Monthly Archives: January 2008

Dueling Surveys

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We’re fast approaching the start of the one-year countdown to the end of analog over-the-air transmission by local television broadcasters. The US Congress has been concerned that Americans may not be aware of the transition to digital broadcasts, or of the government rebate program for digital converters.

A survey commissioned by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) paints a rosy picture of the situation. According to a press release yesterday, 79% of US television households were aware of the February 17, 2009 cut-off date. Among households that rely on over-the-air broadcasts, the awareness level increases to 83%. This is up from 38% from a year ago. The NAB states that about 34 million US households rely on over-the-air broadcasts.

But not so fast! Consumer Reports also issue a press release yesterday, providing the results of their own survey. They found that 36% of US television households were completely unaware of the digital TV transition next year. According to the survey, 15% of all Americans rely on over-the-air programming, and 78% of them have analog sets. Consumer Reports estimates that this means that about 23 million people won’t be able to get television programming next year.

The survey also found that 58% of the respondents who are aware of the transition think that all televisions will need a converter box. 48% think that only digital televisions will work, and 28% think that they will have to throw out all analog televisions. The truth is that the transition will not affect anyone who relies on cable or satellite service for their television programming. All satellite services are already digital, and it’s between you and your cable company whether you have analog or digital service. In any case, your settop box will not be affected by the end of analog broadcasts. If you get your television programming over the air, then you will need either a set with a digital tuner, or a converter box that will allow you to continue to use your existing analog TV.

The differences between these two surveys are not as great as they seem; the awareness level is between 64% and 79%. The difference is whether you take a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty view of the numbers. If I had to pick one, I’d lean toward the Consumer Reports interpretation. There is a huge amount of confusion out there about who will be affected by the transition and what they should do about it. Every day since New Year’s, my HDTV Almanac entry about the government rebates for the digital converters has received almost as many hits as the day’s new entry.

If you understand the conversion situation, you should talk about it at social gatherings. You’ll find that a lot of your friends, family, and neighbors are confused, and they’ll appreciate a simple explanation of what it’s all about. (Or you could just send them here.) It’s clear that a large number of people don’t understand what they’re facing, and what they should do about it.

I Want My IPTV!

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Regular readers of the HDTV Almanac know that I’m a big proponent of what the Internet will do for video entertainment. The ability to watch what you want, where you want, when you want is a powerful development that will change everything. It’s easy to suppose such a position in theory, but it’s even better when you can cite some statistics that point in that direction.

Last week, Ensequence came out with results of a consumer survey about interactive television. Nearly three quarters responded that they use their TV’s remote control to access an on-screen schedule or interact with a video recorder. The only surprise there might be that the number wasn’t 100%. What is more interesting, however, is the fact that there is strong demand for more advanced features. 72% want to interact with the reality shows that they are watching, while 65% want to interact with sporting event programming. And even in this age of commercial skipping, two out of three consumers responded that they wanted to interact with the ads on their televisions!

I think back to the days when the now lowly VCR was just beginning to make its impact on the home television viewing market. The idea that you could record a show and watch it again at a different time was an exciting and liberating discovery. TiVo and other digital video recording devices and services are the logical outgrowth of the VCR’s original mission. Broadband access to the Internet makes it practical to watch just about any content you want, any time you want. It’s not as easy yet as watching the programming on a major network, but that’s changing rapidly. Expect to have more control over your television than ever before in the coming years.

DVDs on Demand

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A lot of movies have been made. Talk about an understatement! The Internet Movie Database currently lists close to half a million different titles. It’s a safe bet that only a small fraction of those titles are available on DVD, because the market for many of them is so small that it’s not worth gearing up a production run of even a few thousand copies. But all that is set to change.

Last week, HP and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment announced that Sony will license some of its catalog titles for HP’s DVD manufactured-on-demand DVD service. Sony is the first major studio to sign on with the service, but it is expected that other studios will follow. The system reduces the inventory and packaging costs, making it feasible to provide DVDs of titles that may have low demand.

So if you’re a fan of some obscure films, this new development could point the way toward giving you easier access to titles that you might not otherwise get to own.

Flicker Makes a Comeback?

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About 20 years ago, when CRT computer monitors started to get bigger than about 14″ diagonal, people started to notice an annoying flicker on their screens. It appears that history may be repeating itself, and researchers are looking for ways to eliminate flicker from large HDTVscreens.

