HDTV Almanac

Lots of analysts — including myself — are a bit pessimistic about the future of plasma HDTVs. The increased efficiency of LCD panel production has led to the routing of plasma in HDTV sizes up to 50″, and LCD is making gains at that size as well. It’s easier to make 1080p resolution panels with LCD than with plasma, which is helping power the shift as well.

There is one development in plasma technology that is worth noting, however, and this could rearrange everyone’s forecasts. Research is discovering ways to get more light from a plasma panel with the same amount of power. These gains and their implications are detailed in a white paper, “The Future Still Looks Bright for Plasma TVs”, that is available at the Panasonic Web site. At present, plasma panels have a reputation for being power hogs, which is hardly a benefit in this “global green” conservation-minded environment. The typical panel produces about 2.5 lumens of light per watt of power. Prototype panels have already been built that double this output to 5 lumens per watt, and commercial products should arrive as early as the second half of 2008. Test panels have also been created that double effiency again, up to 10 lumens per watt; these could come to market by 2010.

Doubling the efficiency has many benefits. First, you can get the same brightness levels with half the power consumption, which is a strong “green” selling point. (The plasma makers are more likely to “spend” this advantage to get more light at the same power level, so that they can compete better with the LCD sets that tend to be brighter.) Along with this comes other savings, however. The components required to drive the panel are smaller and less expensive, which helps drive down production costs. The white paper predicts that a 50″ 1080p plasma panel with 10 lumen per watt efficiency could cost a little more than a third the cost of a 50″ 1080p LCD panel. If this prediction comes true, then plasma will have a decided advantage. LCD technology is not sitting still, however, so there is room for lower production costs there over the next three years as well.

Still, this is a good explanation for why Matsushita, Panasonic’s parent company, has decided to double its plasma panel production capacity. We may see a resurgence in plasma’s fortunes in the coming years.

November 1, 2007 Addendum: Okay, no sooner do I write something positive about the plasma market, Pioneer comes out with a dismal financial report. Next to Panasonic, Pioneer is the most committed to a plasma product strategy. Well, the company is closing a production line and cancelling plans to build a new factory. It is lowering its sales forecasts, and planning to cut production by 12%. And the company expects its plasma business to remain unprofitable in the coming fiscal year as well. If one of the main boosters of this technology is so pessimistic, it’s hard for the rest of us to remain optimistic.

“SneakerNet” was the derogatory term for transfering data from one computer to another by copying it to a floppy disk and walking the disk from one computer to the Other. SanDisk has released the SansaTake TV, a USB device designed to make it easy to transfer video content from a PC to a television.

You connect the SansaTake TV to your computer, and transfer video content to it. You then take the device and slip it into a dock connected to your TV, and you can watch the stored content on your TV. This is a great idea, as many consumers appear to balk at the idea of a computer in the living room, and also don’t want to have to struggle with setting up a wired or wireless home network.

Consumers are already used to putting a DVD into their player to watch video content, so using a solid state storage device to transfer video content from the Web to your TV through a PC may be an appealing solution. The best answer will be to have Web-aware televisions with easy to navigate interfaces, but until those are available, this could be a good interim approach.

One of the big differences between plasma and LCD panels is that plasma can use relatively inexpensive glass, but LCDs require special glass made expressly for use as LCD panel substrates. Corning makes about 60% of the world’s supply of this special glass, but a new development demonstrated by Samsung last week could change the dynamics of that market. According to a report in DigiTimes, Samsung showed a 19″ LCD panel at the FPD International 2007 show in Yokohama, Japan. What’s special about this panel is that it uses ordinary window glass as the substrate. Samsung also announced that the panel will be entering volume production soon.

The report does not indicate whether the window glass substrates are as thin as the special glass sheets, but this development is likely to result in lower material costs for Samsung LCD panels. It will be interesting to see what performance specifications are cited for production panels with this new technology, as a significant cost reduction with equivalent performance could make LCD HDTVs even more appealing.

