HDTV Almanac

I’ve received a lot of promotional emails in recent weeks about new 24″ and 25″ 1080p LCD HDTVs at pretty astounding prices, some under $200. This would have been an appealing price for a 15″ LCD computer monitor just a few years ago, and now you get a widescreen and a TV tuner in the bargain. I’ll set aside the question of what quality panels go into these displays for the moment (though I would expect to find less-than-state-of-the-art technology), and focus instead on how these might be used.

The key point here is that a widescreen 24″ LCD panel has pixels that are about 0.27 mm across. That’s about 94 pixels per inch. How small is that? The Apple iPhone has 163 pixels per inch, so the dots that make up the image on these TVs are only about 70% larger than on the phone.

So what does that mean in terms of how you use it? In order to see the detail available on this screen when it’s showing high definition content (and assuming your vision is good), you’d need to sit no more than about 70% further from the TV than the viewing distance you use for the iPhone. I estimate that most people hold their phone at about 20 inches or less when viewing detailed content on the screen. 170% of that distance is about 34 inches. (In my book, Professor Poor’s Guide to Buying HDTV, my formula recommends about the same distance for a 24″ 1080p HDTV.) That’s less than 3 feet away. Sure, you could get one of these for the kitchen or to put on the wall at the foot of the bed, but you won’t be able to see the available detail. It would be like trying to read a newspaper from 15 feet away. Or your cell phone.

The bottom line here is that these are personal TVs, to be viewed by one person at a personal distance. A TV like this might be an excellent choice for a dorm room where they can serve double duty as a computer monitor (and if the computer is connected to the Internet, you can also gain access to lots of great video content that is available there). But don’t expect to get a high-def experience viewing a screen of this size from the couch across the living room.

Last week, I posed the possibility that cable providers would have to choose between providing the pipes or the water (connections or content) for the Internet. It’s too soon to know if they will have to pick one or the other, but it’s clear that Comcast definitely wants to be in the pipe business. Yesterday, the company launched its new Comcast High-Speed 2go service in Portland, Oregon. Atlanta is slated to be the next market in the nationwide rollout.

This new service is fourth generation – or “4G” — will be offered with a 4G-only card in the “Metro” package, or in a “Nationwide” version that includes a card that works with both Comcast’s 4G and Sprint’s 3G network, using the slower connection for coast-to-coast coverage when out of range of the faster connection. The 4G service provides up to 4 Mbps download speeds, nearly three times faster than the 1.4 Mbps offered by 3G service. Comcast will offer bundled wired and wireless service starting at $50 a month; existing “triple-play” customers will be able to add the wireless service to their subscription for as little as $30 more per month.

There are no signs that Comcast is planning to abandon the content delivery side of its operations, but this move to provide high-speed wireless Internet connections in major markets shows that it’s serious about the “pipe” side of the business. It has also stolen a march on its competitors that could translate into a lasting advantage. If people start to depend on the Internet more and more for their entertainment content, Comcast may be in the best position to meet the demand for mobile connections.

The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday that it decided not to hear a case challenging Cablevision’s new digital video recording (DVR) service that it intends to roll out. This decision could have enormous implications, as far reaching as the famous “Betamax Case” that allowed consumers to “time shift” their viewing of broadcast programming by recording shows on a VCR. In that landmark case, Universal City Studios brought the suit because it felt that its copyrighted material was being recorded without their permission.

This new lawsuit again pits the content providers against new technology. Instead of putting an expensive set top box in every subscriber’s home, Cablevision wants to create individual storage on their central servers. Subscribers choose what is recorded, and they can then play that back on demand when they want. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had decided that this new service was functionally the same as having a VCR at home, and so should be allowed. By deciding not to hear the appeal, the Supreme Court let that ruling stand.

The networks are worried that that this recording will allow subscribers to skip the advertisments in the broadcast content, which is a reasonable concern. This will likely cause the networks to seek higher fees from cable companies, as they lose advertising revenues (which could make cable subscription costs rise even higher). It could also accelerate the move to product placements within the programming itself. Watch for more conspicuous logos on the cars, computers, beverages, and other consumer items that appear on your favorite shows. (Did you really think that the Idol judges all love Coca Cola that much?)

This also has implications for set top box manufacturers. If the TVs have cable connections built in, and the DVR functions can be handled back at the cable company’s home office, there’s not much need for a separate box. And consumers are likely to appreciate reducing the part count and resulting clutter. Add streaming movies from the Internet, and you don’t even need a DVD player. So it’s possible that this court decision could reach out and touch a lot of aspects of the home entertainment market.

