HDTV Almanac

I’ll blame Samsung. Not their engineers who develop some great technology, and not their manufacturing people who execute those designs to create top quality products, but I expect that it’s the marketing folks who came up with this one. There’s a lot of buzz about “LED TVs“, which appears to be a term that Samsung started using first. And it apparently has confused and misled a huge number of people, convincing many of them that this is a new display technology. It’s not.

Let’s review. For flat panels televisions, there are only three technologies that are in commercial production, and I’m being generous with one of them. The hands-down leader is LCD, with plasma following a distant second. OLED doesn’t even show up on the pie chart, because Sony’s little non-HD jewel is the only one on the market (ignoring any mobile phones that can be used to watch TV content). LCD technology uses liquid crystal molecules like tiny shutters to transmit or block light from a backlight. Plasma uses a process similar to a fluorescent light to light up colored phosphors that emit the light that makes up the image. OLED stands for “organic light emitting diode (or display)” and is an amazingly thin device that can emit light of different colors when you run an electrical current through it. (It’s sort of the reverse of a solar cell, which takes in light and puts out electricity.) People are rightfully excited about OLED TVs because the color can be excellent and the incredibly deep black of the image creates outstanding contrast. It’s not clear when we’ll see OLED TVs in reasonable sizes at affordable prices, though some expect to see new products in this segment by the end of this year.

However, LED TVs are not OLED TVs. They are LCD TVs, and for the most part are little different from any other LCD TV that has been on the market. An LED is a solid state lighting device that generally creates a point of light. They are very energy efficient, and every power indicator you have on any electronic device is almost certainly an LED.

What Samsung has done — along with many other companies – is replace the fluorescent backlights on an LCD TV with LEDs. This has a number of advantages. LEDS can make the device more energy efficient, use less environmentally hazardous material, and generally provide a richer color response for the display. As I’ve discussed here before, LEDs also give designers the choice of putting the backlight source either behind the LCD panel or off along the edges of the panel. Positioned in back, they make it possible to do localized dimming which can increase contrast. Positioned along the edge, they can result in a much thinner LCD TV.

So an LED TV is just an LCD TV with an LED backlight. This reminds me of when the rear projection TV makers tried to come up with other names for their product category (such as Mitsubishi’s “Laser TV”) in an attempt to make them more appealing and sound new. And apparently it is working, which is a shame because many people think that the image is being made by LEDs, and is different from an LCD TV. The only true LED TVs that I know of are some of the giant stadium displays that use clusters of LEDs to create the image, but you won’t find anything like that in a room-sized flat panel TV.

Spread the word.

HDMI has become the first choice in making the connection between HDTVs and other components in a home entertainment system; the installed base includes more than a billion connections. The single cable carries video and audio, which helps eliminate the rat’s nest of wires that often accompanies electronic equipment. The high speed digital connection provides “perfect” accuracy, as opposed to the analog component connections that can lose bits of data in translation. HDMI can even be used to send commands between components, turning them on and off or switching sources and other settings. And HDMI supports the copy protection features required by some Hollywood studios and other content producers to prevent piracy of their product.

Well, here comes a new HDMI. Version 1.4 of the specification is scheduled to be finalized by June 30, when it wil be available for download at the HDMI Licensing Web site. This new specification adds a number of interesting and useful features to the connection. First and foremost, it adds an Ethernet channel to the connection. Home networks are becoming increasingly important in home entertainment systems, providing access to content from shared storage as well as from the Internet. HDMI 1.4 will provide the network connection between the devices without the need for extra cables or ports.

HDMI 1.4 will also have an audio return channel. This means that either device in a connection can send audio signals to the other. This will allow a TV that is receiving an audio stream over the air to direct it to a home theater sound system without the need for separate cables. The new design also supports higher resolutions, up to the “4K” currently used in digital cinemas, with 4,096 by 2,160 pixel resolution that is the equivalent of four 1080p displays. There are also provisions for extended color support, 3D video formats, a new micro connector, and even HDMI connections for use with car entertainment systems.