NBC has pulled clips of its programs from YouTube, apparently in preparation for the launch of the network’s Hulu site on the Web. Hulu is a new joint project between NBC and News Corp that is supposed to launch by the end of October but there are few signs of life at the Web address. The new service will apparently host full length episodes of NBC and Fox programming.

This latest move is just one more bit of proof that we are still in the “spaghetti stage” — throwing things at the wall to see what sticks — in merging the existing Hollywood network programming model with the distribution of video content across the Internet. NBC tussled with YouTube over the unauthorized publishing of copyrighted clips, then worked out a deal where the network put its own promotional clips on YouTube, and now they’re pulling their clips again.

Will Hulu be a hit? I don’t know and it’s hard to judge until the site is actually up and running. But there was a perfect example right here in my own house that demonstrates the power of online TV episodes. My wife thought she had missed an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. (It turns out that she only missed part of the final scenes, because ABC ends the show right at the top of the hour, which causes our DVR to miss the last minute.) She was able to go to the ABC site and watch the end of the most recent episode, and see what she had missed. If it was as easy to watch the Web site on the TV in our living room, she might not bother recording the show at all.

Last Monday, an article in Information Week described the new chips for mmWave technology under development by IBM in partnership with MediaTek of Taiwan. According to the report, this new wireless technology uses milimeter wavelength radio signals to transmit data. And we’re talking fast transmissions, up to 2 Gbits per second. This is fast enough to transmit 1080i or 720p signals in real time.

The HDMI cable makers don’t have to be too concerned, yet. IBM has not announced a timeline for prototypes, and the article said it would be at least three years until these become a commercial product.

Still, there is clearly pent up demand for wireless solutions to local and worldwide data access. WiMax has the promise of becoming the wireless broadband connection for the Internet, and in-home solutions like mmWave will make it much easier to create and market devices that can interact with each other, without having to run a snake’s nest of cables throughout the house.

An article in the Wall Street Journal last week shed light on a little-known fact about the high definition DVD market. Both sides in the conflict make a big deal about which Hollywood studios have exclusive agreements for US distribution in one format or the other, with the Blu-ray camp stressing the number of studios on their side.

As it turns out, you may not have to choose format based on the allegiance of a particular studio. Movies are sold to distributors for other markets — such as Europe – where they are free to determine what format they will offer. As a result, you can get HD DVD versions of titles that are available “exclusively” in Blu-ray, and the other way around. Just go to a European Web site, such as Amazon’s UK operation. You can order online and get the disc shipped to you here, though you’ll pay the extra shipping costs. There apparently are also gray market resellers who make these titles available in the USA. Note that HD DVDs do not have the restrictive “region codes” that are a part of standard DVDs and Blu-ray discs.

The Journal article also makes another interesting point: “most major high-definition titles available overseas seem to reflect a switch to HD DVD, rather than the reverse.” I’ll grant that the numbers of titles and unit sales are too small to use as decisive evidence, but I’ll take it as one more data point to indicate that I was right to pick HD DVD as the format that will win in the end.

Consumers continue to be confused by all the HDTV choices (as well as all the talk about the unrelated end of analog “over the air” broadcasts of television programs), so manufacturers and retailers are looking for effective ways to differentiate their offerings from the competition. Philips has decided that service may be the answer, and last week announced the Simplicity Advantage Program.

This plan provides buyers of Philips TVs up to 26″ with a free replacement unit if a technical problem crops up in the first 30 days after purchase and can’t be resolved. If the problem occurs after the first 30 days, the buyer may be able to get a free refurbished unit as a replacement. For sets 37″ or larger, the plan includes lifetime technical support, next-day in-home repair service, and if local service is not available, a streamlined exchange program. More information is available at the Simplicity Advantage Program Web site.

This blue-ribbon approach to service may help put consumers more at ease about plunking down a wad of cash for a new television. You certainly can’t expect to get this sort of support from most of the “opening price point” brands; at the prices they charge, they can’t afford to provide a lot of support. One very curious aspect of the Philips plan, however, is pointed out on the Web site: “Program is not available on 32” televisions.” If Philips doesn’t have the confidence to stand behind those models, maybe you should think about picking a larger or smaller model.