Last week, I got to see prototypes of some of VIZIO’s new XVT line of LCD 1080p HDTVs. These new models will ship this summer and fall. There will be 47″ and 55″ models with LED backlights that incorporate a local dimming feature for increased contrast, and in addition to these two, a 42″ model will offer “240 scenes per second (SPS)” performance. This is really the standard 60 frames per second with one interpolated frame added between each one, for 120 frames, and then the backlight is strobed twice for each frame. The purpose is to decrease the motion blur for the LCD panel. Whether it improves the motion performance over the other 120 Hz designs or not is a difficult call, but it’s clearly better than the standard 60 Hz models.

While the motion blur reduction and the LED backlights are nice, the part that really caught my interest were the three sets that will have VIA: VIZION Internet Apps. These 42″, 47″, and 55″ sets connect directly to the Internet through a wired or wireless Ethernet connection. This connection supports widgets that can show you information such as weather forecasts, sports scores, or stock prices, much like some sets from other brands. VIA also makes it easy to access other content on the Web, however. VIZIO had already announced services including Amazon Video on Demand, Blockbuster on Demand, Netflix, Pandora, and Rhapsody. Last week, the company announced new support for additional connections, including Twitter, eBay, Facebook, Revision3, Showtime, and Vudu. This means that you’ll be able to access an enormous amount of streaming content – much of it available in HD resolution — directly from the Internet without the need for a separate computer or set top box. The user interface for selecting the different services is easy to use and customizable, so you can choose which ones you want to have available.

Perhaps the best part of this is that VIZIO is not charging extra for the VIA feature. The 55″ VF551XVT with LED backlight and 240 SPS is slated to ship in September with an MSRP of $2,199.99 (which is an aggressively low price for an LED backlight model of this size). When the VIA-enabled VF552XVT ships in December, it will have the same price. The 42″ model with the VIA support (and 240 SPS but no LED backlight) SV422XVT is scheduled to ship in November with an MSRP of $1,199.99.

VIZIO is stepping up its game with increased performance and added features while maintaining its competitive price position.

On Wednesday, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) issued a “limited exclusion order” which effectively blocks the import of certain LCD panels and LCD TVs made by Sharp because the company had violated a patent held by Samsung. The ITC started its investigation of Samsung’s original complaint in January 2008, nearly a year and a half ago. At face value, the order appears to say that Sharp cannot import or sell any of these products. In practice, however, it will likely be business as usual, at least for the near future. As is the normal procedure, the decision includes a provision for a Presidential review. Pending a decision by President Obama, Sharp will likely continue to import and sell its LCD panels and TVs.

So what’s the point of this decision if it doesn’t stop Sharp from selling its products in this country? I checked with a patent litigator at McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP. According to the MLA attorney, the President (which in this case really means the United States Trade Representative who will advise Obama) has 60 days to make a decision about the order, which he has the authority to override on policy grounds if he chooses. On the other hand, if the President takes no action, then the order becomes enforceable. Until then, Sharp is allowed to import and sell its products as usual. Moreover, the ITC has decided not to require any additional bond during the Presidential review period.

So what’s going to happen next? Is Best Buy going to have to start pulling Aquos HDTVs from its shelves? Nobody knows for certain at this point, but apparently a separate complaint by Sharp against Samsung for patent infringment is also making its way through the ITC. One possible outcome is that the two companies will come to some sort of a cross-licensing agreement for their patents, and they both will continue to have access to the United States consumer market. As always, stay tuned….

Time Warner and Comcast are collaborating in their “TV Everywhere” initiative, and their CEOs held a joint press conference on Wednesday. The latest word is that the service is likely to launch by the fourth quarter of this year. Just as Netflix wants to put its movie catalog on the Web so that subscribers can stream them on demand, so do these cable companies want to allow their subscribers to watch the broadcast content anywhere they want. Think of a Slingbox without the Slingbox. And they don’t want to just make the programming available in real-time; they also want subscribers to be able to access prior programming on demand. Think of a Hulu with all the content that cable companies show now.

They’re starting with a trial program for 5,000 subscribers beginning next month, using content from the TNT and TBS networks at the start. (The expectation is that more content will be added as the trial progresses.) And therein lies the rub; they have to get additional rights from the content producers to show it over the Internet and on demand.

However, I expect that the content producers will have little choice but to work out some sort of a deal. We’ll assume for the moment that Comcast and Time Warner have the resources to create a system that will scale smoothly to meet demand. (According to The Bridge, the two companies had more than 37 million subscribers, which is a bit of a leap from the 5,000 trial participants.) I love watching Hulu, but I don’t love the too-frequent pauses while the buffer fills. (And I have a high-speed broadband connection, so I don’t think it’s my end that’s the problem.) Working it out so that high-definition streams can be fed to millions of viewers at the same time will require some serious hardware to do the heavy lifting on this project. But hardware is easy compared to negotiating licenses with all the different networks.