These changes will clearly enhance and improve the appeal of HDMI to make HDTV connections easier and more versatile. It will take time for the manufacturers to catch up with some of these features — hardware always is out in front of software developments — but eventually we can expect to see devices that have more intelligence and require less interaction from the user in order to get the desired effect. Instead of having to control individual devices, we should be able to push a single button on the remote that lets us watch a movie, with all the components of the system automatically configuring themselves the way we want.

While I’m on the subject of HDMI, let me repeat my advice about cables. Because they are digital, HDMI connections are generally pass/fail; either they work, or they don’t. It’s not like an analog signal where a poor connection can lose information that degrades the quality of the image or sound. As a result, my advice is to spend as little as possible on your HDMI cables because — in most cases — they will work just as well as the ones that cost up to 10 times as much. And I just found a site on the Web that has some very attractive prices for HDMI cables. I have not tried any cables from Optimized Cable Company – http://www.optimization-world.com — but they appear to be of good quality and come with a lifetime warranty against defects. And the prices are about as good as I’ve seen, even though they use gold plated contacts (to prevent corrosion and oxidation). If you need cables, I’d give them a try. (And if you do, please write to me at alfred@hdtvprofessor.com and let me know how they work for you.)

An interesting announcement was posted yesterday. JVC has released a new 42″ 1080p LCD TV, except that it’s not really a TV; it’s a monitor. What’s the difference, you ask? The difference is that a TV has a tuner that can receive a broadcast signal and extract the sound and images from it, but a monitor has no tuner. And the new JVC Xiview LT-42WX70 has no tuner.

What the “TV” does have is an extended color gamut that is designed to meet the needs of digital photography enthusiasts. According to JVC, it covers 100% of the sRGB color space, and 96% for Adobe RGB. The set also is just over 1.5″ thick, making it attractively thin. And should you need a monitor, a separate controller box with a tuner is available.

The fact is that many people don’t need a tuner in their TV at all. If you have a set top box for your cable or satellite service, and do not use an antenna for over the air broadcasts, then you don’t need a tuner. Now, this new JVC model has a list price of about $2,400 which is about three times the cost of some other 42″ LCD HDTVs with tuners, so clearly you’re not going to save any money by choosing this tunerless model. But it is interesting to see if this is the start of a return of monitors for home entertainment systems. My guess is that enough people need a tuner and that it costs relatively little to included one, so I expect to see tuners in most flat panel TVs for some time to come.

Time Warner announced recently that the company will drop HDNet from its cable services. Apparently, it was unable to come to terms with Mark Cuban for his HDNet and HDNet Movie channels. A a result, the two will be dropped from the Time Warner line-up next Sunday, May 31.

Cuban launced HDNet in September 2001 to promote HD content, well before the major networks were making the investment to create content in high definition. One of the standout moments in the network’s early days was its high definition coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Today, the channel carries content as diverse as Dan Rather’s documentaries and mixed martial arts (MMA) competitions.

Fans of the HDNet and HDNet Movies programming will still be able to get it if they switch to DirecTV or Dish Network satellite service, or to Verizon’s FiOS if it’s available in their area. There are reports of backlash on the part of MMA fans, who are cancelling their cable service and switching to satellite. This could provide an extra bump to the new subscriber rolls, along with the anticipated jump that will come in a few weeks when over-the-air viewers discover that they cannot get the reception they want from digital broadcast channels. It looks as though this will be a very good summer for the satellite services.

If you’re in the United States, I hope that you are getting to enjoy this Memorial Day long weekend. Maybe you’ll get to watch some sports or enjoy a movie on an HDTV screen. Or maybe there will be a backyard barbecue or other celebration of the start of summer. No matter how you spend the day, I hope it’s a good one.

I’m taking the day off, but I want to let you know I’ll be back tomorrow with another installment. I also want to thank you for reading HDTV Almanac, and hope you’ll continue. This summer I expect to post entry #1,000 so stay tuned!