A paper in the Journal of the Society for Information Display from the School of Electronic Engineering at Southeast University in Nanjing, China and Philips Consumer Electronics, discusses some research into the problem of flicker and how to prevent it. The problem comes from trying to reduce the amount of motion blur in an LCD HDTV. Many techniques are used, but one of the methods is to flash the backlight rapidly as the image on the screen is refreshed. The effect is somewhat like a strobe light in a dance club; it freezes the motion so you get a sharp image. The problem is that if you flash the light too slowly, the average person may see a flickering image like an old movie.

The reason for this is that the human vision system is designed to detect motion. We are especially sensitive to motion in the periphery of our vision. So as HDTVs get larger and people sit closer to them for to get the full, cinematic effect, more of the image falls in the range of their peripheral vision (just as happened when people started using larger CRTs on their personal computers).

The research paper indicates that if the LCD panel and backlight are strobed at 60 Hz – 60 times a second — which is the standard rate for many sets, subjects are more likely to notice the flicker effect. If the rate is increased to 75 Hz, the flicker becomes less noticeable.

The take-away from this research is that scanning backlights can help reduce motion blur, but you want a fast refresh rate to go with it. As a result, scanning backlights are likely to be most effective when paired with the new 120 Hz refresh rate panels, to eliminate any flicker.

Digital TV $10 Billion Dividend

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One of the main reasons for switching from analog to digital broadcast of television signals is that you can send more content over a digital signal than you can over an analog one. (This is also why digital broadcasts are required in order to send out high definition signals.) So all the television stations got new channels for their digital broadcasts, and as of February 17, 2008, their analog channels will become available for other uses.

Some of these frequencies will be used for emergency services communication systems, such as police and fire, but the bulk will be made available for commercial use. Since the airwaves belong to the public, the federal government is auctioning off the licenses for these newly available parts of the radio spectrum. And yesterday marked the starting rounds of the bidding for these frequencies.

How much are these airwaves worth? We won’t know until the bidding is over, but according to a report from Reuters yesterday, the initial rounds neared $3 billion. Experts expect the final total to top $10 billion. Part of this windfall is going to be used to fund the government rebate program for digital TV converters for those who want to keep their old analog television sets and still receive over the air broadcasts when the analog broadcasts stop next year.

As for the new applications of these frequencies, expect to see an explosion of mobile services, ranging from video programming on your cell phone to low-cost broadband wireless Internet connections. This will be an exciting time as we see these new technologies come to market in the coming years.

HD DVD Dominated Player Sales

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Was Warner Brothers hasty in dumping HD DVD? Or was the Sony Blu-ray camp clever in engineering the defection so that it could get out in front of some difficult news. A press release from DisplaySearch reports that sales of Toshiba’s HD DVD models accounted for 64% more of the stand alone devices sold in North America during the first three quarters of 2007. On the other hand, Blu-ray dominated in Japan.

The Japanese sales aren’t all that important, however. The report also indicates that 80% of the high-definition DVD devices sold worldwide in the third quarter of 2007 were sold in North America, indicating that the rest of the world is much slower to take to the new technology. And another interesting finding was that game console hardware accounted for 85% of the device shipments for the first three quarters of 2007.

There are two important take away points from all this. First, HD DVD is selling much better than the Blu-ray camp would have you believe. And second, both formats are fighting over what remains a very small pie that is not growing very quickly. It’s entirely possible that the “winning” side will only gain a phyrric victory, simply earning the right to lose money in a difficult market.

In a related subject, a group of consumers has started an online petition in an attempt to get Warner Brothers to reconsider their decision to abandon HD DVD. If you want to read the petition and add your name, you can find it here. As of this morning, the site reports more than 23,000 signatures, which is an impressive number. Unfortunately, I expect that each petitioner would have to sign the back of a $50 bill and send it directly to Warner Brothers if they are to have any chance of changing the company’s mind.

HDTV Almanac on the Air

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I got a call from Larry Magid, tech guru for CBS News who had some questions for his article about buying an HDTV. One thing led to another, and he ended up posting our conversation as a podcast to accompany his article. Click here to listen to the interview.

We’re coming down the stretch for this year’s HDTV buying season; interest drops way off after the SuperBowl, and we’ll probably have to wait for the Olympics to revive the market. Early results for the end of 2007 sales indicate that they may have been a bit disappointing, so you may find that retailers are going to be anxious to move inventory now. Keep an eye on the sales circulars for bargains over the next two weeks.

1/24/07 UPDATE: The CBS Radio site had the wrong podcast link with the story yesterday; the link above has now been corrected.

Find out this week’s best buys in Professor Poor’s Weekly Price Intelligence Report.

HDTV Eyes?

