been downloaded more than 3 million times. And the service had already delivered a daily average of more than 800,000 live audio and video streams (not to mention all the video clips). On Wednesday, April 11, fans viewed more than a million live streams.
Who needs to worry about lousy television or radio reception? If you’re within the reach of WiFi, you can get a digital-clear audio or video stream, and the price of for the whole season is likely viewed as a bargain by many fans. This app is probably especially valuable for fans who are not within reach of their home team’s broadcast footprint for a significant part of the season.
1 million streams in a day may not be a huge number by some measures, but consider this; the average television audience for the 2011 World Series was just 16.6 million. That means that on a random mid-week day early in the season, the number of audio and video streams on this app was equal to 6% of the total television audience for the World Series. I don’t see how you can conclude anything except that consumers are accepting mobile digital devices as a viable alternative to traditional broadcast radio and television. Whether its movies, television episodes, music, or live sports, we are turning to streaming sources on the Internet in growing numbers.
If this keeps up, you’ll be getting a new toaster when you upgrade your cable subscription.
Cablevision announced on Friday that members of its Optimum Rewards loyalty program now get a new perk: discounted car rentals from Hertz. The deal also offers free rental upgrades and free membership in Hertz Gold Plus Rewards.
Wow, when I sit down in front of my television, I often find myself thinking about renting a car. Not. I’m not saying that there isn’t value in this new partnership between the two partnerships, but I think it is a strong indication of just how lost the cable services are in general these days. Cablevision is in a particularly difficult situation in its New York City metropolitan market, because it faces competition on a number of fronts, and not just satellite services. According to The Bridge, Cablevision’s subscriber list has been slowly but steadily dropping since the fourth quarter of 2010. Most large cable services show similar results.
The cable services have to figure out how to deliver more perceived value to their subscribers while charging more for the same service due to increased retransmission fees, infrastructure maintenance, and other rising costs. They have to fight off the pressure for a la carte pricing of their enormous inventory of linear programming channels, while finding a way to get video on demand (VOD) offerings to compete with online streaming and DVD rental services. They certainly have a difficult task on their hands, but I’m not clear that putting the subscriber in the driver’s seat is the solution.
On Monday, the Consumer Electronics Association announced that participants in the eCycling Leadership Initiative managed to recycle 460 million pounds of consumer electronics in 2011. This number is even more impressive when you consider that this is more than one and a half times the 300 million pounds that was recycled in 2010. Drop-off locations increased from 5,000 in 2010 to 7,500 in 2011. The CEA also reports that 96% of all the recycling was performed by certified third-party recycling facilities.
This is an important step in the right direction. The program has set an ambitious goal of 1 billion pounds recycled in 2016, which will keep a football-stadium’s worth of waste out of our nation’s landfills.
If you want to participate by recycling your unwanted consumer electronic devices, you can find the nearest drop-off location at the GreenerGadgets website.
The legendary rapper, Tupac Shakur, made an appearance at Coachella in California last weekend, in spite of the fact that he’s been dead for more than 15 years. He performed on stage alongside Snoop Dogg, including a “live” shout-out to the Coachella audience. Putting aside the creepy factor of performing with dead singers, let’s talk briefly about the technology.
Let me say at the outset that even though I was not there, it appears that this production was a triumph of technology. The creators apparently combined video recordings and computer animation and audio manipulation to create a completely new performance by the rapper. It is impressive, to say the least.
What I wish people would not say, however, that it is a “holographic” image. Just Google “Tupac hologram” and see how widely the term was used to describe this production. As I understand the technology, it is not a hologram; there is no 3D component to the display. It is simply a 2D image projected onto an invisible screen. It’s not clear if it’s rear or front projection, or if perhaps there is some sort of beam-splitter material involved. But in any case, it is not a 3D hologram. When you move your head from side to side, you see different views of the object; you can see details on the side of the object that were not visible before. With a projected image like this, it may look like 3D because you can move your head and see objects placed behind the image, but the image does not change. It’s as if it were constantly turning to face you, no matter where you move.
If you’re too close to the projection screen, you can see a strangely distorted image:
The image of Tupac appears strangely thin from this angle.
This is not the first time that the press has incorrectly named this sort of production a hologram, and I don’t expect it to be the last. But I still wish that they’d use the term correctly.
Two weeks ago, Best Buy announced that it was planning to close 50 stores as part of its cost-cutting moves designed to help reverse its recent financial losses. Over last weekend, the company released a list of the stores that will close.
These stores are expected to close permanently by May 12. This obviously is a tough decision for the company, and eliminates the jobs of many people who work in those stores. The silver lining in this cloud is that we now have locations and a timeline, so if one of these stores is near you, you may want to watch for closing sales that could offer some special bargains.
Here is the list as posted on the Best Buy site:
Store Name
Address
City
State
Casa Grande
1004 N Promenade Pwy
Casa Grande
AZ
Lake Pleasant
10134 W Happy Valley Rd
Peoria
AZ
East Palo Alto
1751 E Bayshore Rd
East Palo Alto
CA
Westwood
10861 Weyburn Ave
Los Angeles
CA
Manteca
934 Perimeter Dr
Manteca
CA
Moreno Valley East
27220 Eucalyptus
Moreno Valley
CA
Ontario
4120 E 4th St
Ontario
CA
Pittsburg
4405 Century Blvd
Pittsburg
CA
Jamboree
2857 Park Ave
Tustin
CA
Arapahoe & Parker
15800 E Briarwood Cir
Aurora
CO
The Forum
9370 Dynasty Dr
Fort Myers
FL
Oldsmar
11655 W Hillsborough Ave
Tampa
FL
Fayetteville
128 Pavilion Pkwy
Fayetteville
GA
Loganville
4014 Atlanta Hwy
Loganville
GA
Addison
1038 N Rohlwing Rd
Addison
IL
87th & Dan Ryan
8900 S Lafayette Ave
Chicago
IL
Deerfield
200 S Waukegan Rd
Deerfield
IL
Matteson
4707 Lincoln Mall Dr
Matteson
IL
Mundelein
1100 N Rt 83
Mundelein
IL
West Dundee
979 W Main St
West Dundee
IL
Speedway
10500 Parallel Pkwy
Kansas City
KS
Back Bay
360 Newbury St
Boston
MA
Wareham
2421 Cranberry Hwy
Wareham
MA
Inner Harbor
600 E Pratt St
Baltimore
MD
Hunt Valley
118 Shawan Rd
Hunt Valley
MD
Biddeford
405 Mariner Way
Biddeford
ME
*Brooklyn Center
5925 Earle Brown Dr
Brooklyn Center
MN
*Edina
3200 Southdale Cir
Edina
MN
*Hutchinson
1350 Hwy 15 S
Hutchinson
MN
*Lakeville
18350 Orchard Trl
Lakeville
MN
Rochester South
4540 Maine Ave Se
Rochester
MN
*Rogers
20870 Rogers Dr
Rogers
MN
Ellisville
15678 Manchester Rd
Ellisville
MO
Monroe
3151 W Highway 74
Monroe
NC
Rocky Mount
1100 N Wesleyan Blvd
Rocky Mount
NC
Millard
12210 K Plz
Omaha
NE
East River Plaza
517 E 117th St
New York
NY
Steelyard Commons
3506 Steelyard Dr
Cleveland
OH
Salem Mall
5031 Salem Ave
Dayton
OH
Caguas
Las Americas Expry PR52 Zafiro
Caguas
PR
Middletown
890 W Main Rd
Middletown
RI
Hickory Hollow
5255 Hickory Hollow Pkwy
Antioch
TN
Techridge
12901 North I-35
Austin
TX
*Woodlake Parkway
6218 Woodglen
San Antonio
TX
Landmark Mall
5901 Stevenson Ave
Alexandria
VA
Cosner’s Corner
9745 Jefferson Davis Hwy
Fredericksburg
VA
East Richmond
4410 S Laburnum Ave
Richmond
VA
Mill Plain
16611 Se Mill Plain Blvd
Vancouver
WA
* indicates stores notified March 29, 2012 of closure plans
Note: Two stores in Kansas City, MO (Metro North) and Scottsdale, AZ (Shea) permanently closed in February 2012.
In 2000, Sony was worth an impressive 0 billion. Today, some estimate that it has lost 90% of that value and is worth just billion. A report from Reuters indicates that the latest cost-cutting strategy will involve laying off about 6% of the company’s workforce, or about 10,000 jobs. It is planning to sell off some divisions and merge others. For example, it is creating a new LCD small panel company called Japan Display that combines the resources from Sony, Toshiba, and Hitachi.
These are hard times for Japanese LCD makers. The liquid crystal technology was originally invented in the United States, but it was the Japanese who first managed to develop it into commercial products. Now the Korean giants of Samsung and LG dominate the business, with Taiwanese and Chinese factories taking ever larger shares of the pie. As reported here, Sharp has had to sell half of its interest in the world’s largest LCD factory to Foxconn’s parent, Hon Hai. (This move was set in motion in part by Sony’s decision not to exercise its option to increase its investment in the plant.)
As the demand for large flat screen HDTVs continues to cool, the downward pressure on prices and profits continues unabated, making it more difficult for these companies to recoup their enormous investments in the technology. Whether Sony can survive remains to be seen, but the company is but a shadow of its former self, and it may not have the strength left to play with the big boys.
When most people think of YouTube, they think of user-generated content (UGC) that focuses on cute cats and fan videos. The fact is that YouTube has had pay-per-view content for years, and now its movie rental library is filled with some appealing and current titles with something for just about everyone.
But a recent post in the company’s Partners and Creators blog points toward an expansion of the pay-per-view offering from third-party content providers. YouTube has announced that members of their YouTube Live program will now be able to create live streaming content, and charge a fee to view it.
Some people may see this as just one more attack on the tradition of “free” content on YouTube and on the Internet in general. I tend to view it a bit differently. This could be a huge boost for events with niche audiences, such as rock bands or sports that cannot draw an audience large enough to attract coverage by a major network. The pay-per-view option will let some or all of the cost be shared by the fans of the content, reducing the need for commercial sponsors. I expect that this model could end up making much more content available, not less, because it creates the opportunity for the coverage to be “crowd funded” by the very people who want to access the content. We’ll have to see how this develops, but I think it’s a move in the right direction.
It looks as though 2012 will pick up right where last year left off when it comes to dust-ups over retransmission fees. Owners of local stations continue to hit cable and satellite subscription television services with increased charges when the contracts come up for renewal. The FCC won’t let the services use the same content from adjacent markets, so their only leverage is to turn the channels off and let the subscribers scream. And the screaming doesn’t end when the lights come back on, because the services are just going to fold the increase into the renewal rate.
The latest incident was a doozie, involving DirecTV and 23 of Tribune Broadcasting’s local television stations. The list of 19 affected markets included some major regions: New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. Tribune turned off the stations starting at midnight Saturday, March 31, and the agreement was not settled until the evening of Wednesday, April 4.
My guess is that consumers become increasingly upset about the ongoing blackouts, and the FCC is going to start feeling the heat from Congress to come up with a workable solution, such as a “no strike” clause that extends the current contract for a fixed period of time. The underlying problem is that the content providers have more leverage than the services, and until the negotiations can be held on a more level playing field, the blackouts are likely to continue.
Ever come across a great YouTube video but didn’t have time to watch it? It’s kinda hard sticking a Post-It note on your monitor that will help you get back to it later when you want to find it again. Fortunately, there’s a new solution that people are using.
I’ve been spending a lot of my time lately helping small businesses use online video for marketing, and one of the great sites that I’ve come across is ReelSEO: The Online Guide to Business Video. It’s a valuable resource with lots of valuable information. One of their recent posts was about a service called “Read It Later“. This service lets you flag items on the Internet that you want to see again later, and syncs this list to your computer and mobile devices. It was originally intended to create a quick reading list of documents and other text, but apparently its users have other ideas on how to use it. According to the company blog, about a quarter million of the items save in January 2012 were videos. And 92% of those were for YouTube videos. And videos longer than five minutes made up nearly one third of the top 1,000 most-saved videos.
My take-away from this is that online video is no longer the empty-calorie potato chip snack of the Internet experience. People are turning to video more and more for all sorts of content: entertainment and information, user-generated and professionally produced, short and long. There is a fundamental change happening to how content of all sorts is being delivered and consumed. The Internet continues to be a powerful agent of “disintermediation” and we are rushing to gain more-direct access to our information.
This ship has sailed and I don’t see it turning around any time soon.
Do you ever wonder what I tell people when they come up to me at a party and ask “What should I buy as my new television?” The website Slashdot wondered, and they commissioned a video interview of me that they call “HDTV Expert Alfred Poor Tells You What to Buy and What Not to Buy“. (The interview was conducted, recorded, and edited by my friend and colleague Robin Miller.)
I won’t recap the whole conversation here, but at the end, you’ll find out the specs for the television that I would buy today if I were replacing our current television.
The big news, though, is about what happens when a story about your site ends up on the home page of Slashdot, like mine did yesterday. Because there was a link to the HDTV Almanac in the piece, curious visitors flocked to this site. Perhaps I should say “flooded” the site, sort of like a digital tsunami. Within an hour of the video being posted, my site was down because the monthly bandwidth allocation had been exhausted. (Needless to say, that has never happened before.) Thanks to the great folks at our hosting service, Advanced Network Hosts, the site was back up and running in just minutes. By the end of the day, more than 12,000 visitors dropped by to check out the HDTV Almanac yesterday.
So if you encountered a strange error message yesterday, or perhaps the site loaded a little slower than usual, that’s what was going on. And if you’re one of the new visitors who cam here by way of Slashdot, thanks for dropping by! I hope you’ll keep checking back for the latest independent news and commentary on HDTV and related home entertainment topics.
I write about lots of different technology stuff that I find interesting; please consider following me on Twitter — @AlfredPoor – or Google+ — Alfred Poor — to hear about some of my latest articles.
The National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus has issued a recommendation that Samsung stop making certain claims about its 3DTVs. In a release last week, the NAD made the following statement:
Following its review of the evidence in the record, NAD concluded that the advertiser’s substantiation was insufficient to provide a reasonable basis for messages conveyed by the claims – that Samsung active 3D televisions provide a superior 3D picture viewing experience to passive 3D televisions, including LG Cinema 3D televisions.
Samsung has claimed that passive 3DTV only presents half the resolution delivered by Samsung’s active 3DTV products, and that the passive technology results in black horizontal lines and jagged lines in the images. The NAD recommended that the company stop this practice, as well as not using a ”left lens” only view of the TV images in 3D mode as this is not representative of what a viewer will experience.
The release also includes a quote from Samsung indicating that it “respects NAD as a self-regulatory body and will comply with NAD’s recommendations.”
Advertising consumer products based on complex technology is always tricky, especially when a company tries to present one as innately superior to another. In this particular case, I believe that the NAD has reached the correct decision, and I’m encouraged that Samsung intends to comply with the recommendations.
The writing is on the wall. Or perhaps it is just encoded in microscopic pits on a polycarbonate disc. But wherever you choose to read the signs, it is clear that physical distribution of entertainment media is on the way out. It has happened in the music industry, and we appear to be reaching a tipping point for movies as well.
New research by IHS Screen Digest Research predicts that in 2012, U.S. consumers will pay to watch more movies online than they will watch movies recorded on DVD and Blu-ray discs. Note that this research covers the money paid for legal downloads of this content. The forecast is that we will watch 3.4 billion streaming “views” this year, compared with 2.4 billion viewings of movies on discs. And their forecasts call for the online views to continue to grow rapidly while the disc views continue to decline.
IHS also makes an interesting point. Even though streaming views will dominate in 2012, the physical discs will continue to generate more revenue. The streaming movies are expected to earn just .7 billion. (Forgive me; did I really write “just .7 billion”? That is still more than the annual GDP of Belize! My apologies.) In contrast, the physical discs will likely generate .1 billion this year.
This may seem like a wildly lopsided comparison; who wouldn’t want 6.5 times more revenue? Keep in mind, however, that the marginal cost — the cost to produce the next copy of a product — is nearly zero for the streaming version. The physical version has a disc, packaging, handling, and shipping that go against that extra money. So as the market matures and the online movie services can further streamline their operations and reduce costs, it is possible that they will make more money even though consumers pay about $.50 per streaming video on average, compared with an average .72 for the physical discs.
From where I sit, I think the Netflix decision to move away from physical discs and toward streaming services was the right choice at the right time. These numbers appear to support that decision.
Have you ever heard of Hon Hai? It’s the parent company of Foxconn, which in turn has been in the news a lot lately as the firm that assembles many of Apple’s products. Foxconn is a giant in its own right, assembling components for a wide range of manufacturers, large and small. And now it is taking a giant step to becoming even bigger on the world stage. Hon Hai announced last week that it was buying half of Sharp’s interest in Sharp’s Gen 10 LCD panel plant, which is handles the largest substrates of any LCD plant in the world.
Sony was Sharp’s original partner in the Gen 10 plant, but that company’s financial hard times led it to cancel its commitment to make further investments. Sony will still have a stake in the plant under this new arrangement, but it will be just 7% while Sharp and Hon Hai will split the remaining 93%.
This is an important development for both Hon Hai and Sharp. For Sharp, it helps decrease the bleeding caused by the debt service on this huge factory. According to some sources it currently is running at as little as half capacity, due to the downturn in worldwide demand for flat panel televisions. At the same time, Sharp has announced that it will focus on manufacturing its own television sets only in the larger sizes of 50″ and above. It will job out the smaller sizes of Sharp-branded sets to other companies, including Foxconn. For Hon Hai, this new deal provides an inside track for panel supplies, giving the company better vertical integration.
I suspect that the eventual winner in this deal will be Hon Hai. While Apple is certainly a major customer, this move will make Foxconn even more attractive as an alternative to the Korean duo of LG and Samsung for major brands looking to outsource their high-end LCD TV production. I would expect that they were able to buy into Sharp’s operation at distress-sale prices, and as the worldwide economy recovers, that investment will likely gain in value.
Video gaming consoles have come a long way since the early Atari 2600 and other devices. We’ve gone from pixelated little cartoon characters to almost life-like “meat puppets” that live out adventures in an immersive three-dimensional world. The Xbox 360, Playstation, and Wii provide a window onto interactive entertainment enjoyed by millions of consumers worldwide. And now they do so much more than just play games.
In fact, according to an article in the LA Times, Microsoft reports that Xbox 360 users spend more than half of their time online with the Xbox Live service watching video and listening to music; less than half of that time is spent playing online games. Now, if you add back in the amount of time spent playing games offline loaded locally from a disc, then gaming still dominates but it is still interesting that other forms of entertainment are taking hold using the gaming console as the hub.
This news was part of Microsoft’s announcement that it was adding applications for HBO Go, Major League Baseball, and Comcast’s on-demand video service for its subscribers. This is in addition to existing services including Hulu, Vudu, YouTube, Netflix, and ESPN. Microsoft already has more than 20 million subscribers to the Xbox Live service who pay a monthly fee to access the video and entertainment content. That’s almost one-third of all Xbox owners worldwide. If Microsoft were a cable company, this many subscribers would nearly it tie it with Comcast for the top position.
People still have plenty of reasons to stick with their cable or satellite subscriptions, but as the monthly fees rise, the alternatives begin to look more attractive. If you can access the content you want over a broadband connection — even if that requires an additional monthly fee of or more — it looks like more and more consumers may join the “cut the cord” movement. It looks as though streaming video may be the path to the appealing “a la carte” pricing for entertainment programming, and there is a herd of millions of video game console camels like the Xbox 360 that already has its nose under the edge of the U.S. consumers living room tent.
Last week, Microsoft launched three (anticipated) new services on their Xbox Live system. Subscribers can now get Comcast’s XFINITY TV, HBO GO, and MLB.TV. You need to be a subscriber to each of these services in order to get it streamed to your Xbox (just as you have to have a Netflix subscription to access its programming), but it is a big step toward expanding the “what you want, where you want, when you want” choices for streaming entertainment content.
Q: Will watching XFINITY TV directly on my Xbox 360 use data from my XFINITY Internet monthly data usage allowance?
A: No; similar to traditional cable television service that is delivered to the set-top box, this content doesn’t count toward our data usage threshold. The Xbox 360 running our XFINITY TV app essentially acts as an additional cable box for your existing cable service, and our data usage threshold does not apply.
Now, in order to use the XFINITY TV service on your Xbox, you need to subscribe to both the Comcast XFINITY TV with On Demand and XFINITY Internet service, in addition to the subscription to Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE Gold. If you use the XFINITY TV service on your Xbox, the streaming content won’t count toward your 250 GB per month data cap. Streaming content from other services — such as HBO GO or Netflix — does count against your cap. And that’s the problem.
Critics claim that Comcast is providing preferential treatment for its own content over that of other services. In its defense, the cable giant points out that the data never actually “leaves” its own network, so it doesn’t really count as “Internet traffic.”
In my opinion, this is a mighty fine line to draw and the distinction will be lost on the average consumer. The bigger issue is that it could lead to other companies providing similar advantages to their own programming, or even programming provided by their partners. What if Hulu Plus made arrangements with a broadband service provider — such as Comcast — to pipe its content directly to their servers? Comcast could say that wasn’t Internet traffic either, and thus Hulu Plus could “buy” preferential treatment over a competitor such as Netflix.
This could well be the opening salvo in a new sort of “data access warfare” that would effectively eliminate net neutrality. Or it is possible that competition among the services that provide Internet access to consumers will force them to raise their usage caps to such high levels that it’s not an issue. After all, phone companies offer “unlimited” long distance service for a fee; perhaps the Internet access market will head in a similar direction.
We can’t know for certain how this will turn out, so the best we can do for now is to keep an eye on the situation and guard against results of the Law of Unintended Consequences.
There’s a reason that more cartoons are in 3D than live action content. That’s because animated images typically are much simpler than real-world objects, which means that they can be manipulated more easily and precisely. This is important when you are trying to adjust the differences between the left and right views of a scene.
The problem gets even worse when you are trying to create a second view from a single image to create a 3D image. You can extract lots of depth cues from a single image — and even more cues if you look at a series of moving images — but it’s difficult to create a natural-looking object in the foreground as the background moves behind it. A company called YUVsoft has developed new algorithms that address this problem, with striking results.
[Credit: YUVsoft]
This is just a still image that I grabbed from the YUVsoft website, but I recommend that you follow the link above to see the original animated sequence. I added the yellow circles to point out the serious artifacts that can happen when you try to “move” a foreground object against a background when you have something that you can see through, like hair. See how the hair in the top circle has smeared; in the lower circle, a weird “window” with sharp edges has appeared. The new process from YUVsoft does a much better job of preserving the natural look of the original image.
Why is this important? As 3DTV gains traction in U.S. (and worldwide living rooms), there will be a huge demand for additional content. And with technology like this matting from YUVsoft, content providers will be able to reach back into their back catalog of 2D content and remaster them for 3D distribution faster and at a lower cost than they can today. The toolkit for improving this conversion process is growing every day, and developments like this from YUVsoft show just how much progress we’re making.
The fourth quarter of every year for consumer electronic retailers is like the rainy season for farmers; it’s a make-or-break time of year when you have to compensate for the slower sales from the other three quarters. So it was like the Dust Bowl when Best Buy posted a .7 billion loss. This is not quite as bad as it might seem, because their fiscal year ends on March 3, so this only includes December’s sales from last year. Also, the bulk of the loss was due to one-time charges for items including its mobile phone business and the closure of its big box stores in the United Kingdom.
All the same, .7 billion is a big number, and the company has announced plans to deal with the loss. It will close 50 of its United States big box stores this year and cut about 400 additional jobs. In spite of these 0 million cuts, the company expects to increase its presence by opening more stores with much smaller footprints.
Clearly, the landscape for consumer electronics retailing is changing in this country. There appear to be more forces at work than just the down economy, as the Internet gives consumers more places to shop and to compare prices. Best Buy is trying to survive these shifts, but looking at the recent history of retailers such as Circuit City, CompUSA, and 6th Ave Electronics suggests that this could be a challenging task.
I get a lot of email from readers, and occasionally I share our exchanges here. This week, I got a particularly interesting message about this week’s post about “Online Streaming Grows“:
You close with the statement that a cable or satellite TV service should be figuring out what to do when their current business falls apart.
There is one big hidden assumption that you seem to be overlooking here, namely the idea that all the users of these services have a fast enough Internet connection to be able to all be streaming at the same volume of TV watching.
I live in Southern California, just outside of LA, in what would otherwise be considered a fairly large community (125K people, growing >10%/year), and I am in the central, long built-up area of town. But the best Internet connection that I can buy would not support HD streaming to all the TVs in the house, what I am currently paying >0/month for is only 1.5Mb down. People who are in more remote areas are in even worse shape.
The broadcast method of delivering the same content to many destinations is fantastically efficent and is unlikely to go away. Cable and Satellite providers do not have enough bandwidth to be able to provide each subscriber with enough bandwidth to have them all simultaneously streaming.
Having said all this, I’ve had a Tivo for over a decade, and I seldom watch live TV. When I do it’s typically to have something going in the background. I could see there being much heavier use of DVRs and having the more popular shows being broadcast once per day (instead of 2-10 times between repeats and different time zone slots) with the DVRs recording the shows the first time they air for viewing later. This would free up a significant chunk of the available broadcast bandwidth for ‘special requests’, which could get streamed out to everyone as well. Recording all of this stuff would be fairly inefficient, but drive sizes are getting large enough that it’s no longer impossible.
And here is my reply:
Thanks so much for sharing your comments. I think you’re right on target in many respects, but I also believe that your analysis and mine not only survive side-by-side, they are probably inevitable.
There are always remote outlier areas of just about any population, especially in the U.S. There are regions where terrestrial broadcast does not reach, for example. In some cases, those areas can be rather well-populated such as the valleys of Vermont. Terrestrial broadcast can’t reach these viewers, so alternative approaches have a window of opportunity, such as digital broadcast satellite (DBS).
Moving to the issue of Internet access, the same problem of sparse population and long distances can make it not cost-effective to build out higher capacity transmission systems. It is likely that it will be a long time — if ever — before it becomes feasible to provide high speed service to remote areas.
So far, we’re right in sync. But here’s how I see it going forward. I believe that “watching what I want, when I want it” will trump linear programming, and that other solutions will be offered to viewers with lower bandwidth. For example, they would simply create a queue of programming that they would like to watch (just as they do now with Netflix, Hulu, or TiVo), and the content would be trickled to temporary storage onsite. (Terabytes are amazingly cheap, and still getting cheaper. I saw a 2 TB external USB drive for 0.) You can move a show up in priority, and it will be ready to watch sooner; the system could even alert you when it is “ready” even though the download is not complete, and you can “chase” the show while the rest of it downloads.
This would have minimal impact on the viewing experience of the user, while delivering almost the same benefits that a high bandwidth subscriber would get. I think that this would be a much more likely scenario than trying to use the terrestrial broadcast system to deliver the content.
I believe that something like this is likely the best-use case for the existing cable infrastructure, and that with the exception of maybe a couple live channels, linear programming is likely to simply go away. Not tomorrow, not next year, but I think it’s the logical outcome of the current trajectory.
Thanks again for writing.
Did something I write make you go “Hmmm?” Please take a moment and share your thoughts by sending me an email at alfred@hdtvprofessor.com.
Perhaps the most interesting development, however, is the location of those home network routers. TDG’s research shows that they have been moving steadily out of home offices and into living rooms. Presumably, home entertainment is taking priority over home computing, as the users want to connect their video game consoles, televisions, network media players, and Internet-ready Blu-ray players to the world.
This is one more bit of evidence that consumers are turning to the Internet more and more for entertainment and information, and the traditional channels of broadcast and subscription television services are going to continue to lose mindshare among U.S. audiences.
The Federal Communications Commission released a report this month with the descriptive yet cumbersome title of “Report On Average Rates for Cable Programming Service And Equipment.” The results come from a study of cable television service fees in different markets. The data was divided into two groups: communities where there was no meaningful competition (aside from satellite) and those where there was a competitor (either cable or phone company). The data is a snapshot taken in January 2010, so it’s not exactly current, but the results were a bit surprising all the same.
In the “competitive” communities, the price of “basic” cable service was about the same as with the “non-competitive” markets. But when it comes to “expanded basic” service, the price was actually slighty higher in the “competitive” markets. This result gets even more interesting when you calculate the “cost per channel” for the different companies; those in “competitive” markets had a lower cost per channel.
What this means is that the cable companies in competitive markets lard their offerings with more channels, so you get more for your higher fee. I’m not too sure that it’s a bargain. It reminds me of the story about two little old ladies on a week-long cruise. They share a table at dinner, and about halfway through the trip, one looks at the other and remarks, “The food on this ship isn’t very good, is it?” To which the other replies, “No, I suppose not. But they do give such nice large portions!”
I suspect that large portions will not be enough to satisfy subscription television customers much longer.
What are the hallmarks of a major television network? It distributes professionally-produced content from other sources such as movies. Check. It has millions of viewers. Check. It has its own original programming that is broadcast live daily. Check. Hmmm, it waddles, swims, and quacks like a duck, so I guess YouTube is now a duck. I mean, a major television network.
The latest development is the announced launch of “My Damn Channel LIVE” which is set to premiere next Wednesday at 4 PM Eastern. The host, Beth Hoyt, apparently provides the “live” component, and introduces clips from “more than 30″ comedy shows.
I mark this as an important milestone, even if the show will only run for 30 minutes on Wednesdays, and just 10 minutes Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. (What? Does Beth have to be someplace else by 4:30 PM on those days?) Hey, it’s a start. And it demonstrates that Hollywood does not have a lock on live or recorded video production (as also demonstrated by online coverage of March Madness). I’ll be watching to see how successful this new YouTube program turns out to be.
Sharp already announced its intention to focus just on big HDTVs, and they are making good on that promise. The company has announced that it has started shipping its 60″ LC-60LE745U and 70″ LC-70LE745U models from their new 2012 lineup. These have 3DTV support, LED edge-lighting, and Smart TV features including WiFi support. The sets have list prices of ,299.99 and ,299.99.
Sharp also announced that they will start shipping the 8 Series models next month: these include the LC-60LE847U, LC-70LE847U, and LC-80LE847U, in 60″, 70″, and 80″ sizes. List prices for these will be ,699.99, ,799.99, and ,999.99, and the sets will include Sharp’s Quattron feature that adds a yellow sub-pixel to the typical red, green, and blue elements. Also the 80″ model includes a full-matrix LED backlight instead of edge-lighting. This presumable provides a more uniform backlight but also requires more LEDs, and that probably contributes to its significantly higher price.
Sharp wasn’t kidding when they said big HDTVs! It used to be that you’d only get TVs this large with rear projection technology, but now we have it in flat screens and at a price that probably isn’t far from what a similar size rear projection model cost when it first came out. However, there is a limited market for HDTVs that cost more than ,000, and I suspect that Sharp’s strategy will result in a loss of market share (not that it has that much to lose anyway).
The part that had me scratching my head and pondering the future was their finding that in 2011, “five technology companies accounted for 68% of all online ad revenue.” This is in the context of the observation that companies such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple are working hard to gain control over a vertically-integrated mesh of hardware, software, and content, as well as the related revenue streams. The report looks in particular at how these large companies are beginning to get involed with mainstream news media:
As a part of YouTube’s plans to become a producer of original television content, a direction it took strongly last year, it is funding Reuters to produce original news shows. Yahoo recently signed a content partnership with ABC News for the network to be its near sole provider of news video. AOL, after seeing less than stellar success with its attempts to produce its own original content, purchased The Huffington Post. With the launch of its Social Reader, Facebook has created partnerships with The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and others. In March 2012 Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes purchased the 98-year-old New Republic magazine.
We’ve encountered media barons before; Rupert Murdoch’s empire ranks right up there among the most influential. But it appears that we could be watching the development of something that reaches further into our lives than ever before. The same company that sells you the device on which you read or watch the news also could create the operating system, own the transmission channel, and even fund the news gathering itself. The opportunity for continued shrinkage in the number of active reporters is real, and we could find fewer sources providing more limited views of current events. They don’t even have to block access to distribution to clobber their competitors; they just run them out of business through financial integration of their own operations.
I’m not ready to say that the news media sky is falling. While I also don’t believe that “citizen journalism” is the answer to all of these ills, it does present a useful counterforce and that genie will be difficult to put back in the bottle. Still, massive power does present the opportunity for abuse. Those who believe in the rights of a free press and need for a free exchange of ideas and information will do well to keep a vigilant eye on these developments. Fortunately, we have the Pew Research Center providing valuable data points along the way.
How much is too much? If it’s possible to go too far with a television set’s specfications, this could be it. China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co Ltd is a subsidiary of the electronics giant, TCL Corporation, and earlier this month, the company announced a monster of a 3DTV.
(Credit: TCL Corporation)
This behemoth measures 110″ diagonal. It also has 4K by 2K resolution, or 4,096 by 2,160 pixels. That’s the same as if you had glued four 55″ 1080p screens together. And it is an active 3DTV display, using shutter glasses for the stereoscopic view. And if that’s not enough, it also has multi-touch touchscreen input.
The company’s press release is silent on plans to make this a commercial product, but does indicate that two units were donated to the Great Hall of the People in Beijing for public display. This points to what is likely the true motivation for the technology demonstration. It shows that China is able to hold its own in terms of innovation in the display industry. TCL quotes an expert from Fudan University; “China will replace Japan and South Korea as the world leader in TV display screens in terms of manufacturing and R&D in three to five years, and will provide a higher level of quality and more cost-effective products to the global community.”
Clearly, this is a very large stake to drive in the ground, but China is marking its territory. Given the current state of the flat panel industry, however, China could end up like the dog who chases a cat, and then has to figure out what it wants to do with it once it catches it. There could be a lot of corporate blood and fur strewn about before this is all over.
Yesterday, Hulu announced that it has upgraded its viewing screen. The biggest news is that the viewing window is now 55% larger, and it’s displayed with a drop shadow against a nice, neutral gray background. (Apparently that is called a “video matte” in the trade; who knew?) Video details appear below the viewing window, and the interface is been tidied up in general.
I think it’s great that Hulu cares and is putting the effort into this upgrade. And I agree that this looks better. But it really does not have much impact on how I use or enjoy Hulu content. As soon as I start watching a program, I immediately switch to full-screen mode. After a brief pause, the playback controls and everything else fades away and I’m left with just the program content. So while it’s nice that Hulu has freshened up the screen, I might not have noticed if they had not pointed it out.
Tell me, am I crazy? Am I the only one out there who would rather watch streaming content in full-screen without the rest of the clutter? Let me know at alfred@hdtvprofessor.com.
Who is Henry Blodget? According to the “Business Insider” website, he is “co-founder, CEO and Editor-In Chief of Business Insider, a former top-ranked Wall Street analyst, [and] the host of Yahoo Daily Ticker, a Yahoo Finance video show viewed by several million people a month. He is often a guest on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and other networks.” Clearly, here is someone who spends much of his time learning and thinking about major companies and finance. And I wish that I could reprint one of his latest columns here in its entirety.
The highlights are that Apple wants to build the coolest TV ever (which is not a surprising goal), charge a lot for it (in order to maintain that incredible Apple product profit margin), and obtain top-shelf content for almost nothing that Apple will control and provide to the consumers. In short, the company wants to replicate its success with the iPod and iTunes in the music industry, except this time do it with movies and television shows.
Blodget paints a credible future in which Apple uses its installed base of iPhones and iPads to be the camel’s nose under the tent, convincing the other parties that there’s some extra money to be made by joining in on Apple’s Grand Experiment. And Apple will become indispensible and eventually “destroy the economics and power of today’s TV industry, both on the content side and the distribution side.”
I don’t think it will happen. I don’t think it can happen. I see two problems with Blodget’s conclusions. First, the television and movie content producers have shown much more reluctance to get in bed with online distribution than the music industry was. For example, as Netflix gets bigger and more influential, some of its content contracts are not getting renewed. The producers don’t want the Netflix money, for fear that it devalues their product. (Whether they are right or wrong in this analysis is beside the point.) So Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and others are apparently preparing to become their own studios and produce original content without the help of the established providers. I don’t see how Apple can convince the content producers to accept a pennies-on-the-dollar deal for their content.
And the second point is that I can’t see a television that costs twice as much as the competition being a run-away success, no matter how cool it might be. When the iPod came out, there weren’t that many MP3 players in use, and the ones that were available were all very different. The same was the case when the first iPhone and the first iPad appeared. Trying to sell a new television today is tough enough, even without pricing yourself out of the market. This is a mature market with many large brand names and little significant product differentiation. Apple is likely to chip a tooth or two trying to take a bite out of this pie.
All the same, I recommend that you read Blodget’s article for yourself and make up your own mind. It’s too soon to say, but if he’s right about Apple’s strategy, I expect this to be a massive failure in the making.
Netflix. YouTube. Hulu. Anyone who streams video content from the Internet probably is aware of these big three sources of television shows and movies. But a lot of people don’t think of Amazon quite as quickly. The company has steadily been beefing up its streaming capabilities and building its content library. And yesterday, Amazon made a big announcement. The company has announced a deal with Discovery to add many of their hit shows to Amazon’s Prime Instant Video catalog. Here’s a quote from Amazon’s home page:
Today we’re announcing our biggest addition yet, bringing nearly 3,000 more titles to Prime Instant Video. We’ve struck a deal with Discovery Networks to bring some of the highest quality, non-fiction, informative and entertaining content about the world to our Amazon Prime customers. Rolling out over the next few weeks are TV shows from Discovery, TLC, Animal Planet, and Science. Prime members, at no additional cost, can now stream more than 17,000 titles. The new titles include hits such as Deadliest Catch, Mythbusters, Man vs. Wild, Dirty Jobs, Gold Rush: Alaska, and Shark Week, TLC series like Say Yes to the Dress and Cake Boss, as well as content like How It’s Made from Science, and The Jeff Corwin Experience from Animal Planet.
This means that these shows can be viewed at no extra cost by subscribers to Amazon’s Prime program. And they can watch them on a wide range of devices including computers, smartphones, and of course, the Amazon Kindle Fire.
Now, Amazon’s total of 17,000 titles is still pretty small, but this announcement shows that they have the resolve to pay for brand-name content that appeals to a broad range of audiences. And it shows that they’re ready to expand the catalog in big chunks. And as more people find out about Prime Instant Video and what it has to offer for a year, they may look twice at what they’re spending each month for Hulu Plus or even Netflix. Especially when they also get free two-day shipping on many Amazon purchases.
Last week, Samsung announced that its 2012 HDTVs will start shipping this month. While their “fifth generation” Smart TVs have more processing power than ever, what caught my eye were four interface features. If you’ve followed my writing elsewhere (including this GigaOM Pro report), you may have noticed that I’m very interested in how we will merge the worlds of traditional linear programming, video-on-demand offerings by subscription television services, and the “over-the-top” streaming content available on the Internet. Clearly, the five-button remote is not going to get the job done.
So I find it interesting that Samsung has decided to be ready for anything. In addition to building a highly-capable computer inside a flat screen HDTV, they have added speech recognition, gesture control, a remote keyboard, and facial recognition to the set’s features. Each offers broader control than the traditional remote control, and combined they could be used in some innovative and potentially useful ways.
Speech recognition allows the set to convert spoken commands into instructions that the controller can act on. (Note that this is not the same as “voice recognition” which instead refers to recognizing individual voices, and is used for applications such as biometric security.) I think that this has potential, but it does not seem to be a naturaly fit with a group viewing experience. Who wants to be interrupted by someone speaking to the remote control? And will this lead to shouting matches in the living room? “No, television, listen to ME! Turn to Channel 426 NOW!”
I’m a little clearer about gesture control; I don’t think that it’s going to work “bare-handed”. I suspect that the gestures will have to be broad enough to separate them from inadvertant movements, and people will tire of doing calisthetics in front of their HDTV when they just want to channel surf. Instead, I expect that we’ll end up relying on some sort of visible or wireless “token” that the computer can identify more precisely when watching for gesture commands. (Think along the lines of the conch shell in “Lord of the Flies”.)
I’m particularly impressed that Samsung is offering a full wireless keyboard with these new sets, albeit as an extra cost option. It is a concession to the same conclusion that I have come to; there simply are some tasks that are best handled with a keyboard. It’s archaic and in the wrong direction from our “Minority Report” dream interface, but I suspect that we’ll be stuck with keyboards for a while longer.
The last feature is profoundly interesting: facial recognition. At this point, it is just baby step, designed to let different family members log onto their favorite social networks just by sitting in front of the television. However, I see this as an essential element going forward if we are to have successful recommendation engines for video content. The preferences in a household will vary with who is watching. What the husband alone prefers is different from the wife alone, and those are different yet again from what they want to watch when they are together. The combinations expand rapidly as you add children of different ages to the mix. So I don’t see this as being particularly useful yet, but we’ll be glad to have it before too long.
As our televisions get smarter, we will expect more from them. New features like those in these new Samsung sets will help them meet some of those expectations.
The NCAA Division 1 men’s basketball tournement launches on Wednesday, and like last year, you can watch all 67 games online. But you can’t watch them for free this time.
The March Madness streaming video has grown to be an enormous success over the past few years, and this year you’re asking to pay for it. What’s the price of a ticket to the Big Show? .99. Seriously folks, that’s it. That won’t even buy you a beer in some sports bars, and with this you get to watch all 67 games. Not only that, but you can watch on your computer, your iPad, or many iPhone and Android smartphones, and you only have to pay once.
What me? Watching March Madness? Not me, boss!
And when you’re watching the games on your computer, the website still throws up a Boss Screen at the click of a button. Ah, just when the economic recovery is starting in earnest, this comes along to blow our nation’s productivity to bits. Oh well, we can get back to work when April gets here.
Samsung has announced the Galaxy Beam, a new Android smartphone with a difference. In addition to all the features you’d expect to find in a computerized phone for your pocket, it has one additional attraction. The phone includes a 15 lumen projector, built right in.
No, this isn’t a high-definition display, but the way things are progressing it may not take long to reach that. It’s only standard definition (not even widescreen), but the phone is still just half an inch thick. And the 15 lumen output would have been impressive for a pocket projector just a few years ago, yet here it is integrated into a smartphone handset. This is not bright enough to fill a wall with the lights on, but in controlled lighting, it’s enough to let a handful of people watch photos or videos instead of crowding around the phone’s tiny display panel.
Projectors in phones have not yet become a compelling feature for consumers; Jack Segal of Pacific Media Associates points out that in spite of Samsung’s pioneering efforts, the company’s projector phones have acheived “only moderate sales.” As the demand for mobile video grows, however, I expect that this feature could take hold before long. And Samsung has a head start on the pack in terms of technology.
I recently wrote about the new Aereo service scheduled to launch in New York City this month. Other systems that have tried to provide broadcast content over the Internet have been smacked down in the courts, but Aereo and its backers believe that it has a model that will hold up to challenges. And it looks as though we’re going to get the chance to find out if they are right.
Two separate groups have already filed suit against the new service, and together they represent the heavy hitters in the television industry: Fox is owned by News Corp. (which also owns The Wall Street Journal,) NBC is a unit of Comcast , ABC is a unit of Walt Disney, and CBS is a unit of CBS Corp. It’s enough to make most startups just shut down and leave town.
In this case, however, the defense is funded in part by deep-pocket investors including Barry Diller, who just happened to found Fox Broadcasting and USA Network in the first place. A statement on the Aereo company blog makes it clear that they welcome the challenge:
Today, two groups of broadcasters filed two separate federal lawsuits against Aereo in the Southern District of New York claiming that Aereo will infringe their copyrights by making available technology which enables consumers to access broadcast television via a remote antenna and DVR. Aereo does not believe that the broadcasters’ position has any merit and it very much looks forward to a full and fair airing of the issues.
Consumers are legally entitled to access broadcast television via an antenna and they are entitled to record television content for their personal use. Innovations in technology over time, from digital signals to Digital Video Recorders (“DVRs”), have made access to television easier and better for consumers. Aereo provides technology that enables consumers to use their cloud DVR and their remote antenna to record and watch the broadcast television signal to which they are entitled anywhere they are, whether on a phone, a tablet, a television or a laptop.
Aereo very much looks forward to its upcoming product launch as well as a prompt resolution of these cases.
Does giving every subscriber their own rented antenna mean that Aereo does not violate the broadcasters’ rights? We’ll be watching these lawsuits with interest.
Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that you won’t find many (any?) Academy Award winners on this list, but I still expect that most people will be find at least a few titles that might pique their interest. For example, “Talladega Nights” and “Year One” have some big stars. And “21” was a pretty engaging drama. If your tastes run more toward the classics, you can watch Douglas Fairbanks in “Robin Hood” or the cult favorite, “Reefer Madness“. And the animation offerings run from “Popeye” to “Sita Sings the Blues“.
In all, you’ll find thousands of free movies available on YouTube. So the next time you’re stuck in some waiting room for an hour and a half, just fire up your smart phone or tablet or notebook computer, and you can kill some time with a free film.
You may have noticed that there has not been a lot of coverage of the new iPad 3 here over the preceding six months. While many members of the new era media were working themselves into a speculative frenzy over what the unannounced and unspecified product would be, I was content to wait for the facts. And I have to admit that at least from the display perspective, the new iPad 3 finally lives up to its predecessor’s hype.
If you want to learn more about its display, I recommend an excellent column by DisplaySearch analyst Richard Shim: “iPad 3: Clarifying Display Issues”. He points out that the LCD panel (sorry, it is not the widely-rumored OLED display) has an impressive 2,048 by 1,536 pixel resolution, which works out to 264 pixels per inch (ppi). Apple also chooses to call this a “Retina Display” even though the pixel density is much less than the 326 ppi found on the iPhone 4. I expect that the explanation is that you are going to hold the iPhone much closer to your eye than the iPad, so the pixels need to be smaller. Whatever.
The news for me is that the iPad finally can display full high-definition images without scaling. Granted, the panel still uses the same old 4:3 aspect ratio as your grandfather’s television set, but at least it now has enough pixels to show 1,920 by 1,080 without scaling (though with plenty space left over for letterboxing). If you make the image scale to fit the width of the panel, however, things could get ugly as you stretch each pixel by 1.06 and two-thirds. (No, I haven’t seen an iPad 3 in person yet, but I sure hope that Apple has included a provision for watching movies that does not involve such scaling.)
Richard also points out that these smaller pixels mean less room for light to be transmitted (smaller aperture ratio) which translates to the need for a brighter backlight which in turn impacts battery life. He expresses his suspicion that the device has a larger battery to respond to this extra power draw, along with the additional power required for the new processor.
There appears to be some interesting innovation in this new tablet, which may help accelerate the spread of video entertainment to devices other than the tradtional television set.
Are you old enough to remember the opening sequence of “The Outer Limits”?
There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. [Source: Wikipedia]
Well, it’s not science fiction, but the major television brands are trying to exert control of their own. Instead of trying to control the image, however, they hope to control the channel. And by this, I don’t mean the broadcast channel; they hope to reign in the retail channels.
Panasonic, Samsung, LG, and Sony each announced new pricing policies recently. The Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) has been a common fixture in consumer electronics in recent years, but retailers were free to set the actual selling price for most models. The manufacturers protected their higher-margin specialty vendors by having certain models that only they could sell. The high-end custom installer business has taken it on the chin in the past ten years, however, and it has become more or less a free-for-all in the market.
As a result, the manufacturers’ profits have been squeezed down to paper-thin margins. Now, they are trying to put the genie back in the bottle. The plans vary from one company to the next, but in general, they are setting minimum sale prices for specific models. In most cases, these apply only to the premium models in the product lines, though some mid-priced models are included as well. And the stick behind the policy is that any retailer who ignores these limits risks losing the right to purchase the products wholesale. If this works, both the manufacturers and the authorized retailers may see slightly better margins on these products with protected pricing.
We’ve seen this attempted before in other industries. I remember the early days of the personal computer when the major brands were facing competition from inexpensive brands. The result was a strong gray market for the “price controlled” products, where retailers would purchase more units than they needed in order to get a price break, and then would sell off the excess inventory to other unauthorized discounters.
Will the TV makers be able to make these new policies stick? My guess is that in the long run they can’t, but for now it could mean that finding a bargain on some models will become more difficult, and your manufacturer’s warranty may not be valid if you purchase from an unauthorized dealer. If you plan to purchase one of the top-of-the-line models from one of these brands, plan on spending a little extra care when you shop.
Last month, YouTube updated its stats again. The site now is getting new video content uploaded at the rate of one hour of video every second of every day. That’s 60 hours of content every minute. I find that astounding.
You might think that all this content is just falling into a black hole in the cloud somewhere. (Actually, I suspect that quite a lot of it is, and it probably deserves it.) But viewing rates are climbing as well. YouTube now reports 4 billion views every day. That’s the equivalent of more than half the world’s population watching one YouTube video a day.
If you want to see an animated infographic how much all this uploaded video is, check out this clever site: http://www.onehourpersecond.com/.
Okay, I don’t know exactly how I can justify this as an HDTV Almanac entry, except that it’s just too cool and it is a demonstration of how online business video can be so much more than just a TV commercial. This piece is from Mercedes about it’s “invisible” demonstration car that promotes its hydrogen fuel cell technology. I like it because it’s a clever use of display technology, and because it is posted on YouTube where you can watch it anytime you want. Is it entertainment or advertising? Obviously it’s both, and that’s the whole point.
The retransmission agreements between New Young Broadcasting and Time Warner Cable (TWC) for Young’s ABC affiliate stations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Albany, New York expired Wednesday night, February 29. At the eleventh hour, the two sides were not able to come to terms. Rather than force a black-out as has often been the case in such disputes, however, they reset the clock for one week later: March 7.
The stations are not ruling out a black-out in the future. In a company statement, they told viewers that “in the event that we are not able to reach an agreement with Time Warner, you can continue to receive the broadcasts of WBAY-TV by way of our free over the air broadcast transmission.” They also recommend DirecTV and DISH Network satellite services as an alternative source for their content.
It’s good to see that the broadcaster has exhibited some restraint in these negotiations, but it’s clear that it still waves the big black-out stick. Consumers are continuing to be held hostage as the various parties try to find ways to shore up their dwindling revenues, and it seems that everyone loses in the end.
Would you pay for a service that lets you watch over-the-air broadcasts on your tablet or smartphone? That’s what a company called Aereo (formerly known as “Bamboom“) plans to launch just such a service for New York City residents starting next month.
The company is building a system of thousands of tiny television antennas; each one is the size of a dime. These capture free broadcast television signals over the air, which are then encoded and made available as streaming data sent over the Internet. These arrays are positioned so that they get excellent reception, which is not a trivial matter in the concrete canyons of New York. Each subscriber is assigned a specific antenna, so all the service is doing is providing a feed from the antenna that you rent. The intent is that the service is not acting as a shared antenna like a cable company, which would be subject to retransmission fees. Instead, each subscriber gets their own dedicated antenna. The company also has massive amounts of data storage, so that they can offer DVR service as well; this means that subscribers can record the shows that they want to watch, and then view them later.
All the control and viewing is done over the Internet, and you can get HD quality programming. The service is starting with 20 channels. The system can also be accessed using a personal computer, an Apple TV, or a Roku network media player. The system comes with a 30-day free trial and a per month membership fee. You must be a New York City resident to sign up.
If this system works, it could present an attractive and low-cost alternative to basic cable or satellite services in the Big Apple. And if it can make it there, it could probably make it anywhere (as the song goes), especially in other major urban markets.
Nearly a year ago, Samsung and HBO announced a partnership that would let consumers stream HBO content to Samsung TVs. You would have to be an HBO subscriber to access the service, which meant that you had to be signed up with a pay-TV service.
Since then, you could get this HBO Go content on your computer, iPad, iPhone, Android smart phone, or even a Roku box. But not a Samsung TV. Until now.
Samsung has just announced that the service is available on certain models of their Smart TVs, with one additional restriction; not all pay-TV services are eligible. While Verizon FiOS, Charter, Cox, DISH Network, and DirecTV are supported on the Samsung screens, Comcast and Time Warner Cable are among the most conspicuously absent (though they do support the smart phone and iPad apps).
I continue to find it fascinating that the content providers such as HBO are being so timid about opening up streaming access to their content. The HBO Go service is free, but available only to HBO subscribers, perhaps so that HBO doesn’t anger the pay-TV services that provide the bulk of its revenues. On the other hand, this may simply be the company’s way of limiting demand for the streaming service, giving them time to test it out before rolling out in a big way.
It might well be that HBO is planning a streaming-only offering down the line with it’s own monthly fee. The same pay-TV service that currently gets subscriber dollars for the HBO channels would almost certainly be the same company that provides the broadband connection used to access the streaming service, so while this could mean less money for the pay-TV service, it’s not as though HBO would be cutting them off completely with the new service. There is no doubt that the cable, satellite, and telco services are going to have to be nimble and responsive over the next few years if they are going to survive the rapidly-changing video entertainment landscape.
Times have been tough for Sears Holdings, the company that owns Sears and Kmart retail stores. In the fourth quarter of 2011, which is the season that retailers hope to post most of their profits for the year, Sears reported a loss of .4 billion. As a result, the company is looking to raise money by shedding some of its assets. According to the company’s announcement, it plans to sell an additional 11 stores in 2012. In addition, it will spin off the Hometown and Outlet stores. The company also plans to reduce inventory and implement other cost-savings measures.
This is not good news for the company and its shareholders, but it could mean that you’ll want to keep a close eye on sales at your local Sears stores. It’s possible that they may have to move some of there electronics inventory at aggressive discounts in order to raise some cash, and you might be able to snag some attractive bargains.
Are you a Dead Head? Or perhaps a fan of Scott and Bryan Devendorf of the National? What would you say to the opportunity to attend a concert featuring the Devendorfs and Bob Weir of the Greatful Dead? They will be performing at a one-time-only event called the “Bridge Sessions” on Saturday, March 24, which is a fund-raiser for HeadCount.org. The bad news is that it will be held at Weir’s own TRI Studios so seating will be limited to just 50 people. And the worse news is that tickets are only available with a ,000 donation to HeadCount.
But don’t give up yet; there is good news. The event will be broadcast live, streamed over the Internet. And you can watch it for free. That’s right: free. Nada. Zilch. How cool is that?
This should come as no surprise, given the Greatful Dead’s bellewether views on controling access to their performance art. Not only did the band not prohibit recording of their epic concerts over the decades that they toured worldwide, they even provide access to the soundboard mix for anyone who wanted to jack in. And then they encouraged people to share their recordings. Did this practice hurt their record sales? Probably not; they seemed to do just fine financially.
And so the same mindset seems to be at work here with this concert. Can’t make it? No problem; those who can will fund it, and there’s no need to get greedy about the rest. And you know that this will generate tremendous goodwill for fans of both the Dead and the National.
This is the kind of thinking that is made possible with video streaming over the Internet. 20 years ago, what would it have cost a band to call up NBC and say “We want to take over your network in prime time for an hour or two so that we can perform a free concert”? It could not have happened without a lot more money. But now we can have a group of people produce a live event and make it available worldwide if they want at just a fraction of the cost.
The world of video entertainment is changing rapidly, and “Bridge Sessions” just demonstrates what can be done with a little imagination and initiative. And I think it’s a Good Thing.
The writing on the wall of every pay-TV headquarters is “Evolve now or die!” Some companies appear to reading this with more clarity than others, and there also seems to be a difference of opinion on what the term “Now!” means.
The latest move in this attempt to switch from gills to breathing air comes from the largest cable company in the country. Last week, Comcast announced its new Streampix service that is available to some customers in some areas. The service will be bundled with some subscriptions, and will be available as a per month add-on for others.
What do you get? From the press release: “Streampix is launching with top-notch programming and will significantly increase the breadth of entertainment choices for Xfinity customers in the coming months to include complete seasons of TV series, popular children’s franchises and hit movies available to instantly stream across multiple platforms.” Sounds like it’s going toe-to-toe with Netflix and Hulu Plus, but at a lower cost.
Well, maybe. The content is somewhat less than compelling. The announcement features older movies including “Stuart Little” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”. These are perfectly fine movies, but they’re not in any danger of dipping into Comcast’s video-on-demand revenues. And the “past full seasons” goes back to “Heros” and “Married with Children”. (Isn’t Christina Applegate on her third sitcom since then?) And you have to be a Comcast subscriber in order to get the service in the first place.
It’s a baby step in the right direction, I suppose, but Comcast is going to have to do a lot better in a big hurry if it is going to challenge those companies that have already established a beachhead in streaming video. This will do as an initial experiment, but not for long.
One major retransmission dispute is now resolved. After nearly two months, the Madison Square Garden (MSG) channels have been turned back on for Time Warner Cable (TWC) customers. This did not happen until the New York governor and state attorney general weighed in to put public pressure on both parties to settle. One reason that make the negotiations particularly sticky is that MSG is controlled by the family of the CEO of Cablevision, which is TWC’s major competitor.
So now we can look to Rhode Island and Pensacola, Florida, where LIN TV is threatening to pull the plug on its stations from Cox in those markets unless they can come to terms. What makes this dispute particularly interesting is that LIN TV has two franchises in each of those markets. They own a Fox and a CBS affiliate in Rhode Island, and a Fox and a CW affiliate in Pensacola. Relaxed FCC rules made it possible for a company to own more than one station in a market, which gives LIN TV increased leverage in its negotiations. According to an article in FierceCable, LIN TV has seen a severe drop in ad revenues, and so appears to be turning to retransmission fees as its main source of income.
The pay-TV services are not bottomless buckets of money, as many of their subscribers are all too happy to tell you. Milking these services (and their subscribers) for ever-larger retransmission fees is a dangerous game that is likely to hasten the inevitable review of the FCC’s rules, and who knows what changes that might bring.
What do people really watch when they watch the SuperBowl? Thanks to the new world of connected entertainment systems, TiVo has a very good idea. By monitoring an anonymous sample of 41,666 households equipped with TiVo DVRs, the company can compile a map of “live and same-day” viewing of content that was watched at “play” speed on the systems. And guess what? People really do like the SuperBowl commercials.
According to the TiVo results, the Dorito’s “Man’s Best Friend” showed the greatest increase compared with the viewing numbers for the adjacent 15 minutes. Even this was well below the numbers for Madonna’s halftime show, and the highest viewership number for the entire program was the desperation “hail mary” pass that ended the game.