Do you have a subscription to Netflix? Do you have a computer with Windows Media Center? Then it is now easier than ever to take advantage of the streaming online movies that are available free to subscribers. This gives you access to the more than 12,000 movies and videos that you can also access with the “Watch Instantly” streaming feature that uses a browser and Windows Media Player to deliver the content.

Netflix now shows up as an option on the TV and Movies section of Media Center:

The nose of the electronic delivery of video content camel continues to inch its way under the tent, and when the rest of the camel follows, there will be a lot less room for broadcast television and physical delivery of movies on plastic discs. Expect to see this trend accelerate.

Okay, file this item in the “There are only two kinds of people in the world” folder. Either you will think that this is a great idea, or a terrible one.

Last year, I reported on Samsung’s plans to provide Yahoo! widgets on their Series 6 and 7 LCD TVs to provide feeds of information from the Internet, such as headlines, weather, stock data, and sports scores. I think it’s great to be able to get data from the Web — I’m watching a lot of Hulu on my living room screen these days — but I’m ambivalent at best about the whole widget idea. My knickers get knotted bad enough with the now-permanent network bugs that are displayed all the time on some broadcast channels, and I’m really tired of the animated program promos that pop up when I’m trying to watch a program.

So what has Samsung done now? They are going to release a free upgrade that will provide a Twitter widget. I’m not clear on how you control it or what you’ll get, but apparently the idea is that all your tweets will scroll by while you watch your TV. Hmmm… I find it hard enough to notice the league score updates at the bottom of the screen when I’m concentrating on watching a professional sports event, so I don’t think I’d be very good at noticing the tweets if they get added to the clutter. The Twitter widget sounds like an excellent way to provide a constant distraction while you try to watch TV.

On the other hand, I do understand how much some people — like my buddy Bruce Brown – love Twitter and want to stay in touch with others at all times. And I really get what this might do for hit shows like “Lost” or “American Idol” where you’ll get twitstorms of real-time responses to what’s happening on the screen. It is probably going to be huge. It’s just not for me.

In addition to the Series 6 and 7 sets with Internet connectivity, the feature will also be available in the 6000, 7000, and 8000 lines of LCD TVs with LED backlights. If you think this is a good feature, don’t try to tweet me because I’m not there, but do send me an email at alfred@hdtvprofessor.com.

Okay; first we had standard definition TV which we will imprecisely assume has 640 by 480 pixels in the image (because that’s close enough for our purposes here). Then HDTV came along with 720p (1,280 by 720 pixels) and 1080i/1080p (1,920 by 1,080 pixels) resolutions. Movie theaters need even higher resolution, and so the standard for digital cinema was “2K” resolution – 2,048 by 1,080 — but is rapidly moving to “4K” which has 4,096 by 2,160 pixels. If you’re keeping score, that’s more than the number of pixels on four 1080p displays.

Enter the new Super Hi-Vision D-ILA projector from JVC. D-ILA is the company’s version of LCOS technology, and it uses three separate imagers to create images with a resolution of 7,680 by 4,320 pixels. Yes, that’s the equivalent of 16 individual 1080p screens tiled in a four-by-four matrix. The projector is capable of creating these images 60 times per second (60 Hz) with 36 bit color depth which requires a throughput of nearly 10 Gigabytes (GB) per second. This requires 16 coax cable connections, but JVC has developed its own interface that uses four separate fiber optic channels. All projector controls are handled through a network connection.

You probably won’t want to put this in your living room, however. It comes with a 3,000 watt lamp (that’s equivalent to 50 60-watt lightbulbs; do you have 50 lightbulbs in your entire house?) that pumps out a 10,000 lumen image. Oh, and it requires 200 volts AC, so you can’t just plug it into the nearest outlet.

