SED, Toshiba’s revolutionary alternative to plasma and LCD, will never come to market. So says Philips’ head of Product Marketing & Strategy for flat TV, Danny Tack: “Too many PDP factories have been built, too much money has been invested,” he says. “And even more has been invested in LCD. Every new factory is five football fields bigger again…the whole industry is behind LCD. I’ve not seen or heard that anyone’s putting that much money behind SED.”
Tack admits though that there’s nothing wrong with the concept behind the new system. “Put the same content on plasma, LCD and SED next to each other, and I would think SED will give the best performance. It’s a great technology, but there have been many good technologies that have never survived.”
The full interview with Danny Tack, covering both the LCD and plasma issues of today, plus his predictions for OLED and HDTV generally, will appear in Home Cinema Choice issue 132, on sale June 29.
It’s being hailed as the next true TV revolution. But will IPTV catch the public imagination? Both the telecoms companies and traditional broadcasters are betting it will.
At last week’s GlobalComm trade show in the US, telecommunications giant AT&T revealed that after a successful trial in San Antonio, it is planning to spend 4.6 billion dollars through 2008 in order to bring IPTV services to 19 million US homes. Both BT and Sky are rolling-out IPTV services in the UK this year.
Meanwhile in Japan, more than 10 million viewers have subscribed to the free Gyao Net TV service since it began in April 2005.
Like many IPTV startups, Gyao is funded by advertising. Material available for viewing includes news, dramas, variety shows and movies. Other Japanese broadcasters are chasing Gyao’s viewers.
Softbank Corporation has opened Yahoo! Doga, attracting 3.2 million registered viewers in its first month, while NTV competes with Dai-ni Nihon Terebi has around 300,000 registered viewers.
China will shortly announce its own digital terrestrial TV broadcast standard, to be known as DMB-T/H, or Digital Multimedia Broadcast-Terrestrial/Hand-held.
The standard will allow both fixed and mobile digital TV reception and is expected to cover half of the country’s TV viewers. As part of the announcement, China will formally reject the DVB-T system employed in Europe.
DMB-T/H is derived from two rival propositions developed by Chinese Universities based in Shanghai and Beijing. Digital TV signals will be transmitted over both the UHF and VHFIII spectrum, and can support HD and SD broadcasts. As part of the country’s DTT trial, mobile digital TV services using the technology have been beamed successfully to taxis along with portable devices such as mobile phones and PDAs.
According to a new survey from market research firm TFCinfo.Corp, Sony and Panasonic are perceived as top brands amongst “experienced plasma users and purchasers” (for full story click link above). This despite the fact that Sony has spend billions trying to bury plasma in favour of LCD screen technology. Samsung was rated as great value for money while NEC was the preffered busines users brand of choice.
Panasonic says it will take a “decisive lead” with Blu-ray by bundling its player as part of a 1080p promotional package with upcoming plasma screens and digital amp this September, rather than promoting the unit as a standalone purchase. The same “bundling” strategy is almost certain to be adopted in the UK, when Panasonic announces its UK plans for Blu-ray at this year’s IFA show (Berlin, 1-6 September). The brand’s Blu-ray “entertainment package” will comprise its debut DMP-BD10 Blu-ray player, pictured above, (1,300 dollars if you really want to go it alone), 100w x 7 SA-XR700 HDMI receiver and a 5.1-channel surround sound SB-TP1000 speaker package. This will be sold along with the company’s 65-inch 1080p plasma screen. The company hasn’t yet decided on an all in one package price. “Panasonic is making a meaningful transition away from offering stand-alone home entertainment products and toward providing complete home entertainment solutions,” proclaimed John Iacoviello, Panasonic product and marketing senior VP, in announcing the approach. He added “more and more consumers are baffled by the range of choices they are being presented and the difficulty in connecting their video and audio components into a smoothly functioning home theater” The DMP-BD10 Blu-ray player sports Panasonic’s proprietary Pixel Precision for High Definition (P4HD) pixel-by-pixel processing system and a 296MHz/14-bit DAC, which claims to offer 4.4 trillion colors and 16,384 levels of gradation. The unit is unusual in that it also features what Panasonic is describing as a “virtual battery”, used to isolate signal noise.
