January, 2012 | HD TV PROFESSOR

Month: January 2012

The World Watches Less TV

January 17, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

Brace yourself. According to a new report by Accenture, the number of consumers watching broadcast or cable TV in 2011 in an average week was just 48%. That number is down from 71% just two years earlier in 2009. (The survey includes an international sample, drawing data from the United States, France, Japan, China, and India.) What is driving the change? According to the same study, one third of the...

A True LED HDTV

January 16, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

One of the most interesting stories to come out of CES 2012 is about a pair of technology demonstration displays that were tucked away in the Sony booth. Labeled "CrystalLED", these 55" HDTV panels were quite different from any other display that has been marketed as an "LED HDTV" in recent years. These panels actually were LED displays, using discrete, individual LED components for each sub-pixel in the 1080p display....

“Dragon TV” Will Let You Talk to Your HDTV

January 13, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

Okay, before I get to my point, I have to stage a little hissy fit that is related to the topic. The topic is the news that Nuance has announced "Dragon TV" which will let future televisions understand your spoken command. And an enormous number of my colleagues in the technical press have written about this as a great advance in"voice recognition." And it's not. "Voice recognition" is the recognition...

Five Rings in 3D

January 12, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

Yup, sales of 3DTVs have been lower than what some people have predicted, or that what manufacturers had hoped for. The reason is not the goofy glasses or the high prices. You now pay little more to get 3D support in a television, and people are just fine with wearing the glasses in the local cinemas. The problem is simple; there's not a compelling library of 3D content available. But...

The OTHER 55″ OLED HDTV at CES 2012

January 11, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

[Okay, I'm just warning you all. The flood of stories coming out of CES 2012 is likely to keep me busy for a while, long after the Las Vegas Convention Center has been hosed down and refilled with the next two or three conventions. So I'll get to them eventually, but you'll have to give me a little time. Write to me at alfred@hdtvprofessor.com if there's a specific topic that...

Running into a Burning Building?

January 10, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

You can't tell the players without a scorecard. In yesterday's Almanac entry, I told you about personal computer maker Lenovo's surprising entry into the HDTV market. Today, it's time for turnabout. If there's a technology market that is worse than the HDTV business in terms of slim profit margins, cut throat competition, and distribution challenges, it's the personal computer market. It's so bad that the industry leader HP announced plans...

HDTVs Get Smarter

January 9, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

One of my public speaking topics in recent years was "Why Your Next Computer Will Be a Television." Even without the network-connected "Smart TV" features that are commonplace now, HDTVs have long relied on powerful processors and other components that outperform the standard desktop computers of not-so-long ago. But even back when I gave this talk, I don't think I foresaw how far this aspect has develop in such a...

LED TVs to Dominate World Market

January 6, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

The worldwide economic downturn put a damper on consumer demand for televisions, according to NPD DisplaySearch's Quarterly Global TV Shipment and Forecast Report. High inventory levels meant that shipments for 2011 are exepected to be flat compared with 2010. The good news is that there are signs of improvement, and the forecast is for a modest increase of 2% in 2012, reaching 254 million units. [Source: NPD DisplaySearch Advanced Quarterly...

Roku Sticks It to TVs

January 5, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

Roku is probably one of the most successful network media players out there, and they seem to keep getting better. The boxes keep getting smaller and programming choices available through them keep growing. It's a great way to make a dumb TV smart. But now Roku has decided to think small again. The company has announced the Roku Streaming Stick, which looks like a typical USB thumb drive. Plug it...

Big OLED TVs Coming…

January 4, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

I know, I should be excited. I was hoping that maybe there'd be a viable 32" OLED HDTV on the market sometime this year, but I wasn't holding my breath. And here comes the news that LG will be showing a 55" monster of an OLED HDTV at CES in Las Vegas next week. Fifty-five freakin' inches! That's crazy! This tells us that they apparently don't need polysilicon for the...