The big take-away from this, however, is not about the SuperBowl. It simply demonstrates how granular our data can be now about who watches what. These “temperature” graphs showing what viewers find most interesting is going to help content producers attract sponsors both for in-line commercials and for embedded product placements in the content itself. This data is likely to become the foundation for new funding models that will make it possible to reach specific markets more effectively, which means that individual sponsors can spend more per viewer in a smaller audience, because they will know what that audience is watching and what holds their interest.
For me, the main point is that the future does not belong to the companies that can deliver the stars and blockbuster content. Instead, the winners will be those best equipped to handle Big Data and be able to match viewers with content and sponsors in a tightly-integrated system. The world of video entertainment is indeed changing.
There are almost 40 million Wii video game consoles installed in U.S. households. And now a partnership between Nintendo and Hulu has brought Hulu Plus to the Wii. For .99 a month, viewers can add the service that provides access to many television shows and movies, and unlike the free Hulu service (which apparently still is not available on the Wii), you are not limited to the last five episodes of many current shows.
This offers a low-cost way for viewers to experiment with making their current television a “Smart TV” and access streaming video content from the Internet. You’ll need a broadband connection, but the vast majority of American households already have this either through cable or telco service, so this should not be a limitation for most people. If the offerings on Hulu Plus are not enough, you access use your Netflix streaming subscription on the Wii as well.
I’ve already written a bunch about the problems with retransmission fees and how pay-television subscribers get caught in the squeeze between their services and the content providers. Many people don’t realize that there is a fascinating flip-side to this problem, which is known as “must carry”. It works like this.
Every three years, local television broadcasters have to make a choice. They can either make their content available to local pay-TV services (cable, satellite, and telco) in return for a retransmission fee, or they can choose to forego the fee and just require the pay-TV service to carry their signal on the subscriber system. It’s a tricky proposition. If you’re sure that consumers will want your programming (note that the pay-TV service is not allowed to go to some adjacent market to replace yours if it’s from the same network), then you go for the gold. If you’re not sure that anyone would miss it if your programming gets left off, then you may want to invoke the “must carry” rule so that you can reach a bigger audience and get more money from your advertisers.
This whole system got more complicated with the digital transition. Cable companies started as community antennas, distributing the over-the-air signals through cables on the ground so that all homes in the area could get good reception. Originally, all cable systems were analog, and they just pumped the signals from the antennas through the wires. Then they got premium channels which they encrypted, which led to set top boxes to decrypt them. And then we got digital systems that offer improved image quality (and more secure encryption). The digital systems also made it possible to deliver high-definition images.
So now we have digital transmissions from almost all television broadcasters, but many cable companies still maintain analog distribution networks. This means that the digital signals have to be converted back to analog in order to be sent to analog subscribers. Cable companies would like to convert over to all-digital systems, but this requires capital investment and converter boxes for any subscribers who still don’t have a television set with a digital tuner.
Cable companies would like to free up some of their capacity by dropping local stations that don’t have much of an audience. Smaller broadcasters want to keep the “must carry” rule so that they don’t lose a major part of their audience (since so few people rely on over-the-air signals these days).
This issue has come to a head because cable services were given a three-year waiver from the requirement to not degrade the rebroadcast signal. This was required because the standard definition analog systems cannot display the high definition content of some digital broadcasts without scaling it down significantly. That waiver expires in June, and the FCC needs to decide whether or not to renew it. If it does not renew the waiver, then local cable companies may be forced to switch to digital networks unless the FCC makes other changes to the “must carry” rule as well. In preparation for these deliberations, the FCC has called for comments on the issue.
Everything seems to come in threes. We had the Big Three Automakers in Detroit. There were those little pigs. And then there were the major television networks: Netflix, Amazon, and Google.
Wait a minute; what happened to ABC, CBS, and NBC?
From where I sit, that is ancient history. The traditional networks are dead men walking, and just don’t know it. They are trying to stick with the old models of providing the conduit for video entertainment, and they are failing. Streaming content over the Internet bypasses the traditional network, making it an unnecessary intermediary in the system between content producer and consumer. And it may also squeeze out the traditional role of “advertiser” at the same time. If we have learned one thing from the Internet, it is death to the middleman; Amazon Kindle, Square, and Zappos are just a few examples.
Most of the content shown on online systems such as Netflix and Amazon are reruns. The traditional networks and Hollywood movie studios try to wring out some additional value from these leftovers so they license the content for streaming. And in the process, they have sowed the seeds of their own demise. They have provided the fuel for the fire that is the consumer demand to watch what they want, when they want, where they want. And that is a fire that can’t be put out at this point.
But can the networks be replaced? Netflix has launched its original content with the series “Lilyhammer” and will follow up with “House of Cards” with Kevin Spacey and a revival of the popular “Arrested Development” next year. Google’s YouTube is investing in original content as well, and is providing full-length programming of all sorts.
And here comes GigaOM with a breaking story that Amazon has posted job openings for creative positions with the goal of creating its own content. The service is a bit of a sleeper in the streaming video arena at this point, but its Amazon Prime members get to watch all sorts of content for free (along with many other useful bonuses) in return for a Netflix-like monthly fee. Many consumers may find that they can get a better combined value from Amazon, and if the company starts producing compelling content, it could be a major force.
The new world of video entertainment is going to require a new world of ways to pay for the content’s creation. Who do you think is in a better position to deliver a new model: ABC, CBS, and NBC, or Google, Netflix, and Amazon?
A new report from Centris indicates that more than one out of five pay-TV subscribers intend to change providers, change their level of service, or cancel entirely in the next three months. About half of these will change the program package that they have, which means that the other half will switch to a new service entirely or get rid of pay-TV altogether.
For those in this second group who are not moving, the main reason for making the change is simple: money. More than a third of them indicate that the price of the subscription is the reason for their decision. And I can’t say that I’m surprised.
Satellite and cable fees continue to rise (driven at least in part by more expensive retransmission licensing fees), and consumers feel that they are paying more for nothing. The pundits forecast continued subscriber losses; in an Associated Press story, Citigroup analyst Jason Bazinet predicts that Comcast will announce a net loss of another 125,000 basic cable subscribers for the fourth quarter of last year.
As I’ve said before, the pay-TV services are getting squeezed and I expect that we’ll see some significant changes in the business before this year is over.
As I have mentioned recently, one of the big topics for 2012 will be the dispute over retransmission fees. Cable and satellite service providers complain that the content producers are holding their customers hostage in order to extort larger fees for the rights to rebroadcast their copyrighted programming. The result has been blackouts of channels — sometimes for extended periods of time — when the previous retransmission contracts expire.
On the content producer side, they are seeing their revenues dwindle from other sources, so they see retransmission fees as a way to recoup their losses. The subscription television services are the ones who draw angry reactions from consumers, however, as their television service bills keep rising year after year. The increased fees are forcing cable and satellite to consider unpalatable options such as lower-priced channel bundles. They could even be forced to offer a la carte pricing.
While the situation is not clearcut, the recent earning news from News Corporation indicates that the retransmission wars may be providing a big windfall for the content providers. The company reported that it experienced “a greater than 100% increase in retransmission consent revenues.”
With the economy the way it is, it seems strange that the rules let a company double its revenues just for providing the same content as before. It appears that part of the problem is that there is no competition permitted in the current rules, and there may be too much leverage given to the content providers.
With numbers like these from News Corp and continuing problems with extended blackouts, it looks like something is broken in the system and this may be the year that it’s bad enough that the FCC or Congress will decide to fix it.
Last Thanksgiving weekend, the NFL Cleveland Browns travelled in-state to play the Cincinnati Bengals. The game was not a sell-out, and under FCC rules, the Bengals exercised their option to blackout the over-the-air broadcast of the game on local television stations in Cincinnati, Dayton, and Lexington. This decision raised the ire of thousands of Bengal fans, which in turn prompted Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown to ask the FCC to revisit its blackout rules.
Personally, I find that this is an interesting issue. I certainly understand that consumers want to be able to watch their local sports teams for “free” on their home televisions. And I also understand that many of those communities have provide all sorts of tax breaks and other financial incentives to build local stadiums for those teams. (The Bengals’ stadium reportedly cost the taxpayers more than 0 million.)
On the other hand, those same teams generate a lot of money in terms of wages, taxes, and tourism which often repays the taxpayer investment many times over. And I’m a bit puzzled that consumers somehow feel entitled to view an event for which admission is charged. I view it as a generous gift to the community that the teams give the broadcast to hometown viewers, and it makes sense that they only do this when the game has sold out. To force them to give away the coverage when they have not sold enough tickets is much like exacting a tax on the teams because the broadcasts make it even less likely that fans will buy tickets. We don’t expect concert promoters to provide free covereage of all concerts that are put on in that same taxpayer-subsidized stadium; why should football be treated differently?
And if the local community thinks that free local coverage is important, then there is no reason why a “no-blackout” clause could not be included in the contract with the team the next time they want taxpayer money to help build a stadium. Again, the choice to black-out local coverage is an option, and the decision to do so lies with the team.
But as fascinating as my view might be, it doesn’t matter what I think. The FCC is asking for consumer feedback on the issue. The bad news is that few people have taken advantage of this opportunity, and the deadline for input is next Monday, February 13.
So here’s your chance to weigh in on the discussion. You can file a comment online at the FCC website at http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/ecfs2/. Let your voice be heard in D.C. about whether the sport blackout rules should be changed.
Touch is transforming our entertainment experience. Second-screen tablets and smartphones are programming our DVR services, delivering supplementary and interactive social content to linear programming, and becoming content delivery platforms in their own right. And while there still is a place for keyboard in this brave new world, touch interfaces are playing an increasingly-important role in how we interact most naturally and efficiently with some very complex systems.
How much do you know about touch technology? Do you know why you can wear gloves with some screens but not others? Do you know which approaches are better suited for multi-touch interfaces, and why?
I’ll grant that this stuff gets pretty propeller-headed in a hurry, but if you want to know more about this important technology, let me point you to an amazing resource. My friend and colleague Geoff Walker (currently Principal Analyst for Touch Research at IMS Research) has made an in-depth report on touch technology available for free to the public. His “Fundamentals of Touch Technologiesand Applications” is actually the 153-page Powerpoint slide deck for his four-hour training course that he has offered at the Society for Information Display (SID) annual conference. SID is the international association for display manufacturers, so this is the course that is taken by the folks who actually build your televisions, tablets, and smart phones. So this isn’t any lightweight summary. You’ll find a thorough, in-depth comparison of the many touch technologies available today, along with unvarnished and informed opinions about just what each is (and is not) good for.
Thanks for sharing this valuable resource, Geoff. I’m sure that a lot of people will understand touch technology a whole lot better, thanks to your generosity.
The good old VHS recorder started something that Tivo took to a higher level, and the result has shaken the video broadcast industry to its very foundations.
Or has it?
Conventional wisdom says that U.S. television viewing households hate commercials. It says that they use digital video recorders (DVRs) so that they can skip over the advertisements. It says that this time-shifting of viewing has a negative impact on the value of the commercial messages that are sprinkled throughout the traditional linear programming. And it could be wrong.
The industry analysis company Centris has released a new white paper on DVRs. Their research paints an interesting picture of DVR usage in this country that runs counter to some of our expectations.
First, fewer than two out of five television-viewing households in the U.S. have one or more DVR. It is also interesting to note that few own their own device; about three-quarters are rented from their television service provider. (Fiber optic subscribers are more likely to rent a DVR than cable or satellite subscribers.)
But the result that surprised me was this: half of all DVR users watch 20% or less of their programming on the DVR. In fact, one out of six DVR users don’t watch programming on the DVR at all! That says to me that the threat to Big Advertising on linear television programming is not nearly as serious as some of us might think.
I guess that the other lesson I learned from this report is to not extrapolate too much from your own experience. I’d estimate that more than 90% of the video programming that we watch in our house (and we watch plenty!) is either recorded or streamed. And we do skip commercials (except last Monday night during the SuperBowl, and on Hulu where we don’t have a choice). The only broadcast linear programming that we watch is the occasional news show and live sports. And even then, we often will use our DVR’s “Pause” function and then skip the commercials as we compress the viewing time.
That’s the conventional wisdom, but I’ve got a dollar that says rumors of the DVD’s death are premature. Why a dollar? Because that’s what it costs to rent a DVD from one of those big red vending machines that you see everywhere from Walmart to McDonalds (not to mention the two just beyond the cash registers at our local grocery store).
Yes, I’m talking about Redbox, which is the other jaw of the vice that — along with Netflix on the other side — squeezed Blockbuster out of existence. Not only is the company succeeding with DVD rentals, it also now offers Blu-ray discs overnight for just .50. Is the strategy working? Consider two breaking news items, and you be the judge.
The most recent announcement is that Redbox will be acquiring the assets from NCR’s entertainment division, which includes the kiosks and DVD inventory of NCR’s ill-fated movie rental venture with Blockbuster. Redbox is doubling down on the DVD rental business to the tune of 0 million, according to some sources.
This announcement comes hard on the heels of its press release with Verizon. The two companies are launching a joint venture that will combine disc rentals with new video on-demand streaming and download services. In other words, what Netflix has chosen to rent asunder, Redbox and Verizon plan to offer together. And if there were some players who could have the leverage to compete with Netflix, it would be these two partners.
According to the press release, the products to be released later this year will be designed to offer “subscription services and more in an easy-to-use, flexible and affordable service that will allow all consumers across the U.S. to enjoy the new and popular entertainment they want, whenever they choose, using the media and devices they prefer.” Hmmm, a multi-modal all-you-can eat service at a flat rate? Do you think that consumers might be interested in something like that? I do. And when you consider that nearly seven out of every 10 people in the U.S. already live within a five minute drive of a Redbox kiosk, they’ve got enough bots on the ground to make this assault work.
Were you one of the 17 million who have watched Corning’s “A Day Made of Glass” since it was posted last year? I know that I watched it at least a half-dozen times. And I remember thinking that it was so cool that just about all the technology required to make everything in that video happen exists today; in many cases, it’s available in shipping products.
Well, they’ve done it again. Corning has posted “A Day Made of Glass 2″. It is also an amazingly cool video, and it demonstrates even more ways that display technology can make our lives easier. Check it out:
I found plenty of moments when I smiled or laughed about some of the clever applications, but it was sort of like watching any sequel, such as “Aliens” or “The Empire Strikes Back” or even “Shreck 2″. You already know about this new world/universe, so it’s more familiar than startling. Even so, there is a lot to like in this video. For me, the augmented reality segments were particularly compelling.
What are you doing next Sunday evening? (I plead “no contest” to charges of East Coast bias.) Perhaps you plan on joining several tens of millions of your U.S. neighbors in watching the Patriots take on the Giants in the SuperBowl. (Perhaps we’re entitled to a little East Coast bias.) Patriot fans in Boston were relieved when the local NBC broadcaster and DirecTV reached agreement on a new retransmission deal; the dispute had threatened to blackout the game coverage for the satellite subscribers.
But even if you can’t get to a TV on Sunday, you can still watch the game if you have access to broadband. The NFL is streaming the SuperBowl this year for free. You’ll be able to watch the game on the NFL.com website, and you’ll even be able to watch it on your smartphone if you’re a Verizon customer.
If just watching the game is not enough, you also can go through your own pregame warmup online. The site has hours of clips from last Sunday’s Media Day; you can watch some of the league’s most famous players come up with new ways to say “we’ve worked hard as a team to get here” and “we have a lot of respect for the other team”. Even if you’re not a fan of football, you may be fascinated by some of the bling these guys wear to a press interview. All week, the NFL will stream live events to provide more background and insight into the upcoming championship. It’s a great resource for football fans; next August is a long way off!
Sorry, folks, but I cannot resist this one. I really struggle to refrain from the breathless “Wow! Look at how low this price is!” type of story because it gets old and it’s inevitable that someone can come up with a deal that tops whatever you’ve found. But I have to give in to this one.
Why? It’s a set from a top tier brand. It’s a deal from a major retailer. It’s nothing fancy but it should get the job done, and it has four HDMI inputs.
It’s the 42″ Sharp LC42SV49U and it is on sale at Best Buy for 9.99. That’s well under the benchmark per diagonal inch, and a rather attractive deal.
How is it priced so low? Sharp is having trouble selling all the televisions it makes. The new (and rather expensive) Gen10 LCD fab is designed to make larger size panels, but word is that they have cut production back to just 50% of capacity. That has to hurt. So I expect that Sharp is looking to make cash any way it can, just to feed the capital costs of that monster factory. And Sharp is not alone. The television market has gone soft just when the companies have ramped up their production. So I expect to have my breath taken away soon and often by even better deals.
Oh, and before you lunge for the keyboard to write to me (at alfred@hdtvprofessor.com), I do realize that this same set was available from Best Buy on Black Friday for just 0. What makes this deal so remarkable is that you don’t need to spend the night in a sleeping back to get one.
UPDATE: 2/3/12 12:05 PM — the folks at Sharp saw this post and sent me the following statement. I’m impressed that they responded so quickly to this piece, and that they presented their case without criticism or comment, but just stated their positive view of the situation. I take their statement about their sales forecasts at face value.
As the sales leader of large screen (60-inches and larger) LED televisions in the US, Sharp Electronics Corporation continues to have strong growth and sales projections for large screen LED TVs in the US market. The company’s sales expectations in the US for the 2012 Fiscal Year are unaffected by production rates at our Sakai (Japan) plant.
Futuresource Consulting has just released a free analysis report that highlights their observations about consumer electronics products and trends at CES 2012. One of the points that they made in their announcement press release caught my attention:
Ever-thinner TV displays boosted interest in speakers, soundbars and home theatre systems.
I confess that I’ve been a bit puzzled over the fascination with thin when it comes to HDTVs. I understand that it’s cool, and that it generally results in a set that weighs less, but those don’t strike me as compelling features. When you think about it, the thickness of the display is one of the few features that you can’t discern when you’re actually using the product. From straight on, a 4 mm-thick OLED display looks the same depth as a “bulky” rear-projection display.
Now the Futuresource report points out another drawback for thin TVs. I grant that the sound system quality for most flat panels rivals that of the dashboard speaker in my 64 Mustang, but making the drivers ever thinner can’t help matters any. I remember Pioneer engineers showing me all sorts of clever designs they had to get better sound out of a flat panel HDTV, but is it really worth the effort? In many cases, a desktop computer speaker set with a subwoofer will outperform the sound quality of the flat panel. If I thought it would save them some money, I’d recommend that manufacturers just drop the charade and sell their thinnest TVs without speakers at all. (Howver, I suspect that they’re not spending enough on the sound components to make much difference.)
So while you’re dreaming of a razor thin HDTV for your living room, remember to budget a little for a separate sound system; there are some bargains in compact home theater surround sound packages. You don’t listen to the movie soundtrack through an AM radio at the local cinema, and you should not have to do the same at home, either.
The FCC tracks the complaints it receives about various services under is oversight, including television, radio, and telephone. In the third quarter of 2011, complaints about cable and satellite services increased more than 15% over the prior quarter, though it is worth noting that the number of complaints about “billing and rates” issues were essentially flat with only a 1.5% increase. The billing and rate complaints still accounted for the largest portion of all complaints, with more than one third of the total.
Perhaps the canary in this coalmine are the numbers for “Satellite Television Extension & Localism Act” complaints. This category bloomed by nearly 44% over the prior quarter. Behind the esoteric title lies a festering problem in the television industry: retransmission rights. Subscription television services have to license the content from local broadcast stations, and cannot negotiate with a station outside the local market for the same content. Broadcasters — and their networks — are looking to replace revenues lost in other areas, and see cable and satellite subscribers as a worthy source. So they withhold their content until they get the fees that they want. The result can be a blackout for the subscribers until the negotiations are settled. In some cases, the blackouts can last weeks or even months. Senator John Kerry weighed in when it appeared that DirecTV subscribers in Boston might not get the SuperBowl, and other retransmission disputes are drawing high-profile attention as well. Expect this to be a controversial issue throughout 2012.
And just to keep this in perspective, all of the cable and satellite complaints combined did not equal half the complaints received about broadcast television. So we can rest assured that there are still people watching the over-the-air channels.
There’s an interesting discussion going on in one of the LinkedIn Groups that I belong to, and I find that I’ve been thinking a lot about it for the past few days. The topic of the conversation is that the industry has not settled on what to call this new and rapidly developing technology landscape that delivers video entertainment to us at home and on the go. Some of the terms in use are Smart TV, Connected TV, TV Everywhere, Interactive TV, and Social TV. Can’t we just settle on one term and move forward?
Well, the hard fact is that unless you own about 80% of the market share, you don’t get to name the catgory. The consumers might come up with one on their own, but the Balkanization of the terminology is likely to continue for a long time. Look at the devices that we connect to the Internet to get video content onto our TVs; I prefer to call them “network media players” but you’ll see them called “set-top boxes”, “digital media receivers”, or a bunch of other terms. About the only recent case that I can think of where the industry quickly standardized on a term was the ill-advised “LED TV” which created far more confusion for consumers than clarity.
I write about lots of different technology stuff that I find interesting; if you think you might find it interesting too, please consider following me on Twitter: @AlfredPoor.
But just because it’s difficult to get unanimous support for a term doesn’t mean that I won’t try anyway. I’m guided by a great quote from Esther Dyson, who once said of artificial intelligence, “that’s what we call it until we can do it” (or something like that; I can’t find the source.) The point is that we need names for new technologies until they get assimilated or they wither up and drop off the technology tree, but after that, the new term is extraneous. How many of us mention that we watch “color TV” these days? It was a big deal when I was in elementary school, but it’s just TV now. Or how many people still make the distinction that they watched “cable TV” or “satellite TV” last night? Heck, I doubt many people even make a distinction about high definition anymore.
So what do we call this brave new world that lets us view moving images on demand, spanning both time and space so that they can reach us in our living rooms or on our computers, tablets, or even telephones? I don’t know what we call it now, but I’m pretty sure that we’ll end up calling it “television”.
In a letter to shareholders about 4th Quarter 2011 results, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings reported good news and bad news. As I read the letter, it looks to me that while the company may have made some very public missteps along the way, there is no question in my mind that the corporate change of direction was a good choice and that it is already paying dividends.
The big news for many people is that the online streaming subscribers now outnumber the DVD-in-the-mail subscribers almost two t0 one. Netflix ended the year with nearly 22 million streaming subscribers and a little more than 11 million DVD subscribers. The DVD users still produce the bulk of the profits, however, 4 million for the quarter compared with just million for the streaming. Still, the company had hoped that streaming would account for as much as 8% of the company profits by the end of last year; it turns out that they exceeded that goal with almost 11% of profits coming from streaming.
Netflix has turned the corner and is not looking back. They see that the days are numbered for DVD rentals; “As expected, DVD members declined this quarter to 11.2 million due to the continued impact of the price changes, as hybrid members continued to predominantly choose a streaming-only plan over a higher priced hybrid plan.” The consumers are voting with their dollars, and moving from disc to broadband delivery. One interesting point is that they see the existing television subscription services as their main competition going forward. “Just as broadcast networks have substantially transformed themselves into cable channels over the last twenty years, both broadcast and cable networks will effectively also become Internet networks like Netflix. As a pure-play we have many advantages, however, just as cable did over broadcast.” Netflix clearly has a strong head start over the others in streaming video, and their commitment to expanding their catalog of content is evidence of their will to compete. They lost the Starz content, but they have already contracted with studios to license many of the same titles directly. And they’re even launching their own original production of content, including a resurrection of the popular series “Arrested Development.”
The company’s future success is anything but guaranteed, but it clearly remains a force to be reckoned with in the market. The transition from in-the-mail to Internet has not been without its bumps, for certain, but Netflix looks strong and will play a role in shaping the future of television.
Okay, I think that this finally is my last CES 2012 post, at least for now. Today, I want to tell you about a product that won an an International CES Innovations 2012 Design and Engineering Award: TelyHD.
This is essentially a dedicated network media player that only has one application: Skype. It runs on Android, and connects to any display with an HDMI port. It accesses the Internet through your home network and high-speed broadband connection. (The higher your broadband speed, the better image you’ll get.) It has a number of features that set it apart from your run of the mill webcam, aside from the fact that you don’t need to hook it up to a computer.
It will alert you of an incoming call when you’re watching TV, so that you can switch to its input. It has a four-microphone array that should provide “beam steering” and better noise cancellation than a regular webcam, which is important in a living room setting. It also has a handy physical shutter that you can pull down over the lens so that you are sure that nobody can take a peek at you when you don’t want.
I haven’t tested the product, so I can’t speak to its performance, but it makes a lot of sense. Several of the major manufacturers have built Skype support into some of their Smart TVs, but I feel that they’ve missed a trick by not marketing this feature heavily to seniors. The TelyHD looks to be simple enough to operate (and fairly easy set up initially) that you don’t need to be very technical to make it work. I believe that one of the biggest undermarketed attractions for Skype is that it is a great way for grandparents to visit with grandchildren (and their parents). I don’t know if you’ve tried to hold a telephone conversation with a two- or three-year old lately, but it’s not a very productive medium for communication at that stage. With a video call, however, you get to see them playing even if their focus is not on your conversation. On a big screen TV, it can almost be like they’re in the room with you.
I think that the TelyHD is on the right track, making this a component feature rather than built-in. (The sets that have Skype “built-in” still require that you purchase extra-cost options to make it work.) That way you can move it to another set without having to buy it again. And I suspect that if they were to make a concerted effort to market the product to seniors, they could see a lot of them.
Let’s review the trends. Televisions are becoming more “connected” to all sorts of content. Subscription television services such as cable and satellite are being battered by “over-the-top” streaming video on the Internet. Everything is going wireless now that we’ve had a taste of untethered computing and communications thanks to our smartphones and tablets. And these smart screens are becoming the second and third windows onto our video entertainment environment.
And here comes an unlikely source of technological “glue” to pull all of this together: DLNA. That acronym that nobody can remember what it means (Digital Living Network Alliance) or exactly what it does may turn out to be a significant factor in home entertainment going forward. Up until now, DLNA technology has been a solution in search of a problem. Yes, it lets you access the photos and music that you have stored on one computer, and view them or listen to it on a different computer or device on your home network, using either a wired or wireless connection. It also lets you send a photo from your smartphone to your printer, but I don’t know anyone who actually does that.
But at CES 2012, the DLNA Premium Video platform was announced with the support of some heavy hitters in the industry: Comcast and Intel. The breakthrough here is that instead of making your content available to other devices on your network, this new technology lets any DLNA device on the network access outside content. Comcast demo’d a set-top box that can stream the cable company’s content to any supported screen in the house.
That’s huge. If DLNA can deliver on this promise, it means that the content provider (cable or satellite) does not have to learn how to support a variety of devices. If a device supports DLNA, then you will be able to access the content on it (or so we hope). It does not help the subscription services deliver their programming to subscribers away from their home (the goal of the TV Everywhere initiatives), but it does solve the need for consumers to be able to move throughout their home and take their entertainment with them. This could turn out to be a major factor in home entertainment in the future.
After last year’s disappearing act at CES 2011, Google TV came back strong at CES 2012. Google announced partnerships with major players including Sony, LG, VIZIO, and newcomer to the Smart TV market, Lenovo. (Logitech was conspicuously absent from the list.) Consumer demand for “over-the-top” streaming video over the Internet is growing by leaps and bounds, and Google is certainly in a position to manage and deliver the oceans of information required to track and access all the online video content that is available. Having the largest search engine and YouTube certainly helps their position.
It also helps to have some top tier brands in your corner. One of the most interesting announcements came from Sony. The company announced two new products with Google TV. The NSZ-GP9 Blu-ray player provides unprecedented connectivity. More surprising for me, however, was the NSZ-GS7 which is a network media player powered by Google TV. Now you can get a Sony that makes your existing dumb TV a Smart TV. (Or if you already have a Smart TV, it can make it smarter.) I take it as a strong sign that Sony feels that there is a market for a retrofit device such as this.
Now here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly: it’s still all about the remote. The press and analysts piled on when the original Google TV products came out, harping on the clunky QWERTY keyboards that were built into the remote. This generation is better, in that the remote has a touchpad to make mouse-like cursor control easier. The bad is that when you flip the remote over, there is the backlit QWERTY keyboard staring back at you. And the ugly is that no matter how you slice it, any remote that is large enough to hold a full keyboard is going to awkwardly large. I am reconciled to the fact that accessing streaming video on the Internet inevitably requires some text entry at some point, but I’m not convinced that having the keyboard with you at all times is necessarily the right answer.
I don’t know what the right answer is; it probably involves some combination of speech recognition, gesture or motion control, a keyboard, and a lot of intelligence the device to make good judgments about what I’m trying to find. But I’m encouraged that Google TV has lived to see another revision, and I expect that consumer interest in the platform will grow when these Sony products ship this summer.
Okay, your wishes have been heard and the display gods are going to give you what you asked for. Just remember that when you get it, I told you so.
One of the big splashes at CES 2012 was the unveiling of Toshiba’s monster 55″ 3D HDTV, and to the breathless adoration of the technology press, it doesn’t require that you wear glasses to see the 3D images! But wait, it gets even better! This display has 4K by 2K resolution, which means that it is the equivalent of four 1080p panels tiled together. Amazing! And while the details were not announced, the expectation is that it may ship in the U.S. as soon as the second quarter of this year. If all this sounds like what you’ve been hoping for, then do us both a favor and stop reading right here.
I mean it. Don’t read the rest of this. I’m only going to break your heart.
Okay, here’s the rest of the story. The panel uses the same sort of nine-position lenticular technology that we’ve seen for a long time. Philips sold a commercial version of a 9-view no-glasses 3D high definition display nearly six years ago, which won a Gold Award from the Society for Information Display in 2006. The biggest technological news is that Toshiba has been able to use a 4K panel in the system, which is a good thing. The way the multi-view works, the image gets divided up among the viewers so this Toshiba HDTV delivers only a 720p image to each viewer when watching 3D. (You do get the full 4K resolution when viewing 2D content, but that’s just scaled up 1080p images because there is no source for 4K content yet.) Yes, the Toshiba set does have head-tracking for the center position, which means you can move around a little and the “sweet spot” will follow you, but the company recommends that you turn this off when watching with others present.
And here’s the big problem. When watching with others, you’ve got to sit in one of those nine sweet spots. That means that you have to adjust to the TV, instead of the other way around. Are you ready to rearrange your living room furniture so that everyone can see the 3D image? And don’t try to sit too close together, because it won’t work.
Now, the technology problems alone are probably enough to kill this product, but there’s one other factor that guarantees that it will flop in the marketplace. The set is selling in Japan now for ,000. As Toshiba’s own VP Scott Ramirez has said repeatedly, there is no market for televisions above ,5000. This new set may sell to rich enthusiasts and technology collectors, but it doesn’t stand a chance of becoming a mass market success when you can buy five or more sets that uses inexpensive passive glasses for the same price, and you may even get a Blu-ray player for each one in the bargain.
Toshiba gave people something to talk about at CES, but we’re still years away from a practical no-glasses 3DTV for the average living room. And I’m not yet convinced that we’ll every get there.
One of the most curious developments to come out of CES 2012 for the television industry was the announcement from DIRECTV and Samsung. The two companies are going to partner by building set-top box functionality into a line of Samsung Smart TVs. This becomes curiouser when you add the fact that Verizon and LG made a similar announcement.
The Samsung sets will connect to a DIRECTV DVR set-top box, so that they can access recordings and live programming directly without the need for a separate box. The LG sets will be able to access live programming on 26 channels, as well as a library of more than 10,000 video on demand titles.
So what’s the real benefit here? By adding some extra features to a smart television, LG and Samsung give you limited access to your subscription-TV service. In return, you get to eliminate the clutter of a set-top box and the extra monthly rental fee. But if that extra cost is just a month, then you can probably save several times the annual cost by getting an HDTV that isn’t as smart as these new ones (such as the set you may already have, which costs you nothing more if you don’t have to replace it). And you get full access to all the programming and all the interactive content that you’re paying for with your subscription.
Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s great to make smarter sets that give me access to more content more easily (and sometimes at a lower cost). But I don’t understand paying more for a set that delivers less than I could get otherwise.
At CES 2012, Western Digital joined the ranks of manufacturers offering passive 3DTV technology, along with LG, Vizio, Panasonic, and Toshiba. The company announced that it plans to ship the 47″ W47S2TCD later this spring with a list price of 9, including four pairs of glasses. This means that this technology will now be available from one of the lower-priced brands on the market.
I don’t see this as the end of active 3D models, but I clearly expect consumers to move to passive 3D models. They now have a choice across a range of brands, features, and prices, and they are going to favor the less expensive (and no-maintenance) passive glasses over the shutter-glasses models. I don’t expect active 3DTV technology to disappear overnight, but I do expect the market share to trend rapidly in the passive 3DTV direction.
It should also be noted that this is not the first time that Westinghouse has announced this model, but I expect that it is much more likely to ship this time.
Brace yourself. According to a new report by Accenture, the number of consumers watching broadcast or cable TV in 2011 in an average week was just 48%. That number is down from 71% just two years earlier in 2009. (The survey includes an international sample, drawing data from the United States, France, Japan, China, and India.) What is driving the change? According to the same study, one third of the consumers watch video content on their personal computers, and one out of ten watch video content on smartphones.
Clearly, streaming video is one of the primary forces behind this change, but it also appears to signal a shift that I’ve been talking about for years. It seems that the traditional group activity of watching television is transforming into a solo activity done on a personal device. We’ve already seen this shift dominate the music business; how much time do you spend listening to music with other people, compared with the amount of time you spend listening through earphones?
This has some serious implications for the television industry. Are people going to stop putting a large screen in their living room or other central location? Accenture’s report indicates that this may be the trend. Only 20% of consumers indicated that they intend to buy an HDTV (of any size) in 2012, which is down from 25% last year. Yes, it’s likely that the market is fairly saturated at this point and the economy has people budgeting a bit tighter, but this is still a large drop.
We’ve already seen other research indicating that people are looking at their laptops, tablets, and smartphones at the same time that they are “watching” a large screen television. It remains to be seen whether this is just an infatuation with our connected gadgets or a true signal that we are privatizing our entertainment experiences, but it could be that these changes could have a profound effect on the consumer electronics market.
I write about lots of different technology stuff that I find interesting; please consider following me on Twitter: @AlfredPoor.
One of the most interesting stories to come out of CES 2012 is about a pair of technology demonstration displays that were tucked away in the Sony booth. Labeled “CrystalLED”, these 55″ HDTV panels were quite different from any other display that has been marketed as an “LED HDTV” in recent years. These panels actually were LED displays, using discrete, individual LED components for each sub-pixel in the 1080p display. That adds up to more than six million LEDs.
Reports from the show were that the image quality was excellent, and why shouldn’t it be? LEDs are emissive, so viewing angle should not be an issue, and they are mind-numbingly fast, so there should be no problem with image blur. LEDs have an extremely long lifetime (when was the last time you had an LED power indicator “burn out” on a piece of equipment?), so they should last forever, or at least well beyond the time when you’d want to replace it. The only problems that I can foresee are the challenge of “binning” the parts so that you get consistent color output from all two million LEDs of the same color, and the fact that some LEDs show color shift with changing temperatures.
Oh, and then there’s the problem of how do you actually build these suckers? A tip of the hat goes to my friend and colleague, Ken Werner, did some old-fashioned journalistic legwork for his “Display Daily” column for Insight Media. He cites a “reliable source” who indicated that each of the six million LED chips were individually wire-bonded to the electrodes. It is not immediately obvious how this sort of assembly could be automated at a speed and yield that would be economically feasible. In fact, the display industry is moving toward production processes that let you spray or print the display materials onto the substrates; a move to discrete LED components would seem to be a big step in the wrong direction.
So my best guess is that you should not bank your HDTV budget in hopes that Sony will be selling one of these LED displays any time soon (if ever).
Okay, before I get to my point, I have to stage a little hissy fit that is related to the topic. The topic is the news that Nuance has announced “Dragon TV” which will let future televisions understand your spoken command. And an enormous number of my colleagues in the technical press have written about this as a great advance in”voice recognition.” And it’s not. “Voice recognition” is the recognition of a specific voice, as in biometric security applications. When you try to dictate to a machine, the application is “speech recognition.” There’s a big difference, folks. Getting it wrong is just sloppy. Okay, I feel a little better now; let’s move on.
So Nuance announced “Dragon TV” which is a new interface platform that HDTV manufacturers can incorporate in their future television designs. The system recognizes spoken commands (not VOICES! — oops, sorry about that). The cool thing about this is not just that you can say channel numbers or channel names to switch, but it also becomes part of the search interface. You can speak the name of an actor, and it will seek out programming options where that actor appears.
From where I stand, this is far more important than any of the gesture interface announcements that came out of CES 2012. (Who wants to do aerobics just to change channels?) The key to the future of television programming is the ability to access the content that you want to watch, when you want to watch it. The rapid growth of “over the top” Internet streaming demonstrates how much American viewers want to break out of the confines of the traditional channel grid, but the big problem is how to access all that content. (This is something I know a little about, as I wrote a major industry overview report for GigaOM Pro on the subject.) The traditional remote control is not the answer, and as Logitech discovered the hard way, a QWERTY keyboard doesn’t go over too well in most living rooms these days. And trying to spell out T-O-M C-R-U-I-S-E by waving at the screen is probably a non-starter.
Speech recognition could be the answer. If it is going to work, nobody is in a better position to deliver on the promise than Nuance. The company’s history starts with Visioneer, a scanning company; it turns out that the same algorithms that help with optical character recognition (OCR) also work with speech recognition. It later acquired ScanSoft (which was a descendant of the famous Kurzweil Computer Products), which in turn goobled up many of the OCR and speech recognition companies of the day including Caere, Lernout & Hauspie, Philips, SpeechWorks, and Locus Dialog. After merging with Nuance in 2005, the company has continued to grow through acquisition, buying Dictaphone, Tegic, and more than a dozen other companies. As a result, Nuance is the repository of perhaps the most extensive collection of speech recognition technology.
I also suspect that lurking in some of those IP collections are some algorithms that can help identify meaning. This will be an essential component to success of any new television interface that tries to sort through the metadata for the universe of movies and TV shows and YouTube clips in order to find matches to recommend in response to a user query.
There are no Dragon TVs on the market yet, but this still could be one of the most significant developments for the HDTV market this year.
Yup, sales of 3DTVs have been lower than what some people have predicted, or that what manufacturers had hoped for. The reason is not the goofy glasses or the high prices. You now pay little more to get 3D support in a television, and people are just fine with wearing the glasses in the local cinemas. The problem is simple; there’s not a compelling library of 3D content available. But that’s changing rapidly.
Consider “Smart TVs” for a moment. For the most part, that means that your HDTV can connect to the Internet without using a separate computer or other black box, so that you can stream movies and past episodes of TV shows on Netflix. Yes, these televisions can also get sports scores and stock prices and weather forecasts, but the compelling application is the entertainment content from Netflix (and perhaps a few other sources such as YouTube, Hulu Plus, and Amazon on Demand). Once the content became available at a reasonable cost (all you can eat for less than a month), the demand for the feature took off.
The 20 or 30 movies that Hollywood releases in 3D just isn’t enough to sustain consumer interest. Even if you wanted to watch everyone of these movies, you’d run out of content even if you rationed yourself to one a week. Clearly not enough content.
But here comes some compelling content, at least for some viewers. Panasonic has announced that it will be partnering with NBC to bring 3D coverage of the London 2012 Summer Olympics to U.S. television audiences. The 3D broadcasts will be shown on a next-day delay, including both the opening and closing ceremonies. The Olympic Broadcasting Services is planning to produce more than 200 hours of 3D programming, covering a wide range of sports including swimming, diving, and gymnastics. The content will be made available to cable, satellite, and telco subscription TV services across the country.
I’ll freely admit that 200 hours of programming is not much in a market where the average viewer watches more than 150 hours a month, but it’s a good start. And when the content being shown is programming that is in high demand by a large number of consumers — such as the Olympics — I expect that we’ll find more people expressing interest in getting a 3DTV. Sports have always been a driving force for adopting new television technology, and when the SuperBowl is finally broadcast live in 3D, I expect that we’ll stop hearing stories about what a flop 3DTV has been.
One of my public speaking topics in recent years was “Why Your Next Computer Will Be a Television.” Even without the network-connected “Smart TV” features that are commonplace now, HDTVs have long relied on powerful processors and other components that outperform the standard desktop computers of not-so-long ago. But even back when I gave this talk, I don’t think I foresaw how far this aspect has develop in such a short time.
Smart TVs connect to the Internet through your home network’s high speed broadband connection, and the widgets or applets or whatever you call them can access information and put it on your screen. Weather forecasts, sports scores and schedules, stock prices, news headlines, traffic reports, and much more are just a remote control click away. These TVs even capture streaming video from Web services, such as Hulu Plus, Netflix, and Amazon on Demand. All that takes some processing horsepower, but it’s nothing compared with what comes next.
Let me describe a new product that was announced by computer-maker Lenovo at CES today. It has a dual-core processor running the Android operating system, 1 GB of memory, an 8 GB hard drive, and support for SD card storage. It also has a built-in 5 megapixel camera. What is it? A new tablet? An entry-level personal computer? Nope; it’s a 55″ LCD HDTV with an LED backlight. The remote control includes a touchpad, and reportedly the system will respond to voice commands. Lenovo also announced a 42″ model. Both will ship this spring, but just for the China market initially. The company plans a later roll-out for the worldwide markets. No prices were announced yet.
This raises the ante for what constitutes a Smart TV, and it marks the entry of a major technology manufacturer in the already-crowded HDTV market. (The pundits are looking for who will be next to drop out of the market, rather than who is looking to join the fray.) With all the rumors of recent months about televisions with motion control and speech recognition commands — many of these rumors paired with the as-yet unconfirmed Apple TV product — Lenovo’s entry kick starts the competition and could set the new standard for what we expect from our televisions.
[Okay, I’m just warning you all. The flood of stories coming out of CES 2012 is likely to keep me busy for a while, long after the Las Vegas Convention Center has been hosed down and refilled with the next two or three conventions. So I’ll get to them eventually, but you’ll have to give me a little time. Write to me at alfred@hdtvprofessor.com if there’s a specific topic that you want me to cover.]
Yes, I’m not at CES this year, so I end up reading about what’s been going on there in some of the same places that you probably read. And so I may not be the first to break a story. But I bet you’ll find commentary here that goes beyond what you’ll find in most of those sources.
For example, take the “Large OLED HDTV” story. LG telegraphed its intention to show its 55″ OLED HDTV well in advance, so we knew to expect it. The big surprise came from Samsung, which also showed a 55″ OLED HDTV. It appears that when it comes to display technology, “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better” must be the national anthem of South Korea. One reason that this was such a surprise is that Samsung has been pretty quiet about large screen OLED technology for the past year or so.
There are some important differences between the two announcements. LG’s panel is a “color by white” design, which means that they make white-emitting OLED sub-pixels for the panel, and then cover them with red, green, or blue filters. (In an effort to boost brightness, the LG pixel layout also includes white sub-pixels with no filter at all.) The advantage of this approach is that you only have one OLED material which (we hope) will age uniformly. The Samsung design uses separate red, green, and blue emissive materials. This indicates that Samsung has apparently come up with a way to deposit the different materials in a finely patterned way on a large panel, which is no mean feat. We don’t yet know how the faster aging of the blue OLED material will affect the picture quality of the sets over time, and if this is a disadvantage compared with the LG design. Samsung also announced that they plan to fabricate the panels on a Gen 8 production line later this year, which could mean lower manufacturing costs than the panels built on smaller Gen 5.5 lines.
The LG and Samsung announcements are more alike than different, in my opinion. Both promise vague “later this year” ship dates. Neither has offered any information about price or production volume. Remember that the Sony OLED TV never made it beyond pilot production volumes, and it remained a collectible rather than a competitive product for the brief time that it was on the market.
I’m ready to be proven wrong, but I have not yet been given any reason to believe that these sets will come out at prices below the ,000 to ,000 range. If they cost that much when they finally ship, it will still be an important milestone for the OLED display industry, but that’s still too high for them to be considered viable competition for LCD or plasma models. These announcements from LG and Samsung are hopeful signs, but I expect that we could still be years away from competitive OLED HDTVs available in the marketplace.
You can’t tell the players without a scorecard. In yesterday’s Almanac entry, I told you about personal computer maker Lenovo’s surprising entry into the HDTV market. Today, it’s time for turnabout. If there’s a technology market that is worse than the HDTV business in terms of slim profit margins, cut throat competition, and distribution challenges, it’s the personal computer market. It’s so bad that the industry leader HP announced plans to exit the business last year (though it quickly rescinded that decision).
So who is running into this burning building? None other than VIZIO, the company that provides high-end HDTV designs and technology at prices well below those of the biggest brands. It uses strong vertical integration in its supply chain to wring out costs, and has managed to become one of the leading brands in the business. Perhaps they were emboldened by their success with an Android tablet last year, but they have taken the plunge and will ship two desktop systems and three notebooks this spring.
The most striking feature of all the products is their elegant design. The desktop systems are “all-in-one” with the computer integrated into the display itself. Two of the notebooks are in the “thin and light” category. Based on the photos from VIZIO, the company has challenged Apple in its area of core competance by making the new products look appealing and state of the art. VIZIO has also drawn on its experience with entertainment hardware, and all the computers are designed with high-definition screens ready to play video from a variety of sources. They include HDMI ports so that you can attach them to Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, or other devices.
This is certainly an aggressive move on VIZIO’s part, but given their track record in the seemingly-impossible HDTV market, I’m not about to bet against them. No pricing has been announced, but if they follow their familiar strategy, they will have features similar to their top competitors but priced a notch below. I’m not shopping for a new computer right now, but I’ll still be curious to see these new products when they become available.
I know that I should mention this more often; if you like what you find here, please consider following me on Twitter. @AlfredPoor
The worldwide economic downturn put a damper on consumer demand for televisions, according to NPD DisplaySearch’s Quarterly Global TV Shipment and Forecast Report. High inventory levels meant that shipments for 2011 are exepected to be flat compared with 2010. The good news is that there are signs of improvement, and the forecast is for a modest increase of 2% in 2012, reaching 254 million units.
[Source: NPD DisplaySearch Advanced Quarterly Global TV Shipment and Forecast Report]
The report cites a number of interesting findings. As the price gap between LCD and plasma shrinks, consumers favor the LCD choices. As a result, the forecast is for plasma unit shipments to decline much more rapidly over the next few years than had been predicted recently. As the price for 50″ sets fall below ,000, demand for the larger sizes will increase rapidly.
Perhaps the most interesting finding, however, is the growing popularity of LED backlights for LCD HDTVs. Their share of the LCD shipments is expected to be about 46% for 2011, but will jump to nearly 68% for 2012. This is probably driven by a combination of factors, including dropping prices for the individual LEDs, increased power efficiency, and more attractive form factors that result in a thinner and lighter TV set. By 2014, DisplaySearch predicts that fluorescent backlights for LCDs will be less than 10% of the LCD HDTV market.
So if you’re going to be in the market for a new flatscreen television this year, chances are excellent that you’ll end up with an LCD HDTV that has an LED backlight.
Roku is probably one of the most successful network media players out there, and they seem to keep getting better. The boxes keep getting smaller and programming choices available through them keep growing. It’s a great way to make a dumb TV smart.
But now Roku has decided to think small again. The company has announced the Roku Streaming Stick, which looks like a typical USB thumb drive. Plug it into an HDMI port of a supported television, however, and you get streaming access to video from the Internet using a wireless connection to your home network.
The one speed bumb in the preceding paragraph is the single word “supported.” The Streaming Stick relies on Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) technology, which is not yet widely implemented. Roku announced that Best Buy intends to produce HDTVs under the Insignia brand that will support the Streaming Stick sometime this year, though the Roku press release did not offer any more specific details.
The problem is that the a typical smart TV offers much of what the Streaming Stick delivers, so it will likely appeal more to buyers of low-end models who want to add smart-TV-style access to streaming video. Unlike the existing Roku boxes that will work with older sets, however, this new device will only work with new televisions that have MHL support. Still, it could provide a lower-cost upgrade route for consumers who buy a low-price HDTV now, but who decide they want to add streaming video support later. Since the average TV will probably see eight to ten years of use over its lifetime, this could be an attractive feature. Whether or not this represents a large-enough market for Roku to make the product successful remains to be seen.
I know, I should be excited. I was hoping that maybe there’d be a viable 32″ OLED HDTV on the market sometime this year, but I wasn’t holding my breath. And here comes the news that LG will be showing a 55″ monster of an OLED HDTV at CES in Las Vegas next week.
Fifty-five freakin’ inches! That’s crazy! This tells us that they apparently don’t need polysilicon for the thin-film transistor (TFT) switching backplane, which should indicate that they’ve worked out the problems for a metal-oxide semiconductor layer to replace polysilicon. So we can expect to see a giant high-resolution panel that is gorgeous and thin and bright, and it won’t be affected by viewing angle or motion blur problems.
But then you see the weasel words in the news stories: “Pricing and availability will be announced later.” I will be amazed if LG announces either of those items at CES, which means that the display is little more than a technology demonstration at this point. Will people get excited and drool all over this new display, giving it lots of coverage? I have no doubt that this will happen, even without a price or a ship date. And I’ve got just one word for you to keep in mind when you read those glowing reports: SED.
If you don’t remember, Surface Emission Displays were the joint project of Canon and Sharp, and for a few years running, the panels were the darling of CES and the display industry. They looked amazing! And they never came to market.
I’m not saying that 55″ OLED HDTVs won’t come to market; I’m just saying that it may not be this year. And when they do ship, think back to the early days of plasma televisions when you imagine the pricing. I won’t be at all surprised if the first models come with a ,000 price tag, or even more. At that price, I don’t count them as a real product any more than the “world’s fastest production car” is a real product. Someone I know in the display industry used to say, “There is no HDTV market above ,500.” The point is that above that price point, the number of units sold is so tiny that it is nearly impossible to make it worthwhile.
At this point, I’m willing to accept LG’s demonstration at CES as a hopeful sign, but I’m not ready to count it as the launch of OLED HDTVs as a competitive product.
A company named Ooyala released an interesting VideoMind Video Index report last fall (free sign-up required). The report has a lot of fascinating information about how much time people spend watching online video on various types of devices and what type of content they watch, but this is the chart that I found most interesting:
One interesting take-away is that people are more likely to complete a video when watched on a Connected TV or a streaming device attached to a television than they are with computers or mobile phones. But that’s not the big news that I see here. People will stick with a video longer when viewed on a tablet than with any other device. This is an astounding difference when you consider how recently tablets appeared on the market. What is it about them?
I believe that this actually is linked to a subject that I wrote about five years ago. Watching television has traditionally been a group activity, but experiments with television on mobile phones five years ago indicated that there was strong appeal for being able to watch video content on a personal device. You don’t have to fight over the remote control, you don’t have to negotiate over what to watch with the others in the room. Video viewing can be a personal experience.
The problem was that the mobile phone screen is tiny and does not deliver a particularly satisfying experience. That has changed now that we have affordable tablets with good screen quality. Thanks to Netflix and Amazon On Demand, the Kindle Fire is going to have at least as much impact on the television programming distribution business as it will on the book publishing. I don’t think that the group activity of watching video on a large screen is going to go away any time soon, I do expect that a growing proportion of the audience will also choose to watch their tablet. This is the start of a significant trend.
…and welcome back! We’ve thrown the light switches back on here and dusted the place to get ready to start the new year off with more HDTV Almanac entries. Just to recap, we were more than halfway to our second thousand posts last September when new projects got the better of me and I had to take a hiatus from posting here.
And boy, did I miss a lot to cover in that time. There have been continued blackouts of local television stations over retransmission fee disputes. The federal government is still looking for ways to get some of the broadband spectrum back from the terrestrial TV broadcasters (who in turn still seem to think that digital mobile TV is going to save their industry). Meanwhile some major cable companies have sold their radio spectrum to Verizon, willing to let the phone company build up wireless broadband and then lease back the service to provide to their cable customers. And Lightsquared still thinks that jamming GPS signals with its wireless broadband service is a good idea.
And then there’s the whole HDTV market. Sony has sold its interest in its joint venture back to Samsung, and seems bent on rebuilding its TV brand by getting out of the TV building business. (I’m still trying to figure that one out.) Just about every pundit in the business has declared that 3DTV is dead, though friend and colleague Peter Putman states in a recent column that “what you’ll see in 2012 is much less emphasis on 3D (it will simply become an embedded feature at no extra cost).” That’s a backhanded way to say it will become a common feature, but I think he’s absolutely right. Prices continue to fall, and the major manufacturers are trying to figure out if there’s a hope of making a profit somewhere in the business.
Meanwhile, people keep holding out the irrational hope for practical 3DTV without glasses for the living room. I’ve received several breathless press releases teasing some breakthrough demonstrations for CES 2012 next week. (I’m sorry to say that I won’t be there, but I’ll still keep you posted on the important news from the show.) It looks as though I may have to repeat my explanation of why autostereoscopic 3DTV can’t work for multiple viewers.
And then there’s all the news about advancements in OLED and other display technology, new television online guides and user interfaces, and changes in the streaming video market. Google TV has a new version, and apparently there is no shortage of speculation about Apple’s new television (which nobody has seen yet).
I apologize for not posting about all this and more over the past four months, but as I’ve said, I was busy tooling up for some new business projects. (I’m happy to tell you about them if you’re curious, but it’s not really on-topic here so drop me an email or check out my LinkedIn profile if you want to know more.) So now I’m back, and you can expect to get more of the wide-ranging content about HDTV technology and the home entertainment industry at large that you expect from the HDTV Almanac. The only difference — at least for now — is that I’m going to stop the practice of putting parts of the text in bold. I’d love to do more of a site design, but that’s a project for another day. If you have some change to suggest that you’d like me to make, drop me a note at alfred@hdtvprofessor.com. I’d love to hear from you.
Just a quick post to let fans of the HDTV Almanac know that the past month of silence has been a hiatus, not an ending. My time and attention has been consumed by a major project launch. (I’m starting a speaking business to help small business owners create effective, low-cost marketing programs that do not take a lot of time. I’m starting in southeast Pennsylvania and central New Jersey, but if you know of a group that might be interested in a speaker on this subject, I ask you to visit www.thecenterforsmallbusiness.com and send me any referral information.)
I’m still buried by the project, but I expect to come up for air again before long, and will get back to the daily HDTV Almanac posts.
I’d also like to send a special word of thanks to the readers who have written to inquire about my silence, and to let me know how much they appreciate the Almanac. I truly appreciate the support and encouragement.
Last week, the FCC announced a procedural decision to freeze all pending applications for new low-power or full-power television broadcast stations on channel 51. The announcement also permits any of these pending applications to be modified within the next 60 days to request assignment to a lower channel.
Any discussion of television channels is complicated by the fact that each station broadcasts on a certain assigned channel, but that typically does not relate to the “channel” you tune to on your television. What we’re talking about here is the radio frequency (RF) channel, which assigns a block of the radio spectrum. Before the digital television transition, the RF channel and the tuner channel were the same; for digital transmissions, the tuner channel can be mapped to a different RF channel. Also as part of the digital transition, UHF channels 52 through 69 were taken out of service for television broadcasts and auctioned off to wireless services such as cell phones and wireless broadband.
Last spring, the licensees of the channel 52 blocks complained to the FCC that television broadcasts assigned to channel 51 were causing interference with their transmissions. Groups including the CTIA-The Wireless Association and the Rural Cellular Association (RCA) lobbied the FCC to shut down television transmissions on channel 51, and the federal agency agreed to look into the issue.
The current freezing of new applications for channel 51 is intended to stabilize the situation while the FCC studies the matter. The decision does not force any station to shut down or move to a different channel, though they can do so if they want. In fact, some wireless service companies actually paid television broadcasters to move from channels in the 52 to 69 range in advance of the digital transition, so that the wireless services could expand into those frequencies sooner. Apparently the FCC is open to similar financial incentives being offered to existing television broadcasters in this case as well.
This news does not presage the death of broadcast television, but it does illustrate how the game has been flipped upside down. Instead of being concerned with wireless transmissions interfering with television broadcasts, it would appear that the television broadcasts are taking a back seat to wireless interests. A strong case can be made that the wireless services may make better use of the radio spectrum – which is viewed as a public resource — than television, and it is likely that TV broadcasters will be under continued pressure to move to a shrinking pool of radio frequencies as time goes on.
When I was growing up, television was a group activity. Sunday evenings, I’d get an early bath and put on my pajamas so that I could watch “The Ed Sullivan Show” with my family. Shows like “American Idol” and “Dancing with the Stars” seem to be keeping that group activity alive, but the it seems that more and more people are turning to television as an individual activity.
As evidence, I offer some new data from In-Stat. Their research indicates that half of all tablet owners are watching feature films and full-length television episodes on these portable devices. Furthermore, the company predicts that the number of “frequent mobile video users” will triple in the next five years.
On the other hand, it could be that it is just that the nature of the “group” part of the activity is changing. In-Stat reports that almost half of all smartphone and table users between the ages of 18 and 24 “frequently” use social media to share about what they’re watching. Perhaps we’re simply witnessing the transition to a global livingroom.
I’m old enough to think that it’s a little strange that Facebook status messages can replace live human interaction, but I’ve also seen enough social changes brought on by technology to realize that these developments are not necessarily good or bad, but can just be different from what we’re used to. I expect that we’re just seeing the beginning of some major social transitions, and I am curious to see how they turn out.
According to the new Quarterly Large-Area TFT LCD Shipment Report from DisplaySearch, the global shipments of 3D-capable panels for use in HDTVs grew to 4.9 million units in the second quarter of 2011, which is a 118% increase over the first quarter of the year.
As the DisplaySearch analysis points out, “the LCD TV panel industry has been in oversupply for more than a year.” 3D support is one way to build more value into a panel, in hopes of getting more revenue from its sale. The fact is, however, that prices continue to fall, and 3D support is becoming more commonplace among HDTV models. The penetration of 3D support in panels 40″ and larger increased from 12.7% in the first quarter to 21.7% in the second quarter, according to DisplaySearch. For 55″ panels, nearly one out of every two panels shipped had 3D support.
The take-away here is that if you’re planning to buy a new HDTV this fall — especially if it will be 40″ or larger — now is the time to start thinking about getting a 3D model. It will still work fine with 2D content, and the plummeting premium for 3D support means that you can add it for just dollars a month if you consider the set’s estimated 10-year life span. I’ve already decided that our next set will have 3D.