This is probably the future for digital cinema, though there is a lot of infrastructure that will have to be developed before this will be a practical solution on a widescale basis. The movie theaters are going to have to keep one step ahead of what people can get in the comfort of their own living room, however, so higher resolution is one of the frontiers that could provide a useful advantage.

DisplaySearch has released their information on worldwide LCD TV shipments (from manufacturers, as opposed to the sales by retailers) for the first quarter of 2009, and the trend is familiar. The number of units shipped — 26.7 million — was up 27% compared with the first quarter of 2008, but the revenues actually declined 1% for the same periods. In other words, what the increased consumer demand added with one hand, the lower prices took away with the other.

One thing missing from these numbers a breakout by size of the TV set. I would not be surprised to find that many of the additional units sold this year were smaller sets with lower prices. This would help increase the count without adding as much revenue. The fact that prices continued to plummet last year, however, is a much bigger factor behind why the manufacturers are making less money even though they are selling more TVs.

Note that some sources are indicating price increases for LCD TVs this year; some predict increases of as much as 30%. I don’t see that happening. It’s very hard to take back a price cut once it’s out there in the market, and there are many hungry manufacturers out there willing to keep prices as low as possible so that they can stay in business. I don’t expect yet another year of 20% to 25% price cuts, but I also don’t expect to see prices rise a lot this year, either.

There are two other interesting numbers in the DisplaySearch results. Plasma TVs accounted for 2.8 million unit shipments, which is about one tenth the number of LCD TVs shipped. That’s only a 1% increase over the same quarter last year, which means that LCD technology is increasing its lead in flat panel TVs. The other fact might come as a surprise in to U.S. consumers where the flat panel technology rules supreme; about 13.7 million picture tube (CRT) TVs shipped worldwide in the first quarter of 2009. That’s neary five for every one plasma TVs shipped, and more than half the count for LCD TVs. So while pictures tube sets may be forgotten, they’re not gone yet.

Nielsen has announced that about 3.3 million U.S. households remain totally unprepared for the end of analog television broadcasts on June 12. If you’re a glass-half-full type, this means that about half the households that were totally unprepared in January are now at least partially prepared. On the other hand, if you’re a glass-half-empty type, then this is as if everyone in the entire Seattle/Tacoma/Bellevue metropolitan area is still unprepared.

With less than a month to go, the FCC has released an update on its preparations for the transition. To the commission’s credit, they express a desire to help those segments of the population who are most likely to be underserved and unprepared: “low-income individuals, minority communities, non-English speaking consumers, senior citizens, consumers with disabilities and individuals living in rural areas or tribal lands.” It’s not clear that they are applying sufficient resources at this late date. Here are some examples.

The FCC is sending out “about” 180 employees to the 49 markets that have the highest numbers of unprepared households. That’s about one for every 20,000 unprepared households. They will be working with local government and agencies to help them educate consumers.

The commission has “issued 12 grass roots contracts to establish up to 400 walk-in centers and 12,000 DTV help clinics” across the country. That’s one center for more than 8,000 unprepared households, and keep in mind that many of the target population may find it difficult to travel to these centers.

The FCC expects to have arrangements with third-party contractors “capable of providing up to 218,700 installations across the country.” That’s an installation for one out of every 15 unprepared households. Also, we learned from those markets that transitioned early that many households that might have been in the “partially prepared” category turned out to need assistance.

The FCC also plans to have “as many as 4,000″ operators at their national DTV help line: 1-888-CALL-FCC (1-888-225-5322), though they don’t indicate how long that peak will be available. Expect that all 4,000 will be busy on June 12 and 13.

Now, I understand that there’s a significant number of households that will remain unprepared, more or less no matter what we do. The problem is that many of the FCC’s activities seem to be put together on the fly, in spite of the Congress granting an eleventh hour extension of another four months from the original February transition date. A lot of people will still be unprepared, and I expect that the cable and satellite companies are going to see a lot of new subscribers in the weeks following the end of analog TV broadcasts. If you know that you need some installation work done for satellite or cable, do it now because these people are going to have a very busy summer.