But where is this headed? As I see it, the industry is eventually going to have to split into focusing either on the hardware or the software. By this, I mean that there are two entirely different businesses here. The first is in the business of building high speed broadband networks and delivering them to the home. The second is the business of obtaining the rights to the content that people want to see, and then making them available on the Web. These two sides were created together when cable TV was invented; the same company had to lay the wire so that it could sell its content service. In fact, we needed to award sanctioned monopolies to cable companies in order to make it affordable for them to wire a whole community.

That has all changed now, and I fully expect these functions to split eventually. One service will create and maintain the physical infrastructure, and another will aggregate and deliver the content. Netflix is not in the broadband business; the cable and phone companies are already doing that just fine. Initially, cable and satellite companies may have an advantage at rolling out television services on the Internet because they already have experience in negotiation with the content producers. But over time, I see that the goals of these two businesses may not mesh well, leading some of these companies to split the services into two entities.

So will they sell the pipes or the water? It will be interesting to see how it works out.

TWICE published a story yesterday that quotes an interview with Gary Severson, senior VP/general merchandise manager of Walmart. The whole article is worth a read, but there was one part that leaped out at me.

The Walmart executive, who is not only responsible for CE but also toys and entertainment software, advised suppliers in the audience that if they want to get noticed by the chain, they should “have a great idea and a great product.” … He suggested that the industry should “focus on simplicity [and] get away from bells and whistles. The majority of customers not tech-heads. They just want a good experience and good things to happen. Categories that are introduced which are too complicated,” he noted, “won’t come into market.”

The key to his comment is that he rejects complexity in a product. I get his point; you need to make a product as easy to use as you can. Electronic ignition in a car is better than the old manual spark advance that you had on the Model A. Automatic transmission cars are easier to drive than manual transmission models (how many people do you know who can drive a stick these days?) But the flaw in his argument is that he equates complexity with ease of use.

If he were correct about complexity, how did personal computers ever manage to replace typewriters? They are much more complex, and to some degree less reliable. And they certainly take a lot longer to learn to use. With a typewriter, you didn’t have much more to learn once you mastered touch typing (or in my case, the “Columbus Method”, which is “find it and land on it.”) Or what about cell phones? How does Severson explain the fact that more than a million of the new iPhone 3G S phones sold last weekend? That phone is a lot more complicated than a simple phone that just lets you place telephone calls. Yet people seem to want a phone that does a lot of complicated things, including let you download programs so that it can do a zillion more specialized complicated things.

Hang on, I’m about to bring this around to televisions. It’s not the complexity that’s the problem; it’s the user interface. People do indeed want the bells and whistles — how long did it take Detroit to realize that Japan’s practice of making every gadget standard in their cars was a winning strategy? — it’s just that they don’t want to have to study the user manual for three weeks before they can drive to the store for a loaf of bread. And the iPhone has succeeded simply because it’s easy to use. The parts that aren’t completely intuitive are easy to learn or even discover through experimentation. (Did you know that people now often try to use the “pinch” gesture on ATM touch screens?)

So do people want more complex televisions? I say that the answer is a strong “Yes”. They want to stream Netflix movies and get sports scores and weather reports and much more on their TV screens whenever they want. They want to connect to their photos and music and schedules and other important information in their lives. It’s just that they don’t want to have to recreate the personal computer experience in the process. They want an interface that is as easy and intuitive to navigate as the iPhone, that gets them to the content they want quickly without a lot of thought.

The problem is that at this point, we don’t have a good interface for finding and viewing information and other content on our TVs. When we just had a half dozen broadcast channels, the remote control “up” and “down” buttons were all we needed. That model has been stretched to the breaking point by cable and satellite services with hundreds of channels. And now that we’re opening up our living rooms to the entire Internet and its enormous libraries of streaming content, the selection process becomes even more complicated. Windows Media Center has made a noble effort to come up with an easier user interface, but it falls short in many areas. Until we get the iPhone equivalent for Internet television, these features won’t really take off. But when the user interface problem gets solved, Mr. Severson and his colleagues are going to sell a lot of HDTVs with some very complicated features. The key is that in spite of the complexity, they will be easy to use.

Who knows what to believe? As I made the rounds of the various booths in the exhibit hall at SID 2009 in San Antonio three weeks ago, I found it difficult to get anyone to talk about OLED TV production plans. The few comments I got ranged from non-committal to a flat out “we haven’t made any announcements“. Discussing the issue with a range of sources leads me to believe that it is unlikely that any OLED HDTVs will appear on the market before 2010, and 2012 is a much more likely date.