Bombshell: Starz has ended talks with Netflix about renewing a licensing agreement for movie content on the streaming video service. The current agreement — which expires on February 28, 2012 – reportedly is estimated to be worth about million, and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings had stated that he expected the renewal to cost around 0 million a year. The huge jump reflects both the mammoth success of the Netflix streaming service and the pile of money that Netflix has generated with its all-you-can-eat subscription model.
So why did Starz walk away from the cash? According to a company statement, it was “a result of our strategy to protect the premium nature of our brand by preserving the appropriate pricing and packaging of our exclusive and highly valuable content.” In other words, they don’t want to upset their main customers – the subscription television services — and they think that perhaps they can do better with some other online streaming deal.
This is enormous news for Netflix. The streaming service currently has a huge movie catalog, though it’s a bit like the old story about the two old ladies on the cruise ship. At dinner one night, one says “The food on this cruise isn’t very good, is it?” To which her friend replies, “No, but they do serve such nice large portions.” Netflix has been serving large portions of average quality films, and a large percentage of those come from Starz. At a time when Netflix is wooing Hollywood studios and other content producers to help it improve the quality of its content catalog, the loss of the Starz titles could be a major blow.
The bigger issue is that this news demonstrates just how fragile this new ecosystem of Internet streaming video is. The distribution channels of Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, Amazon Instant Video, and others are not firmly rooted in the video entertainment establishment yet, unlike cable and satellite services. They continue to balance on the knife edge, fighting content producers’ resistance with piles of money. But none have a certain future; even the sale of Hulu – which was created by the networks and content producers — is shrouded in uncertainty because it is unclear whether or not it will still have access to the content that it now provides.
I believe that online streaming is close to being the proverbial unstoppable force, though no single service controls that force. As a result, I believe that online streaming will continue to grow and that fortunes will be made in the process, but there are no guarantees at this point that any individual service will survive longer than a couple more years. Will Netflix recover from the loss of Starz content and become one of the survivors? It’s too soon to tell.
Satellite TV subscriptions are great, especially if you live out past where the sidewalks end, beyond the reach of cable services. But it’s not so great when you want to go somewhere else. You can’t exactly bring down your dish antenna and take it with you. At least you couldn’t until now. DISH Network is now offering their new Tailgater that lets you bring your great television content with you to the great outdoors.
Actually, portable satellite antennas are not new, but it is convenient to get one from the same company that provides the service. The Tailgater costs 0, and you’ll need a set top box to go with it; DISH Network’s ViP 211k single-tuner HD receiver will tack on another 0 to the price tag. The good news is that you can use your existing DISH Network account, or if you don’t have one, you can get month-to-month service so you don’t have to pay for the system when you’re not using it. The Tailgater can automatically find the available satellites for your location, and you don’t need to worry about aiming the device in the right direction. The system runs on standard 110 volt AC household electricity, but you can run it on a 12 volt DC current — such as from a car or boat — with an inverter or you can use a portable generator to drive it.
As the name implies, this setup could be the ideal entertainment addition to your tailgate party plans. With a big enough screen (or projector), you might even find that the view from the parking lot is so good that you never even bother going into the stadium to find your seats!
The cable TV industry news has been full of gloom and doom over the loss of subscribers recently. Time Warner Cable (TWC) has found a way to boost its subscriber rolls quickly; the company is going to acquire Insight Communications which is a leading cable company in Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky. In exchange for billion in cash, TWC picks up nearly 700,000 video subscribers. It also gets about 550,oo0 broadband customers and almost 300,000 voice customers. The deal requires federal approval before it can be completed.
According to a company press release, TWC expects to save about 0 million a year “through programming expense savings and other cost reductions.” I interpret that as meaning that they expect to pay less for their content licenses than TWC and Insight combined do now, which means that the savings will come out of the pocket of the Hollywood content producers. And that’s only going to put added pressure on finding other sources of revenue for video entertainment content. I expect that this means that Netflix, Hulu, and other online streaming services will be paying even more for their content in the future. And under the heading of “other cost reductions,” I expect that we’ll see some people lose their jobs as the two companies will be able to be run more efficiently as one.
The bottom line is that this still won’t be enough to move TWC ahead of Comcast on the subscriber list, and that it will mean that we’re in for even tougher negotiations on issues of content licensing and rebroadcasting as the different parts of the industry continue to consolidate. Hold onto your hats — and wallets – as this ride could get even bumpier.
Okay, here’s how I see it. Online streaming content has been the poor step-child of the broadcast networks, movie studios, and other content distributors. All the good stuff goes to the cable and satellite services, and the crumbs fall to the online sites. But streaming is managing to post some impressive growth and revenue figures, and the content folks are beginning to tip to the fact that there may be some gold in them thar hills. So we’re seeing more and more experimental deals that are exploring the possibilities of letting online sources get movies and episodes sooner, or even get access to live programming.
So here’s news of a big experiment. We already know that PS3 users are watching tons of streaming content, including Netflix. So DirecTV and the NFL have joined to try something big; you can get the DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket on your PS3, even if you aren’t a DirecTV subscriber. That’s access to up to 14 different out-of-market games each week, streamed live on your PS3.
Okay, now here comes the price, so brace yourself. If you are a DirecTV subscriber and already get the NFL Sunday Ticket package (either because you pay for it or got it free as a bonus), you can access the same content on your PS3 for just more. I’m not entirely sure why you’d do that, unless you want to watch on some screen other than the one that is hooked up to DirecTV. The more intruiging deal is for those who are not DirecTV subscribers; it’s 0 for the season. With a 17 week season, that’s just a week. (Or it’s OMG TWENTY FREAKIN’ DOLLARS A WEEK, depending on your point of view.) I know that I spend way more than when I go to a sports bar in order to watch an out-of-market game. I’m guessing probably wouldn’t even cover your parking at some football stadiums. And you don’t have to commit to paying for satellite service the rest of the year.
My guess is that they’ve priced this high because the revenue will be more or less gravy, and because they don’t want to have to deal with too many subscribers at first so that they can keep the scale down. But if it goes smoothly, and it appears that there are more subscribers waiting on teh sidelines for the price to come down, we’ll not only see this program expanded at a lower price, but it may blaze the trail for other sport and live programming events on streaming video.
So find four buddies who will bring a six-pack apiece each week, and you’ve got your costs covered. Are you ready for way too much football?
After opening ten new stores in Florida this summer, electronics retailer hhgregg is expanding into the Chicago market with 14 new stores. It was not so long ago that we saw the implosion of Circuit City and CompUSA, and the discounting 6th Ave Electronics beat a retreat from its efforts to expand into the Philadelphia market. So here is hhgregg, swimming against the tide with an expansion that will reportedly add 700 new jobs in the Chicago area.
The 14 store locations are slated to open on September 15, with plenty of goodies offered as part of the celebrations. Customers will be able to register for drawings for a Frigidaire Stainless Steel Appliance Package, a 55″ LG 3D TV, or a Magellan GPS. Not too shabby!
This is clearly a bold move for hhgregg, but with the sagging economy and a ready workforce, the price tag for the expansion may be lower than it will ever be. If the company can manage to attract shoppers this holiday season, we may seen even more expansion in the future.
Maybe it would be easier if I just listed all the websites that aren’t offering streaming movies these days. We can now add one more to the list of the ones that do: Facebook. Miramax has signed a deal to provide blockbuster titles for streaming onto computers, tables, or Google TV devices. You can now choose among 20 titles for a rental, including “Chicago,” “Cold Mountain,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “Good Will Hunting.”
This seems to barely putting a toe in the water. These are all films that presumably are already available online from Netflix or Hulu. Few viewers will find more than a couple must-see titles on the list, and chances are excellent that they will have already seen them anyway. (I’ve actually seen more than half of them already, and none are ones that I would rent to see again, probably.) I’m not clear on the point of this exercise; navigating multiple Facebook company pages to find movies does not seem like a particularly appealing prospect, but perhaps this is just the first baby step toward something bigger. I’ll be interested to see what develops.
According to an article published by GigaOM, Netflix appears to be testing a new user interface designed specifically for children. Not only is the listed content limited to kid-friendly titles, it also makes it easier for youngsters to navigate. A scroll bar at the top of the screen shows individual characters, including kid favorites such as Big Bird, Barney, and Dora. Click on the character, and you get a screen showing large stills from each available episode with a minumum amount of text. It makes for a point-and-click selection that can help children find their own programs quickly and easily.
As the GigaOM article points out, Netflix has put up split-run tests in the past, so you may find a different arrangement on your account. In any case, Netflix deserves credit for investing in a different interface for children, and for recognizing the need to give them a safe and friendly place to find their own programs.
Are you a fan of a Fox Network series such as Family Guy, the Simpsons, or Fringe? Have you been using Hulu or Fox.com to catch up on a recent episode that you missed? Well, Fox has delayed your access to new episodes until eight days after the original air date. If you try to watch a newer episode, you’ll be prompted to log in so that you can watch it. And here’s the first catch; you can’t log in unless you have a paid subscription with a satellite or cable TV provider. And here’s the second catch, the only service that currently has an agreement with Fox to provide access to the new episodes is Dish Network. Their subscribers can watch new episodes one day after their original air date.
This is an interesting tactic by Fox. For many reasons, content producers and distributors are scratching for new sources of revenue for their programming. It’s clear that consumers don’t want to pay any more; they’re already upset with the high price of cable and satellite subscriptions. So the network is going after the subscription services, and are trying to enlist angry consumers to pressure the services into giving the network more money.
Will it pay off? Time will tell, but I suspect that the subscription services won’t cave easily to the extortion. So many subscribers already have DVR service of one sort or another that they probably don’t need online access to last night’s episodes. And those who don’t have DVRs probably are won’t mind waiting the eight days until the episodes show up for free. As I read the situation, the most likely loser will be Fox which will anger consumers and gain little. It’s not a friendly move, and the subscribers are not likely to forget being treated as pawns.
Have I got a deal for you! How would you like a 55″ 1080p high definition display for ,500? Not so exciting? Okay, let’s make it 70″; does that make it more interesting? I’ll sweeten the pot and throw in 3D capability and support for radio frequency (RF) active glasses, still for ,500. Do I have your attention yet? Okay, how about if I increase the size to 100″?
No, this is no “fell-off-the-truck” special. You now can buy the new Optoma HD33 projector for under ,500. The manufacturer says that you can use it with up to a 300″ diagonal screen, but I suspect that you’ll be happier keeping it closer to about 100″ in order to get a brighter image. (That’s still the size of four 50″ flat panel HDTVs.) The projector is rated at 1800 lumens, and comes with two HDMI connectors as well as connections for VGA and component video. This is a big drop in price; most equivalent projectors cost more than twice as much.
So if you’ve dreamed of converting that basement room into a home theater but don’t have the price of a new car to invest in the project, you may find that Optoma has brought the cost within reach. You’re closer than you might think to enjoying a big screen viewing experience in your own home.
I wrote about Zediva last month, and the fact that it was taken to court for violating copyright law. If you recall, the company had a clever idea for streaming movie content over the Internet; a customer would rent a physical DVD that would then be placed in a DVD player and the content would be streamed to that individual customer. No postage, no shipping delays–it seemed pretty simple and straightforward.
The case landed in a U.S. District Court in California, and on August 1, the judge handed down a preliminary injuction against the service. Last week, Zediva sent an email to registered customers announcing that they were closing down their service while they “figure out our next steps.” The email indicated that they hoped to be back online soon, but did not know when–or if–that would happen.
Zediva is a bold experiment that pushed the limits of copyrights, and so far, the court appears to sided with the view that the content creators have the ultimate right to negotiate where and how their content is distributed. Some might argue that that concept has been applied inconsistently, but unless Zediva can prevail on an appeal, it looks as though this one joins ivi.tv and FilmOn as video streaming services that have stepped over the line. No doubt this will not deter everyone, and there will be others who are going to try other approaches.
Here’s another item from the Stating the Obvious Department, though it is still worth noting; iSupply has released a study showing that lower-priced HDTV brands are helping drive down the price of premium models. According to a company press release, “U.S. average pricing for a typical high-end LCD TV amounted to ,002.58 in July, down 23.9% from ,317.89 during the same month in 2010.”
One of the key points made by iSupply analysts is that features that used to be found only in premium models have found their way down to some of the lowest-priced entry-level brands. 1080p resolution, 120 Hz refresh rates, and even LED backlights are now common features in lower-tier brand models, with 3D support and Internet connectivity just starting to move beyond the premuim brands. And with today’s economy, “good enough” wins out over “better” so many of the lower-tier brands are getting sales.
From my perspective, it’s true that the lower-cost models must put pressure on the premium set prices, but there are other factors at play. The larger brands are reaping the same benefits of more efficient production as the smaller brands, and that helps push costs down. The big brands are also locked in a battle with each other for the lion’s share of the sales; the lower-tier brands are just fighting over the scraps. It is the competition among the leaders that keeps their prices down, as they can’t afford to let the others have a price advantage. And the premium models still command about twice the price of some of the “off brands” for good reason; they often use components that are visibly better and include extra features that consumers want. These cost more money, which is why the sets cost more. So while having a low-cost alternative certainly helps to pull prices down, I don’t believe that it is the only factor, and perhaps not even the most significant one.
Standards are great. It means that you can buy one set of wrenches and you can use them to work on any car or truck. Unless the car uses hardware built to a different standard. So maybe you need two sets of wrenches to work on cars. It looks as though we may be headed to just two types of 3D glasses for televisions, which is still a Good Thing because you will probably be able to use your existing glasses with a new television. We just need a standard for passive glasses and another for active (shutter) glasses.
The problem with standards is that you need some clout to make them stick in a market. I remember when the personal computer industry settled on a 3″ floppy disk standard to replace the larger 5.25″ disks, but Sony chose to produce its own 3.5″ design instead. After a couple design wins with Hewlett Packard and some other companies, it was game over and the official “standard” never got off the ground.
The good news in this case is that we have three companies working on a standard who should have the numbers to make it happen. From the television side, Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony are joining forces on the project. On the glasses side, they are working with XPAND 3D which is the company that came out with “universal” shutter glasses.
The group has named their project the “Full HD 3D Glasses Initiative” which is a bit of a mouthfull, but the acronym FH3GI would be worse so I guess it will have to do. The “Full HD” part is a not-at-all-subtle jab at the passive glasses 3DTVs that only deliver half the image resolution to each eye. (Never mind that many of the encoding approaches use half-resolution frames for each eye to begin with, so you may not be getting full high definition with either set of glasses.) The resulting standard will use both infrared (IR) and radio frequency (RF) connections between the glasses and the display. The RF part will use Bluetooth technology, and eliminates the line-of-site connection between the glasses and display that is required for IR communications. The group hopes to have new universal glasses available in 2012, and they will be backward compatible with existing 2011 models.
The big benefit of this cooperation should be that manufacturers will be able to do one-stop-shopping for the licenses and technology required make glasses or television sets that are compatible with the standard. This in turn could lead to increased production and competition, which in turn should result in lower prices at just about the time that the average consumers are deciding that there is something that they really want to watch in 3D.
My accountant once gave me some sage advice: “Pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered.” A little greed is okay, but when you start gouging your source of sustinance, you may discover that you end up going hungry. Consider the case of Apple’s iStore and its policy concerning content for iPhones and iPads. Apple insists on getting its 30% cut of the proceeds from any content transactions.
According to a report by Reuters, this new policy has caused Walmart to change the way iPad users access its Vudu video rental and purchase service. Instead of an app, they get an icon that opens the vudu.com website in a browser. The user can then rent or purchase content directly from the website without the aid of a dedicated app. And Apple gets bupkis from the transaction.
I seriously doubt that the loss of the Vudu revenue is going make any difference for Apple’s balance sheet, but if enough retailers decide to follow suit, it could have an impact. Apple has a good thing going, but the management should remain humble enough to limit their greed. If it costs less to work around paying the commission, companies will do so. And as quickly as the iPad has shot up, it can always crash back down just as quickly. (Does anybody remember a company called IBM that decided that their industry-leading personal computer needed a new proprietary expansion slot design?)
The whole idea about a home theater – or a local cinema, for that matter — is to fill your field of vision and overwhelm your auditory system to produce a state of immersion: the sense that you’re really there. This is certainly not the only way to get to such a state; many of us can have a similar reaction from getting absorbed in a good book. Video gamers and flight sim enthusiasts understand the importance of immersion.
And now it appears that the English Premier League (EPL) gets it, too. The football league (though we call it soccer on this side of the pond) is working with Sony Electronics and Electronic Arts to develop a new viewing experience for its fans, according to an article on the Guardian.co.uk site. This makes a lot of sense, as Sony is one of the leading forces in 3DTV, from cameras through production right to the HDTV. Electronic Arts understands immersion from its years in the video game industry, and the success of their FIFA games. Their goal is to create a “you are there” experience, by putting you right in the middle of the crowd in your stadium of choice. It also may be possible to watch from unique locations, such as behind a corner flag or sitting on the players’ bench.
The systems under discussion would include panoramic views from multiple perspectives that would create an available “space” larger than the user’s field of view. This means that you could presumably “look around” from your location and get a 3D view in any direction. This could make the experience much more realistic. According to the EPL chief executive Richard Scudamore, the technology could be ready in just two to five years.
Clearly, such a system would need interactive connections between the viewer and the source content, which could deliver a 3D image in high definition in realtime, all of which translates to some massive bandwidth and computational resources, but it points in a direction that could be the future of all “video” entertainment. Sports has always been a major source of innovation, and it looks like that won’t end any time soon.
There are many items that are unique in Canada, including the Toronto Blue Jays: the only Major League Baseball (MLB) team in the entire country. The team’s unique status has resulted in an unusual and perhaps unintended consequence. MLB treats all of Canada as the home market for Blue Jay games, and thus blacks out online coverage of home games throughout the whole country. That’s like not letting Seattle residents watch a Chicago Cubs home game. (I will resist the temptation to ask why anyone would want to watch a Cubs home game, and stay above taking such an easy, cheap shot.)
That has now changed. The Canadian giant telecommunications company, Rogers, has announced that their customers will now be able to stream Blue Jays games on their computers and cell phones through its Rogers on Demand service. The company’s press release states that this is free to customers, except mobile users who will pay a month for the service (which also includes television, news, and music content).
The company is making a commitment to sports content for its customers. Rogers is also going to provide streaming coverage of the 2011 Rogers Cup professional tennis tournament.
These new streaming options in the Land of the Maple Leaf provide additional datapoints pointing towards the changes in video content distribution. The Internet is going to continue to play a growing role, and we have not yet seen the end of new developments that are likely to have major impact on the traditional broadcast, cable, and satellite distribution systems.
According to a company press release, Best Buy has released two new connected HDTVs under its Insignia brand. The 32″ NS-32E859A11 sells for 9, and the 42″ NS-42E859A11 has a 9 price tag. These sets have fairly typical feature sets, including LED backlights, 120 Hz LCD panels, and support for online streaming services including Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, Pandora, and CinemaNow. (Best Buy owns CinemaNow.) The big difference from other smart TVs is that these models come with a new user interface from TiVo. Based on the design made famous by TiVo’s digital video recorder (DVR) products, the interface lets you search across online sources to find video content that you might want to watch.
This is an important new development. The current reliance on channel grids for subscription television and different user interfaces for each online streaming video service just isn’t working. We need a more flexible and powerful user interface to make it much easier to find what you want. This new interface from TiVo looks top be a good step in the right direction. It is also interesting that it comes in a “lower tier” brand from Best Buy, and not one of the major brands. Clearly there is room for innovation at all levels of the HDTV market, and just as Google was able to replace Yahoo as the leading Web search engine, so might a lesser television brand climb to the top if it can solve the user interface problem better and sooner than its competitors.
AT&T made a big public splash last year when it picked up ESPN 3D, the all-3D sports channel. So it’s a little surprising that the company has dropped the channel without ceremony rather than renew the contract. According to AT&T sources, “the price tag was too high.”
Is this a major blow to ESPN or 3DTV in general? I don’t think so. ESPN is clearly investing in 3D technology, and looks to become the leader in live 3D programming simply because it will have a lot more experience than anyone else by the time 3D in the home takes off. The more it can do to get others to help pay for its research, the better, but they appear to be committed to this course and losing AT&T subscribers is not likely to deter them.
The fact is that more and more HDTVs are going to be 3D-capable; it will become increasingly difficult to find a full-featured set that doesn’t include 3D support. So if you want a “transportation special” entry level set, sure, you won’t have 3D. But if you want high refresh rates, online streaming video access, or other advanced features, you’ll probably get 3D in the bargain whether you want it or not. You don’t have to use it–a 3D set shows standard 2D content just fine–but it will be there when you want it.
And I remain convinced that most users will want it. When “American Idol” or the SuperBowl are broadcast in 3D, a large portion of consumers will want to watch in 3D. So I’m not concerned about AT&T deciding not to renew ESPN 3D; they’ll be back.
Last month, Amazon did a deal with CBS for television episode content to stream to its Amazon Prime members. Now it has added movies from Comcast’s Universal Pictures catalog, including popular titles such as “Notting Hill,” “Being John Malkovich”, “Fletch,” and “Billy Elliott.” According to an Amazon press release, this brings the service’s total count to more than 9,000 movies and TV show episodes.
I have to wonder whether or not Amazon poses a credible threat to the two streaming video leaders. There certainly is an argument to be made that quality beats quantity, but Amazon’s 9,000 choices pale in the face of the overwhelming choices from Netflix. The company doesn’t publish their counts, but various sources estimate that Netflix has between two and six times as many choices as Amazon. And while much of Netflix content is B-grade at best, it also has some top shelf content including an exclusive on the popular series, “Mad Men.”
From where I stand, it’s too soon to count Amazon out, but it still has a long way to go to catch up. Netflix has a commanding lead, and if the right company purchases Hulu, it could remain the other top dog in the pack. Amazon will need a few more announcements before it will start racking up subscribers to match Netflix and Hulu.
Are people unhappy with their pay TV subscriptions? Is the bad economy wiping out the money that people are willing to spend on television entertainment? According to the second quarter earnings reports, the cable and satellite television services lost a net of 553,000 subscribers in the second quarter of this year. Only DirecTV picked up a modest 26,000 gain, while Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner and Dish Network posted significant losses. In the meantime, the telco operations of Verizon (FiOS) and AT&T (U-Verse) gained a net of 184,000 and 202,000 subscribers respectively.
This would be really bad news for the cable and satellite companies if it weren’t for one small detail; Cablevision and DirecTV both showed profits for the quarter. However, the third quarter forecast continues to be glum, and the services are likely to lose just as many subscribers.
Something is going to have to give in the subscription TV market, but it’s not clear what will break first. Competition is stiff, but maybe these economic woes will accelerate a move to the a la carte pricing that might bring customers back with a more affordable price tag.
You can scratch off another “premium” feature that no longer carries a premium price. According to the company’s press release, Westinghouse Digital has announced that it is shipping LCD HDTVs with LED backlights at prices that challenge the traditionally less-expensive cold-cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) backlight designs. Its 40″ LD-4070Z is on sale online now at Walmart for 9.99; that’s at least 40% less than LED-backlit models from the major manufacturers. Westinghouse also has a 46″ LD-4655 that is currently on sale for 9.99 at Best Buy. That’s less than the price of a 42″ LED backlit model from most brands.
The accelerated life cycle and cut-throat pricing in the flat panel TV market now force manufacturers to migrate new features throughout their entire product line faster than ever. We’re seeing that with LED backlights and 120 Hz refresh rates. It’s already starting to happen with Internet connectivity and stereoscopic 3D support. The bottom line is that you don’t have to wait long for a new, desirable feature to get folded into the list of standard features that you can expect to find on all but the most stripped-down entry-level models.
I suspect that it’s a whole lot more fun to be the consumer and not the manufacturer in this market.
The Justice Department gave its blessing to Comcast’s purchase of NBC Universal earlier this year, and many figured it was a done deal. Not so fast! A federal judge in the District of Columbia has expressed doubts about the arbitration terms of the agreement, and has stated that his is concerned that they may not be in the best interest of the public.
The Justice Department has other options available even if this judge should block the sale, including an appeal of the decision. As a result, it’s not likely that this will torpedo the deal.
Don’t look know, but one of Google TV’s few proponents just took a big hit. The company announced a .6 million first quarter 2011 loss, which represents more than a million swing compared with the same quarter 2010. And in a phone call for investors, it was revealed that its Google TV product, Revue, was suffering from more returns than sales. The company later clarified this statement, pointing out that they sell to distributors and retailers, but it’s still not a good sign that the returns are so high.
Logitech lowered the price of the Revue from 9 to 9 last spring, and now has lowered it again to just so that it can compete better with other network media players. Still, this does not reflect well on Google TV, which asked its licensees just before CES 2011 last January to hold off on releasing new products with Google TV. Logitech had already been shipping the Revue so it was allowed to keep shipping, but other major brands had to make some last minute course changes.
Until we see the next version of Google TV it is hard to predict its chances of success, but at this point, the choice to back it does not seem to have helped Logitech.
“Demand in many developed countries continues to be very soft” so analysts at DisplaySearch have lowered their forecasts for the total worldwide television shipments for this year. The new figure is 252 million units, which is down 3% from the previous estimate. Three percent doesn’t sound like much until you realize that represents more than 7 million sets with a total value that is probably more than a few billion dollars.
Consumers in North America, Europe, and Japan have already replaced many of their older picture tube (CRT) televisions with new flat screen models, so with the slow economic recovery, they are less inclined to purchase a new TV. While growth is expected to be just about flat in the developed countries, the emerging markets of China, Latin America, and India are expected to post a healthy 6% growth in unit shipments over last year.
DisplaySearch also predicts that LCD technology will continue to dominate with an 84% share of the market. Its share will continue to grow, largely at the expense of the CRT share, though plasma’s share will continue to decline slowly from its current 7%.
What does this mean for you? Expect prices to decline this fall as manufacturers try to grab as much of the stagnant market as possible. There may be some bargains to be had among the plasma models – especially in the 50″ to 55″ sizes — but chances are good that you’ll be buying an LCD model.
In-Stat has released results of a new survey that indicates connected TVs are being put to use. The company estimates that about 60% of households with a connected TV use a TV app at least once per week. Netflix and YouTube are the leading choices and Keith Nissen, Research Director, says “TV apps will become part of the mainstream TV viewing experience.” The survey also estimates that 22% of U.S. households with broadband service now have an HDTV with integrated apps that connect to the Internet.
This penetration rate is only going to increase, as connected TV features will migrate throughout the product lines of the major manufacturers, and it will soon be difficult to find an HDTV that doesn’t have a network connection. Broadband Internet penetration is already high, so these homes will be ready to connect to online streaming content. I have to agree with In-Stats analysis that we’re going to see rapid growth in online video as a percentage of U.S. consumer viewing habits.
The display market research firm DisplaySearch has released its latest “Quarterly TV Design and Features Report” for Q2′11, in which the company points out the energy-savings advantages of LED backlights for LCD HDTVs. An analysis of 40″ LCD TVs shows that consumers will save money over the life of the television set in spite of paying more for a model with an LED backlight.
For the average U.S. consumer, the payback period is just over five years. In spite of recent trends toward shorter replacement cycles, I expect that a 40″ set purchased today is likely to still be in use ten years from now, so it looks as though the extra cost for an LED backlight is worth it in the long run. (I also expect that energy costs are likely to rise, which presumably makes the analysis even more favorable for the LED model.) Higher energy costs reduce the payback estimate; DisplaySearch puts it at under four years for California consumers, and less than two years for consumers in Western Europe.
If you’re looking for a practical reason to justify going with a more expensive LED backlit model, this may be what you need. On the other hand, the energy savings advantage may soon be moot. DisplaySearch expects LED backlights to outnumber CCFL backlights two to one next year, with CCFL disappearing almost completely by 2015. So you won’t have to struggle with the choice much longer.
New wine in a new bottle, already. Mobile DTV was the name for the broadcast television for mobile devices that has started to roll out in markets across the country. There aren’t many devices available yet that can receive these signals, but the industry hopes that it will be supported by a wide range of devices from smartphones to tablets. And now to make it easier for consumers to recognize which products support this service, the Mobile Content Venture (MVC) has announced the new “Dyle” brand.
Efforts by the MVC and the overlapping Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC) have announced lots of stations nationwide that are now or will soon start broadcasting mobile television signals. It still remains to be seen whether or not there will be any significant consumer demand for this service. Mobile television is one of the key applications that local broadcasters cite for wanting to retain the full assigned radio spectrum for their television channels. On the other side, the FCC and the federal government believe that some of this spectrum could be put to better use, including wireless broadband services. The sale of the underused spectrum could bring in billions of dollars for the government and for the stations that surrender a portion of their allocation.
If you’re a Hulu fan, you have probably noticed the conspicuous absence of any current CBS shows. It’s not too surprising, given that the owners of major rivals ABC (Walt Disney Co.), NBC (Comcast), and FOX (News Corp.) are Hulu’s owners. Now comes word that CBS has signed a deal with Amazon to offer about 2,000 full-length episodes to subscribers of Amazon’s Prime service. Amazon Prime is primarily a VIP customer service, with free two-day shipping on all eligible orders in return for a per year subscription fee. As a fringe benefit, however, you get free access to Amazon’s library of streaming content.
If you consider the fee as paying just for the video, however, it is just .59 a month which is nearly .50 less than the .99 charged by Netflix. Netflix does have a larger library, listed at about 20,000 compared with Amazon’s 8,000 titles, but this latest deal indicates that Amazon is looking to become a serious player in this market. Adding the CBS content could be a big step in that direction.
Amazon’s deal with CBS is non-exclusive, which means that you could also see the same content appear on other services. If the sale of Hulu goes through, that could help make CBS more willing to license its content there as well. The new buyers may have enough cash to make that an attractive possibility.
If you haven’t heard about Zediva yet, you may want to check it out quickly. Like iviTV and FilmOn, this company thinks that it has figured out a way to game the system to provide video content over the Internet. Where iviTV and FilmOn provided broadcast television programming, however, Zediva is renting DVD movies.
The wrinkle on the service is that you actually rent the physical DVD, just as if you were going to a Blockbuster store. You don’t ever get the DVD, however; the rental price includes the use of a DVD player in a Zediva server farm. The physical disc is put in a physical drive that is dedicated to sending you the content over the Internet. Rentals cost between and , depending on how many rental credits you buy at a time, which you can purchase using PayPal. You have 14 days to watch the movie once you’ve rented it. And based on the company’s website, you can choose from the most current and popular DVD releases. The service only offers DVDs at this point; high-definition Blu-ray is not yet supported.
As you might imagine, not everyone is happy with this arrangement. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has asked a California district court for an injunction against the service, pending the outcome of a copyright lawsuit. The MPAA claims that Zediva is streaming the content without a license. In an interesting development, Cablevision has filed a brief with the court that supports the MPAA position. This is a tad ironic, since Cablevision was sued for copyright violations when it created a digital video recording (DVR) service for its customers that stored and streamed the recorded programming from its own servers.
The hearing on the injunction request is scheduled for July 25, so you may not have much time to check out Zediva if things don’t go its way in court.
I recently wrote about adding odors to movie screenings, but it was a low-tech, scratch-and-sniff solution. And it is totally eclipsed by a new venture coming out of Korea that looks to enhance your movie-going experience with a lot more than some simple scents. The company is CJ CGV, and it has created what it calls the CGV Smartplex cinema which uses the company’s “4Dplex” technology.
Yes, the system has a way to waft smells to the audience during the movie, but that’s just for starters. Emitters mounted in the seat backs can blast you with air, or send out a mist when a fog drifts across the scene on the screen. Individual speakers in each seat bring the action right to you. But wait, there’s more! The seats themselves can move, rocking in any direction in sync with the action on the screen. Add stereoscopic 3D and you’ll literally be ducking for cover as bullets whiz past your ear in the midst of a big fight scene.
The company has already built four of these sensory-overload chambers in Korea, and has plans to build one in New York City to demonstrate its powers to U.S. audiences. If they take to this more immersive cinema experience, you may eventually get to see, smell, and feel for yourself at your local movie theater before long. Then you have to ask, how long until this technology follows 3D and migrates to your living room?
With all the interest and excitement about streaming video over the Internet, one detail is often overlooked. Some individuals with disabilities — particularly those with limited hearing – are closed out from this video content because it does not include closed captioning. Broadcast television provides it and most movie DVDs offer English sub-titles, but not on the Internet.
As part of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, the FCC was charged with creating a Video Programming and Emergency Access Advisory Committee (VPAAC) to address this and other problems. Last week, the committee submitted its report, which starts a six-month clock running at the end of which the FCC has to come up with rules for closed captions on Internet video content.
We’re probably at least a year or more away from the time when closed captions will be available for content on the Internet. In the beginning, it will likely be limited to television shows that already are produced with closed captions for broadcast. And it will take time for the hardware to catch up with the technology. The new rules will likely include user-controls for the caption features, and add-on devices will be needed for a while until these control features become standard in televisions and other devices. But the good news is that progress is being made, and a significant part of the population will eventually get better access to this content.
The fast-track waivers that the FCC granted Lightsquared have received a lot of attention lately, none of which makes the federal agency look good. Now the courts have struck down another set of waivers that the FCC granted to allow some companies to own a newspaper and a television station in the same market. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the agency’s decision that was made back in 2008.
The FCC originally created the TV station-newspaper ownership prohibition back in 1975. There are also complex rules, imposed in 2008, that govern how many television stations that one company can own in one market, or how many radio stations. There are also limits on the combined ownership of television and radio stations in one market. The concern behind all of these rules is to foster competition, and to try to prevent one company from dominating all the broadcast media in a given market.
The FCC is in the middle of a major review of all the rules governing broadcast and newspaper ownership. Given that newspapers are no longer the dominant force that they once were, and some papers in even major cities are struggling to survive, there is no doubt that the FCC needs to consider the changing landscape of media distribution. Market forces are already eliminating alternate sources of news and information, and it would seem that preserving competition would be in the best interests of the citizens as a whole.
Frequent readers of the HDTV Almanac will know that one of my favorite hobbyhorses is the question of who will pay for episodic “television” and movie content going forward. Consumers now have more ways to avoid watching commercials, and there are limits to how much money you can get from them in monthly subscription fees. So where will the money come from?
One source that I have stressed as a likely candidate is product placement. This is nothing new; how many times have you noticed that illuminated Apple logo on the back of a notebook in a TV show or movie? That doesn’t happen by accident; that off-hand appearance was almost certainly bought and paid for. The same goes for other products, such as the cars used on screen. (Who could miss the tie-in with Ford in the orginial Hawaii Five-O when McGarrett got behind the wheel of his big, bad, black Lincoln Mercury?)
But product placement needs to be brought into the 21st Century. A company called SeamBI has created a technology that it calls “Dynamic Product Placement.” This process takes program content after it has been produced, and locates opportunities for product messages within the program. For example, the characters might be walking past a store window or driving past a billboard. The SeamBI technology can automatically replace portions of the scene so that the sponsor’s message appears on the billboard or within the store window. The power of the system is that different sponsor messages can appear in different airings of the content, so that it can be used with syndicated reruns to provide different product placement opportunities in different markets. And it’s all handled automatically, without manual editing of the source each time.
I think this is a good idea, as the placements blend into the existing scene. I think the real potential, however, comes with targeted advertising with streaming video. There is every reason to expect that eventually streaming sources like Netflix or Hulu will know a lot about my individual interests. I think it would be wonderful if the world inhabited by the characters on my favorite shows were to be filled with the brands and companies that I already favor, or might be interested in trying. And if this helped keep my subscription costs down in the process, so much the better. I know that all the information I share about myself with various services such as search engines has value, and I’d like to get some of that value back in the form of a lower cost for my video entertainment content.
Apparently there has been a firestorm of protest over Netflix raising its rates this week. The focus is on the company increasing the rate by 60% for some subscribers. That’s sounds pretty egregious, but let’s break it down.
There used to be a plan that gave you one DVD at a time by mail for .99 a month, and you also got unlimited access to the online streaming at no extra charge. Then the company made a commitment to the streaming business and offered a .99 a month plan for streaming only, or more a month if you still wanted the one DVD at a time service. (Given that most rental stores charge about twice that for a single rental, that’s a pretty good deal. And you’d only get two DVDs a month for from Redbox kiosks, compared with the dozen or so you could get from Netflix if you watched them the day they came in.)
So guess what? Netflix has decided that a month for one-at-a-time DVDs is a money-losing proposition. And now they are giving you a choice: for .99 a month, you can get either unlimited streaming, or you can get one-at-a-time DVD by mail service. So it is true that if you want to keep getting what cost .99, it will now cost you .98. Or you can just get the unlimited streaming and go to Redbox twice a month for DVDs with your extra a month.
It’s not difficult to have seen this coming. Mail is expensive. DVDs are expensive. Netflix figured that most subscribers would be happy with the streaming service and would switch over to that. (And many millions have done just that.) Netflix has to spend a lot of money for the licensing rights to the streaming content; it is bidding against cable and satellite services for much of the same content, after all. So it’s going to take more money for Netflix to keep expanding its library and to bring us more of the recent and “good stuff” content. This all means that if you want to continue to get DVDs in the mail, you’ll have to spend a little more for them. It just makes sense.
If you want to be able to choose between tens of thousands of movies and TV episodes whenever and wherever you want, you need to expect to pay for it. And if you want to hold onto the legacy technology of polycarbonate discs showing up in your mailbox, then you’re going to have to pay for that too. I think Netflix is on the right track with its streaming service, and that it is getting noticeably better each year. And I think that a month for that is a bargain.
“They cost too much.” “There’s not enough content.” “I won’t get one until they get rid of those stupid glasses.” Two out of three ain’t bad, and frankly, I expect that it will be more than enough.
We’ve already seen the prices falling for 3DTVs and I expect that the cost difference with standard HDTVs will be close to zero in a year or two, if you’ll even have the choice of getting a flat panel television without 3D support. And we continue to see more good news about increased 3D content.
One of the content success stories is ESPN 3D; launched about a year ago, the channel went to 24/7 broadcasts in February of this year. Sony was an original sponsor, and has just announced that it will renew its commitment for another year. According to the company press release, ESPN will double the number of college football games that will be broadcast in 3D this coming season. The channel will also provide extensive 3D coverage of the Summer X Games July 28 through 31.
ESPN is a leader in live sports coverage, and it has stepped out in front of the pack on 3D coverage. Its partnership with Sony has given it access to equipment and expertise that has helped maximize its investment in this technology. The channel has already broadcast coverage of 115 live sporting events. Sports has always been a driving force in the growth of television technology, and ESPN is positioning itself to have the best 3D skills when the user installed base is ready to take advantage of it. In another year or two, I expect that 3D coverage of major sporting events will become commonplace.
As for getting rid of the stupid glasses for multi-viewer 3DTVs, I’ve already made it clear why that isn’t going to happen.
Have you heard of the Center for Copyright Information? I encourage you to head over to their site and check it out. In particular, look at the “Copyright Alerts” section because it could have an impact on your access to the Internet.
The Center is a joint effort between the copyright holders — the music, film, and television industries — and the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who provide consumers with access to the Internet. The program apparently received support from the White House, which has encouraged major cable companies and other ISPs to get on board with the program. The idea is to get serious about enforcing copyright restrictions; last week, the group announced its program of “Copyright Alerts”.
The basic concept is that broadband account owners may not be aware that their account is being used to access copyrighted information illegally. It could be that the consumer is not aware of the limitations for accessing copyrighted material, or it may be that someone else in the household has access to the account and is using it to download content illegally without the account owner’s knowledge. The program is designed to give the account owner up to six Copyright Alerts. Consumers who repeatedly violate copyright rules will then be subject to “mitigation measures.” These penalties can range from a throttling of data throughput to blocking access to the Web altogether. There are provisions for independent review of violations so that consumers have recourse if they think that the alerts are in error.
The news here is that the major ISPs appear to be willing to take a more proactive role in protecting copyrighted material. Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable have all agreed to take part in the program. A cynic might point out that many of these companies are now the owners of copyrighted material themselves, and so it is no longer someone else’s ox being gored. Whatever the motivation, this move holds out the hope that the people creating the content that we want for our entertainment will stand a better chance of getting a better return on their investment of time, money, and skill, which in turn could mean that we will be more likely to have new content to enjoy in the future.
DigiTimes has reported that LCD panel makers in Korea and Taiwan scaled back production of large size panels, starting in June. Panel prices went up a little in May, but soft demand for product has threatened to drive prices down again. By limiting production, the manufacturers hope to stabilize prices. The article indicated that the cuts will last through July, and likely will extend into August.
This is not good news for the manufacturers. These plants are capital-intensive, and it costs more when they are operating at anything less than full capacity. On the other hand, they lose money if they have to sell the products below their cost, so they have to walk a fine line to try to minimize the inevitable losses. This could be a good sign for consumer, however. If there is a glut of panels on the market now, then the prices for HDTVs during the holiday buying season will remain low. The only problem would be if the economy should turn on a dime and lots of people go looking for a new television in November; if demand exceeds supply then the prices will rise, but that seems unlikely at this point.
According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Disney CEO Bob Igor has gone on the record confirming the rumors that Hulu is up for sale. The joint venture owned by Disney, News Corp, and Comcast/NBC Universal is expected to reach a million registered users and more than 0 million in revenues this year.
One problem is that Hulu does not own its content, and if it can’t get licenses for programming, it’s out of business. Fortunately, it recently renewed agreements with News Corp (which owns Fox) and Disney (which owns ABC) which provides it with a stable supply of content.
There are still plenty of rumors surrounding this situation, the most intriguing of which is that Google may be the front-runner to purchase the service. The company is a good candidate because it has deep pockets and and excellent record of finding synergy among its online offerings. It already has YouTube, and is expanding the full-length video offerings available through that site. It would have the resources and the clout to push Hulu to the next level so that the service could compete successfully with the rapidly-expanding Netflix.
The next generation of “television” is changing quickly, and this could be one of the tipping points in its development.
“Rare-earth” is the term given to a number of exotic minerals that have proven to be essential to the modern electronics industry. Currently, nearly all this material comes from China, but that country has made noises about restricting supply and increasing prices. As a result, geologists have been searching for other sources. The problem is that while these materials are not rare at all, they are so widely dispersed in most areas that it is not practical to try to mine them.
That is why there is a lot of interest in a letter published in the scientific journal, Nature Geoscience. According to the article, Japanese researchers have found high concentrations of rare-earth minerals on the sea floor of the Pacific, including areas near Hawaii. These results are based on a study of more than 2,000 bottom samples, At present, it may be too expensive to retrieve the materials from three miles below the ocean’s surface, but not impossible. Some sources expect it to be a viable industry within 20 years, though there are technical and environmental issues to resolve, as well as determining how to manage the mining rights under international waters.
For now, there are probably ample rare-earth reserves available to be mined in the U.S. and Russia, which provides some protection against price gouging by China, but it could be that the sea floor may provide a significant portion of these materials in the future.
Backyard barbecue or small town parade: how are you celebrating Independence Day? I’m probably sitting someplace shady with a cool beverage right now, taking the day off from the HDTV Almanac. If you’re in the U.S., I hope you enjoy a great long weekend. And I’ll be back tomorrow with more news and insight into home entertainment and related topics.
I know that lots of people are of the opinion that most of Hollywood’s movies stink, but filmmaker Robert Rodriguez apparently wants movie goers to come to that conclusion about his films, literally. His new 3D version of “Spy Kids” All the Time in the World” will provide simulated scents to enhance the cinematic experience.
The 1960 technology Smell-o-Vision pumped the odors into the movie theaters, but Rodriguez is using a simpler “Aromascope” technology for his production. Audience members will be issued a card with numbered circles. At appropriate points in the movie — where a character is obviously pausing to smell something in the scene — the number will appear on the movie screen and viewers will then rub that circle on their card to get the desired scent. One advantage of this approach is that it can also work at home; if the scent cards are bundled with a DVD, for example, the viewers can still get the same olfactory experience as at the local cinema.
Clearly, there is not a groundswell of market demand for smelly movies, so I don’t expect this trend to take over living rooms any time soon. (Or ever.) But it apparently is still novel enough that it works as a publicity ploy. It got me to write about it here, after all.
I have an Android smartphone, and I’m a bit surprised that I actually watch video on it. I don’t watch lengthy content such as movies or television episodes (at least not yet), but I do find myself watching more YouTube videos and similar content on the device in spite of its tiny screen. All the same, I was interested to read about a press release from Futuresource about the results of a new study. The company surveyed users in the U.S., United Kingdom, France, and Germany about smartphones and their use. About 25% of UK users have smartphones, and in the U.S. that portion is about one third.
The result that grabbed my attention was that 64% of iPhone users watch video content on their phones, while the number is about 32% for owners of other smartphones. Even the third for other types of phones seems high to me, though the iPhone percentage being twice as large is an interesting detail. Are iPhone users more inclined to see their phones as an entertainment device? Or is it possible that since the iPhones came out first, their owners have had longer to explore and become comfortable with the multimedia features of their phones?
Whatever the reason for the results, it is clear that an increasing number of people are turning to their smallest screens for some of their video content. As adoption of smartphones increases — Futuresource predicts a 75% market share by 2014 — this increased usage of video will likely add to the strain on the wireless data networks.
A reminder: if you’re interested in knowing about what I’m writing elsewhere, such as explaining the different types of HDMI cables, you can follow me on Twitter @AlfredPoor to get updates on my latest posts on other sites.
“There’s not enough 3D content available!” That’s the main complaint from consumers, and is one of the main reasons for the slow uptake on 3DTV-capable sets. (The other is price, but that difference is going away.) But lack of content is not just a problem for consumers; it also affects teachers.
XPAND is coming to the classroom’s rescue, however. The company that makes “universal” active-shutter 3D glasses is making an effort to support educational applications for 3D video. (And why wouldn’t they, when you need 20 to 30 pairs of glasses for each classroom that uses 3D video?) In addition to offering special packages for educators that include 3D plug-ins for PowerPoint, the company has announced the XPAND 3D Educational Network. When a school joins, teachers get access to public-domain 3D educational content that can be used for free. The company expects to offer additional content for sale from other sources through the network as well.
Does 3DTV have an impact on learning? According to the XPAND website, a study was done to determine the impact of the technology. A lesson that normally took several class periods to teach was taught in a single period using video. One group used standard 2D video and their scores were 9.7% higher over the normal scores. The scores for the group that used 3D video increased by 35%, however. (The site doesn’t provide details on the study; these are impressive results, but a significant portion of the gains could be simply the result of the novelty effect.)
It’s a tough time for most schools to find money for new technology like 3DTV educational content, so it’s a good thing that XPAND is helping make public domain content accessible to schools. I expect that adoption in the classroom will still be slow, but it’s good to see a company providing support like this to schools.
I suspect that many of the readers of this column don’t remember the sinking feeling of arriving at someone’s home in response to a dinner invitation, only to find a Kodak Carousel slide projector set up on the living room coffee table. It meant that you were in for hours of post-meal “entertainment” of reviewing all the family’s photos of their latest trip to somewhere or other. And most people seemed to be of the mindset that if they paid to get a slide developed, then by gosh they were going to show it. Even worse was seeing a Super 8 movie projector waiting for you to finish the meal.
Well, most people don’t have slide projectors anymore, but the new Internet-connected entertainment environment has given you something better: your livingroom HDTV. Most people find it too difficult to locate their digital photos and home movies, let alone figure out how to get them on their big screen. Now you have a solution for that problem. Snap for TV is a Yahoo! Connected TV service that lets you access your photos from 16 of the most popular photo storage and social media service on the Internet, including Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook. You can also access pictures that other people have shared with you on those sites. You can create albums or slide shows to make it easy to share them with friends or guests.
Just remember to feed them a good dinner first. It’s only fair.
Here’s a brief video about the Snap service, which also is available for other devices besides your TV:
Up until Vizio’s stunning announcement at the end of last year, I was convinced that we would not see 3DTV flat screen TVs that use passive glasses any time soon. My reasoning was that the patterned polarizing retarder required to make this work was an added material expense, and panel makers are fighting to reduce costs, not increase them. Also, this extra film layer must be precisely aligned, which adds to the assembly costs. In the hypercompetitive flat panel market, who could afford to add to the cost? Consumers would be willing to pay extra for the active glasses to get 3D, but wouldn’t want to pay more for the TV itself. And I was wrong.
Now we have news of a report from DisplayBank that analyzes the costs of the new LG 47LW5700 television which uses passive glasses. The report compares this set with last year’s LG 47LX6500 that uses active glasses. According to the analysis, the total parts cost of the newer set is 1.20, compared with 1.90 for the older model. If you look at the cost breakdown by category, the new model only has a slight advantage in all areas but one. Almost all the difference comes just from the panel cost: 0 versus 0. LG has managed to reduce the material and manufacturing costs so much that they can produce the panels for less than it cost to create an active glasses panel of the same size last year.
This is an impressive indication of how much innovation continues to happen in the LCD television panel market. The fierce competition among many manufacturers continues to drive down costs while adding new features and technology. And I’m thrilled that I was wrong.
Last week, Comcast and Skype announced a partnership that will make Skype’s video calling available to Comcast customers. Subscribers will be able to make and receive video calls through their television with other Skype users. This means that you’ll be able to connect for free with other televisions, computers, tablets, or even smartphones. The plan includes the ability to place or receive Skype calls while watching programs on your HDTV.
According to a Skype press release, the service will be made available through a separate adapter box. It will also include a “high-quality” video camera; the release does not make it clear whether or not the images will be in high definition. The system will also come with its own wireless remote that can be used to enter text and to control the television. There was no mention of the cost, but the customer trials are slated to begin in the coming months.
Using Skype on an HDTV is a match made in heaven, in my opinion, and I thought it was a brilliant move when LG, Panasonic, and Samsung all announced support for Skype on certain models of their televisions last year. I think that these companies missed a trick by not marketing this feature heavily to seniors; I think that they would welcome an easy way to visit with distant children and grandchildren without having to deal with a computer and other techn0-geeky components. I hope that Comcast makes a better effort to market to this segment, because it could be a good differentiator for its services. I’ll be watching for more details about this later this year.
I mentioned topic this in passing during my discussion of the dustup over wireless broadband vs. GPS, but I think the time has come to officially recognize this as a subject of interest.
Here’s the situation as I see it in a nutshell. Some 8% to 15% of the U.S. population relies on the free terrestrial (local) broadcasts for their television content. They do not have cable or satellite subscriptions. (There are also people who have subscription television service and also watch the free broadcasts, but they are not included in these numbers.) According to a study by Knowledge Networks, this amounts to more than 45 million people in 17 million households. It is worth noting that about 40% of these people are minorities, and that nearly a quarter of all households with annual income under ,000 rely solely on broadcast TV.
Some people look at the radio spectrum assigned to local television broadcasting and argue that it would be much more valuable to society if it were to be used for other purposes, including wireless broadband. They argue that another shopping channel or reruns of 1980s sitcoms do not provide significant societal benefits.
In the middle are advocates who want the local broadcasters to sell off the parts of their assigned spectrum that they aren’t using. The radio spectrum in this country belongs to the people, and the Federal Government is charged with managing that resource. The FCC wants to auction off this unused spectrum in a sale where the TV stations would volunteer to give back spectrum in return for a share of the revenues. Some in the TV industry want to hang onto this spectrum for new applications such as digital mobile TV broadcasts.
One factor that is bringing this issue to a head is that the old model of networks and local channels is falling apart. Federal regulations require that subscription television services carry local programming, which is part of the negotiating advantage for the stations during the retransmission fights that have become so common. And now the networks are demanding a share of those retransmission fees from the local stations. All the while, network viewership is declining which leaves them scrambling to find new revenue sources. According to some sources, it is possible that some of the major networks are looking into transitioning to cable-only channels, leaving the local stations on their own to obtain programming content.
How serious is the possibility that big changes are ahead for broadcast TV in this country? It is way to soon to know for sure, but here’s one interesting data point. A company named Modulation Sciences announced this week that it is exiting the the U.S. market. The company makes signal processing products for the television and radio markets. Here is a quote from the company press release:
Citing the near demise of the United States over the air broadcast marketplace and MSI’s continued growth and acceptance in Latin America and Mexico; Modulation Sciences will no longer manufacture or support U.S. standard products.
I am not saying that the sky is falling, but it certainly is starting to look cloudy. The people who rely most on terrestrial TV broadcasts are the poor, minorities, and residents of sparsely-populated rural areas. None of these groups are known for their political clout, so it’s not clear how much influence they will have in the growing debate. The voices of the folks with smartphones and tablets and other devices that are hungry for high-speed wireless data access are likely to be heard more loudly in the halls of power. We have a long way to go before we’re likely to see any definitive changes, but it is a complex issue that is likely to affect all of us before these issues get resolved.
Cisco has released its Visual Networking Index and it has some interesting data about video and the Internet. For example, video accounted for 40% of all the consumer data traffic on the Internet in 2010, and is forecast to reach 50% in 2012. When you consider all the emails, all the music downloads, and all the peer-to-peer data transfers (which includes a lot of pirated video), this is a mighty impressive milestone.
Once you get past that key piece of information, you rapidly get into some of the blow-your-mind data points. For example, a million minutes of video will cross the Internet every second by 2015. It would take more than five years to watch that second’s worth of content. High-definition video on the Internet is growing and will pass standard definition by the end of this year. By 2015, HD content will make up more than three quarters of the Internet video-on-demand (VoD). By that time, Internet VoD traffic will be the equivalent of three billion DVDs a month.
All of this is good news for Cisco, which is one of the leading companies in making the hardware that makes the Internet possible. The company forecasts that by 2015, there will be two Internet-connected devices for every man, woman, and child in the entire world. The annual global IP traffic of all data combined is forecast to hit nearly a zettabyte by the end of 2015. (I had to look up zettabyte; it’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. Can you imagine a trillion 1GB hard drives full of data? I can’t.)
So Internet video is growing rapidly: tripling in 2010 and increasing 17 times more by 2015. Could it be the application that kills the Internet? I’ve lived through too many doomsday scenarios with the Internet to bet against it at this point. When there’s demand, the networking industry finds ways to meet it. My guess is that the data pipes are just going to get bigger and faster, and we’ll find all sorts of new ways to enjoy instant access to unimaginable amounts of data whenever and wherever we want. I’m looking forward to it.
Reminder: I write for a lot of other places besides the HDTV Almanac. If you’d like to know about the other pieces as they get published, follow me on Twitter @AlfredPoor to get the latest updates.
One of the most common mistakes that people make when choosing an HDTV is that they get one that is too small for the viewing distance. Insufficient budget for a larger one is certainly a good reason for going with a smaller model, but too often I hear people complain that they don’t want a “big ugly television” dominating their living room decor. I’ll grant that it is not easy to find furniture to enclose a large flat screen TV, but that doesn’t mean that you have to settle for a small screen either.
A blog called “Elements of Style” has an entry titled “Concealing the Evil Necessity” and presents some stunning examples of ways to hide or incorporate your television in your room design. (It also has a few examples that didn’t particularly work for me, but you may like them.) Choices range from pairing the wall-mounted set with a dark wallpaper to adding a picture frame around the flat panel. In general, the designs show that it is possible for an HDTV to work with the other visual elements in a room, rather than just be plopped into the middle of them. See if this doesn’t give you some design inspiration!
Westinghouse Digital has announced its new 47″ LCD HDTV, the W47S2TCD. This set has LED backlighting and a bunch of other features that you’d expect to find in a 1080p flat panel television. It is priced at ,199, which is the same price as the 46-inch UN46D6050TF from Samsung which also has LED backlighting. The big difference is that the Westinghouse model also has 3DTV support. Not only is it 3D-capable, but it uses the same patterned retarder technology as LG and Vizio so that it uses inexpensive passive glasses. Westinghouse includes four pairs of glasses in the box.
This is a fairly stunning development, as it means that the additional cost for 3DTV support is approaching zero. Granted, there is a difference in brand value between Samsung and Westinghouse, but the passive retarder feature is state of the art.
I still don’t think that there is enough 3DTV content to warrant buying a new television, but if I were buying a new set for some other reason, prices are getting to the point where I’d probably get 3D support because I expect that I’ll want it starting in just another year or two.
It should come as little surprise that a retailer has sued 15 LCD panel makers for losses due to price fixing. The first one to file is BrandsMart, a Florida-based electronics retailer. The list of defendants includes Samsumg, LG, Sony, Sharp, Toshiba, Epson, and NEC, along with other major companies in the display manufacturing business. BrandsMart is not just claiming damages on HDTVs, either; just about anything with an LCD panel is included in the lawsuit.
The reason that this case should be a bit of a slam-dunk is that many of these companies have already pled guilty to federal charges. The U.S. Justice Department has levied more than 0 million in criminal fines, and some manufacturer executives have been sentenced to jail time of more than a year.
I am not a lawyer, but I don’t see where the defense can hide on this one.
If you still need proof that we live in a global economy, you need look no further than the consumer electronics market for HDTVs and other devices. In this case, the important factor is an ongoing drought in the Yangtsu River basin in China. A big yawn, right? Well, consider this. The Yangtsu River is the biggest source of hydroelectric power in China. And according to a Reuter’s report, the Three Gorges hydropower project has a production capacity of 18.2 gigawatts, which is “the equivalent of about 15 third-generation nuclear reactors.” Already, the water level behind the plant is well below the limit needed to operate the 26 turbines efficiently.
If you’re still wondering what this has to do with the price of beans – or your next television — then consider this. According to the Reuter’s report, “almost half of all silicon-making facilities (in Hunan) had been suspended because of the lack of electricity,” citing a source in Shanghai. And the country is already burning more coal and expensive diesel oil to generate electricity. Lowered production and higher energy costs could spell price increases for just about all digital products, from MP3 players and cell phones to big screen HDTVs.
An economist once said that China has been exporting deflation for years in the form of lower priced goods, but the time will come when the country will start exporting inflation instead. It may be that this drought could accelerate that change.
This should not come as much of a surprise, but The Diffusion Group (TDG) has done the legwork to back it up. People who stream video content from Netflix over the Internet are twice as likely to cut back on their cable or satellite service than they were a year ago. According to a company press release, 16% of online Netflix users in 2010 were inclined to change their subscription to a lower tier or cancel a premium service. That figure had jumped to 32% this year. And about half of them cite cost-savings as the main reason for making the change.
