HDTV Almanac

Q: Some weeks ago, I heard you mention thedifference in power consumption between LCD and plasma televisions on The Personal Computer Show. I have found that Crutchfield provides a comparison option which includes their own testing of TVs. When you have some time, could you compare the four 46″ models I have listed below, using Crutchfield.com. From what I can determine there does not seem to be a great deal of difference of power consumption in actual real world use. Thank you.
David Whitfield, Ohio

A: Thanks for the question, David. As with most technical issues, the generalities are sometimes contradicted by specific instances. This is a complex topic, but let me take a stab at it.

First and foremost, I commend Crutchfield for putting in the time and effort to measure power consumption for their televisions. A review of the four models you cite does show a plasma unit scoring slightly lower than an LCD unit using the Crutchfield measurements. Unfortunately, I cannot find any details on the Crutchfield Web site about how they got these results, so there has to be some question about how to interpret them.

The problem is that LCD and plasma screens consume power differently. Plasmas draw the most power when displaying a white screen at full brightness, because plasma power consumption is a direct result of how much light is needed to create the image on the screen. A picture of a snowy mountain top in daylight is going to draw much more power than a shot of a bad guy lurking in the shadows of a Gotham City alley. This is why it would be helpful to know how Crutchfield tested, because the images you put on the screen will affect the results.

LCDs, on the other hand, change their consumption little as the image changes. For most, they have fluorescent tubes as backlights, which remain on at full brightness whenever the set is on. The LCD layer blocks or transmits the light as needed to create the image, but the backlight stays on. The backlight is more efficient than the plasma panel, however, which is why the LCDs use less power than the plasma maximum.

And there’s one more factor that Crutchfield does not report, and that’s the brightness of the display. In general, LCDs are capable of producing a brighter image than a plasma. I expect that if the brightness on these LCDs was dialed back down to match the output of the plasmas, the power consumption advantage of the LCDs would show more clearly.

Note that some new LCD TVs are using LED backlights instead of fluorescent. Not only do these tend to give better color performance and consume a bit less power, they also make it possible to dim the backlight in darker regions of the image on the screen. This can cut power consumption in half.

Finally, it’s worth considering how significant the savings are. If you leave a single 100 watt light bulb burning while you watch TV instead of turning it off, you will wipe out the difference between the most power hungry model and the least on your list. Using Crutchfield’s estimate of 6 hours a day and $.10 per kilowatt hour, that difference is just $2 a month. So it may not be worth spending hundreds of dollars more just to get a set with lower power consumption.

Do you have questions about HDTVs? Write me at alfred@hdtvprofessor.com and I’ll do my best to help.

My friend and colleague Steve Sechrist at Insight Media wrote a great piece in that company’s free “Display Daily” newsletter about problems facing two subscription-based mobile TV services. Mobile Broadcasting Corp. in Japan will shut down next spring after failing to sign up enough subscribers in spite of 10 years of trying and Toyota’s endorsement. In Germany, Mobile 3.0 is throwing in the towel as well. In both cases, free access to broadcast television on competing services seems to have dealt the fatal blow; consumer seem to prefer free over paying a monthly fee. Go figure!

But this raises the question of who will pay for these free video services. It looks as though the answer may be advertisers, because cell phones have some unique characteristics that could make them ideally suited for a specific form of advertising. MultiMedia Intelligence has just released a new research report on mobile TV and advertising, focusing on what they call “Call to Action” ads. While you’re watching video on your cell phone, you can press one button and get instant interaction with the ad on the screen. This could trigger a text message listing the closest Starbucks to your current location so you can get the advertised coffee special, or it could send a request to a car dealer for a brochure about the car being advertised.

The key here is that the two-way communication features of the cell phone make it ideally suited for interactive advertising. And getting a tangible response from the consumer is an essential first step for any advertiser. Not only does mobile TV make this easy and appropriate, it also means that the advertiser gets hard data on how many people are responding to the ads. And this makes the mobile TV service provider happy because it means that this data will justify the advertising costs.

“If it’s free, it’s for me.” That seems to be the dominant theme in technology today, from open source software to Web sites. Outside of the movie rental market, it looks as though any subscription-based service from telephones to television is at risk of competition from no-fee alternatives. And I’m not so sure that someone won’t come up with a system that could even make the movies free. As always, stay tuned….

