February, 2012 | HD TV PROFESSOR

Month: February 2012

The Big Three Networks

February 15, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

Everything seems to come in threes. We had the Big Three Automakers in Detroit. There were those little pigs. And then there were the major television networks: Netflix, Amazon, and Google. Wait a minute; what happened to ABC, CBS, and NBC? From where I sit, that is ancient history. The traditional networks are dead men walking, and just don't know it. They are trying to stick with the old models...

Why TV Subscribers Change

February 14, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

A new report from Centris indicates that more than one out of five pay-TV subscribers intend to change providers, change their level of service, or cancel entirely in the next three months. About half of these will change the program package that they have, which means that the other half will switch to a new service entirely or get rid of pay-TV altogether. For those in this second group who...

Retransmission Fees: Who Is Winning?

February 13, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

As I have mentioned recently, one of the big topics for 2012 will be the dispute over retransmission fees. Cable and satellite service providers complain that the content producers are holding their customers hostage in order to extort larger fees for the rights to rebroadcast their copyrighted programming. The result has been blackouts of channels -- sometimes for extended periods of time -- when the previous retransmission contracts expire. On...

Shed Some Light on Sports Blackouts

February 10, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

Last Thanksgiving weekend, the NFL Cleveland Browns travelled in-state to play the Cincinnati Bengals. The game was not a sell-out, and under FCC rules, the Bengals exercised their option to blackout the over-the-air broadcast of the game on local television stations in Cincinnati, Dayton, and Lexington. This decision raised the ire of thousands of Bengal fans, which in turn prompted Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown to ask the FCC to revisit...

You Can’t Touch This!

February 9, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

Touch is transforming our entertainment experience. Second-screen tablets and smartphones are programming our DVR services, delivering supplementary and interactive social content to linear programming, and becoming content delivery platforms in their own right. And while there still is a place for keyboard in this brave new world, touch interfaces are playing an increasingly-important role in how we interact most naturally and efficiently with some very complex systems. How much do...

Redbox Rising

February 8, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

The physical DVD is dead; long live streaming! That's the conventional wisdom, but I've got a dollar that says rumors of the DVD's death are premature. Why a dollar? Because that's what it costs to rent a DVD from one of those big red vending machines that you see everywhere from Walmart to McDonalds (not to mention the two just beyond the cash registers at our local grocery store). Yes,...

How Much Time-Shifting Do We Really Do?

February 7, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

The good old VHS recorder started something that Tivo took to a higher level, and the result has shaken the video broadcast industry to its very foundations. Or has it? Conventional wisdom says that U.S. television viewing households hate commercials. It says that they use digital video recorders (DVRs) so that they can skip over the advertisements. It says that this time-shifting of viewing has a negative impact on the...

A Day Made of Glass: the Sequel

February 6, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

Were you one of the 17 million who have watched Corning's "A Day Made of Glass" since it was posted last year? I know that I watched it at least a half-dozen times. And I remember thinking that it was so cool that just about all the technology required to make everything in that video happen exists today; in many cases, it's available in shipping products. Well, they've done it...

How Low Can They Go?

February 3, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

Sorry, folks, but I cannot resist this one. I really struggle to refrain from the breathless "Wow! Look at how low this price is!" type of story because it gets old and it's inevitable that someone can come up with a deal that tops whatever you've found. But I have to give in to this one. Why? It's a set from a top tier brand. It's a deal from a...

A Sound Idea

February 2, 2012 | Author: Ibex Marketing

Futuresource Consulting has just released a free analysis report that highlights their observations about consumer electronics products and trends at CES 2012. One of the points that they made in their announcement press release caught my attention: Ever-thinner TV displays boosted interest in speakers, soundbars and home theatre systems. I confess that I've been a bit puzzled over the fascination with thin when it comes to HDTVs. I understand that...