These results are interesting, because the party line at Netflix is that they are not out to compete with cable and satellite, but rather provide an adjunct service. They can call it whatever they want, but it’s clear that Netflix poses a significant threat to subscription revenues. If the subscription services can’t find a way to lower the costs for their customers – at a time when the networks want more money in retransmission and licensing fees — Netflix is going to steal the bacon right out from under their noses.
When you just need an HDMI cable to connect your big flat screen HDTV to a Blu-ray player or other device, pretty much all you need is one that is long enough. The problem is that HDMI is now used in all sorts of devices, and you may have good reason to want to take an HDMI cable with you. The standard thick cables can be a bulky nuisance, but if you use thinner guage wires for the conductors, you risk degrading the signal to the point where the cable won’t work. But now an Irish company named Redmere has apparently figured out a solution.
The solution is to actively boost the signal using circuitry hidden inside the end connector. The result is a cable that is 70% to 80% thinner and lighter than a typical passive HDMI cable. The technology also makes it possible for the company to make 50 foot long HDMI cables. Redmere’s active HDMI technology is used in cables from VIZIO, Samsung, PNY, Monster, and Radio Shack. And these cables don’t have to cost a lot more; you can find some models for less than .
HDMI is likely to play an increasing role in entertainment, including portable devices. Thinner and more flexible cables will make these uses that much easier.
Korea is first (thanks to LG and Samsung), and Taiwan is second in terms of producing LCD panels, including those used in LCD HDTVs. Now comes word from Displaybank that China has taken over as the third largest producer of LCD panels, pushing Japan out of the money and into fourth place. This is in spite of Sharp having the world’s largest LCD plant – Gen 10 — in operation.
One factor is that the Korean and Taiwanese companies are building plants in mainland China to take advantage of lower costs. One company already has a Gen 8 plant in operation in China, and another company has Gen 8 lines in production. Several more plants are planned for the next couple of years, so we can only expect China’s share of the total production to grow.
This development only underscores the importance of China’s internal economy and power needs for the rest of the world.
Let me start by explaining how this relates to HDTV. A growing number of U.S. consumers are turning to the Internet for some or all of their video content. Consumers are also becoming accustomed to getting the content they want, where they want, when they want. This means that we are growing to expect broadband Internet access wherever we go. WiFi can’t cut it, with its 300 foot (theoretical) limit. So there are many efforts underway to create wireless high-speed Internet access. This would also pay dividends in terms of delivering the Internet to sparsely populated areas where the build out costs for a wired solution might be prohibitive.
If you’re still with me, then let’s turn our attention to an outfit named Lightsquared. This company is building what it calls “the only national 4G-LTE open wireless broadband network that incorporates nationwide satellite coverage and offers the capacity to support the explosive demand generated by new consumer devices and mobile applications.” So far, so good. The company even was granted a conditional waiver by the FCC to allow the expansion of terrestrial use of the existing satellite radio spectrum. Companies including Best Buy, Cablevision, and Time Warner Cable apparently expressed interest in using Lightsquared’s system.
And then the Law of Unintended Consequences reared its ugly head. Some people got the idea that Lightsquared’s signals might interfere with GPS devices. By April, the Coalition to Save Our GPS represented more than 30,000 companies and was raising the alarm with the FCC and Congress. According to the group, “LightSquared plans to transmit ground-based radio signals that would be one billion or more times more powerful as received on earth than GPS’s low-powered satellite-based signals, potentially causing severe interference impacting millions of GPS receivers.”
What’s the truth of the situation? Last week, results of tests by a working group were announced and they clearly showed that the system will cause significant problems with GPS operations, especially in urban areas. This could cause serious problems for aircraft which rely heavily on GPS for navigation systems.
After pushing the FCC to rush the approval process, Lightsquared yesterday suddenly put on the brakes and asked for a two week delay in delivering the working group test report. It appears that the only solution will be to find other parts of the radio spectrum for the company to use, and radio spectrum is something that is in short supply these days.
It is likely that this setback for Lightsquared will only increase the calls for access to the “unused” spectrum that is currently assigned to local television broadcast stations. It is possible that it will also encourage those who are questioning whether we need terrestrial broadcast of television at all. This is a subject that could have wide-reaching implications for many aspects of the consumer entertainment industry, and I’ll try to keep you posted on developments.
If you use Twitter, please follow me at @AlfredPoor. I’ll let you know what other stories I have written for other sites as they are posted.
NBC has become known for its television coverage of the Olympics; the network has had the U.S rights every Summer Olympics since 1988 and every Winter Olympics since 2002. When the next four events came up for bid — 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 – a lot had changed at the network, however. It had been bought by Comcast, which had made noises about not being willing to overspend to keep the Olympics. And then the resignation of NBC sports group chairman Dick Ebersol last month meant the loss of a key advocate for covering the games.
So it was a bit of a surprise when Comcast came out on top in the bidding this week at .38 billion for the four events. The deal includes rights to television, mobile devices, and the Internet. The company has also made the commitment to broadcast every event live on one platform or another. This is great news for fans of some of the less popular sports that don’t get much prime time coverage. You can follow Comcast’s plans for the Summer Games in England next year at a dedicated website.
It looks as though we’re going to get to enjoy Bob Costas, up close and personal, for a bit longer.
From the “How’s That Again?” Department: The market research firm NPD Group has released information from recent studies that indicates Blu-ray technology is starting to take hold and make up some of the ground lost by DVD sales. The company found that nearly half of all Sony PlayStation3 users watched at least one Blu-ray movie a month on their game consoles, and that 15% of U.S. consumers report using a Blu-ray player in the past six months, which is up from 9% last year.
Some of the factors that are cited by the growing interest in Blu-ray are better prices for both the discs and the players. Now that you can get a Blu-ray player for under 0, the absolute price difference between that and a DVD player does not appear to be as important to consumers. And disc prices have come down to about where DVD prices used to be, which helps. You can even rent Blu-ray discs now at your local Redbox kiosk for just .50 a night.
But perhaps the most surprising comment from NPD was this: “Digital services have also driven increased interest in Blu-ray players. In fact 50 percent of consumers who intend to buy Blu-ray set-top players in the next six months cited the desire to use available subscription video download services as a primary reason.” In other words, half of the people who are considering a Blu-ray player want to watch streaming Netflix on it. As I’ve been saying, that’s an easy way to add network connectivity to your existing HDTV and get Blu-ray support in the bargain.
When you look at it that way, it makes sense that Netflix can help sell Blu-ray players, but it’s still a bit strange.
Follow me: Many of my readers may not be aware of the places where my work gets published in addition to the HDTV Almanac. I currently write weekly columns for HP and Verizon sites, among others. I have started tweeting announcements when these columns get posted, so if you’d like to know about them, you should follow me on Twitter: @AlfredPoor. And please retweet to spread the word when you see something interesting. Thanks!
It’s tough to make money in the HDTV business these days. It’s even tougher if you’re trying to push the boulder of rear-projection HDTV up the mountain. Rear-projection DLP has been the focal point for Mitsubishi’s product line, and the company has finally decided not to try to compete with the 0 flat panel market. Instead, they will only make consumer televisions that are 65″ or larger, and will also pursue commercial applications for their sets. Both will be handled by a new company named Mitsubishi Electric Visual Solutions America Inc. (MEVSA), which has a new website of its own.
So if you’re looking for a little LCD screen for the guest room, you can cross Mitsubishi off the list. If you need a projector or a 3D-capable set with a 95″ diagonal screen, however, they’re still looking for your business.
So you think there’s not enough 3DTV content available yet? Samsung wants to sell more 3DTVs, so they are making it easier for you to find the content to watch on their sets. One of the apps available for their connected models is Explore 3D. According to a company press release, this gives you access to free content including movie trailers, music videos, and “educational content.” There are even full-length episodes of shows from Wealth TV.
The big news, however, is that later this year that same application will give you access to pay-per-view access to additional 3DTV content, including feature films and shorts. This is interesting because it sidesteps the traditional content distribution sources and provides it directly from a Samsung-sponsored source. (The actual service is provided by Rovi.)
This muddies the waters a bit further, as it raises the possibility of the set maker as a possible distribution channel for content. We’ve already seen exclusive deals for 3D Blu-ray discs with certain manufacturers; is it possible that there is a future where you will only get to watch a certain streaming movie or other show if you have the right brand of television? I don’t think that consumers will stand for this, and it would probably anger more buyers than it would attract them, so I don’t think it will happen. For now, Samsung’s strategy of making 3D content easy to find and watch strikes me as a smart move.
I was sitting in a restaurant lounge the other day, waiting for a take-out order to be prepared, and I was watching a sports channel on their flat screen televisions. Actually, I mostly watched text images that announced that the signal had been lost (which was probably caused by the massive thunderstorm that was going on at the time). The fact is that satellite doesn’t always work, even in areas where it has a strong “footprint” for its signals. It’s one thing if the blockage is caused by temporary precipitation, but in some places, granite mountains can prevent your dish from getting an unobstructed view of the necessary patch of sky permanently.
This may seem trivial, but it’s not when you consider that the FCC lets cable operators cite satellite service as effective competition, which can have an impact on the fees charged for cable services. Senator Bernie Sanders thinks that this is a problem for many of his constituents in Vermont, because mountains leave many of them with just a single choice for subscription television service. (And over-the-air broadcasts aren’t much of an option for them, either, unless their antenna is on the top of a nearby mountain.) Senator Sanders wants the FCC to roll back some rate increases that have been allowed over the last ten years, because the satellite services cited as competition are not effective alternatives for many subscribers.
It’s easy to get tunnel vision about television services when the vast majority of U.S. households live in densely-populated urban areas, but it’s important to remember that a significant number live in sparsely-populated regions, and the services that we take for granted in metropolitan markets are a lot more problematic in rural areas.
Yesterday, I attended a special conference-within-a-conference about Green Displays, hosted by IMS Research. It turns out that this topic runs deep and wide, but there was one particular aspect that I thought would be worth sharing. Consider the following comparison between two Sony 46″ LCD HDTVs.
The Qualia 005 was the first LCD HDTV to use LEDs for the backlight. It consumed 612 Watts of electricity, was 5″ thick, and weighed 130 pounds. Oh, and it sold for a mere ,000.
Compare that with one of Sony’s current offerings: the 46″ Bravia KDL-46EX520. This also uses LEDs as a light source, but is rated at just 103 Watts. That’s about the same as a single 100 Watt incandescent lightbulb, and it is an 83% reduction in power consumption. At the same time, the weight has dropped to 31 pounds, and the case is just 1.65″ thick. That means a 67% reduction in thickness, and 76% reduction in weight.
It’s obvious that energy will be saved because the set will draw less electricity when operating, but there are energy implications for the other specifications. For example, you can fit three of them in the same space as the other model. That means more pieces per container, which means lower shipping costs. And the lower weight also lowers the shipping costs. And all those are savings that can eventually find their way to the consumer in the form of a lower purchase price. Clearly, not all the savings in the new model come from lower energy costs, but it’s one factor that makes it possible to sell the newer model for 9, which is about 93% less than the first model.
And whether you care about environmental green or not, that’s a lot of folding green that you save.
All around the SID 2011 exhibit hall, a battle raged. In many booths, you could find proponents of the Shutter Glasses (SG) approach to stereoscopic 3DTV. This presents full screen images for left and right eyes, in rapid succession. The glasses synchronize with the screen so that the image is blocked or transmitted to each eye as needed. And that’s why we call them “active glasses.”
On the other side, you’ll find the approaches that use a Patterned Retarder (PR). This technology uses an extra polarizing layer to change the light in alternating stripes on the screen. You then wear polarized glasses that let light from one set of stripes reach one eye, and light from the other stripes reach the other eye. The glasses are just like the ones you would wear to watch a 3D movie at a local cinema, and are little more complex than a pair of regular sunglasses.
Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, but the marketing rhetoric is heating up as each camp tries to paint the other in the worst possible light . As a result, both sides are overstating their claims and will probably succeed in confusing consumers to the point of inaction. (We saw something similar in the Blu-ray versus HD-DVD conflict.)
The interesting change shown at SID 2011 was a third way. Samsung has teamed up with RealD to create a new stereoscopic television technology. Like an AS design, it presents a full screen image for each eye, one after the other in rapid succession. Like a PR design, however, it uses passive polarized glasses like the ones you wear in the movies.
It achieves this magic by adding a second LCD panel over the first. All the second one does is change the polarization of the light, switching rapidly for the left and right eye images. This delivers the full resolution of the image to each eye, but you still enjoy the simplicity and low cost of the passive glasses.
How much more does it cost to add the second LCD panel? We don’t know because this new approach isn’t on the market yet. At first glance, it may seem that it would add a lot to the price of a 3DTV set. The panel would be very simple, however, with no color filter required. According to DisplaySearch, a color 42″ LCD TV panel costs 5, so the extra panel would presumably cost less than that. This could well be competitive with the costs of the patterned retarder, or the extra cost of active glasses when buying for a whole family.
We’ll see if this new approach gains any traction in the marketplace, but for now, just remember to take comparitive claims from the competing camps with a large grain of salt.
I can’t think of a display technology that has generated more interest than OLEDs since the advent of LCDs. Any shred of news gets bounced around the Web like a ball of flubber in an instant. So while there was some OLED news at SID 2011, some of the most interesting details were the ones that weren’t said.
Among the points that were made were new lifetime specs for OLED materials from Universal Display Corporation (UDC). The company now rates its green-yellow phosphorescent material at a mere 1.4 million hours to half brightness. They also have a red that they rate at 900,000 hours. Blues remain the limiting factor; their light blue has improved to 20,000 hours to half brightness, but that’s still a lot lower than the other colors.
UDC also announced a new encapsulation technology. The single layer is a homogeneous mixture of organic and inorganic materials, which is far simpler than the complex multi-layer approaches that alternate organic and inorganic layers in a many-layered stack. UDC’s new material is compatible with roll-to-roll fabrication, which would make it useful for manufacturing flexible displays.
Perhaps the more interesting details were the ones that were not made, however. The biggest dogs that didn’t bark were Samsung and LG, who didn’t show OLED panels this year. The word on the street was that it is normal for companies like this to “go dark” prior to making commercial announcements. Since we expect to hear news of large format OLED panels – suitable for TV use — by the end of this year, their silence makes sense.
There was another interesting missing detail for those who were watching. In a presentation, a DisplaySearch analyst showed a slide listing polysilicon production lines, either in use now or on the drawing boards. Another slide listed OLED fabrication lines. LG’s Gen 8 OLED line was listed to start production early next year, but there was no corresponding polysilicon line listed that can handle substrates that large. The reason for the missing substrate line is that LG won’t be using polysilicon for the active backplane for their OLED panels. Instead, they will use new metal oxide technology that should be easier to create on large substrates. This move has actually been made public already, but it could be easy to overlook.
The interesting part is that Sharp is converting about one quarter of its Kameyama 2 Gen 8 amorphous silicon line for LCDs to metal oxides. Not only does this mean that the technology could improve performance for LCD panels, OLED panels could finally use the same substrate technology as LCDs. This could help accelerate the cuts in manufacturing costs which could make a big difference in whether or not OLED will be able to compete.
So it looks as though we may have to show some patience before we can cite some major breakthroughs for OLED displays, but it looks as though we should hear some interesting news before the year is over.
We all know how television content is made. Producers develop concepts, create pilots, and try to land network contracts. The networks distribute the shows, and in some cases, the show episodes will show up on the network website or maybe even a streaming site like Hulu or Netflix. And if the producers come up with a hit show, everyone makes some money.
But how can you possibly make money by producing a show just for Internet distribution? Well, in at least one case, the proof is in the pudding. The Digital Broadcasting Group (DBG) launched an experiment early this year with an A-list star: Kieffer Sutherland in “The Confession.” And the show was broadcast only on Hulu.
According to a report on GigaOM, DBG created the program with borrowed money, and less than six months later, the project is already profitable and it’s not even finished making money yet. The series will soon be available on other Internet sites. And DBG accomplished all this without lining up a major sponsor or other funding source before starting production.
From my perspective, this is yet another important step in the transformation of television entertainment. It’s true that “The Confession” episodes are only about 8 minutes long, but it’s a proof of concept that shows you don’t need to be part of the traditional network/linear content model to be successful. I don’t expect to see a flood of similar projects right away. This does hold out hope that there’s an alternative model that could work to deliver something better than one more reality show or singing contest.
Every year, the press corps gets up in time to attend the annual press briefing breakfast at SID Display Week. We have to be there in time for its 7 AM start, but we’re there so you don’t have to be. Someone presents an overview of the conference and some of the hot topics, and then a handful of experts sit on a panel and share their insights about the state of the industry.
This year, a new wrinkle was added to this event; you are invited to participate. Starting today at 9 AM Pacific, you will be able to monitor a series of discussions about various topics such as 3D displays, Internet TV, and gaming. You can also add your own comments if you like.
To join in, sign onto www.infoneedle.com/MCADisplay. Once there, create a new account (it’s free) and edit your profile. (Feel free to specify “HDTV Almanac” as the recommending source when you set up your account.) Then you can access the MCADisplay site and join in the forums.
You can’t see it, so you probably take it for granted. But think for a moment about all the glass that you use in everyday life. From windows to windshields, light bulbs to flat panel screens, these variations of melted sand are a fundamental part of many technologies. One of the key applications is for LCD panels, which require glass that is especially smooth and uniform in thickness. Corning is the market leader in LCD glass, with Asahi Glass Company (AGC) providing a significant portion as well. Glass also works well at blocking air and water vapor, which is necessary for encapsulating OLED displays.
At present, LCD and OLED panels are made in “batch mode” production. This means that the glass substrates are cut into rectangles for processing, then then cut into individual panels. In general, larger substrates translate into more efficient production, especially for large displays (though there are indications that we may be nearing some of the limits for those efficiencies). The dream is to be able to produce displays on long ribbons of glass that move continuously through the different production steps, much like a newspaper is printed on a giant printing press using rolls of paper. Roll-to-roll processing could be much more efficient than batch processing. Among the many problems, one stands out; have you ever tried to roll up a sheet of glass?
Corning and AGC have both managed this trick, as shown in this photo. At SID 2011, both companies demonstrated glass that is just 0.1 mm thick and can be rolled up. How thick is 0.1 mm? It’s about the same thickness as a sheet of paper. Managing this material is tricky, as you might imagine. The Corning demo showed a loop of glass traveling over a series of three rollers, and plastic film was attached to the edges on both sides of the glass to protect the edges from damage as it rolled around.
Still, the advantages of this thin glass are plenty. Even if you don’t use roll-to-roll production, the glass is thinner and much lighter than standard LCD glass (which is typically 0.7 mm thick, or about the thickness of a credit card). While you can’t wrap it around a pen, it does make it possible to create more flexible displays which could lead to novel applications. The big bet, however, is that this could help lower production costs even further, and help meet the consumer’s continued expections of larger displays for less money.
[I have not run out of material about SID Display Week 2011, but it’s time to get back to some of the other news in the HDTV Almanac world of large screens and home entertainment.]
One of my favorite hobbyhorses is the concept that content as a service will eventually become separated from the data pipes that deliver it. I expect that “data” will become a utility, just like water or electricity. And I believe that “telephone” and “television” services will become the separate content services that they really are. One logical outcome of this shift will be that the data access will be metered, and those who use more data will pay more than others who use less. That’s how water and electricity utilities work, and eventually data utilities will work in much the same way.
As evidence of this inevitable shift, I offer the news from Verizon from last week. According to a report by Reuters, the company plans to eliminate flat-rate data plans for new smartphone customers starting this summer. Instead, consumers will be able to choose among different tiered plans based on a monthly limit for data transfers. AT&T dropped its flat-rate data plans last year.
I expect that most users will actually end up paying less under these plans, and that the heavy-users will end up paying more of their share. This does have implications for data-intensive activities, such as streaming Netflix content to a smartphone or tablet, but I expect that the market will work itself out and competition will help keep the costs down for both wired and wireless data service.
The day before the official start of SID Display Week 2011, I attended the Business Conference hosted by DisplaySearch. I could probably write the rest of this year’s Almanac entries based just on the information that was presented that day, but I want to highlight one here. Mike Abary is the Senior Vice President of the Home Division of Sony Electronics, and his presentation covered the 3DTV market from his company’s perspective. He had a lot of fascinating information that came from a major consumer research project from February 2011.
It is little surprise that cost was the main reason that people cited for not wanting 3DTVs, or that the second was the need to wear glasses when watching 3D content. According to the survey results, 62% of consumers would be interested in getting a 3DTV if they didn’t have to wear glasses. Sony then added additional attractive features, such as no additional fees for 3D content or favorite video games were available in 3D. With four features in addition to no glasses, 85% of the consumers wanted a 3DTV.
Then Sony asked a similar set of questions, but without the n0-glasses feature. With five other features, 74% said they wanted a 3DTV. In other words, if they are offered the right feature set, three out of four consumers want 3DTV.
The other result that startled me came in a section that surveyed consumer knowledge about 3DTV. 54% reported that they knew that 3DTVs are also HDTVs and can be used to watch 2D HDTV content. That means that 46% believe that you need a separate HDTV in addition to a 3DTV. Wow! No wonder they don’t want to buy one.
While it is interesting to try to take the measure of the market, this is all going to become moot before the year is over. 3D support is migrating throughout the product lines, and by the end of this year, it will be about as difficult to get a TV that is not 3D-capable as it is to buy a car these days that doesn’t have an FM radio. And as those new sets find their way into American households this year and next, the broadcasters will find ways to make more content available in 3D, either produced that way from the start or converted from 2D content. In the meantime, you can do your part by spreading the truth about 3DTV to your family, friends, and neighbors.
And by 2013, 3DTV will be well on its way to becoming a familiar part of the home entertainment landscape.
I’m inLos Angeles, and today marks the official start of the Society for Information Display (SID) Display Week 2011. For those of you who may not be familiar with it, this is the organization for the people who do the research and development that leads to the amazing devices that let us enjoy high definition and mobile video wherever and whenever we want. This conference is great fun for me because I get to peek behind the curtains to see what will be in the products that we’ll be buying five or ten years from now. I’m here all week, and my next posts will be about some of the highlights of what I see and learn here until I’ve covered the highlights. I expect this to carry through into next week, so you may want to stay tuned for these.
While today is the official start (and it was an early start with the annual press breakfast at 7 AM), yesterday was a full-day conference on the display business, organized by the market research firm, DisplaySearch. (I would also like to point out that HDTV Magazine – which syndicates the HDTV Almanac content — was a co-sponsor of the event.) There was a lot of good content presented there, but one topic in particular stood out.
During the discussion of 3DTV, several speakers mentioned that autostereoscopic — no glasses – 3DTVs (AS-3DTV) were on the way. One analyst from DisplaySearch even said that he expects to see commercial products in the next three to five years. (He was careful not to say that he thought that they would be competitive or would perform well.) The most interesting comment came from a Sony representative, however. He explained that they got wind that competitors would be demonstrating AS-3DTV at CES 2011 last January, and they decided that they also needed to show something to be competitive. He also stated that he thought that it would be five to seven years before Sony would have an AS-3DTV product.
Perhaps even more important is what was not said. Nobody spoke about how they think that they will be able to actually make an AS-3DTV product that will work adequately for multi-viewer environments such as the average living room. I remain unconvinced that a practical AS-3DTV technology is possible that can compete with the glasses-based solutions in the foreseeable future. So when someone tells you that they are going to wait until they can get a large flat screen that does 3D without glasses, tell them that they are going to have a long, long wait.
I want to tell you about what I saw yesterday that could have major implications for LCD HDTVs. A new technology from 3M can save weight and drive out all sorts of cost from large LCD panels.
A typical panel for an LED edgelit LCD has a reflective layer in back along with a bunch of free-standing optical films: a light guide, diffusers, collimators, and so on. 3M has come up with a way to use a single, multi-layer optical film that is applied directly to the back of the LCD panel, the rear reflector, and nothing else. The air gap between the two layers does a far more efficient job of mixing the light from the LEDs, creating a uniform backlight.
The most obvious advantage is that it eliminates 90% of the light management materials, which can amount for as much as 6.6 pounds in a 55-inch set. That saves material and assembly costs, as well reducing shipping costs due to the lower weight. So far, so good.
But designers can also use fewer LEDs for the edge light. The standard spacing is 12 mm between LEDs; anything less, and you get a “headlight” effect where you can see bright spots for each LED along the edge of the panel. The 3M solution mixes the light better; the company has demonstrated a uniform backlight with LEDs spaced 60 mm apart. Wider spacing means lower assembly costs and possible improvements in heat management.
The better mixing also means that less expensive LEDs can be used. Instead of the expensive binned units with precisely the desired color temperature, a mix of “warmer” and “cooler” LEDs can produce the same color backlight for less money.
This new technology has additional advantages that will help designers wring even more cost out of LCD displays, which will make consumers happy as it will help continue the downward price trend that we have come to expect.
TiVo was one of the first two companies to come out with digital video recorders (DVR) and the one to eventually dominate the market and kill off the video cassette recorders (VCR). (They will not be missed!) But then the consumers rapidly shifted from over-the-air television to subscription service with cable or satellite. TiVo deftly stepped into the new market, putting its technology into the subscription service set top boxes. For a price. DISH Network and its former subsidiary, EchoStar, decided to offer their own DVR technology to their customers, and TiVo sued them for patent infringement.
Seven years later, after a series of seesaw decisions that went one way then the other, the two sides have settled. Each has agreed to grant licenses to the other for certain patents. And DISH and EchoStar will make a cash settlement with TiVo, paying 0 million now, plus an additional 0 million divided into annual payments for the next six years.
The end result is that DISH and EchoStar will be able to continue to offer its DVR products and services to its customers, and TiVo has a tidy bundle of cash to help fund its future.
It is coming slowly, but it is coming. ESPN is working hard to figure out how to do live sports in stereoscopic 3D, and the movie studios keep churning out feature films. And now comes word that the kids are not going to be left out. 3net is a joint venture by Discovery, Sony, and IMAX, which produces a 24/7 network of 3DTV programming. The company recently announced a deal with Tiny Island Productions for a 26-episode animated series, “Dream Defenders”. The show is slated to debut this fall. 3net is currently available on DirecTV Channel 107. Here’s a preview from Tiny Island, which is based in Singapore.
As expected, we’re seeing the amount of 3D content build slowly but steadily. Too few U.S. households have 3DTVs at this point to make it worth a massive push to create 3D programming, but the number will not grow until consumers feel the pangs of regret because they are missing out on something cool. I also expect that we’ll start to see more progress on computerized conversion of 2D back catalog content into 3D formats. These won’t be suitable for theatrical release — at least not at the start – but they will be good enough for watching at home, and as the volume of production increases, the price of conversion should come down.
I’m sticking with my prediction that 2012 will be the year that we have enough 3DTV content to make it worth getting a set that supports it. Figure on late 2012 or early 2013 to be about the right time to get a set with the feature.
I’m not an expert on transportation history, but I think I have enough of the facts straight to make this analogy work. So please bear with me if I stretch the facts in order to make them fit my purpose.
In the early days of this country, transportation was more or less based on the individual; you rode your horse or wagon to get where you needed to go, and to move goods from one place to another. Then came the railroads. These traveled along fixed lines, and were able to carry more people and more cargo at a much greater speed and reliability and at lower cost. And businesses and population centers sprang up along these routes, and many of them prospered as a result of their connection to the railroad lines. In time however, our horses and wagons were replaced by vehicles with internal combustion engines, and we were freed from the limits of the railroad lines. And we built a network of roads and highways to encourage the movement of people and goods at even greater speed and efficiency.
Now, here’s the big difference between these two systems. The railroads were closely controlled by their owners (at least initially), and folks like the Vanderbilts and Goulds made fortunes from them. The roads were publicly owned (though there have been exceptions), typically supported by public funds from tolls or taxes. With railroads, you had to go where they took you, and the content that they delivered was controlled by their owners. The highways existed simply to let people and goods move from here to there in a network of points, and the public entities that owned them didn’t much care what was moved or where it went.
I see parallels in the systems we have now. Cable television and the traditional phone service are like the railroads of old; they are purpose-built for a specific service. The service provider maintains both the physical system and the service, all for the profit of the owners. In contrast, the Internet is like our highway network; built and maintained by a range of entities for the sole purpose of facilitating the movement of data from here to there. The difference from the highway system is that the majority of the entities involved in the Internet are also looking to profit from their activity. But neither network cares much where the content comes from or ends up, or what the content is.
And here lies the problem for the cable companies. They are transitioning into becoming the providers of broadband Internet access. For now, they are in a conflicted position where they are trying to protect the access to their content (the TV programming that they provide) while trying to offer their customers high-speed access to all the content that the Internet has to offer. In short, they are trying to run access to a highway system as if it were a railroad. In my opinion, they won’t succeed.
Before long, the content will become completely separated from the delivery medium, and consumers will be free to choose which physical (or wireless) network they want to connect to in order to gain access to the Internet and its content. They will also have even more choices for free (Hulu, YouTube) and fee-based (Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Video on Demand) video and movie content that they can access over this connection. The cable company will become a conduit for information as a utility, just like water or electricity. (And keep in mind that the electric company could also become a competitor to provide broadband connections; after all, they also have a physical infrastructure already in place that reaches almost every home.)
This is not a change that will take place overnight, but I believe that it will happen and that the signs of this shift are already present.
Do you have an idea about how to make an insanely great Blu-ray player, or maybe something new that includes a Blu-ray player, such as an an ultimate mult-media bicycle? Before you go into production, make sure that you have all the necessary rights to build it. This means getting licenses for all the various patented parts that go into a Blu-ray player. This can include pieces such as the blue laser, the circuitry that controls the laser, and the software that decodes the data stored on the disc.
Until recently, you’d have to go to all the patent-holders individually and negotiate terms for the use of their intellectual property (IP). This task is now a lot easier. According to a press release from CyberLink this week, the company is working with Hitachi, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung and Sony to create a one-stop clearing house for “patents essential to Blu-ray Disc products.” This new company is named One-Blue, LLC. According to the companie’s Web site, the license for all the patents needed for a BD player costs , and for a BD recorder the fee is . The site also lists the license fees for DB drives and discs, as well as related software.
This convenience is certainly helpful for manufacturers, but consider these costs with some back-of-the-envelope calculations. There are many BD players available now for under 0. Let’s assume that the wholesale price is 50% of the street price, which leaves for the manufacturer (assuming that there isn’t a distributor in the middle). If the manufacturer pays for the licenses, that leaves for all the parts, the manufacturing process, and all the overhead which includes the design work and the marketing. And if they’re lucky, there may be a few dollars left over for profit. As a result, it’s easy to see why some manufacturers may choose to build unlicensed products; when 18% of your revenues go just to licensing fees, there’s a strong incentive to cut that corner. That’s something to keep in mind when you’re scouring the Web for the lowest price on a Blu-ray player. My advice is to pay a little extra for a name brand model, as you’re likely to get better performance and features than you’d find in a bargain basement model.
Talk about “cord cutting”! American Airlines announced that it is the first North American airline to test video streaming over WiFi during flight. Initial tests are being conducted onboard two 767-200 aircraft on transcontinental routes. The system relies on WiFi service which is provided by Aircell, and customers are expected to get a chance to try it out this summer. Wow! This could mean that I would get to choose what I want to watch, using my smartphone or laptop, and not have to sit through yet another showing of “Tin Cup”. (Not that I have anything against that movie. I really like it. There was a time, however, when I was trapped at 30,000 feet on a half-dozen flights where that movie was shown in the cabin. I think I can still recite long stretches of the dialog.)
American is clearly responding to the U.S. consumers’ desire for more control over what they watch and where they watch it. And since American is also rolling out WiFi service on all its domestic aircraft, it will be in a position to provide the video-on-demand service on all flights if it should prove to be a success. The company is also working to provide power outlets at all seats in all its aircraft so that you won’t run out of juice while watching a movie.
There’s no word yet on how much this will cost. If they’re charging to check baggage and won’t give away a piece of fruit and some cookies any more, you can be sure that this will be an additional fee service. But if it means I don’t have to watch Kevin Costner miss another shot, it will be worth it.
ATSC stands for Advanced Television Systems Committee, and about 20 years ago, this group developed the standard that became the basis for our digital terrestrial TV broadcasts. (Remember all that confusion about the digital transition two years ago?) The standard is due for updating, and the group has been hard at work on ATSC 2.0 already. At their annual meeting this week, the committee talked about some of the changes that could come with a revised standard.
One of the key changes would be a provision that supports the transmission of stereoscopic 3DTV content in high definition. This could seem to be a major challenge, especially given the current battles over the broadcast spectrum that has been assigned to terrestrial television stations. The fact is, however, that 3DTV could be accomodated within the existing bandwidth. The current digital broadcast standard is based on MPEG2 compression technology, which is the form that was used for DVDs. We now routinely use MPEG4 for video compression, including Blu-ray and satellite TV transmissions. This newer approach can be roughly twice as efficient as MPEG2, which means that two frames – left and right – could be sent in the same bandwidth currently required for a single frame.
There are other ways that the data stream could be condensed even further. For example, there is no difference in the appearance of distant objects between the two stereoscopic views. As a result, that data only needs to be sent once. The right hand frame could be sent in its entirety, followed by the data that is different for the left frame. This has the added advantage of maintaining backward compatibility with 2D sets; they could just ignore the second frame if they do not have 3D capabilities.
In order to get to this point, we need a standard for the broadcaster and television manufacturers to use. And we’d probably need external adapters for legacy sets, but that would probably be a low-cost addition.
ATSC is reportedly exploring other additions to the standard, including the ability to deliver data files in the background of the signal transmission, interactive features, audience measurement tools, and advanced program guide information.
This is not going to happen any time soon — remember that it took more than 15 years to implement the first ATSC standard — so don’t hold your breath. But it is entirely possible that broadcast television will get the chance to keep up with some of the other program distribution choices.
The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) is the organization behind the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) that is held each January in Las Vegas. It also represents the interests of the consumer electronics industry, which means that it spends a lot of time and money trying to get Congress to see things their way. The group has gone over the top this time, however, with a little four-page brochure entitled “America is Ready for a Comeback” that they are distributing on Capitol Hill.
Open the brochure, and a little display starts playing a video, featuring CEA CEO Gary Shapiro (who, by the way, wrote a book called “The Comeback”. It’s not a coincidence.) After it plays, the viewer can choose to play any of five other videos, starting with the inspiring “American is Ready for a Comeback” which you can also watch on YouTube.
Whether or not you agree with the positions taken by the CEA in this persuasion piece, you have to concede that it’s a bold use of technology. (If you’re like me, you’ll also be tempted to wonder what the budget was for the whole project.) What a powerful way to demonstrate the importance of consumer electronics in our world today, and how innovation can create new opportunities.
Of course, I’ll be watching MAKE Magazine for the first reports on how to hack one of these brochures to create something interesting, like a portable EKG or a WiFi-enabled streaming video viewer.
Are you unhappy with your cable TV subscription rates? Have you been faced with increases year after year? Apparently, this has been such a point of contention among Comcast customers in the Boston, Massachusetts area that the mayor filed a petition with the FCC. He wants the feds to give his city the power to control cable rates. The FCC lets communities control the basic rate if there is no competition in the market, but Boston lost that control in 2002 when the FCC determined that there were enough other cable companies active in the area. Comcast argues that there’s plenty of competition, especially when you consider the satellite options that are available.
Well, remember to play nice out on the playground or one of the big kids might notice and get involved. In this case, U.S. Senator John Kerry has asked the FCC to put together a report on cable TV rate increases in Boston and other Massachusetts markets. It happens that Kerry chairs a Senate subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, so it’s likely that the FCC is going to open the letter when they see his name on the envelope. He asks “whether rate hikes are specific to Boston or systemic, if the hikes are justified, and what the factors are that can effectively check those rate hikes.”
It’s entirely possible that Comcast’s rates are justified and reasonable, but shining a bright light on cable rates in this manner is a bit of publicity that I suspect nobody in the cable industry wants. I suspect that a lot of people will be watching closely to see what the FCC comes up with in response to Senator Kerry’s request.
Last week, I wrote about new content being developed for the 24/7 3DTV network, 3net. This week, I need to add a quick footnote. Digital Revolution Studios (DRS) announced that they created the new series, “Bullproof“, that debuted last week on 3net. The company claims that it is “the first episodic docu-reality or Sportumentary series to be shot entirely in native 3D.” They have produced four one-hour episodes.
The series is about “American Bullfighters”, who were previously known as “rodeo clowns.” Whatever you call them, they are the guys who put themselves between an angry bull and a fallen rodeo rider on purpose. (All of a sudden, fishing for crabs doesn’t look quite so dangerous.) The show is shot in stereoscopic 3D, using dual-camera rigs designed and built by DRS using off-the-shelf video cameras such the Canon XF305. This helped keep production costs low.
It is innovation like this that is going to help fill the pipeline with 3DTV content, and the fact that it is produced from the start as stereoscopic content, it increases the chances that more consumers will decide that there is compelling programming available that will make them want to upgrade to a 3D-capable television.
I know. Posts about “Look at this incredible HDTV deal!” are dime a dozen and I really try to avoid doing them because I don’t think that they really tell you much that you didn’t know already. And it’s an immediate invitation to play “Top This” where everyone wants to chime in with an even better deal that they have found. But from time to time, I think it’s worth pointing out a deal or two, if only because it can raise some interesting issues with broader consequences.
It is in that spirit that I present the Dynex DX-46L150A11. This is a 46″ LCD HDTV that is available on sale from Best Buy for just 9.99. Maybe it’s because I’ve got an eye out to replace our existing 46″ set, but this deal jumped out at me. This is a price that would have been remarkable for a 42″ model just a year or two ago, so I decided to look into it a bit further.
Dynex is an OPP (opening price point) house brand for Best Buy, so you should not be surprised by the modest specifications: 60 Hz refresh rate, no network connectivity, no memory card slots. It is pretty much a bare bones model, though it does have 3 HDMI connectors. I have not seen the display in person, so I cannot comment on the image quality.
My question is this: two years ago, you might have been thrilled to pay twice this amount for this television with this exact feature set. What has changed, aside from the price being cut in half? Yes, it’s true that 120 Hz helps reduce motion blur for LCD HDTVs, but how much are you willing to pay for the improvement? Internet connectivity is great, but you can add that at essentially no extra cost if you replace your DVD player with a Blu-ray player to get high definition movies. (Many Blu-ray players now include network features.) 3DTV is appealing, but we’re still a couple years out from when there will be enough content to make it worthwhile for most people.
It could be that this is an adequate set for most people, and some of its shortcomings can be solved with other parts of your home entertainment system. On the other hand, if you spend 50% more to get a better set, it would only cost you about 5 more which should be enough to get 120 Hz and a network connection. If you’re going to use this set for only five years, it will cost you more a year to get the better set now. That’s about a week. Are those other features worth a week to you?
I don’t have an answer for these questions; maybe that’s part of the reason that I’m still looking. I do think that consumers tend to focus on the short-term appeal of a lower purchase price rather than consider the long term return of spending more up front to get a better experience for years to come. The fact is that the absolute price of these larger HDTVs have fallen to very low levels, which makes the incremental cost of a premuim model over time so low that it borders on trivial.
Or maybe I’m just trying to talk myself into getting a better set than an entry-level model.
EPIX is a a movie channel for subscription TV services including cable, satellite, and telco (such as Verizon’s FiOS). It boasts recent releases from major studios, including Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM. But you aren’t just limited to watching the movies and other programming on your TV service when they are scheduled; EPIX is also a streaming on-demand service that lets you watch any of about 3,000 titles from its catalog whenever you want.
You can watch on your computer if you like, but the news is that the company is aggressively pursuing a multi-screen strategy. On Wednesday, the company announced the roll out of “apps for download on over one hundred consumer electronic and mobile devices including Android-powered tablets and phones from a variety of manufacturers such as Motorola, HTC and LG; Samsung TVs and Blu-Ray players; Google TV; Roku streaming players; and the BlackBerry PlayBook. ” In short, you can watch the content on a wide range of popular products.
The big difference between this and other streaming services such as Netflix is that it is free to “authenticated subscribers“. If you’re already paying for EPIX as part of your television subscription, you can access the content on these other devices. That could be a real bonus for cable and satellite users. On the other hand, it does not pose an a la carte threat to those services the way that Netflix does, because you can’t get it without the subscription. Since there are far more U.S. households with TV service subscriptions than without, they appear to be addressing the fat part of the market.
From my perspective, this strategy means that EPIX is backing the status quo. This is fine if the cable and satellite services can survive the squeeze of consumer resistance to price hikes and the pressure from the content providers for more retransmission revenues. I suspect, however, that EPIX will be nimble enough to shift over to a stand-alone model like Netflix if the authenticated user model doesn’t work out. This is a business model that is worth watching.
An article in Multichannel News reports that Charter is looking to sell its cable business in Los Angeles. It appears that the normal way these deals go down is to swap subscribers with a competitor, but Time-Warner Cable apparently turned down a deal to trade for its business in parts of Wisconsin where Charter already has more than half a million subscribers.
So now it appears that the Los Angeles subscribers may go on the auction block. If you’ve got a spare billion or so, you may be able to acquire your own cable company in southern California. Was this just a shrewd move by TWC, figuring it would be able to buy the business for less at auction than the value of its Wisconsin subscribers? I guess we’ll find out when the gavel drops to end the bidding. But it’s clear that a lot of cable subscribers in L.A. will be dealing with a different company before long.
First, YouTube extended the limits on uploaded content; some partners are now able to post feature-film-length videos. But it seems that Google has even bigger plans for YouTube to become not just the video network of the future, but the whole broadcast system as well. Last week, the company announced that YouTube Live is now active. YouTube again is starting with selected partners, but eventually they hope to have thousands of members providing live streaming content. You can see what’s available right now as well as a schedule of upcoming programs by going to www.youtube.com/live.
This is a bit of a stunning development. On the one hand, you have Netflix opening its wallet and shelling out million for “Mad Men”. (Note that this is not just for the past seasons, but for seasons to come, and in Hulu-like fashion, episodes will be available right after they air on AMC.) But here is YouTube making a bid to become the go-to service for live programming, not some catch-up content that you could probably get using your DVR.
It will be interesting to see how this works out, as we’re in uncharted territory here. Will this be a full-on assault for the traditional broadcast television networks, or will this just become another way to see cute kittens and teens pulling dubious pranks? I think it has enormous potential to be the source for very narrowly focused content, much like the existing YouTube hosted content. If that happens, I can see this becoming the source for “micro-broadcasting” of sports and entertainment events that can’t muster an audience that is large enough for major network coverage. If my favorite local music venue started broadcasting some or all of their concerts, I’m pretty sure that I’d watch. And I expect that it would make me more likely to want to attend more of the shows in person.
This is definitely a development to watch closely.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! It’s just little ol’ Netflix, doing it’s little streaming video thing. Nothing to see here, move along, move along. At least, that seemed to be the message on Monday when CEO Reed Hastings announced the company’s first quarter financials. All they did was about double worldwide revenues and about double U.S. subscribers over the previous year’s number’s. Oh, and overall revenues were up nearly 50%. But Hastings stressed that Netflix “is a supplemental channel to MVPD.” (MPVD is tech speak for Multichannel Video Programming Distributor, which you and I might call subscription television services, like cable and satellite.) So do not fear little ol’ Netflix, you establishment enterprises; it’s not the agent of some cord-cutting nightmare.
Oh, and by the way, Netflix has passed Comcast in number of subscribers, which makes it the number one television subsctription service in the country.
Should Comcast and the other cable companies be concerned? Netflix has only landed a deal for its own original content, with Kevin Spacey starring in the new series House of Cards. It made a deal for past and future episodes of the hit Mad Men. It spent billion to license films from Paramount Pictures, Lions Gate, and MGM. Sure, it’s just a little movie rental company. (Isn’t this how HBO got started?)
Lots of analysts are saying that the new Netflix business model is not sustainable. They’re probably right. But for now, the company is building up its bank accounts, and when it’s ready to establish a new strategy, it’s going to have its own deep pockets, an enormous brand, and significant momentum that can carry it through to its goal. Just remember, there was a time when Amazon was just an online bookstore.
If you’re planning on relying on the Internet to get work done on Friday – especially if you’re on the East Coast — you may want to think about working unplugged. William and Kate may spoil your day.
Not even the HDTV Almanac is a Royal-Wedding-Free zone. But rather than focus on bridal trains and the like, I’m going in a different direction. Liz Shannon Miller wrote a terrific piece for GigaOM about the potential impact of the wedding on the Internet. She points out that YouTube will host a BBC live feed without commentary. And the Associated Press will also be providing a feed that will be hosted on multiple sites (and for a surprisingly small fee, your site can be one of them).
The question is whether or not the Internet is up to the task of worldwide Royals mania. Broadcast television is one thing for live events with a massive audience; it is by definition a single channel of content that is delivered to multiple points – possibly millions in some markets — all at the same time and with the same bandwidth. In contast, the Internet is a point-to-point system, and even if you’re watching the same thing at the same time as the person in the next cubicle, the packets are still individually targeted to your separate computers. And streaming video requires lots of data packets.
Many of us have seen the effect that an early school dismissal for snow on a local cable broadband service; performance can tank for the rest of the afternoon. If everyone else on your cable system decides to stream the royal wedding, it is likely to impact your ability to access data on the Internet. And that’s any data, not just the wedding ceremony video stream. Email, browsing, and other typical activities could be affected. The same holds for small networks that share access to the Internet, such as your company’s network. And even if your network is up to the task, it is not for certain that your broadband service provider or other upstream systems will be able to handle the load without buckling.
If you want to help ease the strain on Friday, eliminate as many video streams on Friday as you can. Set up a large HDTV in a central location and receive a broadcast television signal for all who want to watch, in return for a pledge that they won’t stream the video when they return to their desks.
Friday will be a stress test for the Internet and a lot of other systems. Nobody knows what the impact will be, but I won’t be planning on doing a lot of critical online work on Friday. That doesn’t mean that I’ll be watching the William and Kate show; I’ll just have plenty of offline work prepared.
If you watch television programming that has commercials, I’m sure you’ve experienced it more than once. Your program winds down to a sensitive, thoughtful stopping point, and then there’s a commercial break. And the very first commercial BLOWS YOUR EARS OUT!!! You lunge for the remote and mash the Mute button, wondering “why doesn’t someone do something about this?”
Well, you can now rest easy because your government has heard your pain and done something about them. Last December, in an uncharacteristic fit of bi-partisan cooperation, Congress passed the “Commercial Advertising Loudness Mitigation Act” and President Obama signed it into law. Known better by its initials, the CALM Act gives the FCC one year to come up with a solution to commercials that are too much louder than the programming that surrounds them. And what is the solution? To follow the “A/85 Recommended Practice” of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC).
Huh? The FCC is now charged with enforcing a standard that was published in November 2009. It is designed to set a “uniform loudness” which results in a “comfortable volume between disparate TV programs, commercials, and channel changing transitions.” If this is based on an ATSC “best practice”, then why haven’t the major networks already adopted them? (NBC Universal and FOX apparently were demonstrating compliant systems at the NAB conference this spring.)
The fact remains that advertisers are going to want their ads to be louder than anything else around it. And they’re not going to want the ad to play more quietly during a break on “Grey’s Anatomy” than after a timeout on “Monday Night Football”. The ATSC approach does help normalize levels some, but I’ve got no doubt that there’s plenty of room to “game the system“. Given the dynamic range of television and movie soundtrack content, I expect that there will always be room to make commercials louder than some people would like. And note that the CALM Act only applies to those “stations” that the FCC can control. Online streaming services such as Hulu aren’t bound by FCC rules, so don’t expect them to solve the problem soon.
Earlier this week, I pointed out that the price of active glasses for 3DTV has plummeted, now that Samsung has announced that it will sell them for less than . Now it appears that another point has been proven. I have contended for a long time that adding 3D support to a typical HDTV from a major brand has a marginal cost that approaches zero. It is just a matter of time before companies roll out 3D support to models other than their top-of-the-line premium sets (where they presumably have slightly better margins).
Well, I was right but I didn’t expect it to come so soon. According to a story in CE Pro, Sony will have 3D support in nearly two thirds of their 2011 HDTV lineup. 23 of the 37 models will be able to show stereoscopic 3D content. The smallest with 3D support is the 32″ KDL-EX720 series, which carries a suggested retail price of 9. That still is a hefty premium for 3D; the comparably equipped KDL-EX523 series 32″ model has a 9 price tag, or 25% less than the 3D model.
I’ll score this as a win anyway, because the prices are dropping and the feature is clearly migrating across the model lines. It won’t be long until a competitor comes along and slashes the price premium even further, and I expect that we’ll see 3D more or less across the board by the time the holiday shopping season rolls around.
At the NAB show last week, RCA demonstrated three new portable LCD TVs. All run on battery or AC power, and both can pick up standard ATSC digital television broadcast signals. What makes these two models particularly interesting is that they also can receive the new Mobile DTV signals (that I discussed last week).
Two models have 3.5″ LCD screens: DMT335R and DMT336R. The 335R model runs on AA batteries and has a list price of 9. The 336R model has built-in rechargeable batteries and also receives FM radio, with a list of 9. The DMT270R has a 7″ widescreen WVGA LCD display and rechargeable batteries, and a list price of 9.
I have not seen these products in person, but at these prices, I don’t expect that you’ll get top-of-the-line LCD panels in them; they clearly are not high definition displays. Still, they should fill the need for a battery powered television for your emergency storm kit, and can give you a relatively low cost way to explore the new Mobile DTV services if they are available in your market. For entertainment on the go or information updates when the power goes out, these could be very handy.
This is totally propeller-headed, but a company named Cymer, Inc. made an interesting announcement in a press release last week that said, in part:
Cymer, Inc. (Nasdaq: CYMI), announced today that TCZ, its display equipment product division, has received a volume order for the TCZ-1500B, TCZ’s new Gen 5.5 crystallization system, from a leading Asian flat panel display (FPD) manufacturer. This represents TCZ’s second volume order in 2011 and fourth tool customer. The TCZ-1500B system is used for the production of advanced liquid crystal display (LCD) and next-generation organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays that are targeted for applications such as high-end smart phones and tablet computers.
Enabled by Cymer industry-leading light source technology, the TCZ-1500B incorporates a high-power laser for increased throughput, and the Gen 5.5 system allows for a three-time increase in substrate size compared to Gen 4 systems, reducing manufacturing costs for display makers.
That doesn’t seem to say much, but it says a lot. The typical amorphous silicon backplane used for LCD panels is not efficient enough for OLED displays. Panel makers have relied on “laser annealing” to turn the layer into polysilicon, which is a sheet of tiny crystals. The problem is that the laser process could not be used on large substrates, which is why most of the OLED displays available today are small ones intended for use in mobile devices.
So here comes Cymer stating that it has a laser annealing system that handles substrates three times larger than the Gen 4 systems that are currently in use. That could be big news.
There’s still a lot that isn’t said in the release. Does the annealing process cover the entire Gen 5.5 substrate in a single pass? If so, that should make production much more efficient (and opens the door to the possibilty of multi-pass treatment of even larger substrates). The release also does not name the “Asian flat panel display manufacturer”, but it is almost certain to be Samsung; the company has been very public about its plans to start OLED production on a Gen 5.5 line this summer.
These hints and signs lead me to believe that I’ve been wrong about the prospect for larger OLED HDTVs. I now expect that we may well see some larger models become commercially available before the end of the year, though I still expect them to be priced at many multiples of an equivalent LCD model. It still will take time for the manufacturing process to catch up to the efficiencies of LCD production, so don’t count on a big OLED HDTV under your tree this year.
According to a press release from DisplaySearch, the company’s new study reports that consumers worldwide continue to replace their televisions more frequently than in the past. Traditionally, consumers replaced a CRT TV with another CRT TV every 10 to 15 years. That cycle is much shorter now, and not just in the U.S. but worldwide.
Clearly, the advent of high definition programming and the ever-decreasing prices for flat panel sets has played a major role in this trend. DisplaySearch cites some interesting results from their research, however. An outdated or broken TV was a factor in the decision to get a new set, but it was not one of the top factors, according to the study. Even more interesting is the finding that advanced features such as streaming content from the Internet or stereoscopic 3D support have not been a major factor either.
One of the big drivers for new purchases was price. The 20% annual price drops that we’ve seen in recent years keeps bringing the new sets within reach of more buyers.
DisplaySearch does not share the report’s forecasts for future replacement rates, but some markets including the U.S. must be approaching saturation. If the industry can’t keep lowering prices, I expect that U.S. TV sales will have to level off sooner or later. Fortunately, it looks as though the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are poised for increased consumer demand for flat screen televisions, so the industry will probably enjoy unit sales growth for quite a while.
Once a worldwide leader in the television industry, Philips has thrown in the towel and is exiting the business. The company has been headed in that direction for some time. In 2008, they licensed their brand name to Funai for sales in North America. (Funai also makes televisions under some other familiar brands, including Emerson, Sylvania, and Symphonic.) Philips already has similar licensing agreements in effect for China and India.
The company has announced that the rest of its television business will be taken over by TPV, which already licenses the brand name for television sales in China. TPV is better known for its other brands, including AOC and Emerson.
Will this change have a big impact on the flat panel television market? Probably not. TPV is likely to continue to get many of its panels from the same suppliers, so it probably won’t change their sales in the short term. It is possible that TPV may transition to lower cost panels from other sources, but that will likely take some time and the current market share of the Philips brand is not so large that this would cause a sea change in the supply chain in any case.
Still, it’s another data point marking just how difficult the flat panel HDTV market has become. I won’t be surprised to read news of other well-known names getting out of the business before this year is over.
Walmart recently announced that it was expanding the number of HDTV models that it will offer, but that apparently will be primarily for online sales. The company has announced plans to actually shrink the display space allocated to consumer electronics products in their brick and mortar stores.
Part of the move is due to their perception that the flat panel TV market has stabilized a bit, and sales growth will taper off now that most U.S. consumers have dealt with the analog-to-digital transition. As a result, the in-store mix will shift toward smaller devices including tablets and smart phones, including Apple products.
While I’m not sure how much the digital transition had to do with it — most U.S. viewers rely on cable or satellite service and don’t use tuners on their TVs in most cases — it does make sense that the feeding frenzy may be subsiding and consumers won’t feel a compelling need to replace the sets they’ve purchased in the recent years. And it also seems that online marketing is going to play an increasing role in consumer electronics going forward.
On the other hand, televisions are one of the few products that I want to see in person before I make a buying decision. I recognize that it is an expensive proposition to outfit all the Walmart stores with a complete inventory of sample HDTVs, but I have to wonder whether or not customers will just decide to go elsewhere when they want to kick the tires on a new TV.
A news release from Futuresource indicates that the number of people listening to streaming music over the Internet has remained about the same over the past year and a half — about 38% in the U.S. — but those people are listening more. The study reports that U.S. listeners increased the number of hours by 27% over the same period. Pandora is cited as one of the reasons, with its personalization options and social sharing features.
Another reason, however, is the growth of mobile broadband. Smart phones can access the Internet just about anywhere these days, and can maintain a connection even while moving (which is generally not the case with WiFi connections). As a result, more people are leaving their downloaded music at home in favor of an endless supply of free music from the Internet.
So the question is this: is this Internet radio behavior the bellwether for streaming video as well? As mobile broadband bandwidths increase, will we see the same rapid growth of streaming Internet video on mobile devices as we’re seeing on home entertainment systems? What are the implications for the traditional subscription-based television and movie delivery systems — satellite and cable television — if consumers can get (most if not all of) what they want in terms of video entertainment over the Internet? Watch your favorite television episodes on Netflix on your television, then continue watching on your smart phone as you ride in a car or bus or train, and then finish up on your computer at work. Wouldn’t that make the morning commute breeze by? And what if streaming video offered more of the features that make services like Pandora appealing, such as the playlists and social sharing features?
The problem remains that many of these services are still trying to figure out how to make enough money in their businesses, or how to get access to the content that their customers want the most, but I don’t think that’s much of a problem. I remember a little company that would pay list price plus shipping for a book that I self-published, so that they could turn around and sell it to their customer at the same list price. Amazon lost a little money on those transactions, but they rode that concept to become a dominant force in retailing. I think that the old models of broadcasting and distributing programming — either audio or video — to customers are broken and will be replaced sooner or later. The way things are going, it will probably sooner.
Another dot got connected in the broadcast television picture. Earlier this week, WMFE-TV in Orlando, Florida, announced that it was to be purchased by a Christian broadcaster based in Dallas, Texas, and would be leaving the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). The viewer-supported station was unable to raise enough in donations to meet the annual PBS membership fee. This is the second major market station to leave PBS this year. In January, KCET-TV in Los Angeles, California, left the network because it could not afford the dues.
Certainly, the PBS network relies on a different business model than the major commercial networks, but these stations could well be the canary in the coal mine for local television broadcasting of all stripes. If they can’t raise revenues, then they’ll have to cut costs. And that will mean paying less for programming. And that means less money for the content providers — including the major Hollywood studios. If the viewer-supported stations can’t make their budgets, how long will it be until the commercial stations follow?
Maybe you can’t imagine a major market without national broadcast networks on the air, but then again, it wasn’t so long ago that we couldn’t imagine a major market without a major daily newspaper, either. How’s that working out?
The major studios are scrambling, trying to figure out how to make money from their movies now that DVD sales are dropping. Blockbuster is on the verge of disappearing, and Netflix is trying to transition to streaming services. One possible replacement is to boost the video on demand (VOD) part of the business. It has the convenience of a streaming service but produces fees similar to the DVD rental business.
Now some studios are looking at the premium VOD market as a way to get more money for movies before they are distributed on DVD. The reasoning appears to be that watching a currrent release on VOD in the comfort of your own home is benefit enough; you should still end up paying cinema prices for the experience.
A new report from The Diffusion Group (TDG) is a glass of ice water to the face for this strategy. They surveyed consumers to see what they would actually pay to watch a new movie on the same day as the theatrical release. (The studios are considering a 60-day delay from the theatrical release for their premium VOD, which presumably would be less desirable as same-day, and thus worth less.)