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Technology Research News is a wonderful site that reports on a wide range of scientific papers and studies that point toward possible future technologies. Yesterday, they cited a paper from the 21st IEEE International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanicals Systems (MEMS 2008). If you’re still with me, that’s great because this is really cool.

This contact lens has an embedded LED display.

The researchers created contact lenses with embedded LED displays. They tested them on rabbits who wore them for 20 minutes at a stretch with no apparent adverse effects. This is a step that is hoped will lead to a heads-up display that will overlay digital images on the user’s field of view. Think of the mapping and data readouts that the Terminator robots see. (Yes, I’m watching the Sarah Connor Chronicles, and big kudos to Fox Network for putting up the past episodes for free on their Web site. I missed the pilot and was not able to tape it, but I could catch up with it on my computer.)

There are plenty of scary implications; if you think talking on a cell phone is distracting while you’re driving, imagine trying to read your RSS feeds and email during your morning drive! But I can see lots of excellent and productive applications, such as a display that is not affected when the passenger ahead of you on a flight in coach cranks his seat back all the way. And there are no privacy concerns about someone seeing your screen. And even with driving, a display linked to your GPS that overlays directions and alerts you to turns or traffic problems could improve driver awareness and safety.

I’d be willing to test these when they get to human subjects!

More Broadband Movie Delivery

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The New York Post reports today that content from Time Warner’s HBO network will be available over broadband. The initial rollout is very limited in scope, but there are indications that the availability will expand.

The service will provide on demand access to 600 movie titles and about 4,000 hours of original programming including “The Sopranos” and “Six Feet Under”. What will this cost? If you’re a Time Warner cable broadband customer, or a subscriber to HBO, then you get it for free. Other users will be able to get access to the service for an additional subscription fee. There’s one more catch; initially, it will only be available in Green Bay and Miwaukee, Wisconsin.

In announcing “HBO on Broadband”, HBO co-President Eric Kessler is quoted by the Post as saying “We are different from the broadcast networks because we aren’t in the advertising business. We are in the subscription business, so if we can create services that increase the usage of our product, we can extend the life of a subscriber, which is great for us and for the cable operator.” So it looks as though Time Warner sees subscription-based service as a workable business model for content distribution on the Internet.

The Post story does not attempt to reconcile this announcement with Time Warner’s announcement last week that they are going to start testing new rate plans that would cut off broadband services to customers who use too much bandwidth. This is a shock to those who thought they were buying unlmited access to the Internet with their broadband subscriptions. The new packages will limit the amount of data that you can transfer in a month. It’s not clear how the company will treat the “free” downloads from the HBO on Broadband service, or whether using it would force users to step up to a more expensive cable broadband subscription.

I can understand the cable company’s desire to limit abuse of their broadband systems by the relatively small number of users who transfer extraordinary amounts of data, but I suspect that consumer reaction and competition will clobber their plan to charge more for higher data transfer volumes. And if their HBO division complains that these new limits pose a threat to the success of HBO on Broadband, expect the cable company to come up with a different approach to resolve broadband abuse.

Netflix Offers All-You-Can-Eat Streaming Movies

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Monday’s press release from Netflix says it all: “Beginning today, all Netflix subscribers on unlimited rental plans, which start as low as $8.99 a month, will be able to stream as many movies and TV episodes as they want on their PCs, choosing from a library of over 6,000 familiar movies and TV episodes.”

Bang! No more walks to the mailbox for customers, and no more inventory or postage or pesky human handling of products for Netflix. Instant revolution in the movie rental business! Now, 6,000 titles may sound like a big number, but remember that this includes TV show episodes. The actual number of movie titles is a relatively small fraction of the 90,000 movie titles in the company’s DVD library. But this is still an important start.

How important? Couple it with a pre-CES announcement made jointly by Netflix and LG Electronics to see the full ramifications. The two companies announced that LG will integrate support for the Netflix online service directly into models of their HDTVs and possibly their high-def DVD players, with products expected to come to market in the second half of this year. This means that you don’t need to have a computer in the living room in order to access the Netflix service, which is likely to be appealing to many American consumers. You’ll be able to watch any of the movies or TV episodes any time you want, for $9 a month, right on your HDTV without the need for a set top box or computer or other device.

The one drawback of the service is that it does not include HD movies at this point. Given Apple’s entry into the online movie rental business, and the likelihood that Blockbuster will be forced to come up with some sort of response, there’s plenty of competitive pressure on Netflix to keep upping the ante. I expect that we’ll see a rapid expansion of the available titles for online streaming, as well as HD titles.

Once again, the Internet changes everything.