HDTV Almanac

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 $8.99 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.

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.

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 $179 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 $5,000 to $10,000, 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.

I received some interesting information from Peerless last week. This is one of the companies that makes top quality mounts for flat panel televisions. I was curious about how many people actually use mounts these days; the conventional wisdom from about five years ago was that fewer than 25% of all sets got mounted on the wall. Peerless has compiled numbers based on its customers, and has come up with an interesting trend.

For sets 19″ to 22″, they estimate 18% get mounted. For 23″ to 37″ — the sweet spot in terms of total unit sales — nearly one-third end up on mounts. For 40″ to 52″, the share jumps to 46% which is close to half. And for larger than 52″, a whopping 81% end up on the wall.

It is clear that more people are mounting their flat panels than did five years ago. Why is that? Well, you can see that larger sets are more likely to get hung on the wall, and a larger portion of the sets sold these days fall into this size range. Also, these larger sets take up a lot more space when left on their table top stands. In general, flat panel sets weigh much less for a given size than they did years ago, making it more practical to hang them.

And I think another factor is that mounts have become more available to consumers who want to do it themselves, without the help of an expensive professional installer. You can find a wide range of models available, from no-name Asian products to top designs like those from Peerless. And the designs are getting more practical as well. The mount pictured here (looking down from above) can swing out left or right to a full 90 degrees, yet retracts to just one inch from the wall.

So chances are good that your next HDTV will end up on a wall.

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.

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 $989: under $1,000. 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.)

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.

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!

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.