The results? Fewer than one in ten would pay an extra to watch the new release. In contrast, more than 2 out of ten would be willing to pay an extra . TDG draws the conclusion that a premium for a 60-day delay is not going to fly with consumers.
Now, I’ll admit that we’re not going to really know what will happen until these offerings get out of the lab and into the real world, but I suspect that the studios will make more money with an earlier VOD release at a smaller premium than a later release with a higher premium. Whether or not one of the studios will have the nerve to test this remains to be seen.
The “Sony Style” is changing. According to a report from TWICE, the company closed 11 of its retail stores last month. Perhaps more interesting is that the remaining stores will be renamed from “Sony Style” to “Sony Factory Outlet.”
The closings seem perfectly reasonable. The last few years have been difficult ones for retail stores, and it makes sense that a few of the locations that seemed like a good choice initially have turned out to be less than optimal. Other store closings — consumer electronics and otherwise — have drastically altered the landscape of many malls and shopping centers around the country.
The surprise for me is the shift to “Factory Outlet.” I know Americans love a good bargain, but is this the image that Sony wants? I have seen the high-end Bose stores in some outlet complexes, but those have puzzled me too. Sony used to have the reputation of a top-end brand. You could get a Sony, or you could settle for something less. (The Sony Trinitron CRT televisions and computer monitors were prime examples of this top shelf status.)
Now you find Sony HDTVs in Walmart. I understand the need to go where the shoppers are, but I always felt that this deal raised Walmart’s status at the expense of Sony’s. So the decision to create “Factory Outlet” stores sends the wrong signal. It puts Sony in the same bargain basement boat as the clothing retailers who set up outlets to move their overstocked and discontinued products. It seems to me that Sony is headed in the wrong direction with their new retail strategy.
LIN Media blacked out programming on 27 stations in 17 markets for a total of eight days during a fee dispute with DISH Network. According to a release by the American Cable Association (ACA), the Univision affiliate WUNI in Providence RI has been blacked out on the local Full Channel TV cable system for 30 days, due to a dispute over retransmission fees. The same release points to a situation in Topeka KS where two broadcasters – who reportedly coordinate on retransmission negotiations — will own stations that provide three of the top four networks in that market: ABC, NBC, and FOX. This raises the specter of them pulling all three at once in the event of a fee dispute with a cable or satellite service provider.
Reading the tea leaves, I don’t think that the federal government can ignore the problem of retransmission fee negotiations much longer. A content provider should not be expected to provide their programming for a price lower than what they want, but the subscribers of the cable and satellite service should have a reasonable expectation of receiving the programming that they have paid for. I don’t pretend to have a fair way to resolve the problem, but these service interruptions are just going to get more heated as time goes on. The FCC has proposed rules for this problem, but something needs to be put in place soon.
When you’ve got an also-ran share of an enormous market and there are no signs that you can make a substantial dent in the leaders’ share, what can you do? Mitsubishi has decided that if you can’t beat them, quit. In a press release last week, the company announced that it was leaving the LCD HDTV business. Instead, it will focus on its DLP rear projection HDTVs as well as front projectors and business display products. According to the release from Senior VP Cayce Blanchard, Mitsubishi will manufacture and sell microdisplay rear projection HDTVs in sizes 73″ and larger. (The company showed a 92″ model at CES 2011 in January.)
This is a daring maneuver, but I’m not sure what other choices the company has. Sales of rear projection HDTVs have dropped to the point of invisibility on most sales charts. At a time when consumers are dazzled by wafer-thin flat panels, the bulky rear projection models just don’t hold the same appeal no matter what advantages they may have. It remains true that rear projection remains an incredible bargain; Amazon has a 73″ Mitsubishi set for just ,200 which is only 60% of Amazon’s lowest price for a much smaller 65″ plasma HDTV. Consumers want flat, however, and that’s where their money goes. Consumers are slowly realizing that their first HDTV was too small for the viewing distance, so there’s hope that Mitsubishi’s big screens will come into favor in time.
In the meantime, the company is “evaluating its dealer network,” according to its release. I suspect that this will mean greater focus on retail outlets where the price advantages can be highlighted, but that remains to be seen.
When we talk about “3DTV” we generally mean “stereoscopic” images. This approach presents different views to the left and right eyes. The brain then deciphers information from the small differences between the two images, and constructs a three-dimensional image from the combination. This can deliver the illusion of depth, where some objects appear to be closer and others farther away.
This does not successfully mimic all aspects of real-world vision, however. The most glaring omission is that it does not provide “motion parallax” effects. This is the effect that you see when you move your head from side to side; closer objects will “move” relative to the background, and elements of the background will either be covered up or revealed by this motion. It turns out that this is a very strong effect; it allows you to “see around” objects so that you can see their sides.
You can’t do this with stereoscopic imagery because there are only two images available. If you have more images from additional angles, you could create a hologram that would appear to have volume, but this is expensive and difficult and generally requires lasers. But now a group from Osaka University has demonstrated a system that uses simple front projectors to show multiple images. Instead of projecting onto a flat surface, the images are projected into a cloud of water droplets. Depending on your viewing angle, you will see a different image. As you walk around the cloud of mist, the image changes and it appears as though you are looking at a three-dimensional object.
Unlike stereoscopic imagery, you can capture this effect in a simple video. Here’s a recording of the demonstration:
This approach certainly could be applied to larger, full color displays. A stable “cloud screen” would be required, and it would probably have to rely on interpolation to create enough different images to give it a natural look, but it would definitely solve the multiple-viewer problems inherent in auto-stereoscopic displays.
At the IP&TV World Forum in London last week, the VP of Business Development for Netflix, Bill Holmes, revealed some inside information about his company and its plans. You can watch his entire keynote speech at this link — which I recommend — but here are some highlights.
Perhaps the most intriguing fact of his presentation is that he gave numbers. So many executive keynote addresses don’t dip much below the surface of mission statements and platitudes. One of the hard numbers he provided is that the average Netflix subscriber to the streaming service watches about 27 hours of online content a month. This means that in homes that watch streaming content from Netflix, it probably accounts for more viewing time than any of the major broadcast networks. And when you figure that a lot of people have ESPN Sports Center on whenever they are home, that’s a pretty impressive statement.
Another interesting point is that 70% of Netflix streaming subscribers came from word-of-mouth recommendations. (Maybe this will encourage Netflix to cut down on all their obnoxious pop-up ads on so many Web sites.) I’m not at all surprised by this. I have had dozens of conversations with friends and family who are either curious or misinformed about Netflix streaming. They are often amazed to learn that all it takes is a network media player that costs less than 0 to get your HDTV hooked up to the Internet and Netflix. And with 90% of subscribers happy with the service, it is no surprise that word of mouth is so successful for Netflix.
It seems that as soon as we get settled with our 720p and 1080p HDTV displays, talk started up about even higher resolution images. Demonstrations of 2K and 4K display technologies have knocked viewers’ virtual socks off. Is there a limit to how high “high definition” can become?
One problem that doesn’t get discussed much, however, is how to move all that high resolution data to the television screen. A 3,840 by 2,160 pixel image (sometimes called “Double Full HD”) requires four times as much data as a 1080p frame. How can you squeeze that through a broadband pipe, let alone broadcast it over the airwaves? The problem is that bit-mapped images can only be compressed so much before you start to get noticeable artifacts when the image is decompressed back to its original size. You may have noticed this problem with JPEG photos that have been compressed too aggressively.
Now there is hope from an unexpected direction. The Society for Motion Picture and Televison Engineers (SMPTE) has been quietly working on the problem, and have come up with a solution. In a back-to-the-future move, the organization’s latest standard abandons the rasterized approach that has been with us since the first days of broadcast television, and instead adopts a vector-based design.
A rasterize image is scanned dot by dot, row by row. On a 1080p display, this means 1,080 rows of 1,920 dots each. That’s a lot of data. A vector image takes a different route. Instead of scanning the image, it defines the image as a series of lines that can be described by mathematical formulas. It can be as simple as drawing a straight line that starts here and ends there, or it can take on complex curves. These lines can form the boundaries of areas that are then filled with a texture that is mapped from the original image. Thus these vectors can be assigned a variety of characteristics such as color and thickness, and can be used to recreate the original image.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. Because each element of the image is actually a geometrical definition, it can be infinitely scaled to match the resolution of the display on which it is shown. Each display will show as much detail as it can, based on its actual resolution. And because all the information exists as formulas, it can be condensed into a much smaller data stream than raster-graphics can. Some estimates say that a typical movie image can be defined as a vector image that takes up less than 10% of the space required for a compressed raster image, but with no loss of the original image content.
It gets even better. Because these vector definitions can be defined as objects, their behavior can be tracked from frame to frame. Instead of sending all the vector information for each frame, the object definition can be sent just once along with instructions about how it moves in subsequent frames. This makes it possible to reduce the data stream by another order of magnitude, so that it is just 1% the size of the equivalent compressed raster image.
The beauty of this new approach is that no changes need to be made in the display panels already in use. The controllers simply need to be modified to interpret this vector data and convert it into a rasterized image in the native resolution for the display. Existing HDTVs will be able to use a small external box with an HDMI connection to take advantage of this new technology, while new displays with even higher resolutions will be able to take full advantage of the same data stream.
The Brooklyn Bridge Video Lab is one of the first companies to develop the code for video processing chips required to support this new standard. The company has also announced that it will go public shortly, so you can buy a piece of this technology when the IPO happens.
I love Hulu. About half of the programming that we watch at home comes from Hulu (and the other half from Netflix). This is because I have a computer right beside my HDTV, because my television doesn’t have digital tuners and I wanted to be able to record broadcast shows for time-shifting. A computer was the most practical DVR option at the time. But when we buy our next HDTV (which will have digital tuners so we can watch live sports programming), I may ditch the computer. Why? Because I will probably get most of what I want from a simple network media player, like a Roku box.
On Tuesday, Roku made that possibility a lot more likely. They announced a partnership with Crackle that will bring free streaming movies over the Internet. The Crackle channel will be ad-supported, and will also include full-length episodes of TV shows as well.
From the sounds of things, this will be a whole lot more like Hulu than Joost in terms of quality of the content. According to the release, the Crackle channel will get programming from Columbia Pictures, TriStar Pictures, Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics. Not all the movies will be moldy oldies, either. The press release listed the following examples: “The Da Vinci Code”, “21”, “Ghostbusters”, “Eight Millimeter”, “Ultraviolet”, and “A Few Good Men”. The TV show coverage is not nearly so broad as Hulu, but it has recent series including “Beast” and “Nurse Jackie”. You can check out Crackle online for yourself from your computer.
For me, I’d probably be tempted to pay the extra for a Hulu Plus subscription (also available on Roku) to get the wider selection, but if the Crackle channel catches fire, it could command enough revenue to beef up the offerings. It appears that it has hit the ground running on the Roku platform. From the press release:
“The updated Crackle channel was launched on Roku just over a week ago and has quickly become a top five installed and watched channel,” said Jim Funk, vice president of business development for Roku, Inc.
Google isn’t saying much about the financial side of YouTube, but it has been widely reported that the parent corporation does report that YouTube’s revenues doubled in 2010 compared with 2009. It’s not clear whether or that is enough to be profitable — estimates put the 2009 losses at almost 0 million – but the trend should help the company get better in a big hurry.
One fact is clear; more and more video is being produced solely to be published on YouTube. Google also appears to be investing heavily in the company with lots of new hires planned for 2011. This should help speed development of new projects that they have on tap.
Much of the new development in online video has been moving toward subscription-based services: Hulu Plus, Netflix, Vudu, Amazon Video on Demand. In contrast, YouTube is still all free. And it has quietly rolled out new features such as episode-length programming, high-definition resolution, and more embedding options. So far, YouTube has done the best job of delivering lots of content for just about any interest you may have. (Some of my favorite topics are mandolin, wood-turning, and sailing, and I can’t think of any single site that can match the breadth and quality of selections on these subjects that are available on YouTube.)
YouTube is quietly becoming a major force in online video, and not just user-generated content. It could well be in a position to become dominant in episodic and movie progamming if it chooses to head in that direction.
XPAND 3D is leading the charge to bring some sense to the active-glasses stereoscopic 3DTV market. Yesterday, the company joined with Panasonic to announce the M-3DI standard for 3DTVs, computers, and home projectors, as well as digital cinemas that rely on active shutter glasses technology. This new standard provides a communication protocol for the signals between the display and the glasses. This means that one pair of glasses will work with all frame-sequential stereioscopic displays that conform to M-3DI.
This broad standard eliminates the need to get different glasses for every different manufacturer. As a result, third-party glasses makers should be able to focus on M-3DI compatible models, which could drive down costs by increasing manufacturing volumes.
The new standard has been endorsed by a long list of major players in addition to XPAND 3D and Panasonic: Changhong Electric Co., Ltd., FUNAI Electric Co., Ltd., H isense Electric Co., Ltd., Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Seiko Epson Corporation, SIM2 Multimedia S.p.A., and ViewSonic Corporation. There are some big names missing from this list, but these should have enough clout to make this new standard stick. We may see the others sign on before long.
Ever heard of LIN Media? It’s quite possible that you haven’t. It’s a company that owns local broadcast television stations across the country, from Albuquerque to Toledo. In many markets, it owns more than one station, such as the CBS and CW affiliates in Buffalo, or the NBC and ABC affiliates in Grand Rapids.
If you’re a DISH Network subscriber in any of these 17 markets, however, you probably know about LIN Media. Because at midnight last Friday, all these channels went dark on the the satellite subscriber service. The problem is that the local broadcasters feel that if DISH is collecting money from subscribers, then the broadcasters should get a piece of the action in return for the content that they provide. On the other hand, this is content that viewers can get for free, at least in theory, just by hanging out an antenna.
The fact is that the two sides could not reach an agreement, and the channels were not available anymore. Did LIN pull them, or did DISH block them? Who knows? You can read the War of the Words here and here if you want to go to the source. But the bottom line remains; subscribers are held hostage when the content providers and the television subscription services disagree on how to divide up the money. I don’t expect that consumers will put up with it much longer, and we’re likely to see the federal government stepping into the fray.
Futuresource has announced a study that predicts an installed base of 15 million 3DTVs in the U.S. by the end of next year. They point to the increased content that is becoming available as the driving force behind this forecast. And other prognosticators are saying that this figure is way too high, especially when you consider how long it took HDTV to get traction.
I take a different view. According to various sources, there were 35 to 40 million HDTVs sold in the U.S. in 2010. This number is expected to grow in 2011 and 2012 as the economy continues to recover. I also see that the competition for sales is not going to get any easier. Manufacturers are worn out competing on price, so the only hope they have to stop the steady 20% drop in prices year after year is to deliver more value. Cell phone makers have been doing this for years. And we’re seeing it in HDTVs: LED backlights, Internet connectivity, and all sorts of other bells and whistles. Well, 3D support will be just one more bell and whistle to put in the box. If just one out of every seven or eight sets sold in the next two years have 3D support built in, it won’t be that much of a stretch to hit the 15 million installed base target.
Now I’ll freely admit that most of those sets will be bought without glasses, but many of the Internet-ready sets aren’t connected to home networks either. Consumers are happy to “future-proof” their purchases to make sure that they don’t get obsolete too quickly. So I expect that they’ll get the 3D set but not the glasses until the available content makes it a compelling proposition. That’s what I’d do; wouldn’t you?
Add one more player to the roster of online streaming video content services. Warner Brothers is partnering with the social media juggernaut Facebook. The studio is just dipping its toe in these uncharted waters by offering “The Dark Knight” at for a 48-hour rental. There’s no mention of resolution (or if you have a choice of resolution), but the company’s press release states that “additional titles will be made available for rental and purchase on a regular basis over the coming months.”
Warner Brothers has an enormous back catalog of films and television shows: more than 6,650 feature films, 40,000 television titles and 14,000 animated titles. Facebook is a force to be reckoned with at this point. If Facebook becomes a destination for video entertainment, it could attract other content providers, especially if it has a working rental model that generates more cash than the “all you can eat” plans offered by Netflix and Hulu Plus. As a result, many people in many industries will be paying close attention to this little experiment by WB and Fb.
Dateline: Calgary, Alberta. (That’s Canada, folks.) In a press release, Shaw Communications announced Tuesday that the company was going to offer its subscribers a new service called the Shaw Plan Personalizer. The new offering comes with a three-year price guarantee if you sign up before the end of May, but that’s not the news. Here’s what it says in the press release:
With the new Shaw Plan Personalizer, customers can purchase a core home entertainment and communications package that includes Extreme Internet, Personal TV, hardware options and Personal Home Phone basic. They can then customize the plan exactly how they want it. Customers will pick the products and features they use and love to create a plan that’s made just for them.
Pick the products and features they use and love? Create a plan that’s made just for them? Hmmm; this bird is waddling and quacking. What do you suppose it could be? It sure looks to me as if this duck is an a la carte pricing plan, which is the very thing that consumers have been demanding and that the subscription TV services have been avoiding like the plague.
Does it make a difference? It looks as though you can get a basic HD package for a month, and then add a bundle of sports channels for just more. That’s a big savings over some of the other packages, and you don’t have to pay for a bunch of channels that you’ll never watch. And remember the price is fixed for three years.
I imagine that this approach also might appeal to a few television subscribers south of the 49th parallel. Maybe you should call your provider and tell them that you want the “Shaw Deal”.
Market-tracking firm NPD has issued a press release on digital video based on its VideoWatch Digital service. One of the interesting results is that digital video — either downloaded or streamed — now accounts for one quarter of all video watched at home. That’s a pretty stunning share of the total.
Even more stunning are the numbers for Netflix. According to NPD, Netflix streaming is responsible for more than 60% of the total digital video watched in U.S. households. I expected that they would have a lead, but I never imagined that it was this great. A 60% market share is beyond dominant. This is the sort of share that Corning has for LCD panel glass, or Merck has for liquid crystal material used in LCDs. When you have this much market share, your nearest competitor is not likely to have even half the business that you have. And if the field is crowded, the gap between Number One and Trying Harder can be enormous.
According to NPD, the second place is held by Comcast, followed by a tie for third between DirecTV, TimeWarner Cable, and Apple. That doesn’t sound too bad until you find out that Comcast’s share is just 8%, and the next three have 4% apiece. Combined, these four of the top five only have one-third the total business that Netflix has.
As I’ve written here repeatedly, the biggest factor to slow 3DTV sales is the lack of content. The extra cost of the sets and the annoyance of the glasses would be ignored if there were compelling content available in significant quantity. But it costs a small fortune to convert existing 2D content to 3D, and it costs far to shoot original footage in 3D than in 2D. If you’re working on a theatrical movie project, you need expensive rigs that mount two complete cameras so that you get the highest possible quality in the images with the greatest amount of control.
But as we’ve learned repeatedly with technology, “good enough” often wins out over better. And the production equipment companies are coming up with “good enough” solutions that can result in lower-cost 3D content creation. For example, Panasonic came out with a single camera that has two lenses, which makes it much easier to capture stereoscopic images. According to an article in TV Technology, one producer has found that he can get the shots he needs for about the same money. The smaller camera means a smaller crew, and thus a smaller budget. According to the article, Panasonic has already sold hundreds of their cameras in the U.S. alone since they were introduced last year. And now Sony is expected to come out with a stereoscopic video camera of its own with a list price under ,500. The lightweight, two-lens camera is expected to launch at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference next month.
I think we’re right on track to have plenty of 3DTV content within two or three years.
If you comb the Internet looking for HDTV news, you may have seen headlines trumpeting a breakthrough announcement along the lines of “LG plans 55″ 3D OLED TV for 2012.” Wow — pretty exciting, huh? Ah, but if only it were true. Sadly, some people who publish on the Web either miss some of the details of a story or don’t understand the technology fully. This is an interesting story, to be sure, but it’s not the one that the headline would indicate.
What appears to be true is that LG is looking to build a 55″ LCD HDTV that uses an OLED backlight. This is quite a different matter than building a 55″ OLED HDTV. Many companies are working hard at bringing OLED lighting devices to market; they are incredibly thin and extremely efficient. As a result, they make an excellent candidate to replace the LED or fluorescent backlight for an LCD HDTV. Apparently, LG has this working in a pre-production mode, and expects to have the design in production by the end of this year.
So this won’t be an “OLED TV” any more than an LCD panel with an LED backlight is an “LED TV,” but the bottom line is that flat panel HDTVs could be about to get a whole lot thinner.
It came as no surprise to many when Blockbuster declared bankruptcy last September, given the struggling chain’s continued losses. After a lackluster holiday season, it appeared all but certain that the company was headed for Chapter 7 and liquidation.
But not so fast! As reported by the Wall Street Journal last week, a judge has decided that a group of hedge funds should be allowed to purchase the company in a bankruptcy auction. One stumbling block was whether or not Hollywood studios would receive enough of the money that is already owed for DVDs purchased by Blockbuster; without it, the studios would not ship any new discs to the company. Until this issue was resolved, the deal was reportedly dead on arrival. Terms were reached, however, and the bid can proceed.
According to the WSJ article, as many as a half dozen other groups may want to bid for Blockbuster, and so the chain may live to see another day. Clearly, Hollywood wants to retain a major customer for its DVDs, since the studios have not yet worked out what to do when DVDs are replaced by online and other electronic delivery methods. No matter who buys Blockbuster, its future remains shaky at best.
Words fail. Disaster, devastation, catastrophe; nothing seems adequate to describe the situation in northern Japan. The triple whammy of earthquake, tsunami, and electrical power plant failures has resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of lives and untold billions in damages. No doubt, it will be weeks or months or even years before the magnitude of the losses can be tallied.
But already the consumer electronics industry is marking the impact of the events, which may have far-reaching impacts on all companies involved. For example, Sony reportedly has six manufacturing plants in the stricken area, all of which have been shut down. Factories in the region make everything from lasers used in Blu-ray players to Flash memory chips. Production will be disrupted, which in turn will have an effect on products farther down the supply chain. Component shortages could easily lead to higher prices for the finished products, even for companies that were not directly affected by the disaster. And if Japan’s electrical grid remains crippled for an extended period of time, the disruption of the supply chains could be lengthy and significant.
It’s too soon to tell where the greatest impact will be felt, but you may not want to wait until next fall if you’re thinking about buying electronics products. If you see a deal on a consumer electronics product that you want at a price that is right for you, know that we no longer can be certain that prices will continue to fall as they have in recent years.
[Okay, I’m not that big a fan of the 2.0 version of 5-0, but I couldn’t resist the reference for this title.]
The news is that The Diffusion Group has released a new report about Internet connectivity and television, and I expect that some people will be surprised by the results. According to their study, about one out of three broadband subscribers connect a PC to their television at least once a year. The point is that with all the Internet-enabled HDTVs and Blu-ray players and network media players (such as Roku) available on the market, lots of people are using what I’d call a POPC — plain old personal computer – to put content on their big screen.
And here’s a number that surprised even me. More than one out of six broadband subscribers reportedly use a PC connected to a TV to watch content every day! Based on the number of “cocktail party” conversations I’ve had with friends and family, I haven’t noticed anything close to that high a usage. On the other hand, the report indicates that 18 to 34 year olds are most likely to use a PC to TV connection, and I admit that I don’t spend a lot of time with that demographic these days.
Another encouraging finding is that nearly half of the people using a PC to TV connection are paying something for at least some of the streaming content that they watch. Now, this isn’t all that surprising when you look at the rapidly-growing numbers for the Netflix streaming service, as well as the online rental services. But it also means that piracy is not dominating the marketplace, so there is some hope that this can grow into a economically-feasible marketplace.
Most analysts who understand the HDTV market seem to agree that the reported “failure” of 3D HDTVs is not about people not wanting 3DTV at home; it’s more about the fact that there’s very little to watch. So you can expect to see announcements about more content becoming available. And you can expect to see some companies trumpeting the news about rather little things as if they were very big.
For example, DirecTV has announced that it will be making an opera available through its DIRECTV CINEMA service, which downloads a movie rental to your DVR-equipped set top box. “Lucretia Borgia” will be available in April, and if you are operatically-challenged, it will even include “a series of short films” during the interludes that give you the back story on the Borgias as well as some backstage content.
In the same press release, the company also announces that it be adding four more 3D movies to the available line-up (at .99 a pop): “Piranha 3D” (available now), “Jackass 3D” (available March , “Tangled 3D” (March 29), and “Tron: Legacy 3D” (April 5). Huh? We’re making a big deal about releasing fewer than one new title a week? Even if I was excited to see all four of these (five, if you include the opera), this is hardly enough content to make me run out and spend a couple grand on a new HDTV (plus the DirecTV subscription).
In a similar vein, ESPN has announced 3D coverage of the Masters Tournament. They broadcast a grand total of 10 hours of coverage on ESPN 3D: two hours a day for each of the four rounds. (ESPN will provide nearly that much coverage in 2D over the first two rounds alone.) Now, this is still news because live sports coverage is still in its infancy, and ESPN deserves some props for trying to work out what must be an expensive and difficult project for a relatively small audience.
The bottom line is that there still is not a lot for you to watch on a new 3DTV, but they’re working on it. In a year or two, I expect the situation to be greatly improved.
At a recent conference hosted by DisplaySearch, a presentation by a Corning representative made an interesting point about how often consumers replace their old television sets. In the old days of analog broadcasts and CRTs, the replacement cycle was about nine years. We then had the digital broadcast transition and the advent of more affordable flat panel TV sets, and people replaced their CRTs in record numbers. But recent studies now show that U.S. consumers are replacing their LCD TVs about every 6 years on average, which is only two-thirds the time that we used to see for CRT to CRT replacement.
Yes, these are not the old analog CRTs that are getting the boot; we’re replacing the earlier LCD models. Now, I suspect that the steady drop in prices now encourages consumers to replace those early models with larger ones, or ones with more current features. I expect that the old set is probably getting moved to a different room and continues to see service. Still it’s interesting to see how quickly the new ones are being purchased.
Corning added some insight to these results. The company predicts that by 2014, nearly as many LCD TVs will be purchase to replace other LCDs as will be bought to replace CRTs. Add that to the growing demand for flat panel sets from developing countries such as China and India, and we can expect to see demand for LCD flat panels — and the glass that Corning makes for them — to continue to grow.
No, the title is not about the new shoots appearing as spring arrives (there still are some piles of snow around here as I write this). I’m talking about environmentally-friendly ideas. I just came across a site (actually I rediscovered it) that has some great resources. It’s the Green tab at the Digital Tips site, which is published by the CEA (the same organization that puts on the Consumer Electronics Show every year). On this page, you’ll find links to places that you can donate used electronic gear so that it can be reused, or you can find out ways to get it recycled responsibly. You’ll also find suggestions on ways to be smart about the electronic products that you buy, and how to save energy when using the ones that you have.
Yes, this is an industry-sponsored site, so you may find some points that you might interpret differently, but overall, it’s a good resource and a great place to start.
A report from industry tracker Displaybank indicates that the Koreans still dominate the flat panel TV market. For worldwide unit shipments in 2010, Samsung accounted for 19% of all flat panel TVs, and LG provided another 13%. That means that nearly one out of three flat panel TVs are made by one of these two companies.
Note that these numbers are for the completed sets, not just the flat panels that they contain. Sony was in third place with an 11% share of the total market, but the company outsources at least half of the panel production to other companies. And Sharp was in sixth place, according to Displaybank, with just a 7% unit share worldwide, but their panels appear in sets produced by other companies.
Last week, news of a display technology demonstration from Samsung Electronics was reported in Nature Photonics. This is a thin film technology based on “quantum dots“, and was built on a flexible substrate. This approach is quite different from OLED technology; the nanoparticles emit light when excited by an electrical charge, and the color of the light is limited to a narrow range of the spectrum. By using particles of specific sizes that emit specific colors, you can create a stable display with excellent color performance. One of the achievements covered in the report is a method of transferring stripes of the quantum dot material to an active matrix backplane.
According to some sources, these displays have the potential to be far more energy efficient than even OLEDs. On the other hand, this is still very much at the laboratory stage. The materials only have about a 10,000 hour life to half brightness (compared with 60,000 hours or more for plasma and LCD flat panels), and we’re still a long way off from even pilot production of quantum dot displays. But now we have another technology to track.
Well, you can’t fault them for trying, I guess. Cable companies can pay a fee to the Copyright Office and then capture over-the-air television broadcast signals for distribution over their cable network. Upstart ivi.tv plunked down its cash, and then started distributing the live broadcasts from the New York and Los Angeles markets (among others), and retransmitted them over its network. The problem is that their network was the entire Internet.
It was a clever strategy, but like those who skip April 15th by claiming that the Constitution doesn’t say anything about a federal income tax, ivi.tv’s strategy did not find a sympathetic ear in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald ruled that it was unlikely that ivi.tv would be successful in its claim that it was a cable company, that it had done irreparable harm to the owners of the copyrighted content (which included the three major networks and Major League Baseball), and was directed to shut down. In specific, the ruling blocked ivi.tv from “streaming over mobile telephone systems and/or the Internet of any of the broadcast television programming in which any plaintiff owns a copyright.”
It sounds like lights out for the rogue service, but it’s not over yet. In a statement from Chief Executive Todd Weaver, he claims that the judge’s ruling was based on the false assumption that ivi.tv was in violation of FCC regulations. To the contrary, he claims that his company “has met with the all the commisioner’s offices of the FCC repeatedly and has received assurances that we are in full and complete compliance.”
So for the moment, it appears that ivi.tv cannot continue to rebroadcast the captured content to subscribers over the Internet, but that it may have grounds to appeal the injunction and perhaps ultimately win its case. This should be interesting.
Roku is throwing a party to celebrate the sale of the one millionth Roku box at the end of last year. The company has launched its “1 Million Fans Giveaway” promotion for this popular network media player.
You can enter the contest by uploading a picture that will become part of an online mosaic picture or posting a comment. You can participate either through Facebook or Twitter. 50 prizes will be awarded in all. You can enter or find out more details here: www.roku.com/1million. Good luck!
Mitsubishi has developed yet another twist on the flat panel television, according to a report in Tech-On. Instead of using LEDs as a solid-state light source for an LCD panel, the design uses a red laser along with a special, high-brightness, cyan LED. The combination of the two light sources create a mixed white light that reportedly has better color performance than the standard white LEDs or the combination of red-green-blue LEDs.
One advantage of this design is that it uses far fewer components than one that relies solely on LEDs. The red laser is about 10 times brighter, so you need one-tenth as many lasers as you would LEDs. This creates a challenge in the form of designing light guides that will mix the different-colored lights adequately, however.
This new backlight technology for LCD flat panels is not to be confused with the all-laser rear-projection HDTVs that Mitsubishi has been showing for several years.
Comcast has announced that it’s launching Xfinity 3D, a new 24/7 channel that will have nothing but stereoscopic 3D content. According to the press release, the channel will carry “concerts from top-tier artists, sporting events, more than a dozen movies and original 3D programming.” (Fans of the serial comma might notice that its use here would eliminate any confusion about whether the “dozen” applies to the original programming or not.)
It sounds great at first glance, but wait. A dozen movies? Even if they were two hours long, that’s only 24 hours of content. I expect that this means you will have multiple opportunities to see all the different choices within a single week. And the week after, and the week after that. As it turns out, the movies are sparsely sprinkled throughout the daily schedule, with the bulk of the time taken up with the same sort of endless documentaries that were standard fare for the early HDTV channels. You can check out the schedule here: http://www.locatetv.com/listings/comcast-3dtv
The news about Xfinity 3D is not that it is must-see content, but instead that Comcast is willing to devote a channel to what amounts to an endless 3D demonstration. It may not be compelling yet, but it will give the owners of 3D HDTVs something to show quickly when the neighbors or family drop by.
Some chains are expanding, some are standing still, some are pulling back, and some are just plain going away.
In the last category, the final shoe has dropped and Ultimate Electronics has asked the bankruptcy court for permission to throw in the towel. The company has not been able to secure credit for new inventory, and plans to sell off the remaining product to raise cash and pay off its creditors. Expect it to be all over by April.
And then there’s 6th Avenue Electronics, which is a well-established regional retailer in the greater New York City area. They launched an aggressive expansion campaign two years ago, pushing outward into the Philadelphia market (including a store in Montgomeryville, PA that is just a short drive from here). Now the company is closing the three stores in the Philadelphia area and is phasing out two more in New Jersey. The problem is that these are taking too long to become profitable, and presumably they’d rather use their cash (or credit) for something else.
It’s been a tough couple of years in general, and for the consumer electronics market in particular. While signs of economic recovery are strong, I suspect that the competition for consumers’ dollars for electronics will remain stiff for the next few years. So don’t be surprised to see more changes in the retail market.
Has this ever happened to you? You’re in some store, looking at a beautiful new HDTV or other sparkly shiny electronics gear, and the price looks pretty attractive. But you can’t quite bring yourself to pull the trigger, because you haven’t comparison shopped the item yet. What if you could get it cheaper somewhere else? But that means that you have to leave this store, and drive all around comparing prices (and making your head hurt). Isn’t there an easier way?
Well, Best Buy is hoping that they can simplify the process for you. If you have an iPhone or Android smartphone, you can download the free Best Buy app. This handy little program will automatically give you access to the latest sales flyer, which is certainly convenient. But you can also use it to scan bar codes, and it will let you see the price for that item at Best Buy. Instant buying confidence, and you didn’t have to drive all around town.
Personally, my comparison shopping strategy is driven by diminishing returns. If I find that two or three stores have the same price for a product, I generally stop comparing and buy it. I figure that the chances are slim that some store will have a significantly lower price. However, if I get two prices and they are significantly far apart, I’ll search a bit more, because there may be someone out there who is discounting it even further. In either case, the Best Buy app could save me some travel and time.
Okay, so we now have another spectacular Super Bowl in our rear view mirror. (I won’t make any mention of the favorable outcome.) But keep your eyes on the road ahead, because it may not be a smooth ride. I’m not just talking about the fact that the contract between the players and the National Football League ends in March. There’s another contract expiring that could have even further-reaching consequences.
The licensing agreements for television coverage of the NFL games — including the Super Bowl — are up for renewal in 2014. With roughly 75% of the American television households subscribed to a cable or satellite service, there is a real possibility that one of the cable channels could bid enough to take football coverage off the air. It has already happened to Monday Night Football, which ESPN has captured, and there’s talk that the network might be able to land more of the NFL programming. Keep in mind that ESPN is also investing in live 3D coverage of sports, which could also give it an edge in landing the licensing deals. If it can charge more for 3D advertising, it might be able to outbid the broadcast networks for the licenses.
If NFL games or other major sports coverage goes off the air, you can expect some grumbling from the remaining 25% who rely on local broadcasts. You can also expect more pressure for the content to be streamed over the Internet, even if it is a pay-per-view arrangement. And this will also provide more ammunition for the a la carte pricing advocates who don’t want to pay for 100 other channels just to get ESPN.
From the Other Shoe Finally Drops Department, the Boxee Box now has Netflix. An announcement on the Boxee blog let the world know that the latest revision of the software has given users access to streaming content from Netflix. Now, to be fair, D-Link released the device last November. So it has just been a few months until this hitch got smoothed out. But Netflix had been promised as a feature from the beginning, and the runaway success of Netflix streaming has only whetted consumer appetites for access.
The bottom line is that this is an important step for the Boxee Box, which can now take its place among the many other network media players and Internet-connected Blu-ray players that give to affordable ways to add “smart TV” features to your older television sets. And when we say “smart TV”, we mean “access to Netflix“.
Okay, I’ll confess that I have not yet been caught up in the touch tablet frenzy. (I have never looked at my notebook computer and said to myself, “Dang! I wish that sucker didn’t have a keyboard!“) But I get it that people love their tablets and they are using them for all sorts of things. And here comes Sanus with a clever device for iPad owners: the iPad Mount Adapter.
This device lists for less than , and has mounting holes compatible with the VESA 100 x 100 standard. This means that you can attach it to just about any table or wall mount. You can then pop your iPad into the adapter so you can view it hands-free, and then pop it back out when you want to take it with you. It’s a simple and clever design. Get one for your office so you can monitor information from the Web or other sources while you work on your computer. (You know, the one with a keyboard.)
HDMI Licensing is the organization charged with protecting the intellectual property pool for the High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) standard. This has become the first choice for digital high definition connections for home entertainment devices and accessories, and is supported by more than 1,000 companies who have licensed these patents.
Not all manufacturers have bothered to pay for the rights to make HDMI products, however, and according to a press release from HDMI Licensing, the agency has been stepping into them in a big way. In the past year, the group has helped the US. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seize 32 shipments of counterfeit HDMI products at ports from Alaska to Florida. The devices ranged from cables to DVD players.
These actions help by protecting the investment the other manufacturers made in licensing the required patents. The good news for consumers is that this still doesn’t appear to have impacted either the supply or prices of HDMI products. You can still find good quality HDMI cables for under . (There’s no need to spend more on a cable, at least initially. The connection is usually pass/fail, and if the cheap cable works, you should be fine. A cable costing 10 times as much made with unobtanium won’t deliver any better results.)
I have seen the future, and I like it. Corning is responsible for most of the glass used in LCD flat panel HDTVs, among other things, and naturally the company can be expected to have a rather “glassy-eyed” view of things, if you’ll pardon the expression. But I was not expecting anything like this. The company has put together a high-production video showing some of the ways that its glass might find its way into our lives in the years to come. See for yourself:
The cool part is that I know many of the technologies required to make this vision a reality are already here. For the most part, this is not just making up futuristic stuff, but is grounded in reality.
And I have to tell you, I think I’d like living in that world.
Last night, “3net” was scheduled to debut on DirecTV. (I can’t confirm that it did, because I don’t get DirecTV and I don’t have a 3DTV to test it with anyway.) This collaboration with Sony, Discovery, and IMAX will broadcast 3D programming 24/7, which is pretty cool. And the network has promised to premier new content every night at 9 PM for the rest of February. Along with ESPN3D and other 3D programming, this helps put DirecTV out in front in terms of delivering stereoscopic content to the living room.
However, my excitement is tempered somewhat. The line-up for the launch was underwhelming: a documentary about China, a documentary about marine life, and a documentary about places that once were thriving communities but have since been abandoned. Despicable Me, this isn’t. In fact, it sounds a lot like the initial programming that we got on the HD channels when they first started. I doubt that many viewers will find this to be compelling content.
It’s an important step that I doubt will send consumers flocking to the TV stores, but that does ratchet up the mindshare for 3DTV content a little bit. I expect this process to continue gradually for the next few years until we get to the point where we can have many channels showing new 3D content every night, just as we do now with HD content. That’s when we’ll see sales of 3DTVs start to reach significant numbers.
I figure I could probably write exclusively about lawsuits in the display and consumer electronics industry, but frankly, I get tired of the stories and I suspect you do too. This one is worth mentioning, however, when you consider the two parties and the venue.
LG has announced that it is suing Sony with an International Trade Commission (ITC) complaint that PS3 gaming consoles and some Bravia HDTVs violate LG patents, and these products should be blocked from being imported into this country. As I mentioned in a recent post here, it costs millions to launch such a complaint. (One source has informed me that it’s about million for each side.) So this is not a step that is taken lightly.
But here’s some additional context. Sony has already filed a similar complaint with the ITC about some LG mobile phones and Blu-ray players that it claims violate Sony patents.
I won’t be surprised if this ends up being settled with some sort of cross-licensing agreement, but as I wrote last month, we’ll probably never know the full story about how this came about, and how it gets settled. It’s nice to know, I guess, that these two companies feel that they have million apiece to burn in court this way.
If you’re not from the northeast, you may not be aware that New Jersey is in a serious financial bind. The state is facing a .2 billion deficit in the current fiscal year that ends in June, and forecasts for next year’s budget predict a staggering billion deficit. So it should come as no surprise that discussions of money might get a little heated these days.
It turns out that a law was passed five years ago that imposed a new tax on cable subscriptions, intended to subsidize cable fees for low-income senior citizens and people with disabilities. The tax raised more than million, but it was never distributed. Now Governer Christie has simply taken the funds to help pay down this year’s deficit. The governer is quoted as saying “To have the taxpayers of New Jersey pay for cable TV, I mean seriously, has cable TV become a constitutional right now we are going to pay for, in this time of budget constraints?”
A good argument could be made about how access to video programming can affect the quality of life, especially for those targetted by the initial bill. But I can also see how reasonable people might question funding it with public money, especially when those same elderly and disabled citizens may need help with more fundamental utilities such as heat, water, and electricity.
No, this is not an announcement of a major recall. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) commissioned a study of energy use by flat panel HDTVs, covering 13″ to 65″ LCDs and 42″ to 65″ plasma sets. According to a press release, the results indicate that power consumption of LCD sets when in use dropped 63% from 2003 to 2010. Standby power use for LCDs dropped 87% from 2004 to 2010. Plasma posted impressive gains as well, dropping 41% of active power and 85% of standby power use from 2008 to 2010.
Some of the gains for LCD sets can be attributed to the growing use of LEDs as backlights instead of the traditional fluorescent tubes. Plasma technology has improved so that more ultraviolet light is produced in each cell, resulting in more light for less power.
Now, you need to consider the source when looking at these results. The CEA is an unabashed cheerleader for the manufacturers, so it would be a surprise if the report didn’t paint a favorable picture. For example, the press release states that “the power consumption of the average TV sold in 2010 consumes less energy than a 100 watt incandescent light bulb and less power than what is needed to light a typical living room.” Now, that may seem impressive if you’re thinking about a 42″ HDTV, but I suspect that the “average TV sold in 2010″ was somewhat smaller than that, and the 100 watt draw would seem reasonable for something like a 32″ set. I also did not see an explanation for why the LCD figures started with 2004, but the plasma figures didn’t start until 2008. If you want to check out the report for yourself, here’s the link: http://www.ce.org/PDF/PowerConsumptionTrends.pdf.
Even considering the source, however, it’s clear that great strides have been made to cut down the energy consumption of flat panel HDTVs. And no matter how you slice it, that’s a good thing.
Samsung’s new Galaxy S smart phone and Galaxy Tab know how to play nice with their bigger siblings. According to news from Samsung, the company now offers apps for both of these devices that will let them control many of the 2010 HDTV models, using a WiFi connection. They can also control many of the 2011 model smart TVs. One attractive feature is that you can use the on-screen keyboard of the portable device to type in information for the HDTV. This should make searching for specific content from Internet streaming sources much more convenient.
This development makes a lot of sense. You’ve already paid a lot for your smart phone or tablet; why pay more for a touch-screen universal remote control? And as the features and capabilities on connected TVs become more complex, a controller device that can change its display to present context-relevant choices will probably be a necessity.
The fact is that the user interface will be the next battleground for HDTV manufacturers. The big question is whether consumers will go for a vertically-integrated approach such as Samsung’s, or will they insist on a standards-based solution that will work with HDTVs and peripherals like Blu-ray players from different brands? Watch for lots of developments in this area over the next two years.
Do you watch video on your smartphone? The odds are good that you don’t. A study released by Bytemobile shows that only about 10% of users were responsible for 90% of the total mobile network traffic in 2010. And of this total traffic, 40% is video. The company forecasts that video will grow to be 60% of mobile traffic this year, as people start watching longer video — TV episodes instead of YouTube clips – and at higher resolutions.
But the big question posed by these numbers is what happens when mobile video viewing expands beyond this 10% of users? Some services already have caps on monthly usage for their wireless data services, and presumably more subscribers will start bumping up against these limits as mobile video gains in popularity. We already know that there isn’t sufficient cell phone capacity for all subscribers to make calls at the same time. Will mobile video tie up so much bandwidth that it starts to create noticeable problems for users? Can the service providers expand coverage and capacity fast enough to meet the growing demand?
I suspect that as people get used to watching video from the Internet on their home televisions, they will be more likely to explore ways to access that content on other devices, including cell phones and tablet devices with wireless data service. And I expect that we’ll encounter some growing pains over the next few years as the demand for mobile video grows.
Roku is one of the network media players that lets you turn your HDTV into a “Smart TV” by adding an Internet connection. In general, this means that you can access streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu Plus. The company has announced that it will start carrying its first “linear” channel of programming: WealthTV. Instead of on-demand programming of existing episodes and movies, the WealthTV channel will stream its regularly scheduled content, just as you would receive it on a cable or satellite subscription system.
And this deal adds impetus to the move for a la carte pricing (where you only pay for the channels you want). WealthTV on Roku will require a .99 a month subscription fee. The programming will be available in high definition (provided that you have a sufficiently-fast broadband connection), so you’ll be able to watch shows about luxury cars and world travel in drool-inducing detail.
The success of Roku and other devices that bring Internet content into your living room shows that the American consumer is catching on to the advantages. As the installed base grows, these outlets will become more appealing to content producers, especially the niche channels that may be lost in the noise of the average cable system.
The story is breaking that Microsoft has sued TiVo for alleged patent infringements. What fascinates me is that so many industry pundits are ready to jump in with an explanation of the suit and its implications for the two companies and their markets. Here’s what I think we know for sure about this lawsuit:
We’ll probably never know the story behind it.
I checked in with a couple of my patent experts for some feedback on this, and they generally confirmed what I already suspected. Companies sue other companies for patent infringement all the time, and the motivations are deep and varied. For example, a suit can be a ploy to encourage the other company to enter into a cross-licensing agreement where both get to use each other’s patents. Or such a suit can be the result of a breakdown in direct negotiations – which sometimes can have been running for years — and one side decides to give up trying to reach an agreement and go to the courts instead. Or it can simply be an attempt at intimidation or retaliation, to inflict some damage on other company for your own competitive advantage. And the fact of the matter is that we rarely hear about the true motivation or the outcomes of this sort of action.
One important detail about this particular suit is that Microsoft filed the complaint with the US International Trade Commission, which has the power to ban imports of any products deemed to contain components that violate patent rights. According to one of my sources, Microsoft will likely have to spend millions of dollars on such a suit, which means that more is at stake than just a cross-licensing deal. In any case, it will be interesting to see if anything comes of this suit, and if we ever hear about the details.
Ah, the wonder that is the Internet, where you have access to all the content in the world, and it’s free. And for those parts that aren’t free, they should be free, right? That seems to be the attitude of a lot of people, and I agree that there is a lot of good and generous work that has been done in the spirit of free content on the Internet. I’d include Open Office, the enormous universe that is the Linux operating system, and the wealth of content available through the Creative Commons License.
But I don’t believe that all content can — or even should – be provided for free on the Internet. The content creators deserve the right to ask for and get compensation for their efforts. I don’t think that Netflix is evil for charging .99 a month to access their streaming content; they have had to pay the content producers for the rights to share that content, and this would not have happened without subscription fees.
Perhaps the best empirical example is iTunes. Keep in mind that when Apple first created the site, pirated music sources dominated the distribution of commercial music on the Internet. Many thought Apple’s experiment was doomed to fail because people wouldn’t pay for something that they could get for free. And those people have been proven wrong. Last weekend, the total number of downloads for the site passed the 10 billion mark. Yes, that’s “billion” with a great big “B”! A conservative estimate of billion in revenues (some items cost more than the standard $.99) shows that there is an important incentive for the content producers to participate in this and other digital download distribution services.
I believe that the average American consumers are not looking to get something for nothing. They are willing to pay a reasonable fee for good value delivered. And it has been proven that they are willing to pay for digital download and streaming content. The models are changing, and content producers should be able to find money in this system to support the continued creation of quality music and video content.
In the latest PriceWise report, DisplaySearch reports that large LCD television panels dropped another 1% to 2% for the wholesale price across a wide range of sizes in January. Some of the biggest movement was at the 42″ size, with the typical panel dropping from 5 to 0. A 120Hz LED edge-lit 42″ panel also dropped from 5 to 0. Apparently, December sales did not measure up to expectations, so there is likely to be a backlog in inventory, especially among LED backlight models.
Note that these prices are for the bare panels, not the complete televisions. Still, with a 42″ panel costing 0 and the complete television selling for not much more than twice that amount, there is not much room for profit for the set manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. The slim profits will make the TV makers press for lower panel prices from their suppliers, and the panel manufacturers may have to lower prices in order to operate their production lines at efficient levels.
The bottom line is that you can continue to expect good deals on LCD HDTVs. You’ll find some promotions for the Super Bowl that will likely offer some good deals, but you probably won’t miss out if you wait until after the big game. Once we’re into February, the retailers don’t have much opportunity to sell lots of sets until the football season starts next fall. (There will probably be a bump in sales around the NCAA Men’s March Madness basketball tournament, but that’s about it.) So you will probably find that there are a number of HDTV sales people who will be happy to see you walk through the door in late February. You’ll probably be able to get some great deals on a 2010 model at that point.
Last Wednesday, the FCC issued an order that names nine companies as the joint administrators of a database that will govern the use of an unlicensed section of the broadcast spectrum known as “white space”. These are the frequencies between television channels in a given regional area. Not all channels are assigned in a given market, so those frequencies are available for other uses locally. The problem is that you don’t want these devices interfering with the television stations (and wireless microphones) that are licensed to use parts of the spectrum in these areas.
The FCC has been interested in freeing up access to these bits of radio spectrum for years, especially as a means of facilitating the development of wide-area wireless broadband services. The hope is that this approach can bring broadband Internet access to rural regions and other areas where building a traditional wired infrastructure is not cost-effective. And by making access to these frequencies unlicensed, the FCC intends to open the field to small companies that will provide more competition for the large telecommunications services.
The database will track which parts of the spectrum are available at different locations. For example, a bit more than a third of the TV spectrum is available as white space in San Francisco, while in other cities as much as 70% of the spectrum is not used. The only name that most consumers will recognize among the nine database managers is Google. The company has been active for years in trying to get the FCC to open up access to the unused portions of the broadcast spectrum, and has devised a variable power transmission approach that makes more efficient use of the available frequencies.
The database won’t be active for another month or two, but it will help manufacturers develop products and services that will extend wireless access to content and devices, which is likely to result in a whole new array of gadgets and services.
Netflix has announced that it added 3.1 million net subscribers in the last quarter of 2010, bringing it up to just over 20 million total. If it were a cable company, it would now be in second place behind only Comcast, which has just under 24 million subscribers. Some additional statistics make this comparison even more interesting.
Netflix indicates that about a third of the new subscribers opted for the streaming-only plan. And Comcast reported losing more than a quarter of a million net subscribers in the third quarter of 2010. And Netflix made million profit in the last quarter of 2011, which was up more than 50% over last year. The company is making a healthy profit, which should help give it plenty of bargaining chips as it tries to negotiate new deals for better content for its streaming service.
I believe that we are witnessing a significant change in the way that movies and television programming are delivered to consumers, and Netflix appears to be amassing the cash and the clout to make it stick. I expect to hear a lot more cable and satellite executives proclaiming that they’re not worried about Netflix as competition; what else can they do but whistle past the graveyard?
Parks Associates estimates that about a quarter of the new TVs sold in 2010 were able to connect to the Internet. The same group forecasts that this will reach 76% by 2015. These predictions make sense to me, though it’s not all about streaming content from Web sites.
I expect that a lot of these sales will happen simply because Internet connectivity will rapidly become a standard feature on all but the lowest-priced models, just as 120 Hz has become standard for most LCD HDTV models. So a large part of the 75% sales forecast for 2015 will likely happen just because the sets that people want will have the feature anyway.
I also expect that people will want the feature, however. Looking at the sales of Roku and other network media players that can connect any TV to the Internet and get streaming programming, it is clear that the dawn is breaking slowly for consumers, and they’re beginning to catch on to what these features can do for them.
So it’s likely that your next television will be able to connect to the Internet, whether you want to do that or not.
Pioneer made top-of-the-line plasma HDTVs when it exited the television business. It was known for its Elite brand, which was sold through professional AV retailers. Sharp has now decided to resurrect the brand and license it for its own LCD HDTVs. Pioneer will still use the brand on its home theater products and Blu-ray players.
Presumably, Sharp has access to the Elite brand name in part because it owns a part of Pioneer, and both companies will market the Elite HDTVs.
This is an interesting — if not desperate – move on the part of Sharp. The company’s market share in the U.S. has shrunk to tiny levels and it trails most of the other major brands. The professional AV channel is not a great place to look for help, however. With luxury housing starts at all-time lows, this market segment continues to decline and several big names in the business have closed shop or are in trouble. Even Mitsubishi which used to rely on specialty retailers now is focusing on broader sales outlets for their products.
It doesn’t seem that adding a high-end product line is going to be much help to Sharp, but it will be difficult for the company to grow its share of the retail sales no matter what strategy it pursues.
CORRECTION: My thanks for friend and colleague Peter Putman for pointing out my error. Please see below.
Wandering around the LVCC Central Hall, I rounded a corner and saw this at the Mitsubishi pavillion:
That screen is 155″ diagonal. Yes, that’s equivalent to more than nine 50″ panels. It’s big. (Look at the person standing beside the lower left corner to get a sense of the scale.)
There are two interesting things about this display. First, it’s a true LED TV. Unlike “LED TVs” that some manufacturers advertise, the image here is actually created by millions of individual LEDs. (The other “LED TVs” are simply LCD TVs that have LEDs as a backlight instead of the usual fluorescent tubes. They’re still LCD TVs.)
The other interesting detail is that in spite of its enormous size, it’s not even high definition. This panel has 1152 by 640 pixels, which is essentially a Wide VGA resolution. Fortunately, the design is modular (intended for large signage displays) so you can add enough modules to get up to the desired resolution. Now all you need is a wall big enough for it. Anybody got a stadium in their backyard?
Folks, I got it wrong. This Mitsubishi video wall is not an LED dislpay, it’s an OLED display. (Yes, I could try to argue that OLEDs are just a type of LED, but I’d still be wrong. “LED” implies the inorganic little points of light that are used everywhere, and OLEDs are planar devices with totally different materials.)
In some ways, this makes the story even cooler, even if Mitsubishi did first show this display in 2009 though I believe that this is the first time it has been shown in this country. I should have realized that something was different about it because the image was so much dimmer than the LED billboards we see by the road or in sports stadiums. But apparently this is now a commercial product, which is interesting. It would appear that OLED is going to make its inroads at the very large and very small displays.
Consumers are discovering that there’s a lot of good content available on the Internet. Netflix is getting a lot of the attention, especially with the statistic that at peak times, it accounts for 20% of all Internet traffic in the U.S. That’s astounding.
Television manufacturers are going to make that proportion increase, it appears, as many are adding network connectivity to their sets. Yahoo! Connected TV is perhaps the leading solution, as it is already included in sets from seven of the top 10 manufacturers. The company estimates that it already has an installed base of about 6 million sets worldwide, and that is expected to grow to about 8 million by March of this year. Yahoo! Connected TV also will be in non-TV devices, starting with a D-Link network media player that is scheduled to ship in the second quarter of this year.
The new development with Yahoo! Connected TV is that the company is going let the viewer interact with broadcast content. The broadcaster will be able to encode the programming to provide on-screen prompts to links about additional information. The program window will shrink down but remain active while you browse the other content on the screen. This feature could be used to provide access to statistics or fantasy league data during sports events. I also can envision it being a way to make product placements more effective; being offered more information about a hot sports car featured in some show would not be intrusive if you’re interested in the car. (And if you’re not, you just ignore it and keep watching the show.) This sort of interactivity could end up being a key part to finding new ways to fund the creation and distribution of television programming.
The Yahoo! Connected TV platform is just one of many approaches designed to make it easier and more powerful to access Internet content on your HDTV. It’s too soon to tell which one will eventually win out, but Yahoo! has clearly established a strong position in this market.
The FCC and the Justice Department have given their approval to Comcast’s take-over of NBC Universal, which it is buying from GE. The nation’s largest cable company will now have control of a major Hollywood studio (and all that goes with that), providing it with unprecendent vertical integration.
The FCC tacked on a few conditions with its blessing, ranging from more programming in Spanish to adding 1,000 hours of local news. It will also have to give up management of Hulu.com, but may not pull its programming from the service. The Justice Department also included a few strings, including adherence to net-neutrality requirements and protections against unfair treatment of competitors, both content providers and subscription television services.
So now we’ll find out whether the deal of the century is going to produce a technological marvel that will advance the entire entertainment industry for this country, or a megalomaniacal monster that will rampage across the various distribution channels. My bet is that it will be somewhere right about in the middle.
Good news! Broadcaster Sinclair and Time Warner Cable have worked out an agreement on retransmission, at least in general terms, and will extend the agreement that expired December 31st until February 21st, to give the two sides time to finalize the details. Sinclair did not pull any of its programming from the cable service during the dispute.
In December, the Hearst Corp. managed to reach settle retransmission agreements with DirecTV without any channels going dark.
Perhaps the parties have learned that consumers are not discerning when it comes to placing blame when their programming gets interrupted. It’s clearly “a pox on both your houses” sort of situation, and both sides lose in the court of public opinion. When people already feel that they’re paying too much and getting too little for their television subscription dollar, any dispute over retransmission fees looks a lot like greed. And then subscription fees go up with no increase in service; it’s not surprising that consumers are upset.
There will be more retransmission disputes coming down the road, however, so we’ll soon see if this congenial attitude is a trend or a short-term aberration.
Bottom line: Netflix really wants out of the physical DVD business. And the company is doing its best to hasten its exit.
It has been widely reported that the company’s director of product management, Jamie Odell, announced that subscribers will no longer be able to add DVD titles to their queue using network media players, connected TVs and Blu-ray players, or mobile devices. If you want to add a title to your physical DVD queue, you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way: go to the Web site. The only reason to do this is to make it more difficult to manage your physical DVD queue, and drive more people to use the streaming service.
While this is sure to upset some subscribers, it sends a strong statement about the company’s plans. And it makes even more sense when you combine this with the announcement at CES that new remote controls for connected TVs, connected Blu-ray players, and network media players from major manufacturers will start sporting a big red Netflix button that takes you directly to the service with a single click.
My concern with this emphasis on streaming to the exclusion of physical discs is that the service is not quite ready to be the equivalent of the mailed disc service. You can’t get high definition streams for the majority of titles, and the streaming title selection is not nearly as good as what you can get from the local Redbox for a buck. (Or a buck-fifty for HD Blu-ray.) Netflix seems to be playing a game of chicken, betting that it can come up with enough money to convince the studios and other content producers to let them have more current content. The risk is that some better alternative could come along, or the studios could simply decide to cut them off from the “good stuff”. Netflix has negotiated some impressive agreements with some smaller, quality studios, but they don’t have enough of the big titles on the streaming service yet.
