April, 2011 | HD TV PROFESSOR

Month: April 2011

EPIX Multi-Screen Strategy

April 29, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

EPIX is a a movie channel for subscription TV services including cable, satellite, and telco (such as Verizon's FiOS). It boasts recent releases from major studios, including Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM. But you aren't just limited to watching the movies and other programming on your TV service when they are scheduled; EPIX is also a streaming on-demand service that lets you watch any of about 3,000 titles from its catalog...

Wanna Buy a Cable Business?

April 28, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

An article in Multichannel News reports that Charter is looking to sell its cable business in Los Angeles. It appears that the normal way these deals go down is to swap subscribers with a competitor, but Time-Warner Cable apparently turned down a deal to trade for its business in parts of Wisconsin where Charter already has more than half a million subscribers. So now it appears that the Los Angeles...

Netflix is #1

April 27, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! It's just little ol' Netflix, doing it's little streaming video thing. Nothing to see here, move along, move along. At least, that seemed to be the message on Monday when CEO Reed Hastings announced the company's first quarter financials. All they did was about double worldwide revenues and about double U.S. subscribers over the previous year's number's. Oh, and overall revenues...

Dark Friday

April 26, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

If you're planning on relying on the Internet to get work done on Friday -- especially if you're on the East Coast -- you may want to think about working unplugged. William and Kate may spoil your day. Not even the HDTV Almanac is a Royal-Wedding-Free zone. But rather than focus on bridal trains and the like, I'm going in a different direction. Liz Shannon Miller wrote a terrific piece...

CALM Act: Your Tax Dollars at Work

April 25, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

If you watch television programming that has commercials, I'm sure you've experienced it more than once. Your program winds down to a sensitive, thoughtful stopping point, and then there's a commercial break. And the very first commercial BLOWS YOUR EARS OUT!!! You lunge for the remote and mash the Mute button, wondering "why doesn't someone do something about this?" Well, you can now rest easy because your government has heard...

DisplaySearch: TV Replacement Cycle Shortens

April 22, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

According to a press release from DisplaySearch, the company's new study reports that consumers worldwide continue to replace their televisions more frequently than in the past. Traditionally, consumers replaced a CRT TV with another CRT TV every 10 to 15 years. That cycle is much shorter now, and not just in the U.S. but worldwide. Clearly, the advent of high definition programming and the ever-decreasing prices for flat panel sets...

Philips Quits the TV Business

April 21, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

Once a worldwide leader in the television industry, Philips has thrown in the towel and is exiting the business. The company has been headed in that direction for some time. In 2008, they licensed their brand name to Funai for sales in North America. (Funai also makes televisions under some other familiar brands, including Emerson, Sylvania, and Symphonic.) Philips already has similar licensing agreements in effect for China and India....

More on Bigger OLED Displays

April 20, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

This is totally propeller-headed, but a company named Cymer, Inc. made an interesting announcement in a press release last week that said, in part: Cymer, Inc. (Nasdaq: CYMI), announced today that TCZ, its display equipment product division, has received a volume order for the TCZ-1500B, TCZ's new Gen 5.5 crystallization system, from a leading Asian flat panel display (FPD) manufacturer. This represents TCZ's second volume order in 2011 and fourth...

New Hybrid Portable TVs from RCA

April 19, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

At the NAB show last week, RCA demonstrated three new portable LCD TVs. All run on battery or AC power, and both can pick up standard ATSC digital television broadcast signals. What makes these two models particularly interesting is that they also can receive the new Mobile DTV signals (that I discussed last week). Two models have 3.5" LCD screens: DMT335R and DMT336R. The 335R model runs on AA batteries...

Walmart Shrinks CE Store Space

April 18, 2011 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

Walmart recently announced that it was expanding the number of HDTV models that it will offer, but that apparently will be primarily for online sales. The company has announced plans to actually shrink the display space allocated to consumer electronics products in their brick and mortar stores. Part of the move is due to their perception that the flat panel TV market has stabilized a bit, and sales growth will...