The federal government is providing rebate coupons to consumers who want to buy a converter for their analog-only television sets before the transition to all digital broadcasts next February. (See the HDTV Almanac entry for details about the coupon program.)

The NTIA has issued about 20 million coupons so far. However, the coupons have a 90-day expiration, and of those that have passed that date, less than half have been redeemed. The NTIA is now negotiating with IBM, the main contractor for the program, to issue an additional 6 million coupons to take the place of some of those that expired.

According to a press release from Zenith, the company has shipped more than a million converters, and about 6 million units of all brands have been bought using the rebate coupons. Estimates for the number of US households with TVs and no cable or satellite subcriptions are as high as 20 million. And if you consider the fact that many homes with cable or satellite also have an “extra” TV somewhere that is not connected, and so depends on a broadcast signal, the total number of households could be even higher. So with less than 200 days to go until the digital TV transition (or a bit more than a month, if you live in Wilmington, NC), it would appear that fewer than a third of those who will need a converter box have used a coupon to buy one.

I’m expecting a bit of a crunch on converter boxes this fall, so if you need one and haven’t requested your coupons yet, do it now.

NBC is touting the fact that it will offer 1,400 hours of Olympic coverage on its various networks, including NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, USA, and Telemundo. It also will have 24/7 live and repeat HD coverage on Universal HD. If you want to check out what networks are available to you on your cable or satellite service, just enter your ZIP Code and service at http://www.nbcolympics.com/tv_and_online_listings/zone=ET/day=1/index.html to see what’s available.

But if you have a broadband Internet connection, you can also get free access to another 2,000 hours of coverage. You can got to www.nbcolympics.com to view live and repeat coverage of just about every sport in the Summer Games. As a result, you don’t have to settle for the watered-down network coverage of your favorite sport — such as sailing — just because the marquee sports like swimming and gymnastics get all the prime time coverage. You may have to watch at some odd hours, but you’ll find the coverage online. And if you install Microsoft’s new Silverlight software, you’ll be able to watch multiple sports at once, use picture-in-picture, and other features.

What you want to watch, when you want to watch it, where you want to watch it; that’s the promise of television on the Internet. And the Olympics are shaping up to be an excellent example of what this can mean to sports fans everywhere.

Netflix subscribers, I hope you haven’t rushed out and bought the Roku box yet. (That’s the $100 box that lets you stream movies and other video content from Netflix over the Internet for free.) Apparently, Netflix is going to give you lots of options to access the online content, and yesterday LG Electronics showed off the latest.

The new LG BD300 Network Blu-ray Disc Player has a wired Ethernet connection, and if you connect it to your home network with broadband Internet access, your Netflix subscription will give you unlimited free access to their online library of more than 12,000 movies and other video content. No pricing has been announced yet for the player which will ship this fall, but this added feature makes the higher cost of Blu-ray (as compared with HD DVD, RIP) a lot more palatable.

In addition to the Roku box, Netflix recently announced partnering with Microsoft XBox Live service to provide free streaming video to Netflix subscribers. Clearly, the company is aggressive about making the transition from renting physical discs by mail to an electronic delivery service. And Netflix has come out of the blocks hard and fast, leaving Blockbuster in the dust.

This week, NBC and the NFL announced that Sunday Night Football will be streamed live on the Internet on NFL.com and NBCSports.com. Ironically, the first game will actually be on Thursday, September 4; if you’ve got a broadband connection, you’ll be able to watch the Redskins and Giants battle it out on the gridiron. (Does anybody actually say “gridiron” anymore?)

The remaining 16 games will be on Sunday nights, and the Web-based programming is slated to offer some interactive wrinkles. You will be able to choose different camera views, including the Madden-esque cable cam. Picture-in-picture will let you follow multiple angles at one time. You can also get live stats throughout the game and replay highlights on demand.

Football on TV is great. It’s arguably better than even being at the stadium (especially if you get stuck in third deck seats on the goal line). Adding interactive features will make it even better. And now that March Madness has demonstrated how successful live sports over the Internet can be, it’s about time that we get to try professional football in the Digital Age. My major concern is about the resolution of the streamed images; football was invented just to make HDTV look good, so anything less could be a disappointment. But if you’re stuck at a computer on a Sunday night, at least you’ll know that you won’t have to miss the big game.