Actually, it’s just under 8 minutes this time. The HDTV Almanac is syndicated through Newstex, a service that provides “authoritative content” from a variety of online sources. And I’m pleased that they chose the Almanac as one of their sources. The company has a new program of video interviews with some of their authors and publishers, and they chose to interview me about HDTV Almanac. Here’s the video.
If you have any reactions, you can post them on YouTube or email me at alfred@hdtvprofessor.com.
Back when the digital transition was pending, I raised the question of battery-powered portable televisions for use in emergencies. The old analog sets that people had stored in their hurricane kits no longer work with the digital signals. At first, there were few choices.
Now the market has responded and you’ve got more choices than in those early days of digital broadcasts. At CES 2011, however, I found some interesting products from RCA. These portable LCD sets not only receive the standard ATSC digital broadcast signals; they also can get the new Mobile DTV programming that is becoming available in cities around the country. This new free service from local broadcasters is designed to work better with portable devices, especially when they are moving. (ATSC signals apparently were not designed to work with devices that are moving, though I have seen examples where it seems to work just fine.)
It remains to be seen whether or not Mobile DTV takes off. It probably depends on how many devices support it, though the tuners are showing up in unusual places including the new Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet. It’s not clear how much consumer demand there is for the separate television broadcasts; it’s possible that the project is driven more by local broadcasters not wanting to relinquish some of the broadcast bandwidth that the FCC wants to get back for broadband wireless services. Given the uncertain future of Mobile DTV at this point, it would be smart to get a portable television like the RCA models that can receive both types of television signals, just in case.
The big buzz at CES 2011 was about the auto-stereoscopic 3DTV demonstrations that seemed to be everywhere. Toshiba, Sony, and LG all had demo screens available that worked without glasses. Some are designed for single viewers, which is okay. Some were designed for multiple viewers, which I don’t think will work in the typical American living room. I have decided to diagram the problem.
In this schematic, the HDTV at the bottom is viewed from across the room. (We’re looking down from the ceiling in the room. The red sectors are for the right eye image, and the green sectors are for the left eye image. If your head is not in one of the three “sweet spots” you will not see a 3D image. In many cases, you’ll see a jumbled image that you cannot resolve into a coherent image.
Here’s a real-world view of what this means. The man in the photo is seated in one of the sweet spots, and will see the 3D effect without glasses. The woman, on the other hand is not in a sweet spot. She may see just a 2D image — just the left eye’s image — or if she moves just a little to her left, her right eye will get the left image and her left eye will get the right image, and she will not see a watchable image.
This is what I call the “cuddle factor”, and I do not believe that Americans would rather rearrange the furniture to sit in precise locations in order to see 3DTV, just to avoid having to wear glasses. I think that they will prefer the glasses (provided that they are inexpensive and work well).
And this leads me to the larger point. I think that the television manufacturers are making a dreadful mistake by making these public “technology demonstrations.” There once was a company named Osborne that made one of the first portable computers. It announced that it was going to ship a second generation model, and everyone stopped buying the first model. The production date slipped, Kaypro and Compaq came to market with better models, and Osborne never recovered. I believe that something similar is happening with no-glasses 3DTVs. I’ve heard from lots of consumers that they do not want to wear 3D glasses of any sort. “They’re showing no-glasses 3DTVs; I’m just going to wait until they have that working.” I’ve heard this repeatedly.
I believe that by demonstrating no-glasses 3DTVs, the manufacturers are actually inhibiting the sales of the existing models, while consumers wait for a no-glasses solution that will either be unacceptable or unaffordable (or both!) If you’re waiting for a competitive no-glasses 3DTV for your living room, I believe that you’ve got a long wait ahead of you.
Take your iPod or iPad and plop it in a handy dock to recharge; that’s not unusual. The dock has speakers so you can listen to your music with room-filling sound. Also not so unusual. But look at this:
The Cinemin Slice from WowWee is a docking station that includes a pico projector so you can view photos or videos from your iProduct device. Pretty cool, huh?
The fact is that you’re going to see pico projectors a lot more in the future. At CES 2011, there were pocket projectors that we’ve seen before, but they are also being integrated into digital cameras, docking stations, and more.
Texas Instruments continues to be one of the leading makers of the tiny imagers used for these devices. At CES 2011, the company announced their new DL P Pico HD chip that brings high definition images to these tiny projectors. The chip has Wide XGA resolution (1366 by 768 pixels) so it can handle 720p images without having to scale down. While early pico projector models had brightness ratings of 10 lumens or less, current generation models are rated at up to 300 lumens using solid state lighting sources (which means no expensive lamp to replace).
Syndiant is another company that makes a pocket projector imager, and has a number of design wins including 3M. The company currently has a Wide SVGA chip — 854 by 600 pixels – but plans to sample a 720p panel later this year that will be just 0.37 inches diagonal. One of their partners is developing a projection TV box for developing markets such as India and China, where a low-powered pico projector could make an efficient display where electrical service is limited.
The whole pico projector market is developing rapidly, and is likely to result in massive growth for the components and the end products which will help drive down costs. Expect to see a lot more products with pico projectors embedded in them by next year’s CES.
According to a new report from DisplaySearch, 2010 was a good year for LCD television shipments worldwide. Total shipments are expected to top 190 million units, which is a whopping 31% increase over the 2009 figures. This is a bit of a surprise, given the worldwide recession, but apparently the demand increased in response to the prices that continued to plummet.
Shipments for North America only showed a 0.4% increase over 2009, indicating that the recession had a much bigger impact on sales in these markets.
Displaysearch predicts slower growth for next year with worldwide LCD TV shipments increasing to 215 million units; that’s only about a 13% increase. Prices will continue to fall rapidly for another year, however, so the projected sales revenues for 2011 will actually be less than for 2010 in spite of the unit increase. Another interesting prediction is that LED backlights will be found in the majority of LCD TVs in 2011. This makes sense, as LED backlights have already taken over in notebooks, and falling LED prices will make the costs more competitive with fluorescent models. Displaysearch expects that the price premium for LED backlights will fall from about 100% in early 2010 to as low as 20% for some sizes in 2011.
The bottom line here is that LCD technology continues to dominate the flat screen TV market. Plasma shipments kept pace with LCDs on a unit growth bases for 2010, but the technology still accounts for less than 10% of the total flat screen market. LCDs offer a bright image and a good value, and apparently are what most consumers want in a flat screen television.
My wife was watching Glee the other night, and I thought I recognized one actress as someone who has starred in movies. In a typical senior moment, however, I could not come up with her name or any of the movies, which left me with the stammering conversation, “That’s whats-her-name, right? The one who has been in all those movies like ummm, whatever?” Not too helpful.
If I had an iPhone and the new Videosurf Mobile app, I could have just pointed my phone at the TV screen, recorded about five seconds of the show. The program would analyze the content using facial recognition and other technology, query the system’s database in the cloud, and then come back with the answer. Not only would it have identified Gwyneth Paltrow in the Glee episode, but it would have brought back lists of her movies and other appearances and links to more information. It will even find video clips of her on YouTube and other sites, and provide the links.
I can think of lots of ways that this app would be helpful. I saw it demonstrated last night here at CES, and it’s scheduled to be available for free soon. So if you struggle to idenitify stars or TV shows, check out this program… if you can remember to do it.
I’ve only got one more day at CES 2011 left, but I’ve got a lot of great information that I’ll be writing about next week, so stay tuned….
“Those goofy glasses.” It’s one of the biggest stumbling blocks for 3DTV with many consumers, and I can’t blame them. Many of the active shutter glasses look like something out of a 50s science fiction B movie. And the passive glasses that you get in the movie theaters make Buddy Holly and Elvis Costello’s eyewear look stylish.
But CES 2011 is full of new ideas for glasses. (No, the show doesn’t open until today, but after two days of press events, I’ve seen a lot of new approaches.) On the shutter glass front, it’s clear that some manufacturers still don’t get it. Sony offers a range of sizes and colors, but they all look like they could double as snorkeling goggles. In contrast, XPAND has improved its line of “universal” shutter glasses that work with all 3DTVs and projectors on the market today. The newest XPAND YOUNIVERSAL models are programmable, so that you can tune them to your individual preferences, such as changing the settings for “dark time” and “transition time”. You can make adjustments for viewing distance, your age, and other factors. And they come in different sizes and with different nose pieces to accomodate different facial features.
Perhaps the most impressive demonstration of new shutter glasses was by Samsung, which showed a sleek, stylish model that weighs only one ounce.
On the passive glasses side, Marchon 3D announced a new patent for curved lenses, which gets away from that flat-lens bug-eyed look that you get with the typical cinema glasses. They have various models starting at a pair, but also have designer lines including some by Calvin Klein. They even offer photochromatic lenses that get darker in the sunlight, so that you can use the same 3D glasses as your sunglasses. And you will even be able to get them with prescription lenses so you’ll only have to wear one pair when watching 3D.
I believe that all these improvements are slowly going to wear away at the average consumer’s resistance. Price and appearance are improving rapidly, and that’s after only selling about a million sets in this country in 2010. As the numbers climb — and they will climb — the competition to sell the glasses will result in more improvements and even lower costs.
CES 2011 Day -1: No, the show doesn’t open until tomorrow, but I arrived in Las Vegas yesterday because it starts two days early for the press. So I had a bunch of events to deal with yesterday. There are a lot of interesting themes emerging already, but I was particularly interested by three different views on 3DTVs that I encountered at last night’s events.
First, I got my first look at the new Vizio 65″ LCD 3DTV that uses passive glasses instead of active ones. I have not yet spoken with the folks from Vizio, but the set looked very good to me. I think that with its low price, it stands to be a real game changer. It uses a panel from LG Electronics, so I expect that we’ll see a similar set from them before long.
I also came across a new DLP rear-projection 3DTV from Mitsubishi. It was hard to miss; it has a 92″ diagonal screen. That’s the equivalent of four 46″ sets tiled together. It’s really big. It relies on active glasses, and the image looked good.
Then I went to a Toshiba press event, and discovered that they intend to sell three different types of 3DTVs: active glasses, passive glasses, and no glasses. I know that people are anxious to get a no-glasses solution (see my Monday comments), so I’ll focus on that. The company had two autostereoscopic screens on display at the event. The Toshiba representatives were very clear that these were simply engineering prototypes and that they did not have any information about when they might become commercial products. One was a notebook computer with a head-tracking feature so that you could see 3D without having to keep your head in one spot. As I’ve been saying, this is fine for a single-viewer application, but won’t play in the living room. The other was an LCD HDTV that only had three “sweet spots”, and all three were close together directly in front of the screen. The resolution looked great, because the screen had 4K resolution (about twice a regular 1080p set) to make up for the resolution lost to the autostereoscopic feature. It looked okay, but you really had to be in just the right spot or else the 3D effect would not work correctly.
From all this, my take-away so far is that 3DTV continues to be an important topic, that passive glasses solutions are likely to gain market share rapidly, and that we’re no closer to a multi-viewer autostereoscopic solution.
Tomorrow, I’ll have some highlights from the Press Day press conferences, and on Friday, I’ll report on the first day of the actual show. Stay tuned….
The number one complaint about cable companies appears to be the increased subscription fees with no change in the service. The DirecTV satellite service is following in a similar trajectory. The company just announced a 4% rate increase, effective February 10. This is similar to a rate increase that they announced a year ago.
According to the company, the increase is needed to pay for higher channel carriage fees from the networks.
I expect that consumers won’t be happy with this development, and it could set off another round of musical chairs as consumers try to find out where the subscription television grass is greener. This is a situation that will only get worse, as we are likely to see more instances of retransmission negotiations that go past the 11th hour and subscribers will find some networks going dark on their satellite or cable service. And when the dust settles, the service will be paying more for the programming, and those increased costs are going to get passed on to the consumer sooner or later. Probably sooner.
As I’ve mentioned before, the steady ratcheting increase of subscription rates is only going to fuel consumer insistance on a la carte plans where you only have to pay for the channels that you want. I believe that this is a losing game for the subscription services, however, because they will see their revenues slashed and it will become increasingly difficult to fund the maintenance and expansion of their physical infrastructure. (Have you priced out the cost of putting a television satellite in orbit lately?) And many content producers will find their revenues plummeting as the automatic enrollment of subscribers come to a screeching halt. As a result, I don’t expect to see a la carte pricing any time soon, unless the government should decide to mandate it.
So if you pay a monthly fee for your television, don’t be surprised when it goes up again.
According to a report in the Media Daily News, a research study by Futurescape predicts that 54% of all flat panel televisions shipped worldwide in 2014 will have network connectivity so that they can access content from the Internet. The study also forecasts that by five years from now, 40% of all U.S. homes will have at least one television set connected to the Internet.
These numbers are not surprising to me. 100% of all televisions sold in the U.S. have tuners capable of getting signals over the air with an antenna. In spite of this, a small fraction are actually connected to an antenna. It adds little cost to include the tuner (and besides, it’s mandated by the federal government), so every set has one. In the same way, it really doesn’t add much cost to a set when you add network support. The controller of a typical HDTV is already a powerful computer, so the added connectivity is not that big a deal. In fact, Samsung predicts that 70% of all the televisions that they ship in 2014 will have network support.
The more difficult race to handicap at this point is how many of those sets will be connected to the Internet. Sales for devices that retrofit existing HDTVs with Internet capabilities are slower than some expected, so maybe there is not that much demand. On the other hand, Netflix points to all their subscribers who are taking advantage of their all-you-can-eat streaming video service.
My personal take is that streaming video over the Internet remains a mystery to the average American consumer, and they don’t really understand what these retrofit devices and NeTVs can do for them. Also, the quality of the content and the images are slowly improving, but still aren’t to the levels that some consumers demand. I see these factors as shifting steadily in favor of Internet streaming and access to other content on an HDTV. Consumers are going to catch on and the demand will certainly increase. As a result, I expect that a majority of those Internet-capable televisions will be connected by 2014.
It’s a time to look back and look ahead. It’s been a busy year in the HDTV and home entertainment world, and next year promises to be even busier!
I want to take a quiet moment to thank you for your support of HDTV Almanac. I’m glad to know that so many of you find the content here to be useful and informative. And it’s great that so many of you keep coming back for more on a regular basis. As a result, the content here ranks high on the search engines, making it easier for others to discover it.
I have a lot of fun writing this, and I love to hear from readers. Whether it’s to ask a question, point out an error, or just give me a pat on the back for something I wrote here, it’s great to get the feedback. And if you have suggestions of topics you think I should spend more time covering (or less, as the case may be), I hope you’ll write me at alfred@hdtvprofessor.com and let me know.
In any case, let me also take this time to wish you and yours a healthy, happy, and successful new year.
The story broke last week that Rovi will acquire Sonic Solutions for more than 0 million. And you are probably saying, “Who cares?”
It helps to know who these two companies are. Rovi used to be called Macrovision, and they are responsible for the copy protection schemes that prevent you from copying (or at least make it more difficult to copy) published DVDs. They also provide on-screen program guides. Their customer list includes cable and satellite TV services.
Sonic Solutions is probably best known for its Roxi0 brand of software for CD and DVD burning on computers. The company also provides a range of other services, including its RoxioNow service that is used by clients including Best Buy and Blockbuster for their streaming video content rental and sales systems.
It makes good sense for Rovi to grow its product portfolio by acquiring Sonic Solutions. This creates a synergy that helps strengthen the company’s relations with major content producers and retailers, both for traditional DVD products as well as new online streaming services. In this fast-moving market, it would appear that Rovi continues to be agile and responsive. You still may not recognize the company’s name, but the chances are increased that it will touch on your choices for home entertainment content.
How can life possibly be hard for a company with a net worth of more than billion? Well, Google apparently has stubbed its toe and is struggling to make the best of it. The problem is with Google TV, which was to be the company’s universal solution to all things video. It is intended to provide a single, simple access point for all programming, whether it is broadcast over the airwaves, on cable, on satellite, on a telco system, or available on the Internet. It has not been as simple as Google might have hoped (or planned), and now the company has asked its partners to not show any new products using Google TV at the upcoming CES 2011 trade show in Las Vegas. Making this change in direction must be creating some difficulties for major players such as Toshiba, LG, and Sharp.
Part of the problem may be the lackluster sales to date for the Sony HDTV and Logitech network media player that include Google TV. Another part of the problem, however, may have been Google’s failure to secure access to the most popular content. At this point, ABC, CBS, and NBC all have declined to make the content from their Web sites available through Google TV, and you can’t access Hulu’s large (and attractive) collection either.
So while the potential is enormous, it is clear that Google is not yet in a position to deliver on that promise. So pulling the products from CES may be a good call. Or it may shake the confidence of both product partners and consumers, and maybe we’ll just muddle through without Google’s help. It’s too soon to tell, but when the company does get it right and is finally ready to roll it out in earnest, it had better be awesome.
Here’s the problem in a nutshell. People are watching more video over the Internet than ever before; by some accounts, Netflix streaming alone accounts for 20% of all Internet traffic in the U.S. at peak times. Streaming video can place a strain on the available bandwidth for some service providers, such as cable companies. The streaming video companies do pay for access to the Internet for their data, but in some cases, the carriers feel that they don’t pay enough.
The question is what happens if a service provider wants to charge one data provider more than another? Or if the service provider wants to give data from one source preferential treatment? Or even block data from a source altogether?
The issue is complex and anything but clear cut. Some groups feel that Internet access is essential for free speech, and anything that allows the establishment of arbitrary obstacles is wrong. Others view the Internet as a business operation, and businesses should be free to make deals that they believe to be in the best interest of their customers and themselves. And then there are those on both sides who question whether or not the FCC has the right to regulate the situation at all.
After hesitation, delays, and mixed signals, the FCC finally took action this week and established new rules to protect “net neutrality”. Needless to say, opponents on both sides complained loudly about these rules. While the rules have not yet been published, they apparently will prohibit wired service providers from blocking data from specific sources. Wireless broadband operators will be allowed to limit access to specific sites and services, persumably because their bandwidth is more limited. But even the wired carriers will be permitted to adjust access to sites and services as part of “reasonable network management”. That would appear to be a loophole large enough to drive a truck through. And the rules apparently will allow “paid prioritazion” that will give packets from some services faster handling than others.
As a result, there’s something to upset just about everyone involved. At this point, about the only thing for certain is that provisions of these new rules are bound to be tested in the courts. It may well take Congressional action with new laws to provide a final resolution. This is not the end of the net neutrality issue, but instead probably marks the beginning of hammering out a solution.
Hulu has changed the way that many Americans watch television programming these days. It is currently owned by News Corp, Walt Disney, NBC Universal, and Providence Equity Partners, but the company had been looking to going public with an IPO to gain its independence. Those plans are now on hold, even though the company is on track to earn 0 million for 2010. The problem apparently is that Hulu has not yet locked up long-term agreements for its streaming video content, which it fears could spook investors. Instead, it seems that they will go back to the well again, and ask the current investors for additional funding.
One of the big problems for Hulu is that Netflix is breathing down its neck. While Hulu shows “catch-up” episodes of television programming, Netflix has been limited to past seasons that have come out on DVD. Netflix is busy making new deals, however, including a “next day” arrangement for NBC’s Saturday Night Live. If Netflix continues to add access to recent episodes, it could challenge Hulu’s advantage in this area.
Many have viewed Hulu as an interesting experiment that has given Fox, ABC, and NBC a sandbox in which to explore online streaming of their programming content. Whether or not they have the conviction to transform it into a major distribution service for their content — and whether they can compete effectively with Netflix — remains to be seen.
Qualcomm will sell its nationwide licenses for the 700 MHz broadcast spectrum as it pulls the plug on its FLO TV mobile television service. AT&T will pay nearly billion for the rights to these radio waves. Along with this announcement came the news that Qualcomm will shut down the mobile television services that it has been providing to AT&T and Verizon for their privately-branded services.
AT&T will reportedly use the new spectrum to provide faster wireless broadband service as part of its new 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) network. Qualcomm is primarily a chip maker, and will make the chips required for 4G LTE devices. As I wrote in the the past, Qualcomm’s heart probably was never in the FLO TV project; it just wanted to demonstrate what could be done with a high-bandwidth wireless data network. So it’s hard to count this as a failure for the company; the spectrum will still be used and chips like Qualcomm’s will still be required.
The take-away for me is that there are indeed limits to what the American consumer wants in terms of wireless services. And in particular, it appears that scheduled TV programming on cell-phone-sized devices is probably beyond those limits. I still think that consumers are getting a taste for on-demand programming, thanks to the Internet, and I suspect that high-speed broadband wireless provides a more versatile and appealing solution than just replicating the traditional broadcast model.
Last year, HDTV Almanac was honored with a “Golden Retrevo Award” for 2010 for its coverage of HDTV and home entertainment technology topics. As 2010 draws to a close, Retrevo is getting ready to choose the winners for 2011. And once again, HDTV Almanac has been nominated for the award.
This year, they are asking readers to vote for their favorite candidates. If you think that HDTV Almanac has been of value to you over the past year, then I ask that you take a moment to click on this link — http://www.retrevo.com/search/vote.jsp?q=GRA187 — to vote for HDTV Almanac. There is no registration required and you don’t have to give any personal information to vote.
And if you’re so inclined, you can vote every day through January 24, 2011. We’ll find out in February if HDTV Almanac gets to wear the Golden Retrevo badge for another year.
Thanks for all your support, and please help spread the word.
For quite a while, I’ve been saying that if you want 3DTV with a flat panel display, you’re going to be stuck with active “shutter glasses” for the foreseeable future. Why not use the inexpensive passive glasses like you wear at the local cinema? Because it costs too much to add the required extra polarizing layers to the display panel, and this would raise the price too much to be competitive.
Clearly, I was wrong.
Yesterday, Vizio announced the XVT3D650SV, a new 65″ LED LCD HDTV with 3DTV support. It also has Vizio’s VIA (Vizio Internet Apps) for Internet connectivity and access to Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand, Facebook, Rhapsody, Pandora, and much, much more. It has wired and dual-band 802.11n WiFi support and a Bluetooth universal remote with a QWERTY keypad. It has localized dimming with the edge-lit LED backlight for increased dynamic contrast. And it is compatible with a wide range of 3DTV signal formats – including Blu-ray — which helps futureproof the purchase. And it comes bundled with four pairs of passive 3D glasses which are just like the ones that you wear at the local cinema. In fact, the same glasses will work in both places.
Not only does it use passive glasses, but the price is not sky high. Packed with top-of-the-line features, it will sell at Costco and Sam’s Club (in store and online) for ,500. That’s much less than the price for other 65″ LCD 3DTVs that use active glasses, and even less than the street price for Panasonic’s 65″ 3D plasma model that uses active glasses. So not only does this not cost more than the other approaches, Vizio is able to sell it for less!
In short, this new 3DTV is a game changer. While Vizio has rolled it out as a flagship model, presumably there is no reason why this technology can’t filter down to smaller models and sets without the premium bells and whistles found in this one. I still am holding to my prediction that 3D will be a standard feature in all flat panel HDTVs within two or three years, but now I’m not so sure that they will be using active shutter glasses.
I’ll get a chance to see this new set up close and personal at CES 2011 next month in Las Vegas, and you can be sure that you’ll hear more about it right here. Stay tuned!
Tired of standing in line to see the latest blockbuster? Not so thrilled about paying a fortune for a giant tub of buttery popcorn? Wishing for a way that you could enjoy the latest movies without having to endure the loud conversations and ringing cell phones at your local cinema?
Well, you may be able to solve your problems, if Prima Cinema is successful. According to a Wall Street Journal article, the new company hopes to have a system that will stream first-run movies to your home screen. Now, before you go out and order new slippers to wear for opening night, understand that there is a cost involved. The home system is expected to cost about ,000. Oh, and each movie screening will cost an additional 0. That’s a lot of popcorn!
The company has financial backing from Best Buy and Universal Pictures, and hopes to start installations later next year. Clearly, this is not the solution for the average movie fan, but it could find its niche among the very wealthy who are looking for new, exclusive technologies.
I’ve got a couple Internet-connected devices here, including network media player boxes from Roku and Western Digital. They have individual strengths and weaknessess, but both share two features that I really like.
First, they let me access content on the Internet or on my other computers on the network. This gives me a nearly-endless supply of music and video content that I can enjoy without having to boot up a full-blown computer. This saves me time and money, and makes it easy for me to explore new content that I might not know about, such as genres of music that are not familiar to me. (I’m a big bluegrass fan, but I like to have a change of pace sometimes with a little jazz guitar, or perhaps a ska/reggae mix.)
The other fetaure that I love is the no-hassle upgrade process. In the early days of computers, you’d have to get updated programs on a disk, and then find the time to install and configure the updates. Now, the Internet delivers these upgrades to computers automatically if you want. The cool thing about network-attached entertainment devices is that they too can be updated automatically over the Internet. If the manufacturer makes a deal with a new content source, an automatic update of the network media player’s update means that the new choice will show up on your home menu. No muss, no fuss; I love it.
The fact is that the cost of processing power and its associated memory keeps dropping, which means that these network media players and other boxes are just going to get smarter and smarter. If you’ve been thinking about hooking up a personal computer to your HDTV, you might want to investigate a network-capable Blu-ray player, network media player, or other Internet-connected device and just see what they can do for you.
Several sources including the LA Times have reported that Netflix has struck a new deal with Disney to gain access to more of its television content. This includes episodes from prior seasons of popular ABC shows such as “Lost” and “Grey’s Anatomy”. According to the LA Times article, episodes from the current season still will be only available on Hulu. Some of shows from other Disney networks — ABC Family and the Disney Channel — will be available as early as 15 days after the initial broadcast date.
There are two interesting aspects to this story. First, the Netflix camel’s nose is nudging insitently under the tent. No longer are they just streaming content that’s avaiable on DVDs; they are getting into television episodes in a big way. Sure, it’s not every episode of every show, but at the end of that sentence, you have to put a great big “YET”. The company is in the right place at the right time to capitalize on the studios’ worries about revenues and retransmission rights and plummeting DVD sales. So expect to see more deals that will expand the scope of the content, and compress the delay between initial release and streaming availability.
The other part of the LA Times story that I found interesting is how much Netflix is willing to spend. According to the newspaper’s unnamed sources, the company will pay Disney-ABC between ,000 and 0,000 per episode for the major shows. That may seem like a lot of money, until you find out that some networks pay .4 million per episode for reruns of popular shows. Now, the initial conclusion might be that Netflix can’t afford to increase their offer by 10-fold to compete with these cable networks. I think that’s looking at the wrong end of the telescope. What happens to the studio revenues if cable and satellite services offer more stripped-down packages, or even shift to a la carte pricing? Many of these networks that have these rerun deals may see their subscriber count drop, which reduces ad revenues, which limits what they can pay for the programming. If this happens, it’s likely that Netflix could pick up much of the slack, as subscribers would not be paying extra to gain access to these shows. Netflix revenues increase, and is able to pay the studios more. As they become the major outlet, their bargaining position also gets stronger. It will be interesting to see how the money side of episodic television programming develops.
Looking for the ideal holiday gift for a college student or someone living in a small flat? Note that I say “flat” instead of “apartment” because this new set is only available in the United Kingdom at this point. Sony has rolled out the new KDL-22PX300, a 22″ LCD HDTV with a built-in PS2 video game console. This one device will let you watch television, watch Blu-ray high definition movies, play video games, and thanks to the Ethernet network port, get content streamed from the Internet. And there are even ports that let you use it as a monitor for a personal computer.
One problem with integrated devices such as this is that if one component fails, you have to take the whole thing in for servicing. On the other hand, it saves space and costs less than separate parts. This has been the crux of the argument over compact versus component stereo systems for years, and it applies just as well to integrated HDTVs. In my opinion, these devices have become incredibly reliable and I would not hesitate to buy an integrated device if I had a setting that would benefit from one.
The future is here. Netflix has announced a new subscription option; for .99 a month, you get unlimited access to the company’s streaming video content for movies and television episodes. That’s a drop of a month from the old plan that also included one DVD movie rental at a time. The cost of the single-DVD plan is now increasing to .99, so you can save a month if you don’t want to get the discs in the mail.
The streaming service still suffers from a limited selection of “quality” movies, though some recent deals have helped improve the choices somewhat. And now that Netflix has demonstrated that it is serious about becoming an Internet-based service, it may be able to negotiate some better deals for other content as well. For example, NBC is letting the company stream the latest episodes of Saturday Night Live starting the day after they air. If Netflix can make other deals for current programming, it could pose serious problems for competitors such as Hulu.
The genie of video content over the Internet shows no signs of being put back in its bottle, and growing consumer enthusiasm is building momentum for this game-changing delivery approach. This is going to get very interesting.
What would you say about a company that started streaming television programming over the Internet to subscribers, and chalked up 30 million users in a few weeks? That’s reportedly the score for FilmOn, one of two companies that are streaming locally-broadcast television content over the Internet. Along with iviTV, FilmOn believes that it has the right to rebroadcast the content as a cable company, but the networks are opposing this interpretation. Yesterday, a federal court in New York issued a temporary restraining order against FilmOn, requiring it to stop transmitting content from Fox, CBS, NBC, and ABC affiliate stations over the Internet. This is in advance of a hearing that will be held to determine whether or not there is legal cause for the FilmOn site to be shut down.
FilmOn has agreed to comply with the order, but continues to stream content from other channels. It likely will take weeks before the next set of decisions are handed down, but this is certainly an anxious time for the major networks. If FilmOn and iviTV should prevail in their position that their operations are legal under existing law, it could represent a serious challenge to the existing television broadcast and distribution systems. It could also impact the cable and satellite services by providing broadband subscribers with the equivalent of basic cable service at a much lower price.
We’re witnessing the initial skirmishes of what promises to be an important battle for the television industry as a whole.
This is big news, folks. Time Warner has announced a new subscription option. For to a month, the cable service will offer a stripped down “basic” plan named “TV Essentials” as a response to subscribers who complain that the monthly fees are just too high. The service will include local channels and 12 of the top-rated cable channels.
The company’s press release indicates that this is in response to the impact of the recession, with many households looking for ways to trim costs from their budgets. The release does not mention that there’s a need to stop the bleeding as subscribers cancel their cable contracts; according to MediaBiz, cable services had a net loss of 641,000 subscribers in the third quarter of this year. Time Warner lost 155,000 of those.
Is this new offering going to make a difference? I doubt it. Subscribers will be paying about to per channel per month (aside from the ones that they could get for free just by sticking up an antenna), and unless these are channels that they love, that doesn’t strike me as a great bargain. The choices for content streamed over the Internet aren’t ready yet to take cable’s place in most households, but they’re getting better every day.
And this offering is getting perilously close to the a la carte pricing that consumers want. Why pay for channels you never watch? Instead of bundling them, why not pay or a month for just the individual networks that you want? The problem is that this approach would drastically reduce the cable companies’ revenues, making it difficult for them to maintain their physical infrastructure. And it certainly would not make the networks happy as they would not be able to count on getting bundled in with a package and their viewer counts will undoubtedly drop.
So Time Warner and the others are going to have to find a way to preserve the bundling concept, and still keep the consumer happy. But as Blockbuster and Netflix have discovered, the old models for distributing video entertainment content are not holding up well, and it looks as though new models are developing whether the cable companies are ready or not.
A report this week from DisplaySearch showed that the growth of global television shipments slowed in the third quarter of 2010, compared with the same period in 2009. Last year’s shipments over the prior year were up 26% for the third quarter, but this year, that figure shrank to just 9%. Weak sell-through at the retail level — especially in North America — has led to increased inventories.
DisplaySearch also points out that the lower prices for plasma HDTVs compared with LCD models of equivalent size has resulted in a 35% increase in unit shipments compared with the third quarter last year, but this still left the technology with only about one-tenth the number of units shipped for LCD televisions. Samsung, LGE, and Sony remain the top three flat panel TV brands worldwide.
The low growth in shipments indicates that consumer demand is still weak, which is to be expected under the current economic conditions faced by most consumers. The retailers are clearly doing what they can to spur sales, as we saw last week on Black Friday with 32″ models available for under 0 and a 40″ LCD HDTV under 0. It’s not clear yet how strong the HDTV sales were on Black Friday, but it would appear that there are still plenty of sets in inventory as the bargain advertisements continue. If you’re still waiting to buy a new HDTV, you should expect to strike a good bargain between now and New Year’s.
HDTV may be in Sony’s DNA, according to the company’s marketing campaign, but it appears that they are turning more and more to surrogate parents to produce their offspring. A recent report in DigiTimes indicates that Sony will increase its use of LCD panels made by other companies from 30% to 50%, relying primarily on the Taiwanese companies such as CMI. This means that half of Sony’s HDTVs won’t have Sony LCD panels inside.
This is just one more sign that the once-dominant Japanese electronic industry continues to lose ground in the worldwide markets. Sony also recently disclosed that it would not increase its share of the new Sharp Gen 10 plant from 7% to 34% as originally planned. Electronics production has moved to Korea and Taiwan, and now there are signs that mainland China could take over the top production role before too long.
Yesterday, Level 3 went public with its complaints that Comcast is demanding new fees in order to deliver Level 3’s data over its cable broadband networks. The dispute becomes a lot more interesting when you consider that Level 3 is now distributing the content for Netflix’s on-demand streaming video service. The stakes are increased by the fact that Comcast — the largest cable service in the country — is already under federal scrutiny as it moves to complete its purchase of NBC Universal.
As I dig into the story, however, I find that it’s hard to tell who is truly the aggrieved party here. From what I understand, Level 3 is one of several services that distribute Internet content along the backbones of the data network. Local service providers — such as Comcast – make arrangements with these services so that they can get their data to the end customers. In many cases, it apparently has been standard practice for the nationwide and local services to simply make reciprocal arrangements to give access to the each other’s networks.
Comcast claims, however, that the usage is now lopsided. Level 3 is using much more of Comcast’s resources than the other way around, and Comcast feels that it should be compensated for this. What is causing all that usage? A recent study showed that Netflix accounts for as much as 20% of the total traffic on the Internet at peak times. So maybe Comcast has a valid claim.
On the other hand, Level 3 complains that Comcast is essentially holding its users hostage and demanding that Level 3 pay an unreasonable fee for access. The fear is that this could lead to other services picking and choosing which content they will pass through to their customers. Could Comcast make a sweetheart deal with NBC Universal that would allow their content access to the Comcast networks at a lower fee than for competing content providers?
I certainly don’t have the answers on this, but it appears to me that the growth of the Internet has outrun it rules and we are at risk of falling into a black hole of confusion. It seems to me that we need to have rules established so content providers get access to consumers on a reliable basis and at reasonable cost, while the cable companies and other broadband providers are able to make enough revenues to support their businesses. I expect that the FCC can no longer ignore this “net neutrality” mess, but I also suspect that it’s too late for the FCC to fix it. I expect that there will be court cases and new federal legislation before this problem gets fixed.
Calvin Hsieh of Displaybank has written a great article, entitled “Which Technology Will Dominate the 3DTV Market?”. It’s been picked up all over the place — just search with Google — and one place you can find it is Widescreen Review. In the article, he tears down the different approaches to building a 3D-compatible flat screen television, and analyzes the different choices based on the bill of material costs for the different approaches. It’s a detailed and well-reasoned explanation that answers many of the questions that I get asked by friends, family, and neighbors. And best of all, he essentially agrees with what I’ve been saying for more than a year, so he must be smart!
Here’s my take in a nutshell. Current technology for autostere0scopic 3DTV – the one that doesn’t need glasses — cannot work in the living room for multiple viewers. We won’t have a workable solution at a competitive price for at least 10 years, so you’re going have to wear the goofy glasses. Get over it.
So which goofy glasses will win? It costs almost nothing to add 3D support to a panel capable of 120 Hz refresh rate if you simply present the left eye image and the right eye image in rapid succession. This preserves the full resolution of the image, but means that you need to wear active “shutter” glasses. One good feature of this approach is that the set does not have to cost more, putting the extra cost in the active glasses which the consumer can buy when he or she is ready to start using the 3D feature.
The other approach is to use passive glasses, much like the ones you use at the local cinema. To do this, you have to add a special polarizing layer to the front of the display panel, and it has to be precisely aligned so that it splits the image into left and right eye images. This cuts the resolution of the image in half. It also adds a significant amount to the materials and assembly costs, which makes the final set more expensive. The passive glasses may cost a lot less than active glasses, but that is offset by the initial set price. (And I won’t even mention the fact that this approach can greatly reduce off-axis viewing performance.)
Consumers are especially cost-sensitive these days, and I believe that any technology that inherently costs more than its competitors is a losing strategy. Consumers are much more willing to pay for optional accessories than pay a higher price for the television set. So for the near term, I expect that solutions that use active glasses will dominate for the next few years.
If you’re in the Philadelphia area and would like to hear me talk about 3DTV technologies, I’ll be speaking to the Philadelphia Area Computer Society (PACS) in Willow Grove on Saturday, December 18, at noon. The meeting is free and open to the public; complete details are available athttp://pacsnet.org/.
The transition to digital broadcasting of television content freed up a lot of valuable radio spectrum, much of which the FCC auctioned off years ago for which it collected billions of dollars. Almost before the transition dust had settled, however, the FCC started to look longingly at some of the spectrum that had been assigned to the television broadcasters. The agency felt that it was not being used to its full capacity, and it might be more valuable if reassigned to other purposes, such as wireless broadband services to help expand high-speed network connections around the country. TV broadcasters objected, citing projects such as Mobile DTV that can transmit television content to mobile devices.
Now the FCC has taken the next step in reallocating parts of the radio spectrum. The agency published a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) that asks TV stations to voluntarily give up part of their assigned spectrum. The carrot in the deal is that the stations would likely share in the proceeds from the sale of this spectrum. It appears that there is no stick in this proposal, and television stations will be free to opt out of any reallocation if they choose.
The FCC is seeking public comment on how the extra spectrum should be used to support both fixed and mobile broadband services. You can find the details about Innovation in the Broadcast Television Bands: Allocations, Channel Sharing and Improvements to VHF at the FCC site.
I’m enjoying a day when our home will be filled with friends and family, so I’m not here to write an HDTV Almanac entry today. Instead, let me just wish you and yours happiness and a wonderful list of reasons to be thankful today and always.
Among the many items on my list is the support and encouragement that I have received from so many of you over the years for my HDTV Almanac. I’m glad that you have found it useful, and I hope that you’ll continue to enjoy this content for a long time to come.
Note: I wrote this entry earlier this week, and the situation has undoubtedly developed further since I put this together. So while the details may need to be updated, the issues remain the same.
You may be expecting some insightfull commentary about Black Friday deals on HDTVs, but I’m leaving that for others to cover. Instead, I want to discuss some other current events that may or may not be on your radar as you consider HDTV issues.
Earlier this week, North Korea shelled a South Korean island, killing civilians and South Korean military personnel. South Korea returned the fire. This exchange came hard on the heels of revelations about what may be a North Korean facility that is capable of producing weapons-grade nuclear materials. It appears that the conflict between the two halves of this divided nation is heating up once again, with potentially drastic results. The North Korean military is reportedly large and well-equipped, and a full scale attack on South Korea would undoubtedly be a major battle.
The fact is that it’s difficult to set world politics aside when discussing topics such as home entertainment equipment. The Number 1 and 2 producers of large format LCD panels for HDTVs are LG Electronics and Samsung; both are South Korean companies. The other leading producers are based in Taiwan, which until recently has had its own conflicts with a “mainland China” that still claims sovereignty over the island. The fact is that a major political or military conflict in either place could create a profound disruption in the HDTV market. Supplies could be severely curtailed, along with much of the research and development that drives the advances in display technology. And since a new LCD manufacturing plant costs billions of dollars and many years to build, lost of manufacturing capacity is not easy to replace.
Maybe it’s wrong somehow to be concerned about something as trivial as home television sets when considering warfare between nations, but the fact is that everything is connected in this global economy, and it is important to keep those connections in mind as we ponder the latest developments in current events.
Last week, I stumbled across the phenomenon of Hatsune Miku, a teen-idol Japanese pop singer. One important attribute sets her apart from other performers; she is entirely computer generated. Not only is her anime-style person digitally drawn, her voice and dance moves are also synthesized from the musical score and lyrics. And perhaps most impressive of all, she performs in “live” concerts that draw thousands of glowstick-waving fans. One of the delightful ironies is that she is backed up on stage by a rock band made up of living, human musicians.
What caught my eye were the many references to her “holographic 3D” stage avatar that delivers these performances. I had my doubts about the accuracy of that description, so I dug in further. I did not reach a final conclusion, but I failed to find any evidence at all that the image is projected in 3D. Instead, it looks pretty clear that it simply is a 2D animated image projected onto a rear-projection screen that is stretched across the stage. Here’s one of her performances:
As you watch this video, you’ll see that there are times when the camera trucks left or right through the crowd. It’s hard to tell with the dance movements of the avatars, but it doesn’t look as though there are multiple views available. As you move across in front of the stage, the avatars still seem to be looking at you.
The performances are impressive, but not as impressive as they would be in 3D. The rendering required to create the additional views so that you could see the synths from the side while others see their fronts would be demanding, and the projection system would require more than just a simple rear projection screen. It’s still possible that this is 3D, but I’ll need more information before I’ll believe it. So at this point, I’m not ready to pick this as an exciting breakthrough in projection technology.
In 2009, about 745,000 LCD TVs were sold in India. In October this year, about 700,000 LCD TVs were sold in India. (These figures come from the display tracking firm, DisplaySearch.) In other words, they nearly matched all of the prior year’s sales in just one month. Sony, Samsung, and LG were among the dominant brands.
This is significant because it underscores the growing significance of the Indian consumer market in the world economy. Combined with increased demand in China for flat panel TVs, it appears that we’re fast approaching the day when the United States and Europe will no longer represent the majority of the flat panel television market. We’ll have to see what implications that may have for the supply of products that are available here in the years to come.
According to several reports, Samsung demonstrated a prototype OLED television this week at a trade show. The 19″ model only had a resolution of 960 by 540, which is not sufficient for a high definition display. This does represent one quarter of a 1080p panel, however, so it presumably demonstrates a production process that can be scaled up to larger substrates.
The reports indicate that it was made using an ink jet process for depositing the materials on the panel. According to one report, the company declined to comment on plans for commercial production of the panel, as the technology is still under development.
This demonstration hardly represents a breakthrough, so don’t start holding your breath in anticipation of an OLED HDTV. Scaling this 19″ panel up to a 38″ panel for full 1080p high definition resolution is not a trivial task. One of the big hurdles is being able to produce the required substrates efficiently at that size. There’s nothing in this news that gives me any reason to revise my opinion that we’re still years away from an affordable OLED HDTV of any size.
ESPN has released a report about testing it conducted with sports fans and the viewing of sporting events on 3DTV. The study was conducted by ESPN Research + Analytics during the network’s 3D broadcasts of the 2010 FIFA World Cup last summer.
One of the results was that fan enjoyment of the event rose from 65% to 70% compared with 2D, while the sense of being there increased from 42% to 69%. (Maybe the small difference in the first numbers was because the fans were simply happy to see the World Cup games, whether they were in 2D or 3D.)
Perhaps more significant is the fact that 3D commercials were more effective than the 2D versions. According to the report, “cued recall” went from 68% to 83% with 3D ads, purchase intent increased from 49% to 83%, and the test subjects reporting that they liked the commercials went from 67% to 84%. Now some of this can reasonably be attributed to the novelty effect, but there is still enough smoke in these results that it could light a fire under the advertisers and get them to back 3DTV broadcasts.
One other interesting finding is that while some subjects reported that passive glasses were more comfortable and less distracting, the overall scores on the other measures were not affected significantly by which type of glasses the subjects wore. This could indicate that more comfortable active glasses might be just as acceptable to viewers as the passive glasses.
Clearly, ESPN has a vested interest in positive results for 3DTV broadcasts, as the network has already committed to televising live sports events in 3D. It has already announced college football events, including the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, and recently added 16 college basketball games starting on Thanksgiving Day with the Old Spice Classic tournament from Orlando, Florida. Even so, it appears that ESPN is sincere in its desire to understand what works and what doesn’t work for viewers of live 3D sports action. It is an expensive undertaking, and research such as this should help them climb the learning curve that much faster.
You now have more reasons than ever to connect your HDTV to the Internet (or to some device that connects to the Internet), but many people don’t have an outlet for their home network in the living room. A wireless WiFi connection is not always the answer, as it may not have sufficient bandwidth to handle high definition content.
Rather than spend the money to snake wires through the walls, floors, and ceilings of your home, you could use the Powerline technology as an alternative. This lets you use the electrical wiring in your home to carry the network signals. One example is the new TPL-304E adapter from TRENDnet.
You need a pair of these devices. Plug one into an outlet near your network router, and connect the two with a standard Ethernet cable. Then plug the other device in an outlet near your television (or network device), and use an Ethernet cable to connect them. You now will have a connection that will support up to a 200 Mbps bandwidth connection — faster than most wired home network connections. And setup is simple; just press a button and the devices will configure themselves. You can then install additional adapter in other rooms to expand your home network to other parts of the house. The TPL-340E has indicator LEDs so you can tell its status at a glance, and it even has an additional power outlet so that you don’t lose an outlet in the process.
There are other Powerline adapters available, but whichever you choose, this technology can be the easiest way to extend the reach of your home network.
The HDTV manufacturers are making bold statements about how they’ve got the inventory problems under control, but it sounds like whistling in the dark to me. A perhaps more honest appraisal of the situation came out this week from the president of the discount consumer electronics retailer, hhgregg, according to a report in TWICE.
In a conference call with analysts, Dennis May stated that he expected 3DTV retail prices to drop down to ,199. He pointed out that consumers are waiting for the price premium for advanced HDTVs to shrink, coming closer to the cost of basic models.
Already, we see signs that his predictions are coming true. Many retailers have made plans to slash prices this holiday season. BlackFriday.info apparently has obtained a copy of the Target sales flyer for Black Friday, which lists a 40″ 1080p LCD HDTV from Westinghouse for just 8. Granted, it’s a 60 Hz model, but that’s still a ridiculous price for a 40″ LCD HDTV. And this is probably a loss-leader “doorbuster” deal, but it’s not an offer that can go unnoticed by competing retailers. I’m expecting that you will find 10% to 20% discounts off of the current street price for many HDTVs this holiday season.
If you have the cash, there are going to be some big bargains available.
More than half the U.S. households — 56% — now have at least one HDTV installed, according to a new study by Nielson. That’s not particularly surprising, since it’s getting increasingly difficult to buy a display that isn’t high definition (except for the iPad perhaps).
But here’s a statistic that might surprise you. More than 80% of the television viewing in U.S. households is in standard resolution. Part of that is because there are the 44% of the homes without an HDTV, but another part is that many homes have at least one standard definition set even if they have an HDTV. Even so, about 20% of the content viewed on the HDTVs is still in standard definition.
The bulk of the channels on most television subscription services are in standard definition. (And don’t forget that all DVDs are also in standard definition.) It will be a long time from now before all content is delivered in high definition.
So just because you have an HDTV doesn’t mean that you’re watching HD. It appears that either a lot of Americans don’t know the difference, or they don’t care, or — most likely — they don’t have an alternative for the content that they want to watch.
As we move into the brave new world of HDTV video delivered over the Internet, we need to find ways to hand the enormous amounts of data required. And the prospect of using 4K resolution video — equivalent to more than four 1080p displays — means that we will need even bigger pipes to move this data around. According to a report in Telepresence Options, a group at University of California Santa Barbara is working on solving the problem for local networks.
The current limit for Ethernet is 1,000 Mbits per second over copper wires. Researchers at TOEC — the Tereabit Optical Ethernet Center — are looking to boost that bandwidth by 1,000 times. As the name indicates, the technology uses optical fiber to move up to 1 Terrabit of data per second over a single line.
This isn’t going to happen overnight. The group expects to have 1 Tb Ethernet by 2015, and hope to extend that further to 100 Tb Ethernet by 2020. If they can deliver on these goals, it will help reduce bottlenecks in Internet data access.
The good news is that you still have some time to wait before you have to think about rewiring your home.
Let’s face it; touchscreens are taking over. Smartphones, personal media players, and even HDTV remote controls are now using touchscreens. The advantages are obvious; instead of being limited to pre-defined functions for specific buttons and other controls, a touchscreen can display an infinite number of choices, and lets you respond with touchs and gestures for greater control.
Most of these devices now use a “capacitive touch” technology that is much better than the traditional pressure-sensitive approaches because it is more durable and can provide a more accurate response to input. But there’s a problem; it only can detect the presence of an object that can conduct electricity. This is why these screens will work when you touch it with your finger, but not with your fingernail or when you’re wearing gloves.
That’s why Hitachi Displays has been working to develop a capacitive touch screen that can also detect the presence of an insulator: something that does not conduct electricity. This means that you can wear gloves or use a simple plastic stylus to register inputs on the screen, or your fingertip as you would do now. The company already supports two- and three-point multi-touch capabilities, and has started providing sample panels to manufacturers.
So for those of you who are saving energy by keeping the thermostat down in the winter, you may be able to keep your gloves on as you use your new touchscreen remote control for your home entertainment system.
An article in GigaOm noted a curious detail about ESPN’s new TV Everywhere service that is now available to Time Warner subscribers. You can now access live and on-demand content from the sports network, but only if you are an authenticated subscriber to TW cable.
The curious detail is that the content is not accompanied by commercials. You don’t get uninterrupted programming, however. Instead, the commercial segments are filled with an animated ESPN logo. I suppose that watching the logo for minutes at a time might be less annoying than another repeat of some beer or luxury car commercial, but I’m not certain.
In any case, the GigaOm writer contacted ESPN for an explanation. Here’s the quote that he published from the spokeperson’s response:
Due to rights differences online and on TV, our authenticated channels currently feature an animated logo during traditional commercial time. In the future we expect to add commercials to the online versions of the networks, using the same system ESPN pioneered for live, dynamic commercial insertion on ESPN3.com.
So if you’re lucky enough to be able to get this service, enjoy the animated logo while you can. I expect that ESPN will be hot to “monetize” this new distribution medium for their content just as soon as they have some numbers to show the advertisers.
The new 42PFL6805 LCD HDTV from Philips boasts a “green” feature that you won’t find on the screen; the set’s remote control has solar panels on the back so that it can recharge using the light available in the room. In my experience, we get a year or two from a set of batteries in our remote control, but I can see how a battery or two a year from millions of TV sets can add up to a significant environmental issue.
The Philips remote is not the first to be solar-powered, but I believe it is the first to be included as a standard feature with a television set. So a tip of the hat to Philips for trying to make a practical contribution to helping the environment. Just don’t lose this remote in your sofa cushions or it will run out of power.
Okay, it’s time for my semi-annual rant about consumer electronics that tell time. Just about everything seems to tell the time these days, from microwave ovens to electronic picture frames. Some of them make sense; a cell phone needs an internal clock, I believe, to help negotiate communications with cell towers, for example. I’m not entirely clear, however, why some personal media players need to know the time of day. I’d be much happier if mine had a simple “sleep” function that I could call on to shut itself off after 30 minutes.
But this Sunday, I’ll be running around with my cell phone, changing the time on all sorts of electronic devices around the house to adjust for the end of Daylight Savings Time. And thus my rant. Why do I have to do that? These are smart devices, many of which are more powerful than my first half dozen personal computers put together. Yet many have to be reset by me.
The correct time is all over the place, and these devices should be able to ask for themselves and make the change. Here’s my list; if it receives radio waves of any sort, if it is connected to the Internet, or if it is connected to any device that receives radio waves or is connected to the Internet, then by golly, it should know what time it is without relying on me. I actually think that anything that is plugged into an electrical outlet could reasonably be expected to know the time, if the electrical companies would only send a signal. How hard could that be?
I admit that things are a bit better now than in the past. My computer has known the correct time for years, and my cell phone makes the transition without help. But all the rest of these things with clocks? Helpless. And it doesn’t have to be this way.
So as you go through your home (and office) moving all the clocks back an hour, see if you don’t agree with me. Let me know how many items in your home entertainment system you had to adjust for the time change.
Hmmph! There’s one more good reason to move to Hawaii.
If you have a personal media player such as an iPod, you probably enjoy listening to and viewing your content in private. Bu if you’re like many people, you also like to be able to share the content with others, especially at home. Just look at all the docking devices that include speakers so that you can fill the room with your music. But what about the pictures? Are you going to drop your player in a dock and then crowd around to view the tiny screen?
Optoma is betting that you want more than that, but less than a full-blown high definition home entertainment system. (After all, there are some flat panel HDTVs and projectors that offer iPod docks already.) The company has announced its new Neo-i, an iPod dock that includes a built-in pico projector in the tabletop device. The projector has a Wide VGA resolution, suitable for widescreen DVD resolution content to go along with the 16 Watt stereo sound system. The LED-illuminated projector is rated at only 50 lumens, so you’ll want to dim the lights when watching videos as a large image, though the image should bright enough for normal lighting conditions if you keep the image down to the size of a sheet of paper or so.
The Neo-i weighs less than 2.5 pounds, and you can get an optional battery pack so that you don’t even have to plug it in. With this, you can enjoy your own personal “drive-in” movies on your deck on a summer evening.
The Neo-i is slated to ship in mid-December with a list price of 9. The standard 30-pin Apple docking connection supports all iPod, iPhone, and iTouch devices, and can also recharge a device while it’s in the dock.
Last year, a transformer on an electrical pole outside our home decided to go out with a bang and in a blaze of glory, showering sparks onto the street. Pretty spectacular on its own, but even more impressive when you consider that it also took a number of innocent victims with it. I don’t know what happened in any of the surrounding homes, but our tally was plenty all by itself: one large LCD HDTV, one small LCD HDTV with integrated DVD player, two small CRT TVs, one stand-alone DVD player, a microwave oven, and one Microsoft XBox 360. We had spares for the CRT TVs and the DVD player, and we were fortunate that we were able to get the two LCD TVs repaired at a nominal cost (a small fraction of the replacement price). So the major expense was for the microwave and XBox.
We could have purchased simple insurance that would have prevented the loss entirely, but as it was, we got these new barn doors only after the horses had escaped and been brought back again. As a computer expert for several decades, I should have known better. All we needed was some quality surge protectors at each device. Just like I already have on all my computers.
A surge protector is essentially a shock absorber for electronic equipment. A nearby lighting strike or other event can cause a spike in the electricity coming into your home, which can fry the circuits of electronic devices. A surge protector has components called “metal oxide varistors” — MOVs — that can absorb this extra energy and keep it from reaching your valuable equipment.
One important point to keep in mind is that MOVs act like a car bumper with a crush zone, not like a spring. When it takes a hit, that uses up some of its capacity to absorb future spikes. And eventually, the protection is used up and it is no better than a simple extension cord at saving your devices. For this reason, I recommend that you pay a little extra for a unit that has an indicator light that will show you if you still have functioning protection.
You’ll also want to check the specs; a rating for 1,000 to 2,000 joules should be sufficient for most users. These will cost a little more than the absolute cheapo units with no indicator light, but you’ll get better protection.
And take it from me; it costs less to buy them now than it does to wait and buy them after you’ve had to repair or replace your home entertainment equipment.
XPAND has announced that its new Universal X103 3D glasses are available for pre-order on Amazon. Priced at 9, they cost less than some of the glasses available from the 3DTV manufacturers, but are designed to work with “any 3D-ready display, regardless of brand” according to the company. (I do not have every brand of 3DTV available to me here, so I have not had the opportunity to test the accuracy of this claim.)
Note that these only work with 3DTVs that require active glasses. This means that the left and right images are presented one after the other, and the glasses are used to block the image from reaching one eye or the other in sync with the display. The advantage of this approach is that you get full resolution images; sets that use the passive polarized glasses that you use at the local cinema only deliver half the resolution because each image is split between the left and right eye. At the present, it costs much more to manufacture a passive-glasses 3DTV, and as far as I know, there are not yet any on the market in this country. Some companies — such as Vizio – have demonstrated products using this approach. I do expect sets requiring passive glasses to show up before the end of the year, however.
Unless the passive-glasses 3D sets can lower their production costs significantly, however, I expect that you’ll be able to buy an active-glasses set and a family-pack of active glasses for less money. And the XPAND glasses can help ease the minds of consumers, keeping them from getting locked into one specific brand for their 3DTV purchases.
I still think it’s too early to buy a 3DTV – wait another year or two for the content to catch up — but if you really want to get one this holiday season, be sure to consider the XPAND glasses as a way to save some money and hedge your bet on the 3DTV brand.
Last week, a company named Ikanos Communications made an announcement that is somewhat propellor-headed, but could have far-reaching impact on the average consumer. The company announced the lauch of “NodeScale Vectoring“, which reduces the impact of crosstalk between common copper wire phone lines. It uses unique algorithms, compression, and coding techniques to reduce the processing power required to compensate for crosstalk and external interference.
Or at least that’s what the press release says, I think. The part that I’m sure that I understand is that they believe that this technology can deliver 100 Mbps performance over traditional copper phone lines. That’s up to 100 times faster than some existing DSL broadband plans, and is about twice as fast as the fastest offering from residential fiber optic services (which is not an option for you unless they’ve brought fiber to your neighborhood).
If Ikanos can deliver on this technology, it could mean that nearly every home with a telephone line could get an extremely high-speed broadband Internet connection. And without having to upgrade the wiring.
Online streaming of video content, video chat, and a host of other new services require more bandwidth. It is possible that technology such as NodeScale Vectoring could make that bandwidth available on a wide basis. And that’s why a techie topic like this could have a big impact on how you connect to the Internet.
Want a battery-powered portable projector? Buy.com is selling the Eyeclops Portable Mini-Projector for just .99, and they’ll ship it for free! It uses a solid state LED light source, so you’ll never have to replace an expensive lamp, and it runs on just four D flashlight batteries.
Now, before you get too excited, this is not an HD device. Heck, it’s not even SD. The manufacturer’s Web site does not mention resolution, but according to other sources, the projector has QVGA resolution, which stands for “quarter VGA“. That means it would take four of these 320 by 240 pixel images to create a single standard definition image. And it’s not bright. You need to have a darkened room in order to be able to get the most from this projector.
It may not be the amazing deal that it might sound like at first, but it still is a stunning price for a video projector.
