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.

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 $50 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 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 $333 in May, but that has dropped to $288 in the beginning of September. That’s $45 less, or a 13.5% price drop in less than four months. A 32″ WXGA (720p) panel went from $205 to $174 in the same period, down $31 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.

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.

The important point is that the first Redbox movie kiosk appeared just six years ago. Now there are more than 24,000 of these convenient, unstaffed, automated little buggers. And the company has announced plans to add service at thousands of CVS pharmacy stores (which seem to be sprouting up on just about every corner around here). Redbox has taken over the local rental market just as Netflix took over rentals by mail (and may soon rule the streaming-over-the-Internet rentals as well). How effective has Redbox been? The LA Times reports that Blockbuster will pull the trigger on a structured bankruptcy this month in an attempt to salvage what it can of its brick-and-mortar business while it plays catchup on both the kiosk and streaming markets at the same time. I have not been optimistic about Blockbuster’s chances for a while, and this latest news from Redbox makes it even more of a long shot.

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 $2.99 for older standard definition titles to $4.99 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 $8.95 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 $99 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.

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.

And now Roku has lowered its prices. The Standard Definition (SD) model has gone from $79.99 tp $59.99 (though the Web site shows this model as out of stock). The HD model dropped from $99.99 to $69.99, and the HD-XR model which includes 802.11n WiFi support has fallen from $129.99 to $99.99. If you’ve got a wired network connection near your HDTV, then the HD model can do the job and the $70 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.

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.

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.