The space race is now measured in number of high definition channels, and DIRECTV is continuing with its successful drive to stress HD coverage to attract subscribers. This week, the company announced that it will be adding more than 30 additional HD channels next month, which adds up to a total of more than 130 HD channels. This increase was made possible by the new DIRECTV 11 satellite, which was launched last March. DIRECTV 12 is slated for launch next year.

The company also announced that it will complete its transition to using MPEG-4 compression for its video, which allows for greater efficiency than the MPEG-2 compression used by many video services. DIRECTV also has plans to offer HD movies in 1080p resolution before the end of the year.

The race to offer the most HD channels is in danger of becoming a bit like adding more blades to a razor. At some point, it becomes just a statistic because you don’t have time to watch all those channels. However, if the additional channel happens to carry content that you care about, then the increase is likely to be more important to you. And DIRECTV clearly wants to give you more choices than any other service.

Residents of the Big Apple will now be able to get their daily dose of fiber — fiber optics, that is — thanks to FiOS TV. Verizon announced yesterday that the service is now available to residents in 108 neighborhoods, with a capacity of 300,000 subscribers. By the end of the year, the company plans to offer service to a half million homes.

Verizon also announced that they will offer 100 high definition channels to NYC subscribers. The company is offering a variety of subscription plans, including a triple play Internet/HDTV/phone service for under $100 a month. The company is also working to complete its build-out of fiber optic coverage throughout all five boroughs, planning to make the service available across the city by 2014. The company is also busy running flexible optic fiber through apartment buildings, and has completed at least 800 so far.

This is an important step for Verizon, as it will be the real test of whether the technology can be viable in areas other than “cherry-picked” suburban neighborhoods. This will also provide serious competition for cable and satellite services. It is not a true IPTV solution, but is a clear step in that direction compared with the more “broadcast” model used by competing services.

There are those who argue that any tax on subscription video service fees is unfair, but in many states, satellite services are taxed at a higher rate than the cable services. As a result, Michigan representative John Conyers introduced H.R. 3679 — known as the State Video Tax Fairness Act – which is wending it way through Congress. It passed a major hurdle last week when the House Judiciary Committee unanimously approved the bill.

It’s not a surprise that the cable companies oppose the bill, saying that they have to pay franchise fees on top of the taxes paid on subscriptions. On the other hand, if it were the satellite companies who were being charged at a lower tax rate for subscriptions, I suspect the cable company probably would not object to the bill.

Even the National Taxpayers Union has weighed in on the issue in favor of the new law. The bill states the following:

No State shall impose a discriminatory tax on any means of providing multichannel video programming distribution services, including Internet protocol (or any successor protocol), direct broadcast satellite delivery, and cable television services. For purposes of this Act, the term ‘discriminatory tax’ means any form of direct or indirect tax that results in different net State charges being imposed on substantially equivalent multichannel video programming services based on the means by which those services are delivered.

It is worth noting that this law will also apply to the telecos including Verizon who also deliver video programming. (It does not apply to free over-the-air broadcasts, because there is no subscription fee charged for that service.) It seems to me that it’s only fair to level the playing field, and while this is just one more example of the erosion of cable’s original deal, I think it’s a good idea.

At Samsung’s annual “Christmas in July” press event in New York City on Wednesday, the company showed off cool stuff like their 3D-capable plasma and DLP rear projection televisions, but the item that caught my eye was the “touch of color” LCD HDTVs with Samsung’s “Infolink” feature. This function is built in as a standard feature in all Series 6 and higher models, and uses an RSS feed to display content from the Internet on your TV screen.

You can put news, weather, financial information and more on your screen in translucent boxes that appear on top of the content behind. You can choose the arrangement and content of the boxes, and interact with them using the TV remote to get more detail if you want. A press of a button will make the overlay appear or disappear in an instant. And the best part of this is that it’s free. Infolink is a standard feature in these sets — unlike the extra cost option on some Sony sets — and if you have a home network that can access the Internet, all you have to do is connect your TV to the network.

For now, all the data is fed by a custom service from USA Today, so this is a “walled garden” service that does not let you browse everywhere on the Internet. However, a Samsung representative said that they are exploring other possible data partners.

So it’s quick, easy, and free. That’s enough for me. I certainly hope for more versatility in the future, but this is a great first step at bringing the wealth of the Internet to TV viewers.