Western Digital has launched another network media player, but this time with a twist. The new WD TV Live Hub includes 1 TB of hard drive storage that can be accessed and shared across your home network. In addition, DLNA support means that it can play video, music, and photos from files stored on computers on your network. It also can connect with Internet streaming sources, including Netflix, YouTube, Flickr, and Pandora, as well as Blockbuster on Demand.
It can output video in 1080p resolution over an HDMI 1.4 connection, and has a pair of USB ports that can be used to connect cameras or other storage devices.
So how much would you pay for an HD network media player that also can hold all your family photos, your videos, and your entire music collection so that you can stream them to any computer in your home? The WD TV Live Hub is available now from Best Buy and from Western Digital’s online store for a list price of 9.99. I figure 0 for the network media player and 0 for the 1 TB external hard drive, which makes this a reasonable price.
I’ve been seeing an interesting commercial on television these days. (Being from the Philadelphia area, there are a few live sports events that I’ve been drawn to watch, and thus I’ve been exposed to more commercials than usual.) The ad in question is from DirecTV, the satellite television subscription service, and the positioning message is that DirecTV gets new release movies a lot sooner than you can get them through Netflix.
Huh? The take-away here is that satellite services apparently aren’t competing with cable companies or terrestrial broadcast; they see Netflix as the bigger threat. And the ad is not specific about whether they’re talking about discs through the mail or movies streamed over the Internet. While it is true that subscription television networks still have an advantage over Netflix over release dates — especially the Netflix streaming service — I expect that the situation will change rapidly as Netflix builds more clout with the studios and is able to negotiate better and better deals.
How serious a threat is streaming content over the Internet? The market tracking company WitsView is predicting that 40 million Internet-connected TVs will ship worldwide this year, which will account for about 20% of the total. By 2015, sales could hit 200 million units, or about two out of every three televisions sold. Tell me that this is not enough of an installed base to attract Hollywood’s attention! And this doesn’t even count all the Blu-ray players, video game consoles, and network media players that also can connect a television to the Internet.
There’s another subtle angle to the DirecTV commercial. The implication is that you can get better movies sooner with the satellite service, so people who watch movies should sign up. But what about people who are interested primarily in movies, and not all the other stuff that fills the hundreds of available channels? This marketing approach would seem to open the door to the question of a la carte pricing. If I just want to watch movies, I can pay less than a month to Netflix and have discs delivered to my mailbox while I also can watch all that I want streamed over the Internet. Is DirecTV going to offer me such a low-cost and focused option? Can satellite and cable survive if subscribers don’t have to pay for the dozens of channels that they don’t watch?
There are many signs of desperation and confusion in the subscription television business, and I sense that we’re rapidly approaching a tipping point.
Netflix has released new software updates for the Nintendo Wii and the Sony PS3 that lets them access the Netflix online streaming service, without having to put in a disc. They now join the Microsoft XBox 360 in having this convenient feature.
This enormous installed base helps extend Netflix’s reach just that much further. The streaming video feature is free for all who subscribe for one or more rental discs by mail at a time, and is a major factor in introducing consumers to the convenience of accessing movies and television programming over the Internet.
HD movies and television episodes over the Internet are getting more affordable and easier to use. One of the latest developments is the announcement that Roku will be adding support for Hulu Plus to its product line, which starts at . The two models with 1080p HD support cost and 0.
Aside from the a month subscription for Hulu Plus and your broadband fee, you have no other monthly fees to pay. And that should be an attractive alternative for some cable subscribers who are tired of paying highly monthly fees.
Okay, let me start by saying that I’m planting a stake in the technological terminology ground here, and declaring that I will now use the term “network media player” to refer to devices that connect a television to your home network so that you get access to media files stored locally and on the Internet. In the spirit of full disclosure, let me also point out that I have been singularly unsuccessful in such attempts in the past. (Everyone still says “laser printer” even though I tried to switch it to “page printer” about two decades ago because not all of them use lasers. But so it goes.)
These are the devices that let you stream Netflix movies or listen to your MP3 collection on your HDTV. It includes products such as the Roku boxes or Western Digital’s WD HD TV Live series. Note that I would also describe some HDTVs, Blu-ray players, video game consoles, and home theater receivers as having “network media player features“, which means that they can also access content from your network or the Internet without the need for a separate box.
There are more and more of these coming on the market every day, and I find it hard to keep up with all the choices and details. Now you’ll see why I started by defining my terms. Veronica Belmont of Revision3 has stepped up by creating a shared Google Docs spreadsheet on the Internet. She calls the devices “set top boxes“, but I reserve that term for the thing that provides an interface between your television and your subscription television service, such as cable or satellite TV. In any case, this list has a lot of good detail.
You can read the contents of the file, and if you wish, update and add to the information there. Like WikiPedia or any other crowd-sourced material, trust but verify before you take any action based on the details in the file. Still, it makes an excellent starting point for your research into these products.
According to an article in TWICE, the ad flier for the Sears “Black Friday Now” sale on October 29 and 30 has been leaked. The flier has been posted by BFAds.net, which also included some interesting commentary. They point out that they have gone through the 16-page flier and have determined that instead of blockbuster discounts, the items appear to be priced as usual.
Maybe we need a new term: “blackwashing“. This would apply to retailers who invoke “Black Friday” in their marketing and ad copy, but don’t actually offer anything other than business as usual prices.
Whatever you want to call it, be careful about ads for big sales in consumer electronics, especially before Thanksgiving. I still have no doubt that we’re going to see some dramatic price cuts on products this holiday season, and I’m sure that some retailers will be tempted to jump the gun in order to capture a few more consumer dollars. But just plastering “Black Friday” on a sales flier won’t be a guarantee that you’ll find the bargains in those pages.
Those who look for signs of hope in the OLED display market will now have one less place to look for them. Toshiba has announced that it will not produce OLED panels at Toshiba Mobile Display as originally planned, and instead will focuse on LCD panels instead. This comes after the company spent nearly 0 million two years ago to create an OLED production line.
This decision makes a little more sense when you consider that Toshiba sold its low-temperature poly-silicon (LTPS) line in Singapore to AUO earlier this year, as pointed out by my friend and colleague, Ken Werner. The fact that Toshiba is struggling financially is also likely to be a factor, and they have to cut costs and shed excess assets so that they can tend to their primary revenue generators. The risk in this strategy, of course, is that it leaves them with fewer options should the markets shift away from their core products. Times could remain tough for Toshiba for a while.
The question is whether or not consumers will pay for mobile television service. The people have voted with their dollars, and now Qualcom’s subsidiary FLO TV has announced that it’s shutting down the service that it sells directly to subscribers, as reported by TWICE. The company also announced that it will continue to support the branded versions of the service that it provides to AT&T and Verizon. Verizon’s V Cast and AT&T’s Mobile TVwill continue to operate, at least for now. Apparently Qualcom is looking to sell off some or perhaps all the 700 MHz spectrum that it bought to deliver its mobile TV signals. There could be strong demand for it for wireless broadband services, or some company may want to lease the network as it stands so that it can deliver its own content.
I’d have to say that it’s unlikely that Qualcom’s heart was ever really in this project. It is a chip company, and it wanted to sell its tuner chips to cellphone makers and other consumer electronic manufacturers. Without a network, there was no demand, so Qualcom went out and built its own network. In spite of support from third-party manufactures such as Audiovox, consumers were slow to sign up for the per month service that offered about 20 channels of content from major networks.
Now that one mobile TV service has bit the dust, it remains to be seen whether or not the free Mobile DTV system can find a toehold. Early indications from a test roll-out in the Washington DC market were positive, but the sample of users was tiny and it’s not clear whether or not the consumer electronics manufacturers are going to make devices to support the system. It may be that wireless broadband will give users on-demand access to video from the Internet, and simply overtake these systems that attempt to recreate the traditional broadcast programming model.
Cable television companies are suffering from consumer approval ratings that continue to plunge headlong for the cellar. And at the same time, networks are trying to deal with their declining revenues by hitting up the cable companies for more money in return for retransmitting their content. Some might say that the cable companies are just getting a dose of their own medicine, as consumers constantly are asked to pay more for the same service they had been getting.
And once again, the negotiations between a network and a cable company may lead to a confrontation where the subscribers are the losers. This time it’s News Corp’s FOX network channels in play for the Cablevision subscribers. The current agreement expires this Saturday, October 16th, just in time for the FOX coverage of the Major League Baseball’s League Championship Series. And guess where many of Cablevision’s subscribers live? In the New York and Philadelphia markets, where the Yankees and Phillies are set to play in their respective championship rounds. And FOX is threatening to pull the plug on its broadcasts if Cablevision doesn’t agree to their terms.
We’ve seen this before, and we’ll see it again, but I don’t expect that consumers will put up with having their programming held hostage for much longer. I expect to see the FCC or the US Congress get involved in this problem since it appears that the networks and cable companies (and satellite companies for that matter) no longer seem to be able to play nice. This probably won’t be in the best interest of either of the warring parties, though there’s a chance that consumers could come out with some sort of a win. Perhaps the government will force a la carte pricing on subscription television services, though I expect that would spell disaster for most of them and many of the network channels.
Here’s the good news: at CEATAC in Tokyo this week, Toshiba demonstrated its flat panel HDTVs that create 3D images without the need for any special glasses. The technical term is autostereoscopic, and it’s just what consumers have been clamoring for. And the demonstration now proves what I’ve been saying all along; consumers are going to hate it.
Why would they hate the no-glasses displays, since that’s what they’ve been citing as the reason for not buying 3D HDTVs? The answer is that you must be careful what you wish for. In this case, the cure is far worse than the disease. Don’t take my word for it; here’s a quote from an article in the LA Times:
You can’t just plop down anywhere in the living room and watch 3-D shows on these TVs. The sets have nine designated angles from which the format can be viewed. Otherwise, the screen is a blur.
Yes, you read that correctly. There are exactly nine positions where you see the 3D effect. Anywhere else, the image is scrambled just as if you look at a “regular” 3D HDTV or movie without the special glasses. And trust me; the average US consumer will not sit still for such a burdensome limitation. They’ll be reaching for their 3D glasses faster than you can say “Avatar”.
Why is there this limitation? It’s simple optics. In order to have a stereoscopic 3D image, you need to deliver different images to the left and right eye of the viewer. In order for someone to see the two images in the correct eyes, the images must radiate out somehow from the screen. If you move your head a little to the left, the “left eye” image will now be shining in the right eye. The only way to prevent this problem when you move is to add sophisticated head tracking and a mechanism that lets you “steer” the images to the correct eyes. This has been done for single-viewer displays, but it’s expensive. And it’s just about impossible for multiple viewers watching the screen at the same time.
The only solution is to create “sweet spots”. From the sound of it, Toshiba’s technology may be a lot like the Philips nine-point autostereoscopic display that I saw demonstrated many years ago. It was very effective, but only when you stood in the correct spot, and you stood still.
If that’s not enough of a wet blanket for consumer enthusiasm, how about this? The new sets will only be sold in Japan for now, but the 20″ model will go for a cool ,950. What’s that? I’d say it’s about ten times the price of a 20″ HDTV, or maybe five times if you allow for 3D support. The ,400 difference would pay for enough glasses for a big family, and still have some extras for when friends drop by.
I don’t blame people for wanting to get 3D without glasses, but the fact is that it just can’t work in a way that lets you walk around the room watching it like you can a traditional 2D HDTV image. And it’s expensive at that.
My hope is that the Toshiba demonstration will finally get American consumers to lower their expectations and accept that it’s either 3D with the glasses, or no 3D. They really won’t be happy with the third choice.
Hulu Plus is the subscription-based premium service from Hulu (though you still have to watch some advertisements) that lets you watch recent episodes of many major, popular television shows. More than just a “catch-up” service, many consumers are using it as their DVR function of choice. This has been made easier as access to the service is showing up in some consumer electronic devices, eliminating the need for a computer in the living room.
Samsung was first to add it to some of its HDTVs and Blu-ray players. Now Vizio has it in its XVT3SV series models, which also won a CNET 2010 Editors’ Choice Awared. In fact, it’s available in any of the company’s models that support Vizio Internet Apps (VIA), a feature that provides access to a variety of programming sources, including Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand, and Vudu.
Building this support into the HDTV or Blu-ray player makes a lot of sense. It can’t cost much if the network media players such as Roku and Apple TV cost about 0, and it eliminates some connections and confusion in the process which is always a good idea for a consumer product.
It is getting to the point where I’d have a hard time choosing a new HDTVthat doesn’t have network support to get content from the Internet.
While some people are mounting their flat panel HDTVs on the wall, many still have their sets placed in an entertainment center or sitting on a low table. And these pose a significant safety risk to small children. One study showed that in 2007, almost 17,000 children were admitted to emergency rooms after having furniture or a TV fall on them. This number marked a 41% increase over the number of similar accidents in 1990, which some attribute to the rise in popularity of flat panel HDTVs.
Sanus is a leading manufacturer of wall mounts for flat panels, but they have now come out with a product that addresses this safety issue of unmounted HDTVs. They have come up with a Y-shaped strap that attaches two straps to the mounting holes on the back of the set, and then third is secured to the piece of furniture, and then to the wall. As a result, the flat panel is prevented from falling forward.
And how much does this peace of mind cost? In a market segment that tends to have expensive options, the Sanus Elements ELM701 Anti-Tip Strap has a list price of just .99. Is your flat panel safe from a curious toddler?
What is the monster lurking among the dust bunnies under the beds of cable television executives? Google TV. Promising to be the one-stop solution to organizing all your video and other media options, Google TV could transform the way we think about and watch video programming.
And now comes word from TV Technology that Google is working with some networks to optimize their content for the new system. Which networks? So far, Google has named some big names. How about Turner Broadcasting, which owns CNN, TBS, TNT, and the Cartoon Network? NBC reportedly will provide CNBC Real-Time that will provide stock-tracking feeds. HBO is offering HBO Go, which will give subscribers access to on-demand content. And the NBA will have a app that gives you real-time statistics. Google also mentioned partnering with Amazon Video on Demand and Netflix.
What will you be able to do with Google TV? Here’s a video that demonstrates some of the apps that you can expect:
The market-tracking firm Futuresource is bullish on Blu-ray. The company forecasts that 24 million players will be sold in 2010, just in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. And this does not include the Sony PlayStation 3 (which includes a Blu-ray player). The company predicts that 11 million of these units — nearly half of the total — will be sold in the fourth quarter alone. They predict an 80% growth in unit sales over last year.
Certainly the falling prices for Blu-ray players are helping fuel the growth in sales. The players still cost many times as much as an equivalent-quality DVD player, but in terms of absolute dollars, the difference is shrinking to 0 or 0 in many cases, which is a small enough differential that many consumers can accept. Also, the recovering economy shows signs that some consumers feel comfortable about spending again, which could translate into stronger holiday sales figures than last year.
While online sources of streaming movie and television content are certainly making an impact on the sales and rental of optical discs, these sources do not yet have broad support for high definition versions of the content. At the moment, the Blu-ray discs remain one of the best options for getting the best viewing experience for HD content.
The future for Blu-ray is a little cloudier, but it is possible that its ability to handle 3D content may extend its life and help sales to continue to grow. There are still a lot of people out there who are perfectly satisfied with their standard definition DVDs when viewed on an HDTV, however, which may put an upper limit on just how far Blu-ray can expand in the market.
Millions of people use Skype every day to place hold video chats with friends, family, and business colleagues across town or around the world… for free. All you need is a computer with a Web cam and a microphone, and you’re good to go. There are even Skype applications that let you have a video chat with someone using certain models of smart phones. (You need one with a camera that faces you while you’re looking at the screen.) There are also other systems that offer free video chat, from giants such as Google and Microsoft to smaller companies that specialize in this.
So what is Cisco thinking with its announcement this week of its new “umi” product? (Yes, it’s pronounced “you-me”, because that’s who is involved in the video chat. Cute, huh?) First, you have to have an HDTV with an available HDMI connection, as well as a high-speed broadband connection. Then you have to pay 0 (list price) for the hardware. And finally, you also have to pay .99 a month for the service. Huh? Why on earth would anyone pay about 0 (for the first year) just to have video chats with others when you can do it for free using other services?
The answer is that the Cisco service should be a lot better. I use Skype for video chat a lot, and while it’s great, the image and sound quality is not always ideal. Think back to the days of analog cell phones and “can you hear me now?” It can be sort of like that. Cisco is going to provide a service “in the cloud” where they will be providing the computing power to make sure that you get a good connection every time. And it will do more. If someone “calls” you and you’re not there to answer, they can leave a video message that will get stored in the cloud until you’re ready to retrieve it. And you can access video messages and other features using a laptop, even though it’s not connected to the hardware.
And speaking of the hardware, it’s a lot more than just a Webcam. The package includes a microphone array that should be able to pick the sound of your voice out of the ambient noise in the room. The camera is motorized, so that it can pan and zoom in response to remote control commands. In other words, it’s designed from the ground up for living room use.
Now, if all you could do with this is call other umi users, I’d have a real problem with that. Video phones have failed in the past largely because they never could get enough of them installed to create a useful network. According to the Cisco press release, you will be able to hold video conversations with people who are using the video chat feature of Google Chat. That immediately enlarges the universe of potential conversation partners. And there’s the added benefit that the Google Chat users will be exposed to the advantages of umi, making them prospects to step up to the better service.
We won’t know just how well all this works until it hits the shelves in mid-November, through Best Buy and directly from Cisco. But the company has clearly developed a comprehensive marketing plan which includes mall tours and getting Oprah to use the system to contact people on her show. Cisco looks as though they will be able to make a good case for why you should pay for a service that you could get free somewhere else.
Ho, ho, ho, the holiday buying season is upon us. On Tuesday, I received what I think was my very first holiday sales pitch for consumer electronics. Judge for yourself; here’s the heading graphic:
CompUSA is a division of Tiger Direct, and the company has a reputation for aggressive marketing and attractive prices. (This particular email had a 55″ RCA 240 Hz LCD HDTV from RCA for 9.99, and a Magnavox Blu-Ray player (refurb) for .99.) Still, invoking Santa in the first week of October seems a bit extreme to me. But I could be wrong; after all, there were only 81 days left until Christmas, after all. Of course, that’s only slightly less time than the whole summer from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Maybe stores should start running Back to School specials at the start of June.
I get it. It’s been hard to separate consumers from their money these days. Maybe starting a holiday sales theme now will scare some buyers into jumping at a deal. Not me; I view this as a harbinger of tough times ahead for consumer electronics retailers. I’m going to sit tight, because I think the best deals are yet to come.
Have you ever thought about where broadcast television signals come from? I’m not talking about the studio, I’m talking about the actual transmission tower. You know, the thing you aim your rooftop antenna at to get the best signal. In parts of the country where it’s really flat, a single tower can reach a circle with a 55 mile radius or more. You could drive for two hours and not lose the signal.
In order to get that coverage, however, you need a tall tower. In one particular case, the tower is 1,768 feet tall. That’s taller than the Empire State Building. It’s taller than the Sears Tower. The top is more than a third of a mile up in the air. And if something breaks, someone has to go up there and fix it. Ever thought about that?
Well, here’s a video that can show you just exactly what that’s like. The clip starts after the climber has completed a 1,600 foot elevator ride (the equivalent to riding to the 160th floor in a skyscraper, if it goes that high). Then he starts climbing. And it all gets recorded by his helmet-mounted video camera. After he reaches the top of the tower, he still has to climb the 60 foot antenna itself. (Another six stories!)
I don’t do well with heights. I have trouble working on my own rooftop antenna. There’s no way you could get me to do what these guys do for a living. And this video is a great demonstration of what it’s like at the top of a broadcast antenna. Wow!
(And a tip of the hardhat to TV Technology for finding this video.)
CEDIA Expo is the annual show for the high-end home theater industry. (CEDIA is easier to say than “Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association“.) It was held last week, and while many of the products are well out of range for the average home owner’s budget (such as the new Runco D-73d DLP front projector that uses an LED light source and supports 3D content for a mere ,000), there were still developments of broad interest. And the majority of the display announcements seem to have been about products that support 3D content.
For example, both Sony and Mitsubishi showed front projectors that show 3D content. Both apparently use Sony’s SXRD LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) microdisplay panels, and both have 1080p resolution. The Sony VPL-VW90ES model will have a list price of ,000 when it ships in November; the Mitsubishi pricing and ship date were not announced yet.
Sharp and Toshiba were among the manufacturers showing new flat panel LCD HDTVs with 3D support. The Sharp LE925 will come in 52″ and 60″ models which are expected ship in time for the holidays. Both feature the new Sharp Quattron four-color LCD technology, which adds yellow sub-pixels to the standard red, green, and blue triads. Toshiba showed their WX800 series LCD HDTVs with 3D support, which will ship in 46″ (,600 list) and 50″ (,300 list) prices. Using LEDs in an edge-lit configuration, the panels are less than 1.2″ thick.
You’re not going to find many of these products at your local Walmart or Best Buy; high-end products like these are destined for the high-end specialty retailers and custom installation markets. In time, however, the features and prices of these products will trickle down to the broader market.
It looks as though Comcast is actually going to take over NBC Universal, or at least the company is acting as though it is going to. At the end of last week, Comcast announced that COO Steve Burke is going to take over as CEO of NBCU when the final deal goes through. The current NBCU CEO Jeffrey Zucker announced that he’d leave the company when the sale is finalized.
The takeover of a major network by a cable company is uncharted territory. In this case, it’s particularly interesting because NBCU is so much more than just the struggling NBC television network, which one analyst has valued at a negative 0 million. In fact, the most valuable property in the basket is actually the USA Network, a cable channel, valued at .7 billion. That’s nearly triple the Universal Studios part, worth an estimated billion. Other cable channels in the basket include SyFy, CNBC, MSNBC, and Bravo, all of which are mainstays for subscription television services across the country. What will it mean to have them controlled by Comcast?
Pull up a chair and break out the popcorn; this is going to get interesting.
Ah, the brave new world of home entertainment. Streaming video across high-speed broadband connections will cause legions of viewers to cut their cable cords (and satellite cords, except that satellites don’t have cords). HDTVs, Blu-ray players, video game consoles, and even digital picture frames have wired and wireless connections to home networks, opening up a world of opportunities and possibilities. Soon we will all be watching and listening to whatever we want, wherever we want, whenever we want.
Or will we? In a press release announcing a new research report, the Diffusion Group (TDG) cites some pretty grim statistics. Only 40% of homes with broadband connections have a home network, a share that apparently has been fairly steady since 2008. It’s not cost; even at a price of , only about 13% of the respondents indicated that they would be highly likely to add a home network in the next six months.
Among broadband households without a network, 87% are flat-out not interested in buying a home network. Here’s how they break out. 16% have never heard of a home network. 46% aren’t very familiar with them. 34% are familiar, but don’t own one. And 5% used to own a home network, but not anymore.
Huh? Those of us watching Hulu and Netflix on our HDTVs get it, but apparently we’re in a very small minority. The big problem is that without these other viewers getting on the bandwagon, the market for the new products that rely on a network connection will be stagnant. And instead of taking over, these products could disappear.
So here’s your homework for the next three months as we get ready for the holiday season. If you already have a home network and use it to view streaming content on your HDTV or some other device, take a few minutes to show it off next time you have family, friends, or neighbors drop by for a visit. Show them that it does not require a degree in rocket science or brain surgery to take advantage of this technology. (I believe that programming our old VCR was much more difficult.) Share a little of your enthusiasm. Be a cheerleader. Let’s get them hooked — and hooked up – so that we can keep development on Internet-connected home entertainment moving forward.
I just can’t help it. Sometimes, I hear about HDTV deals that just are too good to let go by without a mention. I recently received an email from the PR firm that works for Westinghouse Digital, which is known for its low-priced LCD HDTV offerings. So let’s play “The Price is Right” and see if you can get the price right on this one.
First, the retailer in question is Costco, and the offer is only available online. (Here’s the link, but don’t click on it yet until you’ve made your guess.) It’s for a 42″ LCD HDTV. The resolution is 1080p, of course, and it has a 120 Hz refresh rate which is a plus. It comes with a pair of HDMI inputs. Okay, what’s the price? I would not be surprised by a price under 0, and maybe even under 0.
But wait; there’s one more detail. This HDTV has an LED backlight that reportedly draws 20% less electricty than a standard 100 Watt incandescent light bulb. What does that do to your guess? It’s edge-lit, so the set is specified as 1.5″ thick. Given the price of LED backlit LCD HDTVs, I’d probably double my initial estimate. How about you?
Well, now through October 10, or until Costco.com runs out of them, you can get one for 9.99, which is less than the usual online price. Now, I have not seen one of these units in person, so I can’t offer any comments about picture quality or other features. But if you want a thin, LED-edgelit LCD HDTV, this could be worth checking out.
On June 19, 2009, all major terrestrial television broadcasters were required to switch from analog to digital transmissions (though many had already made the switch by that point). People scrambled to get their rebate coupons from the FCC for digital conversion boxes, and there was more than a bit of grumbling when people discovered that they no longer could get a signal strong enough to show a picture. (Cable and satellite companies were more than happy to sign them up for a subscription, however.) Fortunately, all that is in the rear-view mirror as we all merrily cruise down the highway of digital television.
Not so fast. The fact is that there are still thousands of television stations in this country still broadcasting analog signals. These are low-power stations and repeater stations that are used in rural areas to relay signals into sparsely-populated areas. But the FCC has finally turned its attention to these, and last week, it adopted a “Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Memorandum Opinion and Order” that — among other things — establishes the summer of 2012 as the deadline for these low-power stations to convert to digital transmissions.
How big a problem can this be? According to the FCC document, there are more than 7,500 of these low power stations. Only a bit more than half of them have made the switch to digital broadcasts, which still leaves more than 3,000 stations that still need to make the transition. Why bother? It’s the same problem as with the full-power stations, except on a smaller scale. Digital transmissions require less radio spectrum, so it frees up frequencies for other applications. In part, this will allow emergency services such as police, fire, and ambulance services to upgrade their communications systems. The issue has taken on additional importance with the National Broadband Plan which will calls for the use of part of the radio spectrum for wireless broadband services.
The FCC is taking comments for 60 days after the document is published in the Federal Register, with reply comments for an additional 30 days after that.
Is anyone surprised by this morning’s news that Blockbuster has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection? It has been rumored and discussed for months (years?). Squeezed hard by Netflix’s mail service and the Redbox kiosks, it has become increasingly difficult for Blockbuster to compete in the movie rental business with their traditional brick-and-mortar approach. As I’ve discussed here repeatedly, the company is working to make forays into both the online delivery and kiosk rental markets, but it continues to look like too little, too late, to save the company.
Today’s news indicates that this is a “structured bankruptcy” in which about 80% of the debt holders have agreed to reduce the existing 0 million of debt down to less than 0 million. That means that the creditors are going to take a bath on this one, but leaves open the possibility that the company might recover and be able to pay back the the remainder.
Blockbuster did close about a quarter of its stores last year, and may close as much as a third of the remaining 3,300 stores this year. It does have more than 6,600 kiosks already in place. It cut more than 0 million in annual costs last year, and plans to cut nearly 0 million more this year, but it lost more than 0 million in 2009. The company does have a strong brand, however, which could serve it well if it can gain a competitive foothold in either the online or kiosk markets.
Overall, I’d still have to say that the future looks gloomy for Blockbuster.
Along the Atlantic Coast of the U.S., this is the time of year when residents have a heightened interest in the weather off the Cape Verde islands, which is where hurricanes are born. In addition to fresh water and flashlights, a good hurricane kit also includes a way to keep up on the news and weather. But the old battery-powered TVs no longer work since the transition to digital broadcasts.
Now one of the major brands has come out with a portable model: the Razor LED LCD Portable TV from Vizio. This 7″ screen has a WideVGA resolution with 800 by 480 pixels. It’s less than 1″ thick and weighs one pound, but has a battery that can run for up to 3.5 hours. It has a list price of 9.99, and is available direct from Vizio as well as at some Walmart stores.
And you’ll probably enjoy watching it so much that you won’t keep it stowed away in your hurricane kit.
Okay, what would you pay to get live streaming content from a collection of broadcast television stations? We’re talking about the same content that you could get for free over the air in a major metropolitan area, but that instead you can access over the Internet, no matter where you are. And even if you can’t get a good digital broadcast signal where you are.
What if I told you that the streaming system didn’t require buffering (though I’m not yet entirely clear on how that works without resulting in display problems), but instead just streams the content out directly to your computer?
Now, you may be asking yourself “isn’t this what cable is supposed to be all about?” You’re right that this is what cable was in the beginning, before it got bloated with all the different cable programming channels, from the free ones like Home Shopping Network and the CSPAN to the premium channels that have the shows that you really want to watch, like HBO and ESPN.
So what would you pay to access 25 different channels (currently from the New York City and Seattle markets)? How does .95 a month sound? (Of course, you’ll also have to pay for your broadband Internet connection, but you’ll have that anyway to get your email and surf the Web.) Yes, this is just a live streaming service — just like watching broadcast TV — but you can time-shift by adding the DVR feature for just another $.99 per month. (Apparently, the DVR cost is an introductory rate, and I don’t know what the “permanent” rate will be.)
Does this sound intriguing? It’s a new service called “ivi TV” and you can find it at www.ivi.tv. And you can even sign up for a free 30-day trial before you have to commit to paying for it.
I haven’t tried the service yet, but apparently it only offers standard definition resolution. The service apparently is prepared to offer high definition, but according to the company Web site, it does not appear that it offers that at this time.
So who would want this service? If you’re in a rural area and can get broadband but not over-the-air television broadcasts, this is a cheaper alternative to cable. Also people who really just want the basics and save money over a cable subscription might find this to be a worthwhile choice.
If you decide to use the 30-day free trial to see what ivi TV has to offer, write to me at alfred@hdtvprofessor.com and let me know what you find out,
FOX News has reported confirmation by Intel that the High Definition Copy Protection (HDCP) code has been cracked. This code is designed to protect digital content such as high-definition Blu-ray movies, so that digitally-identical copies cannot be made from a commercial disc. The HDMI digital connections include HDCP support, for example.
According to the reports, this development is not likely to result in an explosion of pirated BD movies hitting the market. In order to take advantage of this exploit, it apparently would have to be implemented in a chip, and then installed in a device such as a Blu-ray player or a disc-duplicating machine. At this point, that seems like an expensive proposition, and there may not be enough profit available to the pirates to make the effort worth it.
Still, this does demonstrate that “locks keep honest people out” and it’s just a matter of time before just about any copy-protection scheme will fall.
Epson has announced the new MovieMate 85HD, a 720p high definition projector that also includes a DVD player. This gives you a complete home entertainment system in a single unit. The projector uses three LCD panels, and is rated at 2,500 lumens for a bright image.
The projector does not have a tuner, but you can easily connect it to a cable or satellite set-top box. It will ship later this month with an 9 price tag.
The MovieMate 85HD sounds like a good way to get a really big HD image at an incredibly low price. The only strange feature is that it has a standard definition DVD player, as opposed to a high-definition Blu-ray player. Still, many people are satisfied with DVD resolution on HDTVs, and you can always connect a Blu-ray player if you want to use one.
Few people love to pay their cable bill. Even fewer celebrate every time the monthly fee goes up again. Still, we’re used to seeing a game of musical chairs when it comes to TV subscription services. Someone gets fed up with their local cable, and decides to switch to satellite service. Others are tired of the shortcomings of satellite, and switch to local cable. Still others are enamoured with the bright, shiny options offered by the telcos in their market. But the numbers have stayed more or less the same. Until now.
According to the September issue of The Bridge, the total number of subscribers for the fourteen largest subscription TV services declined by about 151,000 in the second quarter of this year. The telco services added about 383,000 to their rolls, reaching about 5.7 million. Satellite services stood nearly still, gaining 81,000 to stay at 33 million. But the largest cable companies lost about 615,000 subscribers, dropping down to 54.8 million.
Now, for these cable companies to lose about 1% of their total subscribers is not going put them out of business by the end of the year, but this does represent a disturbing trend. And the same Bridge article also cites research by SNL Kagan across a broader range of subscription TV services; it shows that the net loss in the second quarter of this year was larger than the Bridge’s numbers, down about 216,000 subscribers.
One quarter’s results does not make a trend, but this is certainly worth watching. Is it caused by the lousy economy and high unemployment, causing people to cut back on expenses where they can? Are too many homeowners — the foundation of pay-TV services — losing their homes to foreclosure? Are more people being enticed to “cut the cord” by streaming Internet options such as Netflix and Hulu? Have people discovered that they can get plenty of programming for free in most metropolitan areas from over-the-air digital broadcasts?
It’s likely that the true cause is a combination of all of the above. The danger is that as U.S. TV-watching households start to discover alternatives to the expensive subscription services, some of these subscribers may be lost forever. Cable and the telcos still are in a position to profit off the broadband connections that make some of these alternatives viable, but this still could the warning signs of a fundamental shift in their business models.
So while it’s clear that the sky is not falling, pay TV services would do well to watch the horizon and see if these puffy white things grow into storm clouds.
You may recognize “Carl Zeiss” as the company that makes excellent optics for cameras and binoculars and telescopes, but the company also makes a head-mounted display system named “cinemizer“. At the recent IFA show, the company revealed an upgraded model that uses OLED panels in the goggles to deliver the images.
Now, the downside is that these goggles are limited to 640 by 480 resolution — that’s standard definition — so you’ll be losing a lot if you try to watch HD content on them. And they’re not inexpensive. And it’s not clear if they will be marketed in the U.S., or just in Europe for now.
But if you’re looking to get a big-screen experience from OLED technology this year, this may be your best bet. Samsung showed their new 7″ Samsung Galazy Tab tablet device at IFA, and revealed that it will only have an LCD screen. After all of Samsung’s brave talk about OLED displays, some may find this disappointing but there are plenty of us who view this news as no surprise. We’re still a long way out from large scale production of OLED displays larger than a cell phone screen.
I know that the economy is tough and lots of people are out of work. Even more people are walking on eggshells, hoping that they get to keep their current job. This is the point in the economic cycles where cash is king and bargains are to be had. And that’s the case for HDTVs as well.
There’s a huge traffic jam in the inventory pipeline. The summer was even slower than projected, which is really slow. The Labor Day/back-to-school buying season looks disappointing, and I won’t be surprised to see retailers hanging snowflakes and deep price cuts in October. Once again, Black Friday and the holiday shopping season is shaping up to be a consumer electronics blood bath, with lots of red ink spilled all over the place.
DisplaySearch has a service that tracks the price of LCD panels. These are not complete HDTV sets, but just the display panel itself. A 42″ 1080p panel sold for about 3 in May, but that has dropped to 8 in the beginning of September. That’s less, or a 13.5% price drop in less than four months. A 32″ WXGA (720p) panel went from 5 to 4 in the same period, down or more than 15%.
In order to generate sales, HDTV manufacturers are going to have to cut prices, and they are going to look the panel makers to share some of the pain. The panel makers are already starting to lower their production, which is expensive. Their plants are designed to run flat out in order to maximize the return on the cost of building these expensive factories, yet some Taiwan plants are reported to be running at just 80% of capacity. And the retailers are going to be slow to order more product until they can sell off what they’ve got on hand already.
So all this bad news adds up to good news for you; you can expect to get some great bargains this fall on flat screen TVs, if you’ve got the money on hand. And you won’t have to wait until after the holidays; you’ll be able to find bargains now so that you don’t have to watch football on your old set this season.
I know, I know, you’ve heard that “sleeping giant” stuff too much lately. China’s economy is becoming inexorably tied to that of the U.S., but there may be some ways that you haven’t considered yet. For example, thanks to cheap manufacturing costs, many of our consumer electronics products are priced at just a fraction of what they were a few years ago, including HDTVs. Okay, maybe that’s not news either.
But I just received a presentation that was made by Lia Fang, President of Corning Display Technologies China, at the DisplaySearch China 2010 conference. It was full of fascinating information, but this was the slide that caused me to pause.
China nearly matches the U.S. in terms of the availability of electricity, which as we saw in this country in the last century, can be a driving force for building a middle class. As they acquire labor-saving devices, people have more time to be more productive. This increases their earning power, and they can start acquiring more consumer goods.
But look at the signs of middle class in China now. They outnumber us in terms of Internet users by 68 million. They have 45% more televisions in use than in the U.S. but only about half as many LCD TVs. They already buy more TVs per year than we do in the U.S. What will happen as they start to replace those existing TVs with LCDs? And what happens when the remaining 0.9 billion people decide that they want and can afford a TV?
One thing that will happen is that we are likely to shift from a surplus to a shortage for LCD and plasma TVs. And when the market faces a shortage instead of a surplus, prices are likely to stop dropping. There is always the hope that increased production will lead to greater efficiencies which will help drive down costs, but this presumes that all the supply chains for materials and other resources are able to keep pace.
The U.S. has been in the enviable position of being in the driver’s seat, with our demand defining the features and functions of consumer electronics, especially HDTVs. The picture presented by Corning has me wondering how much longer that will remain true.
I first mentioned XpanD’s plan to make “universal” 3D shutter glasses back in March. At the IFA conference in Germany last week, the company unveiled the new glasses. The X103 model sells for about 5 a pair.
The company also revealed a list of compatible sets on their Web Site. This list includes models from Sony, Samsung, LG, and Panasonic, among others.
Yes, the price is still high, but we expect high prices for the early adopters. By the time that there’s enough content to make it worth buying a 3D capable HDTV (and the price premium for 3D support had dropped to near-zero), I expect the cost of these glasses to drop to about a pair, which is less than lots of people pay for a pair of sunglasses, or even on taking the family to the local cinema to see a movie. So if you can wait two years, you’ll get a much better price.
There’s been a buzz caused by a news item from the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun. According to the story, Toshiba has plans to release 3DTV models later this year that will not require the special glasses used with other 3D displays such as those from Panasonic or Samsung. Here’s the key section from the story:
Toshiba has developed an integral imaging system that emits rays of light at different angles, allowing viewers’ brains to recreate 3-D images without special glasses. The new technology also will enable viewers to enjoy 3-D content from numerous viewing positions, and the images will not strain the eyes, the sources said.
Before you join the excited throngs, note the “numerous viewing positions” phrase. While the article is not specific, this sounds exactly like a typical lenticular lens arrangement that has been used in computer monitors and other displays to create auto-stereoscopic (no glasses) 3D images for years. In fact, it’s exactly the same concept behind those “flicker” baseball cards that I knew about half a century ago; as you turn the card, you see a different image. A flat panel display using this approach will let you see one image with the left eye and a different image with the right eye. But there’s one huge catch; you have to be seated in a specific location in order to see the two images in the correct eyes.
Early displays of this type only had only one “sweet spot”. I think it was about five years ago that Philips demonstrated a large flat panel that had nine viewing points, but as far as I know, they have never made it into a commercial product. (It was expensive at the time, and they figured that it would be used for digital signage, not home entertainment.)
So the key point here is that you will have to sit in specific locations around the room in order to see the 3D effect. I know that people say that they don’t like the idea of having to wear “goofy glasses” just to watch TV, and to spend all the money required to have enough glasses on hand when company comes over. But I believe that forcing people to sit in specific locations in the room is going to be even less popular.
And there’s an economic reason why I don’t think this will work. With existing 3DTV sets, they don’t cost much more than equivalent sets without 3D support. And that difference is going to rapidly fall to near-zero. By putting the extra cost in the glasses, they can keep the price of the sets competitive with 2D sets. If you increase the production costs of the TV significantly however — and I expect that the cost for these Toshiba sets will be considerably higher – people will balk at paying extra. And as the cost of the glasses falls, which it will, the auto-stereoscopic approach is going to be too expensive by comparison.
This story is a case of old wine in new bottles, and I don’t see how it can be successful for Toshiba.
The Internet is buzzing with the news about Apple’s iTV. At the very least, this is a refreshing change from it buzzing with rumors about iTV. We all know that Steve Jobs is the master marketer of our time; he can turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse just by talking about it. The facts don’t always support the assertions, however. (See my analysis of the claim that the iPad is “the best… movie-watching experience ever.”)
So here comes the new iTV. It’s a little box – much like a Roku or other boxes — that connects your TV to the Internet through your local network and a broadband connection. And it lets you stream content from the Web. And you can now get that content from iTunes. We know iTunes; that’s the service that made it safe and simple enough that millions of people would actually pay for the music that they download. But one difference here is that you only rent the video content from iTunes. TV shows cost $.99 each, and movies cost .99 for older standard definition titles to .99 for new HD releases. Once you rent a show or movie, you have 30 days to start watching, but then you have to finish within the next 24 hours (48 hours for a TV show). Huh? Oh, and the TV shows are only from ABC (where Jobs sits on the Board of Directors) and Fox. This makes the selection available on Hulu seem like a feast.
But what about Hulu? Well, at least with iTV you don’t have to watch commercials, which is an advantage that it shares with the Netflix streaming service. Netflix doesn’t (yet) give you access to many recent releases, but the shows don’t expire once you start watching them. And all you need is an .95 monthly subscription. Rent two shows a night from iTunes for one work week and you will have spent more than you would for the Netflix subscription that would last the whole month.
But here’s the really crazy part; Apple is including Netflix streaming on the iTV. And YouTube access. I guess the idea is that people may watch a lot of the free and flat-rate stuff, but come to iTunes for the latest releases that they can’t get from the other services.
The price for the iTV box makes sense, or at least a whole lot more sense than the price of the original Apple TV that it replaces. But I don’t see the appeal of the rental model for the content. I think that a lot of the viewing public will prefer the all-you-can-eat terms of Hulu (with the commercials) or Netflix (with the low monthly subscription) over the Apple offering. Aside from the loyal Apple fans, I’m not sure who is going to buy this. I can’t see it becoming the same sort of hit that the iPod or iPhone were when they were released.
In a press release, The Diffusion Group (TDG) announced its new report, “The Possibilities and Challenges for Mobile TV”. In the release, TDG states that mobile TV subscription services are forecast to double their subscriber base by 2013. This sounds exciting until you find out that this means increasing from 1.6 million this year to 3.3 million subscribers in 2013. That number pales in comparison to other services; for example, Comcast is estimated to have 23.5 million cable TV subscribers.
The press release indicates that demand for the service is lower than originally expected, partly because it is an additional fee on top of other subscription services. Also, few mobile phones are equipped to receive the over-the-air Mobile TV signals.
I agree that the cost may be part of the problem, but the real barrier to growth for these offerings is that users have good alternatives already. Most of the people who would be willing to pay for a mobile TV service already have smart phones with data plans. And this allows them to access streaming content from the Internet at no additional fee beyond their existing data plan. (And if they’re paying for the data plan, they may as well use it.)
TDG suggests that the solution may be to bundle Mobile TV service in with other subscription TV services such as cable or satellite. This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Cable and satellite are already struggling to stop the bleeding of lost customers, and are working feverishly to make their own content available to subscribers over the Internet, through TV Everywhere initiatives.
Mobile TV is a cool idea that would have been a lot cooler 15 years ago. Unfortunately, in today’s crowded market of free, pay-as-you-go, and subscribtion services on the Internet, there really is not room — or need – for another entertainment distribution system.
Last spring, I wrote about Netflix demo’ing its streaming service on a Windows Phone 7 operating system. Now comes word that Netflix is releasing free applications for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch that will let subscribers access streaming content on these portable devices.
The free apps can access the streaming service across either a WiFi or 3G data connection. You can even stop in the middle of a movie or TV episode, and then when you come back, it will pick up right where you left off. This works even if you restart on another device, such as your home computer. You can download the free apps from the Apple iTunes store.
This announcement is particularly interesting in the light of recent news reports that Apple is negotiating to rent TV episodes for $.99 each. The all-you-can-eat Netflix service is available to any subscriber with an .99 monthly subscription or higher, so the break-even point is just 10 shows a month, no matter whether you watch on your phone, media player, computer, notebook, video game console, or Internet-connected TV or Blu-ray player. Netflix is expanding its footprint across the entertainment landscape, and Apple’s pay-as-you-go model may be a difficult sell.
What’s a Roku? It’s a media player that you connect to your home network, through which it accesses the Internet to get streaming content for your television. It’s a whole lot easier than setting up a full-blown computer, and at about 5 by 5 by 2 inches, it’s a lot smaller too.
The box lets you access content from a wide range of services. Netflix is the one that the most people may want, but it also connects to Amazon Video on Demand, Pandora, Major Leage Baseball, and many others. You’ll find news, sports, movies, music, photos, and social media sites. Some require subscriptions or pay-as-you-go fees, but many of them are available for free.
And now Roku has lowered its prices. The Standard Definition (SD) model has gone from .99 tp .99 (though the Web site shows this model as out of stock). The HD model dropped from .99 to .99, and the HD-XR model which includes 802.11n WiFi support has fallen from 9.99 to .99. If you’ve got a wired network connection near your HDTV, then the HD model can do the job and the price tag brings it down close to impulse-buy range.
Expect to see competition in this media player market to heat up as consumers start to understand what these little boxes can do for them. And prices will probably keep falling.
I long for the old days, when things were simpler. Back when a computer monitor was a computer monitor, and a TV was a TV. It’s not that way anymore. Almost all TVs now have a way that lets you connect it to a laptop or desktop computer: either a VGA connector, or an HDMI connector that can hook up to a DVI port. But we still have computer monitors that don’t have TV tuners, so you can’t watch television programming on them (unless you stream it over the Internet or something like that).
Well, not so fast. Samsung has announced their 30 series of “computer monitors” that are available now, and a new 90 series of monitors that will ship in September. The 24″ FX2490HD has an LED backlight, 1080p resolution, two HDMI connectors in addition to VGA and component video connectors, and a USB port that lets you play content stored on a thumb drive. And it includes tuners and a coax connection for cable or over-the-air signals. It even can do picture-in-picture.
Hey, I don’t know about you, but this waddles and quacks like a familiar waterfowl. I really don’t get why it’s not an HDTV. I do get that it’s a compact display, and if I were sending a kid off to college, this would be just the sort of space-saving convenience that I’d want to send along. But why this would do the job better than some other 24″ display that is called an HDTV escapes me at this point.
TWICE commissioned a survey about consumer opinion about 3DTV, and the results have some interesting highlights. A good place to start is the fact that about 78% of the respondents have seen at least one 3D movie in a cinema. This is interesting because nearly the identical 78% have never seen a 3DTV.
Now, nearly the same 78% of those who had seen a 3D movie were positive about the experience, but only 54% had positive comments about the 3DTV viewing experience. Only 54% of the total said that they would consider buying a 3DTV, but most of them figured it would be more than a year before they’d buy one. The three most common reasons for not getting a 3DTV were the need to buy additional items (41%), the cost (36%), and the lack of content (24%).
TWICE published the results under the headline “Consumers Know 3D But Need More Convincing”. My take on the results is a bit different; the consumers appear to be well-informed, and they are waiting for the prices to come down and the amount of available content to go up. I wouldn’t call that a need for convincing as much as this is the sign of a patient attitude. Aside from the early adopters, the value proposition just isn’t strong enough yet for the average consumer. I expect that we’re right on track for broader acceptance of 3DTV in late 2012 and into 2013.
According to a press release from Western Digital, research by Parks Associates indicates that 42% of the consumers unwilling to connect their TVs to the Internet felt that either the router connection is too far away, or that it would be too complicated to set up, or both. WiFi does help solve the connection problem, but unless you get an 802.11n system, you’ll be limited to a theoretical 54 Mb per second which may not be fast enough for some applications including high definition video. Running network wires to your television can also be an expensive hassle. But there is a third option.
The Livewire Powerline AV Network Kit from Western Digital is designed to solve this problem. It uses new HomePlug AV technology that provides up to 200 Mbps throughput simply by plugging the devices into electrical power outlets in your home. One device connects to your router and gets plugged into an outlet, and then you just plug the other device into an outlet near your television and make the network connection. You can even connect four separate network devices – such as a game console or Blu-ray disc player — to the remote device.
With more than 37 million Internet-capable devices expected in U.S. homes by the end of this year, according to Parks Associates, more consumers will be looking for an easy and reliable way to make the connection to their high-speed broadband service. HomePlug AV compatible devices like the Livewire kit could be just what many of them need. They still are not as fast as a gigabit Ethernet connection, but they should be fast enough for most applications.
The Motley Fool declares “game over“. I agree, though the seeds for this domination were planted a long time ago.
What’s the big deal? Netflix has agreed to pay billion to Epix over the next five years in return for the right to stream movie titles over the Internet for its Watch Instantly service. Who is Epix? It’s a new premimum movie channel owned by Paramount Pictures, MGM, and Lionsgate.
So what? The cool thing about Watch Instantly is that for a single-disc Netflix subscription for a month, you can watch all the streaming content that you want. Until now, this has been a case of large portions of middling quality, as the catalog has been mostly older classics and also-ran titles. A recent deal with Starz has boosted the quality a tad, but this new deal will provide a major boost to the quantity and quality of the content available online from Netflix. The service gets to stream recent titles from these major movie studios, and it could start as soon as September 1.
And more Watch Instantly viewers will mean less money spent on discs and postage. Some sources report that Netflix spends 0 million a year on postage (and the rates are about to go up again), so it doesn’t take too many new members using just Watch Instantly to make this billion dollar deal look like a bargain. And you can be sure that this new deal will attract more subscribers. Netflix streaming is already supported by Windows Media Center, many network-connected TVs and Blu-ray players, as well as all three major video game consoles. Not to mention TiVo and Roku boxes and the iPad. Who needs a computer in the living room?
Netflix is a juggernaut, growing its subscriber rolls, and rapidly slicing away at the expensive part of its business: the handling of physical discs to distribute rental movies. They could not have been in this position without the success of their postal rentals, but it is clear that they have the numbers to make the transition to electronic delivery. It will be very hard for anyone to scale up to a competitive position that could threaten the Netflix dominance any time soon.
What is it about technology products and acronyms? It’s bad enough that products have deadpan model numbers; can you tell what the new Samsung product does if all you know is the “BD-C8000” model number? I know that I can’t guess. Let me tell you what it is: a 3D BD HD player with WiFi, DLNA, and HDMI 1.4 support. If that makes your heart beat faster, you might be wearing a beanie with a propellor on top.
For the rest of you, let me explain what that means. The “BD” stands for Blu-ray disc, so this player can play HDTV discs in 1080p high definition (the HD part, but you probably knew that). And the 3D means that it can do so in stereoscopic splendor. WiFi is the familiar wireless network connection. (It supports 802.11b/g/n, but only /n is recommended for video streaming.) DLNA lets you play media files that you have stored on your network, and HDMI 1.4 is the latest version of the high-speed serial connection which includes support for 3DTV. Oh, and this is a portable device that will play for up to three hours on a single charge, according to Samsung.
It sounds like an appealing device. You get support for streaming Internet features including Netflix and other services, which is cool. And it’s available now for 9. It loses a little luster as you look closer, however. The 10.3″ “high resolution” screen is not capable of displaying HD images; according to the owner’s manual it only has 1024 by 600 pixels, so to see all the Blu-ray detail, you’ll have to connect it to an HDTV. And you’ll only be able to see the 3D images on a 3D-capably HDTV; the portable display is only 2D.
So it’s more than a string of letters and numbers, but a little less than a portable HDTV experience. However, if you’ve started your collection of Blu-ray titles and want to be able to enjoy them when you’re traveling, this could be just what you need.
I know I’m not the only one who gets peeved about this; you’re watching a show, then a commercial comes on and blasts you out of your seat with a high volume setting. It’s not just broadcast video; I’ve also noticed this (with dismay) on streaming sites such as Hulu. I’ve written about this problem before, including a mention of a product from SRS Labs that uses the company’s technology that is also built into many current HDTV models.
Now comes the announcement of another device, this time from Gefen.
The box can accept and output either analog stereo or digital (TOSLINK or S/PDIF) audio signals. It relies on Dolby Volume leveling technology, which can also enhance the low and high range levels in order to create a more natural-sounding experience, no matter how loud or quiet you have the volume set. And it has a simple bypass button on the front so that you can turn off the effect if you want. The Gefen product is a little pricey at 9 direct, but it has sophisticated modeling technology inside that may well outperform the feature that is built into your TV set (if it has volume leveling).
It was 2008 when I last wrote about Canon’s SED technology, after they won a lawsuit over a technology license agreement and their decision to abandon efforts to make a consumer product and focus instead on a high-end monitor for commercial video production facilities.
According to a report in Network World this week, Canon has finally thrown in the towel and pulled the plug on the project. After 15 years of work, the company apparently has conceded that they to market. And so dies one more branch of the technology tree that hopes to bring us thin, energy-efficient, emissive, high-resolution flat panel color displays.
SED stands for “surface-condition electron-emitter display” (though some shortened that to just “surface emitter display”). It is a close relative of the field-emitter display (FED) technology. Canon came up with a way to create a microscopic gap between two conductors, then bridge it with a material that would emit light when the gap produced electrons. I remember seeing the first public prototype demonstration in Boston at a Society for Information Display conference around 1997, and it created an instant buzz. The fun fact about it was that Canon engineers used a standard BubbleJet printhead on an X-Y positioning system in order to deposit the tiny amounts of material required at each junction.
A few years ago, Canon started showing pre-production prototypes in television sizes at CES and other events. The image quality was stunning, and since it was an emissive technology like plasma, there were no viewing angle issues. And the panel didn’t produce any light when the power to a pixel was turned off, so the blacks were incredibly rich and deep.
Sadly, Canon could not produce a competitively priced product, even at the professional level. They might have had a chance back when an HDTV cost ,000 to ,000, but there’s just no market for something in that price range when the competition is around one-tenth that price. The rapid and steady fall of plasma and LCD prices — about 20% a year for the past few years — has made it all but impossible for new technologies to ramp up to the production scale required to compete on price.
OLED is still hanging on, thanks to its success in the mobile display market including cell phones and MP3 players, but I still think we’re years away from a 32″ OLED HDTV, and years beyond that before they become competitive with LCD pricing. FED is also still hanging around, as researchers explore how carbon nanotubes (CNT) may form an emitter layer that is inexpensive and reliable. But don’t hold your breath.
It’s not enough to have a better technology at this point. It also has to be cost-competitive and ramp up almost overnight to production at the level of millions of units per year, all while maintaining sufficient yield results that you can still scrape off a little profit from the money that flows through the operation. Expect your flat panel choices to be limited to LCD and plasma for the time being.
Did you ever notice that with technology, it often seems to be two steps forward but one step back? Before digital TV, our analog tuners could change channels at the speed of a thumb-press. (This was even true in the early days of the remote controls. My grandmother had a Zenith Space Command, and when my uncle’s black lab came in the room and shook its dog tags, the jangling sound would cause the channels to change wildly!) Now we’ve advanced to HDTV and lots of fancy features, but not everything is an improvement.
For example, what happens when you want to channel surf and you press the Channel Up button? Probably nothing, at least for about a second. I sometimes will press the button three or four times in rapid succession, in hopes that I’ve got the count right to get to the desired channel. It’s a small price to pay for the other benefits, but it’s still annoying.
That’s why Broadcom has developed “FastRTV“, which provides nearly instantaneous channel switching for cable system set-top boxes and other devices. And the great thing about it is that the cable company doesn’t have to do anything different to the digital signal that it is already sending out. The company claims that the switching speed is up to five times faster, but judge for yourself; scroll down on this page to find a video demonstration of the technology.
Now, Broadcom is a company that makes chips that go into the set-top boxes and other devices that the cable companies buy for their customers, so you can’t just go on Amazon and buy a FastRTV device for your system. But it might not hurt to ask your cable company if they offer boxes with this feature. Comcast apparently is deploying boxes with the FastRTV feature, and others are likely to follow suit.
So it may take a little time, but eventually technology takes another two steps forward to put you ahead of where you were. And one more little annoyance is eliminated.
Cox has apparently decided to join ‘em. In a recent story in the L.A. Times, Cox will put their video-on-demand (VOD) service into standard TiVo personal video recorders (PVRs), eliminating the need for a separate set-top box. The TiVo box also gives access to online services such as Netflix streaming video and Rhapsody music.
This is significant because it shows that a cable company is willing to let go of control of the set-top box, presumably in a move to help retain existing customers and perhaps attract new ones with this convenient feature. Cox is not the largest cable company, but with 6 million subscribers in 18 states, it’s in a position to be a trendsetter for other cable companies. And the deal helps extend TiVo’s reach at a time when it is increasingly difficult to get consumers to pay an extra monthly fee on top of their cable bill.
Rather than spend it at Bernie’s, how about spending the weekend of September 10 through 12 at your local electronics store? The Consumer Electronics Association (hosts of the mammoth CES show in Las Vegas every January) and ESPN are joining forces to create “National 3D Demo Days“. ESPN will provide continuous 3D programming for those three days from 10 AM to 11 PM Eastern.
The content will include live college football, recorded coverage from this summer’s FIFA World Cup soccer tournament (the other “football”), and footage of the Harlem Globetrotters, and highlights from X Games 16. The CEA has posted a list of participating retailers here: http://www.digitaltips.org/video/retailer-locator.asp.
The fact remains that we don’t yet have that much 3D content available, but this is a good effort to help consumers learn more about the technology and find out what they need to get so that they can take advantage of the 3D coverage at home. I also suspect that this is part of a concerted effort to get subscription television services including cable and telco to allocate resources to the distribution of 3D content and channels as they become available.
We’ve got a chicken and egg problem here, and it looks as though both sides are working together to bootstrap the process. I still think that unless you’re an early adopter, you’re best off waiting until late 2012. By that point, 3D capability should not add much of a premium – if any — to the cost of a new television, and the supply of 3D content should be much greater by then. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t go join the fun the second weekend in September.
Many of the major LCD panel manufacturers have already pleaded guilty to price fixing charges in U.S. federal courts — paying close to billion in fines – and now the states are lining up to get a piece of the action in the form of defending their citizens who were ripped off by the price fixing. New York and Florida were first to step up to take their swings at the plate, and now Illinois and Washington have stepped into the batter’s box. These suits go after the big players — including Samsung, LG, and Sharp — as well as other LCD manufacturers. The states are seeking damages for overcharging, penalties, and fees from the defendant companies.
The part that amazes me in the story is that this is one cartel that must have been particularly inept in their efforts to fix prices. Apparently in spite of their efforts, prices for flat panel HDTVs have fallen about 20% a year for the past few years — in spite of improved technology and new features — and we still have experienced situations of serious oversupply that has helped drive prices down. If they were keeping prices artificially high — which they apparently have admitted doing – then my mind boggles at how much lower the prices might be by now.