Put an end to HDTV confusion with Professor Poor’s Guide to Buying HDTV, now available in paperback from Amazon or other fine booksellers.

Okay, you no longer have to rely on crudely recorded clips of Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” on YouTube to get your news reports (or check back on what has happened over the past eight years). Commedy Central has posted 13,000 video clips of past shows on the program’s Web site. No, I didn’t count to make sure that they’re all there; I am taking their word for it.

I also want to give a shout out to the site designers; the interface for these archived programs is great. Sure, you can search for segments by keyword – I found a great interview with Harrison Ford from back in 2006 — but it also has a clever timeline interface that lets you go back in time to find shows around a specific event. (Early November in years that are multiples of 4 appear to be particularly fertile times to explore.)

So for the generation that has replaced the national evening news with Jon Stewart’s more palatable reporting, this is a wonderful resource that is entertaining and informative. It’s as if you had TiVo’ed and cross-indexed all the shows, and they’re all instantly available. The Internet changes everything, and television is next.

People are getting serious about the February 17, 2009 cut-off for analog over-the-air television broadcasts. The FCC has started taking money from retailers for failing to inform buyers adequately about the limitations of some of the sets that they sell.

As of earlier this year, stores were not allowed to import televisions that do not have a digital tuner. (It’s still okay to sell displays that have no tuner at all, such as a computer monitor.) If a television device has an analog tuner, then it has to have a digital tuner as well. The FCC left retailers an out, however, so that they could sell any remaining inventory of analog-only sets. They could sell these products, but only if there is a prominent display “in close proximity” to the set explaining its limitations. If you’ve browsed the Web much for older televisions, you’re sure to have seen these disclaimers.

A bunch of retailers failed spot checks, and were fined $8,000 fines per model per store. Fred Meyer and Ultimate Electronics got hit with three fines apiece ($24,000), and Radio Shack was fined $16,000 for two incidents. A couple of other stores were fined for single infractions.

This is actually pretty remarkable. Out of all the thousands of stores, the FCC found fewer than a dozen violations. It would appear that the industry has been doing a good job of marking these older analog-only sets. And Best Buy has taken a high ground approach; they have announced that they won’t sell any analog-only sets at all.

Be sure to keep this whole issue in perspective. If you’ve got cable or satellite service, you don’t need a tuner in your television at all. You only need a tuner if you get broadcast programming from local television stations. The major stations are already broadcasting in digital format as well as analog, and there are significant benefits to getting digital signals, but you can still get analog signals if you choose. And starting early next year, you will be able to get a $40 rebate from the US government to help pay for a converter box that will allow your analog set to receive digital signals. (Wait until later in 2008 to buy one of these boxes, as I expect the street price to fall to $50 or less before the end of the year.) So even if you have an analog set now, or want to get a great deal on an analog-only set, you don’t have to worry about it “going dark” a year from now.

It’s enough to make me start wondering if I’ve got my own version of the Sports Illustrated “Kiss of Death” going here. (Buy me a cold bevearage and ask about the Cauzin Strip Reader or the PD CD format or the Zenith MiniSport’s 2″ floppy disk sometime….) But I had to go all enthusiastic over the Olevia 665H that I saw in Denver last month at CEDIA 2007, a gorgeous 65″ 1080p LCoS rear projection HDTV that was scheduled to list for $1,999. Note that the operative word is “was“.

Yesterday, Syntax-Brillian announced that they are closing down their LCoS operations, and will focus on their flat panel products. They are looking for a buyer for the LCoS business, and it’s conceivable that the 665H design could reappear under another brand, but it’s got to be seen as a long shot at this point.

There are still companies playing in the LCoS microdisplay panel space. Sony and JVC are the two leaders, but Spatialight, Microdisplay, Displaytech and others are also involved in the LCoS market. Other companies have called it quits, however, with Philips being most notable in recent years.

It was a long road from Colorado Microdisplay to Zight to ThreeFive to Brillian to Syntax-Brillian, but it looks as though this line of LCoS product may have finally reached the end of the line.