Last week, OLED-Info.com posted an interview with Mr Won Kim, Vice Presideont of OLED Sales and Marketing from LG Display. Here’s a quote from the interview:

Q: You have been showing a 15″ OLED TV prototype since the beginning of 2009… and you said it can begin production by June 2009. Which is now.. will you start making these panels? Or are you still waiting for a customer?
During the period of Dec 2009-Jan 2010, our customer will launch 15″ OLED TV in Korean market. Thereafter global roll-out follows.

This is a surprise compared with the information I was hearing earlier in the month. The quote does not indicate whether the TV will have HD resolution; the Sony 11-inch XEL-1 does not, but the 15″ panel that LG demonstrated at CES last January had a WXGA resolution (1366 by 768 pixels) which means that it can show 720p images without scaling. So if that is the panel that will be used in this product, it would be a 720p HDTV and the first OLED HDTV on the market.

I have to say that I’m still skeptical about this interview statement, and I won’t be the least surprised if January 2010 comes and goes and there still is no OLED HDTV on the market. There are still a number of technology issues to be worked out before OLED is ready for a long duty cycle device such as a television. For now, the technology is well suited for small mobile devices like cell phones and personal media players, but I don’t expect large format, high resolution devices to show up on the market at reasonable prices and large quantities any time soon.

Okay, I’ll grudgingly give the FCC some credit where credit is due; I’m not sure that the end of analog television broadcasts on June 12 was the complete train wreck that I expected it to be. But I also give FCC Acting Chairman Michael Copps credit for being honest about the fact that it was not all cookies and cream. “This was never going to be an easy transition, as I have said many times. It appears to have worked well for the majority of over-the-air viewers, but for those who are experiencing a less-satisfactory outcome, we are committed to staying on the job to help.”

Clearly, many people experienced a “less-satisfactory outcome.” By the FCC’s own tally, their toll-free support line handled more than 900,000 phone calls in the week from June 8 to June 14. More than a third of those were received on Friday, June 12, which was the day most stations cut off their analog broadcasts for good. Note that this only includes the calls to the FCC hotline. The calls to the hundreds of local stations across the country could easily add several hundred thousand more calls to this total.

According to the FCC, 28% of the calls requested help with installing or configuring digital converter boxes that allow TV sets with only analog tuners to receive the digitl TV signals. Another 49% — just about half of the total – called because they were having reception problems. And this just what I expected.

Part of the problem may have been that people with digital tuners — either in a converter box or in a TV set — did not know to rescan after the transition. As part of the switch over, stations in many markets changed their broadcast frequency. (Note that the broadcast frequency is not directly related to the “channel” number that has been assigned to a station.)

Even after rescanning, however, many people continued to have difficulties. Right here in Philadelphia, many people could not receive Channel 6, the local ABC affiliate. Before the transition, the digital broadcasts for this station were in the UHF range, but after the switch the station moved the signal to its assigned frequency in the VHF range. Many people in Philadelphia couldn’t receive the signal, and the FCC has since granted permission for a temporary power boost to see if that helps resolve the problems. Part of the problem, however, is that many people have been sold “digital” TV antennas that actually are no different than that required for an analog TV, except that many of these new antennas are designed to only receive signals in the UHF range. Some people mistakenly thought that none of the new digital broadcasts would be in the VHF range, but that’s not the case. In many major markets, some stations are still broadcasting in the VHF range. To receive these signals, you need at least a set of “rabbit ears”: the kind of antenna with two rods (as opposed to must UHF antennas which are just a wire loop). If you go to www.antennaweb.org, you can find a listing of the television stations that you can expect to receive at your location, and which ones are VHF or UHF.

It will take a bit more time to sort all this out, and I expect to see a surge in new cable and satellite subcriptions for June as people give up with trying to resolve problems with the free broadcasts. The transition wasn’t as bad as I expected, but it wasn’t smooth either. About the best I can say is that I’m very glad it’s behind us. Now the various segments of the broadcast spectrum will be freed up, and we’ll start seeing some interesting new services become available, such as the FloTV mobile TV service available on cell phones from AT&T and Verizon.

InfoComm is a show for dealers and professional installers, and has products for digital signage and meeting room applications and professional sound and staging and all sorts of cool bright and shiny things. But one of the displays that stopped me in my tracks was at the Daktronics booth. This company makes the large LED displays that are used to make stadium screens among other applications.

The setup on show at InfoComm used the company’s 6 mm pixel pitch LED modules, with 12 panels used to make this display. Note the silhouette of the person standing by the left edge of the display to get an idea of how big it really is. With a 4:3 aspect ratio, the display in the photo actually only had 480 by 360 pixel resolution; each panel has 120 by 120 pixels. To make a 720p HD resolution display, you’d need to stack up the panels until they stand about 14 feet tall; that’s too big for my living room.

The panels are rated at 2,000 nits (which is very bright) and they are remarkbly thin. And as the photo indicates, the image quality is remarkable. Need an HD display for your backyard sports arena?