Conventional wisdom holds that people won’t buy 3DTVs by the millions because they don’t want to wear the goofy glasses and there isn’t enough content available. I’ve already addressed the first item, but let’s look at the second one for a moment.
According to the 3D@Home site, Hollywood plans to release about 40 movies – new and conversions — in 3D next year. Figure an hour and a half to two hours per movie, that’s maybe 70 hours of programming. At three hours a night, that’s maybe enough for three weeks of prime time programming for just one channel. In a world of 500 channels, that’s not much. But what if Hollywood came up with a way to convert their back catalog of movies and TV shows into 3D?
The fact is that a typical 2D photo image has lots of visual cues that can be used to extract depth data. Factors like changes to patterns and textures, perspective angles, relative size, and overlapping objects can all be used to determine how far apart objects are in a scene. Teach a computer to recognize those factors, and it can create stereoscopic images automatically. But that requires a lot of expensive computing power.
Or does it? I just got a press release from ArcSoft about their new MediaConverter 7 . The program has the “ability to turn your 2D photos and videos into 3D.” It supports anaglyph (red/blue glasses) as well as page flip and interleave modes. Oh, and it only costs .99.
Now, I have not used this program so I don’t know how good the results are. But that’s not the point. Even if it can only do a lousy job at this point, the processing can only get better and faster. (You can now buy a fully-equipped quad-core PC kit for 0 these days so the computing power is cheap.) If you can do a lousy job on a PC for , think of what you could do if you spend ,000 on the software. That’s still way less than the budget for shooting a 2D movie or even a TV episode.
It seems to me that we’re on track to have mass conversions of back catalog material within the next two years, just as the installed base is reaching critical mass and the cost difference for 3DTV over 2D approaches zero. Start saving now; 2013 looks to be the year when you’ll be buying a 3DTV.
Market tracking firm In-Stat has predicted that by 2014, there will be 20 million devices with pico projectors embedded in them. These are tiny front projector devices that use either bright LEDs or tiny lasers as a light source. They can create an image the size of a sheet of paper that can be viewed in most normal room lighting conditions, and with the lights dimmed way down, can make big images 50″ or larger.
In-Stat predicts that mobile phones will account for the bulk of the embedded projectors. This makes sense because mobile phone makers are caught in an endless arms race to add features and apparent value to their products in order to come up with some differentiation. And the current replacement cycle of less than two years requires accelerated development of these new features.
One possible beneficiary of this move may be the various mobile TV services. A cell phone screen is a bit small for most people to use to watch video programming for any length of time. A pico projector could not only make an image big enough for the user to see, it also can create an image that can be shared with other viewers easily.
The key to success will be getting the price down for these devices, but as production volumes increase, they should become more affordable. 20 million projectors in a mobile phone market that currently sells more than a billion units every year is just a fraction of a percent share over the forecast period, so it would seem to be a pretty safe prediction.
Pacific Media Associates is a company that tracks the front projector display market, and they have recently released their latest projections. They expect that 5.4 million 3D-capable front projectors will ship in 2014, which is roughly five times as many as are expected to ship this year. While some analysts see the education market as the focal point for these displays, Dr. William Coggshall of Pacific Media Associates sees it differently. With education budgets under severe constraints these days, he sees the consumer market as the source for much of the growth. From gaming to home theater, 3D-capable projectors may be able to compete dollar-for-dollar with large flat panel solutions. He also expects that many of these projectors will not be used for 3D content initially, but as the available content and distribution sources increase, more and more consumers will take advantage of the feature.
With all the emphasis given to flat panel displays, it’s easy to forget about front projection systems. They are not as convenient, as you need to manage light more effectively, but the traditional “home theater” is not found in just the luxury homes that has been their traditional market. As consumers look to get larger and larger images, the front projectors may be able to offer affordable solutions.
It’s time to play a little Jeopardy. The answer is “Serbia and Macedonia“. Can you come up with the question? Give up? Here you go: “What two countries rank higher than the United States in terms of average daily time spent viewing television?” Clearly we can do better, folks! You’re just not trying hard enough.
Nielsen is out with a new report: How People Watch. It reports on how people around the world use television and other electronic devices to watch television programming. Now, it’s important to note that the survey was given to 27,000 consumers from 55 different countries. And a key factor is that they were all online users. This makes me suspect that you may not be able to generalize the answers across the entire world population. With that caveat in mind, the results are still interesting.
For example, the fact cited at the start of this piece has the average American consumer watching 5:04 (hours:minutes) of TV each day. Macedonia topped us with 5:18, and Serbia blew us away at 5:39, more than an additional half hour every day. I don’t have an explanation for this, but I will point out that the CIA World Fact Book reports that the Serbian unemployment rate is 16.6% compared with the U.S. 9.3%. And Macedonia unemployment is at 32.2%. Maybe these people just have more time that they can give to television? Oh, and we just edged out Greece for the number 3 spot; they averaged one minute less than us at 5:03 (and an almost-identical unemployment rate).
We went for the Bronze in another category as well. In High-Definition Television Ownership, we tied the United Kingdom for third place with an index score of 157. Hong Kong topped us for second place with an index score of 160, but the Australians finished far out in first with an index of 200. (Fair dinkum? Some might say that the Aussies use a different ruler to measure with; they count 576p as high-def, while the rest of the world seems to agree that 720p marks the minimum spec for HD.)
And you don’t even want to know where we finished on items such as mobile TV or watching over-the-top Internet content on a television set. Cubs fans would be familiar with our position in the pack.
Bottom line: it appears that we’re slacking off here. So let’s plan on a big push this holiday season to get hooked up, tuned in, and zoned out. Let’s see some better numbers if Nielsen decides to update this study next year!
I’ve written here more than once that current efforts at “3DTV” are really stereoscopic displays that trick the brain into seeing depth in an image displayed on a flat surface. It’s a little unnatural, and depending on a lot of factors, it can be easy or painful to view. But it still is only providing two images: one for each eye. This means that you can’t “look around” an object by moving your head, and this lack of “motion parallax” adds to the lack of reality in a stereoscopic image. In order to get an image that truly looks three dimensional, you need many, many images that are presented in sequence as you move your head.
Now, you might think that it would be difficult to have dozens of cameras in a circle to capture the images, but it turns out that it may be easier than that. Check out this video:
Sony has created this prototype RayModeler display that can display 360 images — one degree increments — in a cylindrical display. This results in an image that you can walk around and view from any angle. And because each eye receives a slightly different image, the object appears to have a natural depth. The cool part is that they can capture live images. With just eight cameras arranged 45 degrees apart around the subject, the missing 352 images can be interpolated.
Clearly, this could have limitations for complex scenes, because parts of the some objects may be obscured by other objects at certain angles, and there may not be enough data to interpolate the images correctly. But for a single subject, such as the other person in a telecommunications conversation, it could provide remarkable reality.
Now, this is just a lab prototype, and no doubt is prohibitively expensive to make even without thinking about the source of the image data. But it’s an interesting concept, and maybe technology will catch up with it and it could become inexpensive enough to become our next HDTV.
ESPN 3D has announced that it will broadcast about 13 NCAA Division 1 football games this year. The network also has named the first three contests:
- Monday, September 6, 8 PM Eastern: Boise State vs. Virginia Tech
- Saturday, September 11, 3:40 PM Eastern: Ohio State vs. Miami
- Saturday, September 18, 7 PM Eastern: Clemson vs. Auburn
The network also will show the Tostitos BCS National Championship Game on Monday, January 10 at 8:30 PM Eastern. ESPN 3D also plans to broadcast additional live sports programming this year, including the NBA, college basketball, and Winter X Games 15. The network is still developing the skills needed for live 3D broadcasting, which requires different camera angles than standard 2D coverage in order to be most effective. The college football broadcasts are sponsored by Sony, and ESPN 3D will be using Sony equipment to produce their live coverage.
13 football games are probably not enough to warrant getting a new 3DTV for most people, but it may be the nudge that some early adopters will need to push them into making a move. Adding 3D coverage to an event that is already being produced in 2D increases the costs significantly – especially since it appears that you can’t use the same camera angles for both — so it will be a while before more networks will be able to provide a lot of live 3D programming. Still, ESPN is getting out in front and doing the experimenting and learning that will be necessary when 3D becomes commonplace, if not the standard mode.
Only a handful of early adopters got to see it, but Major League Baseball broadcast some experimental 3DTV early this month around the All-Star Game in Anaheim, California. Earlier in the week, Fox Sports shot two games in 3D from Seattle as the Mariners took on the Yankees. These were sponsored by Panasonic and DirecTV, and were broadcast by DirecTV, Verizon, and major cable operators.
The big game was the All-Star Game, however, which Fox Sports shot using 13 3D cameras, including some Panasonic camcorders. The stereoscopic images apparently enhanced the viewing experience for many viewers, giving a better sense of the distance from pitcher to batter, and making it easier to judge the ball’s position and movement.
While no additional games are scheduled to be televised in 3D for this season at this point, the experiments were deemed a success. The challenge will be to find a way to fund the significantly-greater expense of 3D coverage, especially if it has to be provided in parallel with the existing 2D high definition production. Fortunately, the installed base of 3DTVs won’t represent a significant portion of the viewing public in the U.S. for a couple of years, so the MLB and the networks still have time to work it out.
Sure, anyone who works with computers is familar with Dell, the company that built an empire based on online shopping for desktops and notebooks. (They even managed to make us forget Gateway, with their spotted-cow shipping boxes, which is now part of Acer.) But would you think of Dell for your next HDTV?
You might consider it. Over this past weekend, Dell ran a one-day special deal on the Sharp LC-42SB48UT for 9 including free shipping. The price today is back up to 9, but this is still lower than the price charged by many other online retailers for this entry level 42″ LCD HDTV.
Clearly, Dell is making an effort to diversify into consumer electronics, as it carries a variety of digital cameras, MP3 players, and gaming consoles, in addition to a wide selection of televisions. They’re not just computers anymore.
At SID 2010 in Seattle, I saw a clever demonstration. Syndiant wanted to demonstrate how their pocket projector could be used to create a stereoscopic 3D image. So one of their engineers duct taped two of them together, put different polarizers across each lens, aligned the images, and voila! It was a very effective 3D projector that worked with passive glasses.
So that was a cool way to get 3D from a pocket projector. And then along came this:
This is a table top display that creates a 3D image that you can view without glasses. In theory, it can create an image that you can walk around. In this demonstration from NICT’s Keihanna Research Labs, it only can be viewed across a 120-degree range. In order to create the image, the display uses 96 individual pocket projector engines, each aimed at a specially-designed funnel-shaped device that creates an image that appears to float above the table.
Now consider this; a standard 3DTV simply has two images. One is for the left eye, and the other for the right. This table requires 96 separate images. Start showing a full motion image at 30 frames per second, and you’re talking about 2,880 images per second. If you expand this to the full 360-degree viewing range, it balloons to 8,640 images per second. At full HD resolution, that’s 18 billion pixels per second. Figure 24 bits of color per pixel, and you’re up to more than 140 gigabytes of data per second. So while this is a clever creation, we’ve got a ways to go before we can have a system that could support a full motion HD version of this concept.
The researchers envision a way to use this to simulate a sports field projected into a stadium so you could watch your home team play in 3D even when they are playing out of town. I’m not betting against the concept, but I don’t expect to see it any time soon. (You can read more about this in an article at DigInfo.tv.)
“Cutting the cord” is the term that analysts have given to the growing movement of consumers who have disconnected themselves from the traditional utilities. At first, it meant users who got rid of landline telephone service and rely instead solely on cell phones. Now it also applies to folks who are now watching so much television content from the Internet that they are turning off their expensive cable and satellite subscription television service.
But what does it mean for a broadcaster to “cut the cord”? In one case, it could mean severing the connection between the production facility and the broadcast transmitter. What’s that? How can you be a television station without transmitting?
Well, a new report entitled “A Future for Public Media in New Jersey” makes a radical solution for public television in New Jersey. Sandwiched between the giant Philadelphia and New York City markets, the New Jersey public television stations exist primarily to provide coverage of state news that does not always get in-depth coverage from stations in the adjacent states. The report suggests selling off the stations’ broadcast licenses (for a lot of money) and just relying on cable and satellite services to carry the programming. In cash-strapped New Jersey, this could create an endowment that could sustain the network for a long time without having to rely on state funds.
The idea is that a huge majority of the audience already subscribes to cable or satellite services already, and the broadcast systems are a reduntant and expensive luxury. One problem is that the local cable companies are not obligated to carry programming from stations that are not broadcast locally, so the New Jersey public television system would have to get some sort of assurance that their shows would be distributed. Still, it’s an intriguing concept, and raises questions about the future of terrestrial broadcasting of televsion program in general. If the content is available online or by subscription service, why bother taking up valuable broadcast spectrum?
I don’t expect terrestrial broadcast to end any time soon, this does open the way to some alternative futures.
The market research firm DisplaySearch is now forecasting that about 3.4 million 3DTVs will be shipped in 20210, for about a 5% share of the total worldwide HDTV market. One of its competitors in the display market research business is iSupply, which now predicts that about 4.2 million 3DTVs will ship this year. DisplaySearch’s prediction for the year 2014 is 42.9 million, which is considerably more pessimistic than iSupply’s 60.5 million forecast.
Whichever number you choose, the big growth in this segment isn’t expected to start until 2012 at which point the premium for 3D capability will be reduced and there will be more content available to attract consumers.
The analysts at iSupply make an interesting point in their forecasts. They predict that the sales of NeTVs — HDTVs that can connect directly to a network to access the Internet — will significantly outsell 3DTVs over the same period. They predict 27.7 million worldwide units this year, growing to 148.3 million in 2014.
I suspect that they are probably right that the NeTVs will sell better. First, the technology has been out longer, and so the premium is getting smaller for the feature. 3D capability is still limited to the larger, premium models which do not sell in the same volumes as more affordable models. At the same time, the Internet connectivity is migrating down into smaller and less expensive models, so it makes good sense that they will sell more.
Yes, this is another supply chain story. Never heard of “metalorganic gases“? Don’t feel bad; few people outside of the semiconductor industry (and some Chemistry majors) know what they are. Apparently they are an essential component in the fabrication of certain types of semiconductors, and they are used to deposit thin films of different chemical compounds. And according to an article in DIGITIMES, the price for some of these has doubled recently.
Some companies have more efficient production than others, and thus less of these expensive resources are wasted. As a result, the cost of these materials is a smaller portion of their total cost for a finished product, and their costs won’t increase as much as for the less efficient companies.
Now, why should you care? Good question. Some of the semiconductors that are fabricated using metalorganic gases are LEDs. Demand is skyrocketing for LEDs, due to growth in their use as solid state lighting and as backlights for LCD panels. And the LED panels are used in just about every notebook computer, many desktop monitors, and a growing number of LCD HDTVs. If the cost of making LEDs goes up significantly, then the cost of these devices will also be impacted. According to the DIGITIMES report, those manufacturers who make the least expensive and low quality LEDs are likely to be hit the hardest. Fortunately, the LEDs used for most HDTVs are high quality devices, and may be affected less by the cost increase, but this could help slow the price decline of LCD HDTVs with LED backlights later this year.
The Netflix instant streaming service is free to subscribers of the company’s disc rental service. Many customers love the streaming service, and some get more Netflix content from the Internet than from their mailbox. The one knock on the service is the fact that almost all of the content is , well, rather old. There are some classic movies, and a lot of old episodes of some great TV shows, and some excellent foreign titles. The point is that it is incredibly convenient, and it was the first signs of the Internet camel’s nose beginning to peek under the video delivery’s tent.
Well, now a bit more of the camel’s nose is showing. Netflix announced this week that it has an agreement with Relativity Media to stream the company’s first-run theatrical films at the same time that HBO and Showtime get them. Reality Media is the company behind hits including “Get Him to the Greek” and “Robin Hood”. This means that instead of having to wait years after the release of a movie on DVD, Netflix will be able to stream the movies just months after the DVD hits the shelves.
Colin Dixon of The Diffusion Group (TDG) made an interesting observation about this announcement: “As long ago as May of 2009 TDG identified premium PayTV as Netflix’ true competition.” As I’ve been saying, Netflix clearly is positioning itself for the day when it doesn’t have to manage an enormous inventory of plastic discs and cope with the steady increase of postage costs. The competition is not Redbox and Blockbuster; it’s HBO and Showtime and Starz and the on-demand offerings by the subscription TV services.
Netflix is clearly succeeding, as about three out of four subscribers apparently are using the streaming service. If people start getting their movies and archived TV episodes from Netflix (and Hulu), how much are they going to be willing to pay for all those channels that they don’t watch on the subscription TV services? This is going to increase the pressure on a la carte pricing, which I contend will be the end of subscription TV as we know it. Those services will have to become data transmission utilities delivering the Internet to your home.
(And you know what would accelerate the process? If ESPN were to expand its online streaming offerings to match what’s available on the subscription services — even at a monthly fee – I expect that users would cut the cable cord in droves. ESPN is one of the remaining valued content sources that is not available over the air or by streaming.)
So this announcement definitely qualifies as a BIG DEAL. It’s another incremental step in the redefinition of Netflix and video content delivery. The world of television is changing right before our eyes.
Can’t you just hear that holiday mall music playing already? Be glad that you’re not running a consumer electronics retailer business, because those folks are already holed up in their war rooms, mapping out strategies for Black Friday sales for this year.
According to a report in TWICE, “manufacturers, retailers and buying groups are already planning aggressive Black Friday promotions that may begin earlier, and last longer, than last year’s extended event period.” It appears that the recession continues to keep household purse strings knotted tightly, and high-end products such as 3DTVs are already piling up in inventory.
Slow sales across the board this summer will set up some aggressive promotions, perhaps starting even before the end of the third quarter. Absent a major turn-around in the unemployment and other economic measures, it looks as though we’re looking at some great bargains by the time we’ve tucked away this year’s turkey.
Remember, there are only 157 days left until Christmas!
Back in April, I wrote about a lawsuit between Best Buy and Ultimate. Ultimate was advertising that it comparison shops at Best Buy and Walmart every day, and that its prices were lower. Best Buy complained that this was not true, and that the Best Buy prices were sometimes lower than those advertised by Ultimate. Arbitration failed to resolve the disagreement, and so Best Buy sued.
Now here’s the rest of the story. Best Buy has dropped the suit because Ultimate is no longer using the price comparison claims in its marketing, For its part, Ultimate does not admit that it did anything wrong. And each side will pay its own lawyers.
As I said back in April, don’t expect this to be the last tiff between electronics retailers over their advertising practices. This going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
How can an analyst predict the future if the manufacturers accelerate time so much that the future is here before we can even finish our speculation?
That’s about what has happened in the 3D segment of the flat panel HDTV market. I’ve been saying that making a current set “3D capable” really does not add much cost in materials or assembly, and that eventually all but the lowest-priced entry models will be ready for 3D. But for now, the feature is only available in the premium models with the higher prices (and higher margins for the manufacturerers).
Well, not so fast. Engadget has a report that ABC Warehouse is taking orders for a new 50″ Samsung plasma HDTV that is 3D-ready. And the pre-shipment price is 9: under ,000. Now, one way that Samsung got the price down was to make this a 720p resolution model, but chances are good that you’ll be sitting so far from it that you wouldn’t be able to see the extra detail of a 1080p set from that distance anyway. So you really aren’t giving up a whole lot by going with a 720p set.
To paraphrase Dark Helmet’s minion in Spaceballs, “then” won’t be “now” soon, it’s “now” already. Expect other lower-priced models to start offering 3D ready features in times for the holiday buying season. (At least I can count on Black Friday not arriving until November.)
As I wrote at the end of last month, the new Hulu Plus service for .95 a month stands to disrupt television viewing habits. It provides more content that does not expire, and it’s all offered in 720p high definition.
As it turns out, more and more people view this sort of offering as appealing. Some people have the attitude that everything on the Internet should be accessible for free, but that attitude appears to be changing. A new study by The Diffusion Group (TDG) polled broadband users about the new TV Everywhere initiatives from subscription television services such as cable and satellite. The concept is that existing customers will be able to access the same programming that they receive at home, but can get it as streaming video over the Internet. The TDG survey found out that 60% of the users are enthusiastic about the idea, and a total of 34% would be willing to pay at least a month extra for the privilege.
On the one hand, TV Everwhere could be an important new source of revenue for these services, which are faced with increasing costs of maintaining their physical infrastructure. On the other hand, this sort of Internet streaming service could train their subscribers to get video content online. This could have the unintended consequence of users discovering that they can get enough of what they want from other sources that cost a fraction of their cable or satellite subscription fee. With those fees routinely running 0 a month or more just for television, a lot of households might be willing to chop that to a month, and settle for what they can get from Hulu Plus or Netflix.
Netgear has announced their new ReadyNAS Ultra storage devices. NAS stands for “network attached storage” which means that the data on its hard drives can be accessed by any device on your home network. This provides you with a powerful storage system that lets you share files and create backups of critical data – including music, video, and photo files — from all your home computers.
One key feature of the devices is their ability to store data from a TiVo DVR using the network connection. And once the data is in the NAS box, it can be streamed to any TiVo box on your network. The device can also automatically reformat streaming video for viewing on mobile devices or home computers, transcoding on the fly. And Skifta software lets you access your media files from any DLNA-compatible device even when you’re away from home; you can even use a smartphone to access your media content remotely.
The four- and six-bay models are slated to ship later this month, with the two-bay models scheduled to be available in October.
I wrote about a future I envision where people would were those “goofy 3D glasses” on a regular basis. Now it appears that I may have been a pessimist in my vision. Marchon Eyewear has announced that it has licensed RealD technology for use in a line of 3D-compatible sunglasses.
The glasses will be available through a variety of retail channels, including eye-care professionals who will be able to make them with prescription lenses. And when you go to a local cinema showing a 3D movie using RealD technology, you can just wear your own glasses. Oh, and when you’re outside, the company claims that they will block 100% of UVA and UVB rays.
Now, these are only passive glasses, and thus won’t work with home 3D-capable HDTVs that require active shutter glasses. But it shows that the 3D phenomenon is real enough for at least one company to start making some styling accessories for it.
Okay. You are probably more interested in reading about OLEDs than LEDs. OLEDs are the thin displays that look way better than LCDs and are used in high-end mobile phones and will be here “any day now” in HDTVs. LEDs are those little thingies that make power indicators light up.
But right now, LEDs are a whole lot more important to the HDTV industry than OLEDs. Way more important. The notebook computer industry has already shifted to LEDs for backlights for their LCD screens, and HDTV makers are following close behind. LEDs use less power to produce the same amount of light as fluorescent tubes, have better color performance, and don’t have use the environmentally hazardous mercury that complicates waste disposal and recycling. Oh, and the LED backlights make it possible to create impossibly thin LCD televisions.
But the problem is that you need very bright LEDs for those thin edge-lit panels. And high brightness LEDs get hot. And when an LED gets hot, its light output is reduced. So heat management is a critical issue for LCD HDTV backlights. The LED manufacturers are working with new substrates as alternatives to the standard sapphire substrates used to make LEDs. These alternatives have better heat dissipation, so the LED chips can run cooler. According to a report in DIGITIMES, Formosa Epitaxy is one of the leaders in using copper-tungsten substrates, and has started production in small volumes. For now, most of the product is used as illumination for pico projectors, but the company projects that the new substrate could account for 20% to 30% of its high-brightness LED production for 2011.
So not all the technology advances are in the obvious parts of an HDTV. Sometimes an improvement in a small part can make a big difference in the overall system.
LG has announced its LED-sidelit LCD 3DTVs. The LX9500 series and LX6500 series both offer local dimming for increased contrast and better energy efficiency, optional WiFi connectivity, and come in 47″ and 55″ models. The LX9500 series also features ultra-thin design and 480 Hz refresh rates, compared with the 240 Hz for the LX6500 models. Both series include NetCast support, which access the Internet through your home network to provide content from Netflix, YouTube, Vudu, and Picassa.
To promote the new lines, LG is offering a special “1-2-3D” bundle promotion. Buy one of the four HDTVs along with the BX580 Network Blu-ray Disc player, and LG will include two free pairs of the 3D active shutter glasses, a 0 instant rebate, and a bonus redemption certificate to receive Warner Home Video’s Blu-ray 3D title IMAX Under the Sea 3D. The glasses are valued at 0 apiece.
The discounts are probably not enough to convince bargain hunters to spring for these premium products, but it could be enough to give a push to those on the fence about making a purchase. I suspect that this is not the last promotion we’ll see for 3DTVs before this year is over.
I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing that you have a Facebook account. If you don’t, I still bet that you know what Facebook is. What started out as a way for students to keep in touch has become one of the keystones of “social media” on the Internet. And businesses have begun to take advantage of it, some of them in a big way.
For example, take JVC’s “Like It to Win It” Summer Sweepstakes on Facebook. The contest started July 7 and runs through September 6. Each day, just go to the Wall for the sweepstakes and just “Like” the day’s product. A winner is drawn at random, and as I write this, 766 people have already “Liked” today’s product so the odds seem pretty attractive at this point. So far, the company has put up iPod docking stations, clock radios, digital camcorders, and even a 32″ LCD HDTV!
Note that when you enter the first time, you will have to provide your email address. I asked a JVC representative about this, and was told that this is necessary to match your Facebook ID with your “Like” entry. Facebook won’t let sweepstakes use Facebook mail to notify winners, so you have to give JVC your email address if you want them to be able to notify you that you’ve won. And the company representative assured me that the email information is only used to notify winners; so far, I have not noticed a single piece of unsolicited email from JVC, so I’m inclined to believe them.
Okay, so now I’ve lowered my odds of winning by letting you all know about it, but that’s okay. That’s just the generous sort of person that I am. Good luck.
HDMI, we hardly knew ye. Introduced in 2003, it held forth the promise of long cable runs, high-speed data exchange with enough bandwidth for HD video, digital audio included, as well as the ability to control multiple peripherals from one device. It has taken some time to deliver on all this potential, and we’ve just started learning about the ins and outs for HDMI 1.4. So is it possible that the HDMI connector is going to retire so soon?
That’s a real possibility with the new HDBaseT specification that was finalized this week. This uses a standard Ethernet connector, but can carry network signals, uncompressed 1080p/60 video, multi-channel audio, and even provide power to devices. It uses the same Cat5e/6 network cables, and can be configured in daisychain and star configurations which could make device connection far simpler for consumers. The new design makes it easier to take advantage of content available on home networks and the Internet, and is expected to be able to switch faster between devices than HDMI can currently.
According to a press release from the HDBaseT Alliance, the first products could start to appear as early as the second half of this year, followed by major adoption next year. Will it be enough better than HDMI that it will be able to reach a critical mass of installations quickly? That remains to be seen, but with founding members that include LG, Samsung, and Sony, they have the market share to make this stick.
A press release from Displaybank predicts that by 2013, more than 86% of all plasma HDTVs sold will be 3D-ready. As the press release points out, it’s easier for plasma to support 3D than it is for LCD technology, because plasma has an innate advantage with its much higher switching speed. The result is that the incremental cost for 3D support should be less for plasma than LCD.
On the other hand, 3D exacerbates the plasma disadvantage of being not as bright as LCD, on average. 3D effectively cuts the light output, and you get less than half as much light as a result. This won’t be a problem for rooms where you can control the ambient lighting, but if you have a room with lots of windows, LCD may still be a better choice for you than plasma.
You may have seen Swanni’s merciless roasting of TV and movie personalities who do not fare well under the high resolution HD cameras. It’s not just actors and actresses that have a problem with the new reality of HD programming however. It turns out that professional sports uniforms are not immune to the unintended effects of high res.
The Dallas Observer ran a story about the fact that the famed Dallas Cowboys are thinking about making a change to their home uniform. Why? It turns out that those sparkling silver pants that we’ve been watching on our little screens for years actually are a shade of light green. The shade was chosen because it resulted in a great silver for standard definition screens. But on HDTVs, the true hue comes through. So it’s back to the drawing board for the Cowboys to find a shade that will look silver both on the field and in your living room.
I have often said that you could take a rear projection television, dip it in batter, deep fry it, and cover it with powdered sugar and the average American consumer still would not buy it. So the news is that Mitsubishi still has not given up on rear-projection DLP televisions. Yes, their pricey LaserVue sets get most of the press coverage (though the price for the 75″ model is approaching reason at ,999 list). But the traditional DLP models deserve some attention from buyers looking for large screens at atttractive prices.
For example, the 60″ WD-60638 has a list price of ,199. No, there are no missing digits in that price, and that’s list, not street price. Oh, and like all other Mitsubishi rear projection models, it’s 3D ready. If you want a big screen, consider the 82″ WD-82838 that lists for ,499; you could pay that much for an LED backlit LCD flat screen that is much smaller.
It is interesting to note that Mitsubishi no longer relies solely on the high margin pro A/V channel to sell their HDTVs. You can now find their products in a range of familiar retailers, including Amazon.
If your heart isn’t set on getting the thinnest panel possible – and who can tell when you’re seated directly in front of it — don’t forget that a rear projection set may give you more bang for your buck.
Is streaming video over the Internet a viable option over standard cable or satellite services? Hulu is betting that it is. Their free, ad-supported service has given access to new and archived episodes of current and past hit TV shows, as well as a smattering of feature length movies. After months of rumors, news broke yesterday of Hulu Plus, a .95 per month subscription service that provides complete episodes for full seasons of major shows from NBC, ABC, and Fox, among others. According to the announcement on the company blog, the service will still be “ad supported”, and will offer more content than the existing free Hulu service (which will also continue). The service will also offer content in 720p high definition.
The other part of the news is that Hulu Plus will also be available on more platforms. The blog entry mentions support for the iPad and iPhone, and Samsung has announced that it will add a downloadable app for Hulu Plus immediately for “select 2010 Blu-ray players, Blu-ray home theater systems, and the majority of 2010 Samsung TVs 40” and above.” Samsung cites that it is the “exclusive HDTV partner” for the Hulu Plus preview period. At the same time, Vizio has announced that it will also be supporting Hulu Plus on its Vizio Internet Apps (VIA) platform for its Blu-ray players and HDTVs.
Hulu Plus is starting with an invitation-only preview period, after which it will be opened up to all subscribers. You can request an invitation at the Hulu Plus site at http://www.hulu.com/plus.
This is huge news. True, you don’t get any CBS content, and the coverage of the other networks is not comprehensive. But all the same, it allows you to watch your favorite shows in HD on your HDTV, Blu-ray player, phone, pad, notebook computer, or desktop computer for a single monthly fee. This rate is way below the average cable company subscription, and puts the camel’s nose even further under the tent for a la carte pricing of cable programming. If the cable and satellite companies won’t or can’t respond, this will just hasten the demise of standard subscription-based television services.
At a trade show last week, I saw a fascinating new product. It’s called the Immerz from Kor FX. The device looks a lot like a pair of folding headphones, but the difference is that you wear them around your neck so that they rest just below your collarbone. The devices are a pair of haptic transducers that can transmit low frequency sounds directly into your chest cavity. As the name implies, the goal is to give you an immersive experience. And wow does it work!
I had a chance to chat with the inventor, Shahriar Afshar, and his point was that we tend to perceive sounds as being external or internal to ourselves. Our voice is an internal sound, which is why people tend think that recordings of their voice sounds so strange, because it is recorded and played back as an external sound. The transducers can transform an external sound and make it personal by making it come from inside your body. The result is an immersive experience that can put you right in the middle of the action of a movie. I know, because I experienced that effect while watching an iPod. The effect was stunning.
At this point, the device is available in a wired version, designed to be used by an individual in conjunction with a set of headphones. The next version will be wireless, so that many people can share the experience while watching a large screen and hearing the bulk of the sound track through room speakers.
This is definitely a product that you’ll want to track.
To paraphrase Will Rogers, I never metadata that I didn’t like. And I like the new metadata system that THX has created. Known primarily for their cinema sound certification, THX has also been very active in trying to make sure that the movie experience in the living room is as good as possible. Their latest initiative, THX Media Director, has been to create a metadata system that can be encoded along with a television signal, so that your HDTV can automatically adjust key settings in response to the signal requirements.
What does this mean? One of the simplest examples is that there is a metadata code for 2D versus 3D signals. The embedded code can switch the TV into the appropriate mode. The system can handle much more than this, however. It also can automatically control color space settings, surround sound, and aspect ratio.
Now, the problem is that there is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation here. The content producers won’t put the metadata into the signal until there are enough set top boxes and HDTVs installed that can interpret it. And the set top boxes and HDTVs won’t add the ability to interpret the codes until they’re included in the signal.
Still, it would probably be a good thing if the two ends of the chain could get together and implement this system. Having seen so many HDTVs with the wrong settings, a system that could adjust automatically could be a major improvement.
You will soon be able to buy a 3D display that can convert 2D content to 3D on the fly and uses passive polarized glasses to view the stereoscopic images. The display is WideXGA format — 1,366 by 768 pixels – so it can handle 720p high definition without scaling. The whole thing weighs under 6 pounds, but that’s not too surprising when you find out that the screen is only 15.6″ diagonal.
Of course, none of this is so surprising when you find out that it’s the new Lenovo IdeaPad Y560d notebook computer which is due to ship in the next two weeks. The LCD display has alternating polarized strips, so you don’t need active glasses to see the 3D images. The passive glasses mean that you only get half the resolution when viewing 3D content, but this is the price you pay for doing without shutter glasses. A Blu-ray drive is optional, and the computer has an HDMI output in case you want to connect to a full-sized HDTV. The suggested retail price is listed at ,200 for the base model.
Another specialty AV store chain is closing its doors. Ken Crane’s, with 10 locations in southern California, is selling off its inventory and shutting down operations within the next two months. The company was founded in 1948 as a Magnavox dealer, according to an article in TWICE. Apparently, the current recession was apparently too deep and too wide for the company to make it across.
I suspect that the changing home entertainment market also played a part in the fate of Ken Crane’s. Quality consumer electronics products are no longer primarily for the wealthy, and the industry relies more and more on mass market products. It has become increasingly difficult to protect different retail channels, especially when they have different profit margins for the sellers. Consumers are smart enough to realize that two nearly identical models selling for different prices are probably enough the same that you can simply buy the less expensive model. And there is more information available for consumers, so they don’t need to rely as much on the guidance of a pro AV sales staff.
There will always be a place for specialty dealers such as Ken Crane’s because there will always be custom builders of very expensive homes, and these homes will need very expensive home entertainment systems. But the number of consumers who will need these services is shrinking, and we can expect to see additional store closings in the future.
I’ve written about the Mobile Digital Television (Mobile DTV) that is currently undergoing a trial roll-out in the Washington DC market, with eight area stations broadcasting 23 different channels showing the same content as is broadcast on the stations’ regular broadcast channels. My reservations still hold; I don’t think consumers will want to have to buy a new device or a tuner for an existing device. They already own enough displays, and if they want television content, they’ll want to get it on the devices they already own, like a smart phone. And I don’t think consumers are going to be satisfied with watching whatever happens to be on the schedule at that moment. The Internet has changed everything, and one of those changes is that consumers expect to be able to watch what they want, whenever they want.
So I was interested to find out about a service called BitBop, a new service from the Fox Mobile Group. The service lets you watch full episodes of television shows for a flat monthly subscription. It currently offers a wide range of shows, though not as extensive as the Hulu catalog. It’s an app-based system that is currently available only for certain Blackberry models, but additional phones will be supported in the future. You can either stream content and view it directly, or download it to your phone to watch later. And it can use either a 3G or WiFi data connection. It’s not free like Mobile DTV, but the price is reasonable and you don’t have to have anything but your existing smart phone. It’s all you can eat for a flat rate subscription, and ad-free.
I’m pretty sure that more American consumers will be more interested in BitBop than in Mobile DTV. What do you think? Let me know at alfred@hdtvprofessor.com.
With any new technology, the Law of Unintended Consequences is always lurking somewhere, waiting to bite you in the butt. 3DTV is no exception, and already the reports are beginning to show up, questioning whether or not 3DTV can be harmful to you in some way or another. Perhaps the most dramatic is the set of warnings that Samsung Australia has published. It may simply be a case of lawyer-induced defensive overkill, but their “Photosensitive Seizure Warning and Other Health Risks” statement has received a fair amount of attention on the Web. Some of it seems a bit silly, such as the admonition not to watch 3DTV if “you are in bad physical condition, need sleep or have been drinking alcohol.” Really? Don’t watch 3DTV if you’re tired?
Fortunately, there’s an industry group that is looking to provide additional information about the health implications of 3DTV. The 3D@Home Consortium is a group of more than 40 companies worldwide that are involved in the 3DTV market. The group recognizes that a lot of research as been done on the effects of stereoscopic displays on human physiology, but that there has not been a concerted effort to share, communicate, and compare the findings. The Consortium also has established relationships with similar organizations in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China, to further expand the scope of cooperation.
The Consortium has created a steering team that is chaired by representatives from members Intel and BlueFocus. Philip Corriveau is Principal Engineer and Director of the User Experience Research Group at Intel, and is be one of the co-chairs. The other co-chair is Paulette Pantoja, the CEO of BluFocus.
If this group can sift through the research and provide consumers with reliable, accurate information about the health risks associated with 3DTV (and 3D in the local cinema, for that matter), then they will have done a valuable service to the market.
FLO TV had previously announced that it would ship a piggyback tuner for iPhone and iPod Touch in the first half of this year, then in late March said it would be ready within a month and a half, according to an article in TWICE. The same article reports that now the company says the Juice Pack TV is not far away.
The device adds a FLO TV tuner that allows you to receive the subscription-based mobile television service. The tuner actually retransmits the signal to your iPhone or iPod using WiFi, and up to three other devices can share the encrypted signal. The Juice Pack TV is made by Mophie, and also serves as a battery extender.
The Mophie site does not yet have a price posted for the product. FLO TV subscriptions start at per month.
TiVo and the satellite TV service Dish Network (and its parent company, EchoStar) have been embroiled in a series of legal actions over TiVo’s claims of patent infringement. Last year, TiVo won a 0 million judgment against Dish, but a federal appeals court recently decided that it will review that decision and the claim that the presiding judge should have given Dish a new trial to determine whether or not the company was still infringing on TiVo’s intellectual property.
Now the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has rejected two claims in TiVo’s patents. According to a report on NewTeeVee, TiVo believes that the judgment is in error, and will appeal the recent PTO decision. Earlier in the process, the PTO ruled against some of TiVo’s patent claims, only to have them ultimately upheld as valid. For its part, Dish claims that the recent PTO decision was the right one, citing prior art that should invalidate the patent claims.
As for the ultimate winner in this case, the only ones we can be sure of are the lawyers. Whether or not this dispute will end up having an impact on Dish subscribers remains to be seen.
Almost everyone has heard that the FIFA World Cup tournament is underway. And just about everyone has heard the song of the vuvuzela, the noisemaker of choice for South African soccer fans. The deafening din is drowning out sports commentators and giving TV viewers instant headaches. While debates rage on about banning the horns from international competition and broadcasters scramble to find ways to cope with the racket, some viewers have taken matters into their own hands.
If your HDTV, home stereo, or even computer has a “parametric” equalizer for the sound portion of your TV signal, you may be able to muffle the vuvuzela or even eliminate it completely by filtering out certain frequencies. The Lifehacker site has posted an article on vuvuzela killer strategies. The page contains a link to settings for a Samsung TV, but also demonstrates how to use GarageBand on a Mac to filter the signal to get rid of the droning sound. They even posted a video showing how to do it:
It’s a pretty impressive demonstration, and can greatly increase your enjoyment of the World Cup Games.
Last week, XpanD began shipping its second-generation X102 DLP-link glasses for 3D television. Unlike most active shutter glasses, these don’t need to have a separate emitter in order to sync with the 3D television. These glasses support 3D-ready HDTVs and projectors that use DLP technology. The display will flash a signal to the glasses to switch from one eye to the other. This feature is called DLP-Link and eliminates the need for extra components in the TV or projector.
In an article last week, Media Daily News cited Time Warner Cable CFO John Martin’s statement that he expects half of all pay-TV homes in the U.S. will have the option of a TV Everywhere service to go along with their subscription. Cable and satellite companies are moving rapidly to give their customers “any time, any where” access to their programming content over the Internet. Martin also said he would not be surprised if the number of homes reached 50 million by this time next year.
TV Everywhere is an important movement in the subscription-based TV programming market. While consumers can access some TV content for free on the Internet — such as through Hulu or the individual network sites — they also want to be able to watch the premium channels and live programming that they have paid for as part of their subscriptions. The services are responding in hopes of being able to retain their customers and attract new ones.
I think that this is a great idea in general, but I’m concerned that it may backfire on the subscription services. If the TV Everywhere offerings are primarily the dozens of channels that people don’t watch that much anyway, or if there is an additional premimum charged to watch the “good” ones, I believe that it will put added pressure on the subscription services to offer “a la carte” pricing. With monthly bills of 0 to 0 being common, consumers would love to pick and choose which networks they want and not pay for the rest. But this would be the death knell for cable and satellite as we know it; I doubt that most could survive the loss of revenue for the “other” channels that don’t have much of an audience but round up the total channel count (and HD content count) for these companies. And then there’s the question of whether people will need the basic service at all; if given the choice of just getting their all content over the Internet, will they take down their dishes and cut off the coax?
I know, everyone gets it that LCD HDTV prices are lower than they were. But every once in a while, I see something that just makes me stop and go “hmmm….” Today it was an alert that Walmart is selling the 46″ Toshiba 46XV645U for 9. That’s not an entry level model, either; the 1080p set has 120 Hz refresh and three HDMI inputs. Okay, so it’s last year’s model. But as recently as early this year, it was picked by Consumer Reports included it as one of its best buys at a street price of ,000. Today’s price is 30% lower than that.
Just two years ago, the lowest advertised price I found for a 46″ LCD HDTV was ,899.99 for a close-out Samsung model. Most of the sets at that time were advertised at ,000 to ,900. That’s three to four times more than this Walmart price today. So while I realize that we’ve all become a bit jaded about price drops on HDTVs in general, I still think it’s helpful to look back from time to time and see just how big the pricing changes are. It’s as if a car that cost ,000 two years ago could be bought today for just ,000. I don’t know about you, but I’m still impressed by that.
Western Digital has come out with another version of its media player that adds network connectivity features to any HDTV. The new WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player now adds Netflix to its list of supported Internet sources for audio and video content. It also streams content from YouTube, Flickr, Pandora, Live365, and the MediaFly network. It also can access your own locally-stored content, either through a USB storage device or across a home network. It is capable of 1080p HD playback, and supports both wired and WiFi connections to your home network (though WiFi support requires a separate, optional adapter at additional cost).
The box is available now with an MSRP of 9.99, though I have found sites offering it for under 0.
This week, Verizon announced that it was adding V CAST Video service for its Android cell phones. This service offers on-demand content including episodes of popular television shows from major networks including NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, A&E, Lifetime, and more. There are 81 channels of programming from which to choose. The service also includes live coverage of major league sporting events. The connection time does not count against your voice minutes or data download allocation.
Verizon charges a month for the service, on top of the the required monthly data service plan. You can also get access for a day at a time for per day, which might be handy if you get stranded in an airport while traveling.
One of the great features of the new breed of Internet-connected NeTVs is that they can learn new tricks as if by magic. You can download new applications and widgets to your set, and presto changeo! Your HDTV can now do something new.
Samsung just announced that it has added two new applications to is Samsung Apps store: Facebook and Google Maps. So now your television can be the hub of your social network as well as a world atlas with street-level resolution. (Try fitting that on your living room shelf!) These apps join the 30 others already available for Samsung’s network-connected HDTVs and Blu-ray players, including Netflix, Vudu, Pandora, Twitter, and USA Today.
If you’re in the market for a new HDTV, I strongly urge you to consider getting one with network support. It is probably going to be an increasingly important feature in the coming years.
“TV Everywhere” is the moniker given to a new initiative by subscription-based TV services (cable, satellite, and telco). The idea is that when you’re away from home and your set top box, you can “call in” over the Internet to watch the programming you could have watched if you were home. Think of it as a Slingbox application that doesn’t commandeer your home TV. Comcast was one of the first to launch, and now another company has stepped up: Rogers Communications. Now, that may not be a familiar name for most of us in the U.S. That’s because it’s a Canadian cable company.
The Rogers On Demand Online Web site launched in beta mode last November, but now has had its official rollout. One difference between this and other TV Everywhere projects is that Rogers does not require that you be a subscriber to use the site. You do need to be a subscriber to access exclusive content, including the coverage of live sporting events and concerts. The only catch is that in order to access the streaming video on the site, you have to be in Canada. But it’s something to keep in mind if you live below the 49th parallel and have a trip planned to the Land of the Maple Leaf.
Yesterday, Apple announced a new digital camcorder that can take 720p high definition movies. The camera does not accept memory cards, but comes in 16 GB and 32 GB versions. It also serves double duty as a still digital camera, including flash and 5 megapixel resolution. It has an LCD viewing panel that is only 3.5 inches diagonal, but has very fine pitch pixels so it has 960 by 640 widescreen resolution. (That’s a bit better than wide VGA standard resolution, but not enough to show HD images without scaling them down some.) And the camera even has a touch screen for controls, and a built-in GPS so you’ll always know where you are when you’re shooting.
Oh, and it’s a phone, too.
I am happy to acknowledge that the new pocket sized iPhone 4G has a lot of features, and some of them probably are going to be useful too. I recognize how difficult it is to differentiate your product in the crowded cell phone market with its ridiculously short replacement cycles. Many of the new Apple phone’s features aren’t first to market. For example, other phones have “front-facing” cameras and support video chat, which is a cool application even though Apple doesn’t get to be the first to offer it. But it still is an impressive almagamation of video camera, still camera, GPS, game controller, PDA, media player, video chat platform, Internet browser, and phone.
I’m not sure I’d buy it just to get the HD camcorder feature, but it’s tempting.
By the way, you can read about my industry report on consumer video chat, “The Consumer Video Chat Market, 2010-2015”, that was just published by GigaOM Pro by clicking here.
Late last month, the Mobile Digital Television Consumer Showcase kicked off in the Washington, D.C. metro area. This four month experiment by local television broadcasters is intended to introduce consumers (as well as federal lawmakers and administration officials) to the benefits and convenience of Mobile Digital Television (Mobile DTV).
Nine metropolitan stations are broadcasting more than 20 separate channels. Programming includes interactive features such as polling and advertising feedback. The broadcasts can be received on certain cell phones, DVD players, and netbooks that support Mobile DTV, as well dedicated receivers. According to a press release from the Open Mobile Video Coalition, “hundreds of area consumers” will be asked to provide feedback through “daily diaries, market research, and feedback groups”.
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: I don’t think that this new service will gain much traction. Yes, we’re an active, mobile population and yes, current ATSC broadcasts aren’t designed to be received while in motion. (Just don’t tell my friend and colleague Peter Putman that you can’t watch ATSC broadcasts on a moving train.) But I think Mobile DTV is the solution to a problem that isn’t there. If people are driving, any screens are mostly likely in use for GPS or for DVDs or video games for the youngsters in the back of the minivan. If you want to watch the baseball game, you’re more likely to be sitting still at a barbecue in the park or some similar stationary location, at which point a battery-powered TV that receives ATSC should do just fine. And I don’t believe that there will be enough of an audience to make it worth it for the local broadcasters to deal with the reformatting and editing of the program content to fit a Mobile DTV format. And if people on the go do want to watch video, it’s more likely to be on-demand content, and the wireless broadband services let any smartphone get you all the content you could possibly want, when you want it, instead of having to wait for it to come around on a Mobile DTV channel.
Finally, the Baltimore-Washington area has a sizeable population with a string of local broadcasters. It’s not like most of the country, where the choice of broadcasters is far more limited. If nine stations are putting up 20 Mobile DTV channels, how many choices will a consumer have in a rural area that may be served by one terrestrial broadcaster, if any? Even 20 stations may not be all that satisfying to a consumer used to the hundreds of choices from their cable or satellite service. And with the advent of “TV Anywhere” options over the Internet from these services, won’t users be more likely to turn to the Web for their video content than a limited local broadcast?
So while Mobile DTV is an interesting experiment, I’ll be very surprised if there’s a huge spike in Mobile DTV devices in the Balto-Washington area this summer, or a hue and cry for its continuation after this demonstration ends.
At a conference yesterday, Redbox president Mitch Lowe announced that the company will start renting Blu-ray titles from its kiosks for .50 a night, according to a report published in Home Media Magazine. The discs should start appearing in the next few months, though it the Redbox site already has Blu-ray titles listed as being available. More than one out of every six Redbox customers already owns a Blu-ray player, and the company is already renting about 40 million movies a month, so it could be in a good position to help grow the demand for Blu-ray titles and players.
A 50% premimum sounds like a lot to pay for Blu-ray, but it’s only $.50 so it may be that the absolute amount is more significant than the percentage in this case. According to the article, Lowe cited some interesting statistics. He said that 20% of Redbox customers would not have bought or rented a certain DVD if it were not available at Redbox. He also cited number for how many Redbox customers go on to buy a movie after they have rented it. As a result, he believes that his service actually helps Hollywood sell movies.
OLEDs make my heart sing. They are everything that a display should be: thin, light, great color, emissive, energy efficient, no viewing angle problems. Other people seem to agree; according to some sources, 45 million OLED displays will be sold this year for mobile applications such as cell phones and personal media players. And if you have been monitoring my InBox, you’d know that lots of people who read the HDTV Almanac are anxious to buy a large format OLED HDTV.
So it was with great anticipation that we went to the SID 2010 keynote address yesterday by Dr. Sang Soo Kim, Executive VP with Samsung Mobile Displays. This is the company that is now responsible for the research and production of Samsung’s OLED displays. The talk generated a lot of advance buzz, as it was rumored that Samsung would make a major announcement about OLED, perhaps building on the news that it was building a Gen 5.5 production line for OLED.
The biggest news coming out of the presentation, however, was that Kim predicts that OLED display shipments could reach 1 billion units by 2015. Given the increased production capacity, that seems possible though quite optimistic. The only other news was that Samsung was developing plans for a Gen 8 OLED line, though no dates were given.
The problem with Samsung’s announcements is that it did not adequately address the backplane problem. At this point, standard amorphous silicon works fine for LCDs, but does not work for OLED. OLED requires a poly-silicon backplane, which is created by heating the amorphous silicon layer with lasers so that it crystalizes. It is an expensive and slow step, and currently does not work for substrates larger than Gen 4.5. That’s fine when you’re making 3″ displays for cell phones, but expensive for an HDTV size panel. Samsung’s approach for Gen 5.5 and Gen 8 is to use the same slow, size-limited laser process to anneal the silicon in Gen 4.5 size segments. This means that the process will take about as long as if you were producing the panels on a Gen 4.5 line, so there is little efficiency gain. So it’s not going to have much impact on the costs. So the sets aren’t be even close to LCD prices.
So as much as I’d love to tell you that you’re going to have some wonderful choices for OLED HDTVs next year, I don’t believe it will happen. DisplaySearch doesn’t expect OLED TV revenues worldwide to reach a few hundred million dollars until 2013, so I’m not the only one who is thinking this way.
And after looking at displays here like the beautiful 2.6 mm thick (that’s one tenth of an inch, folks!) 42″ HDTV from LG, I wonder if we really need OLED HDTVs at all.
At the IMS Market Focus Conference at SID 2010, yesterday was devoted to all aspects of the 3DTV market. During the session on the 3DTV Market Outlook, one of the speakers was Jim Sanduski, Senior Vice President for Sales with Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company. He made a number of interesting comments during his presentation, such as the fact that Panasonic does not feel that the current real-time 2D-to-3D conversion technology produces adequate quality, which is why the company does not include the feature in its models.
But another comment might be of more interest to the average consumer. He showed a picture of the kiosk that Panasonic has developed for retail display. The kiosk clearly was more expensive to develop and roll out than just simply putting a display on a retail shelf, but he pointed out that the in-store experience for the customer must be top quality. It appears that Panasonic is concerned that shoppers might not understand the 3DTV and could come away thinking that it doesn’t work well.
The comment that is most noteworthy, however, is that because Panasonic wants shoppers to have a good experience with the 3DTV, the company will not authorize the sale of their 3D-capable models over the Internet. Now, this certainly makes sense from the viewpoint of wanting to control the shopper’s experience, but I suspect that there’s more to that. To make room for a kiosk that looks like a smaller version of the starship Enterprise’s bridge deck, a retailer will be giving up a lot of space for just a single HDTV. It’s clear that Panasonic wants to protect its brick-and-mortar retail partners by prohibiting online sale of these models.
If the past provides any hint of the future, however, this is a genie that will be difficult to keep in its bottle. Not authorizing their sale is no guarantee that some units won’t leak out the supply channel, however. Once the unauthorized online retail sales start, you can be sure that Panasonic’s authorized online retailers will be clamoring for permission to compete. We’ll see how long the Web sale prohibition lasts.
Okay, I just used my entire quota of acronyms in the title, and I haven’t even started the entry. But this is pretty clever news. Gefen has created a “USB DVI Adapter” — oops, more acronyms — that lets you connect a computer to an HDTV. And it only uses a standard USB port. The box is powered by the port, so there’s no need for an external power source. The DVI connector lets you connect to a variety of devices, and DVI-to-HDMI cables are easy to get so you can use this box to connect just about any computer to your HDTV.
Perhaps the coolest feature is that you can connect up to six of these little boxes to one computer. (This assumes that your computer has six USB ports and sufficient processing power, though the Gefen Web site states that the device “uses little resources, ensuring a quality display without compromising performance.”) Sorry, Mac users; you’re limited to just four per machine. It supports resolutions of 1080p and even higher, such as 1920 by 1200. If there’s a drawback, it is that the box costs 9 direct from Gefen, which is a little pricey for a graphics adapter but it makes it up in convenience.
It’s getaway day here in Seattle for me, but as always, it has been a packed week at the Society for Information Display (SID) annual conference. There were no earth-shaking developments for the HDTV market revealed here, but I want to recap the overall themes based on what I saw and heard here.
First, 3DTV is real and it’s here to stay. I didn’t see anything that changed my view that active glasses will be the only commercial solution for the living room. Passive glasses add too much cost to the TV set, and auto-stereoscopic just can’t work for multiple viewers in a living room setting. It’s great for single user situations – 3M’s clever portable 3D screen proves that — but until you have many more images than just the two used in stereoscopic 3DTV, the limited “sweet spots” are just too restrictive. (Now, when you get to the 200-camera system that has been demonstrated in Japan, that’s a different story.)
Next, the debate over “native 3D” versus “synthesized” content developed from 2D originals won’t end soon. Yes, the best content is made in 3D from the start when it is initially captured. (Note that some of the worst content is also native 3D, as content producers are still struggling to learn the basics about stereoscopic imagery.) And yes, you can get a good result (though some would not call it more than “acceptable”) if you carefully convert 2D to 3D using human graphic artists to make painstaking decisions about the details in each frame. This gets expensive, however, because it is similar to hand-drawn animation in terms of effort. And yes, the real-time conversion of 2D source content into 3D in a ,000 home television set is not going to be as good as the best examples of the native or hand-c0nverted content. The key question is whether it’s “good enough”. I think it is for most viewers, and if I were buying a 3DTV today (which I’m not, by the way) I would definitely get one that could do the realtime conversion. I’d rather have the feature and decide to not use it than not have the feature and wish I did.
Finally, LED backlights will take over from fluorescent backlights for LCD HDTVs. They are friendlier to the environment in terms of manufacturing, energy consumption while in use, and ultimate disposal as waste or recycling material. They have better color. And they make it possible to create thinner displays that people appear to prefer. The increasing demand for LEDs for all sorts of applications, including HDTVs, is resulting in rapid growth of production capacity, which in turn should drive down costs. Between that and the fierce competition among manufacturers, I expect to see the price differential between LED and fluorescent models to continue to shrink.
So I don’t think we’re going to be buying holographic 3D HDTVs or quad-1080p super high definition sets next year. The story is that we can expect steady improvement in the technology (and perhaps a sprinkling of both useful and wacky features as manufacturers struggle to differentiate their products) along with some continued price erosion so by the holiday season, a big flat panel HDTV will be more affordable than ever.
I’ve got my feet up, sitting under the shade of a big tree, sipping on something cold. I’ll be back at the HDTV Almanac tomorrow, but for today, I’m taking some time off. I hope that you get to do the same.
The Diffusion Group has released a report that predicts Internet video will surpass broadcast TV programming by 2020.
The market research firm points out that broadcast television has remained fairly stable in recent years, while Internet video watching has increased by 84% from 2008 to 2009. The company forecasts a rapidly increasing rate of growth, coming at the expense of broadcast television. The co-author of the report predicts that “Internet and broadcast delivery of video content will become blended in such a way that consumers will be unaware of which conduit serves which content.”
Now, let me point out that a small decrease in the majority share is a small percentage, but an equally small increase in a minority share can look enormous. In this case, they are holding the total number of TV viewing hours constant, so the change in broadcast versus Internet will be the same. This means that the 84% growth figure is probably not all that exciting since it’s starting with such a low number. The curves in the forecast graphs are pretty flat initially, and then accelerate rapidly starting in about four years.
I believe that the overall conclusions are probably valid, if not pessimistic. The current network/broadcast/cable/satellite model is under enormous strain, as is the mass-advertising model on which they have been built. We may not have to wait until 202o to see the current system collapse, resulting in a new model that consists of separate content producers, content distributors, and broadband bandwidth providers. Individually-targeted advertising and content developed for smaller audiences will transform what we watch and how it gets delivered to us. Certainly there will continue to be mass-market blockbuster shows and movies, but these will likely become the minor portion of the available content that we’ll watch in our living rooms.
, “Tangled 3D” (March 29), and “Tron: Legacy 3D” (April 5). Huh? We’re making a big deal about releasing fewer than one new title a week? Even if I was excited to see all four of these (five, if you include the opera), this is hardly enough content to make me run out and spend a couple grand on a new HDTV (plus the DirecTV subscription).
Priced at 9, they cost less than some of the glasses available from the 3DTV manufacturers, but are designed to work with “any 3D-ready display, regardless of brand” according to the company. (I do not have every brand of 3DTV available to me here, so I have not had the opportunity to test the accuracy of this claim.)
