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* ‘The Biz’ *
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EHX Strong outlook despite slumping home sales
Although declining selling prices might be infuriating, declining sales of new homes haven’t proven to be so, industry leaders said. “There has never been a higher demand for integrator expertise,” said David Epstein, president of the Sound Solutions custom installation company in Culver City, Calif. “A broadening base of consumers needs specialists to assist them,” he said.
Custom-home builders have been less affected by softening new home sales than production builders, and most of the custom industry’s revenues are generated through custom builders, he said.
http://www.twice.com/article/CA6422920.html
T6 Commentary: This is refreshing news for most AV integrators especially after Donald Tomnitz, CEO of D.R. Horton (the nation’s largest homebuilder by volume)- stated “I don't want to be too sophisticated here, but '07 is going to suck, all 12 months of the calendar year.” It goes without saying that as demand for new home sales fall off so do the ancillary value added services and upgrades. Several sources see mid to strong growth for home automation products for retrofit and ‘home theater’ install or upgrades. Conventional financial wisdom appears to state that as times get tougher folks tend to focus on upgrading their homes and ‘nest’ a bit more. The article does not state this outright but if new home installs falter then the growth should be in the retrofit and update markets A key could be taking in more the so-called ‘entry level ‘ clients (getting the ever present wife approval) to jump in for the first time or finally upgrade systems or add more features or services.
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Retailers Seek End To Flat-Panel ‘Land Grab’
… what went wrong in the fourth quarter of 2006 was the fault of retailers and manufacturers “acting as if this was the last year they were ever going to sell flat-panel displays.”
He noted, “What happened last fall was the sheriff went out of town and somebody passed the pistols around and said ‘let’s have a blast.’ It was like a gunfight at the OK Corral to see who would be the last man standing.”
Pricing is not nationally consistent, Baker said, explaining that there can be as much as a $200 difference in the average selling price of a television model sold in Denver compared with the least expensive Seattle market.
http://www.twice.com/article/CA6422230.html
T6 Commentary: A number of industry analysis groups have been chirping about the declining profit margins for flat panel sales and the effect this is having on retailers and resellers. In past issues of T6 we documented the reported closing of Circuit City Stores and some Best Buys to alleviate the stated loss of revenue from lower profit margins, especially on flat panels. Yeah, remarkable at it is, the margins on this one product section is a huge part of the industries total. Installers are also feeling the pinch as the manufactures try to out low-ball one another to gain market share or brand name awareness. This airfare type war really hurts the resellers and integrators who rely heavily on box sale profits and less so on service packages. Major Retailers and resellers want this to end – now. The Major manufactures have yet to indicate when such practices will end but it will need to happen sooner then later for the box stores.
As a consumer my thoughts are about getting a good deal on my flat panel purchase, should I wait and see if prices drop lower? Or, should I chuck it all and wait until my HD ready CRT’s finally give out? Flat panel prices for decent sized units (40” +) are still prohibitively expensive for the average homeowner who may not be willing to fork over $2K just to watch the nightly news or Cops. Sports fans truly drive the HD and flat panel markets as it takes much more effort to bring in those who are not buying HD flat panels to impress the boys on game day. I see the prices leveling off but not dramatically rising until at least 2009 when the analog cut off happens.
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* Format Wars *
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Blu-ray Widens Lead Over HD-DVD
Blu-ray HDTV DVDs outsold rival HD-DVD by a 2-1 margin in February, the second straight month it has done so.
That's according to an article published by Video
However, Sony's attempt to portray Blu-ray as the inevitable winner in the format war was shot down by Universal who said Blu-ray sales have risen only because of a recent increase in new titles.
http://www.tvpredictions.com/blubetter031207.htm
T6 Commentary: I include this article link as a number of tech pundits and major news outlets –( including NPR of all things) reported this pronouncement. While there is strong indication that the sales data may only be a statistical bump meaning nearly nothing in the long run, Blu-Ray still seems to have taken a substantial market awareness lead. Obviously more time and observation is needed before anyone can be declared a winner – ( no matter how eager the trades are to be the first to declare a victor). If Blu-Ray does win –( most probably from Sony releasing its films in Blu-Ray only or long before HD-DVD versions) it will be the first time a format not ‘backed’ by the adult industry has succeeded. This type of format war is exactly why Sony went on a buying spree of Television stations, Music labels and movie studios both large and small in the early 80’s. Sony wanted Paramount so badly that they were willing to purchase Seagram’s who owned paramount –( Sony spun the beverage business off as soon as the deal was done). Sony does not want to ever lose the format war again and will use content as a weapon.
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A new box from Sony turns videotapes into shiny DVDs
Now, the technologically savvy computer nut thinks nothing of connecting an old camcorder or VCR to a well-equipped Mac or PC; hitting Play; waiting two hours for each tape to transfer in real time; editing and touching up the result on the computer screen; and then waiting another two hours for the resulting video to burn onto a DVD.
But in Sony's opinion (and many other people's), this is much too laborious, expensive and time-consuming. Enter the Sony DVDirect VRD-MC3, a $218 box that converts old (and new) videotapes into shiny new DVDs with an emphasis on two extremely important attributes: simplicity and reproduction quality.
T6 Comment: Sony has either read the tea leaves and still sees a huge market for converting ‘legacy’ formats ( VHS, Betacam, Laser Disc) to standard DVDs, OR this is yet another ill fated product similar to the disastrous MP3 player. When do we see the Blu-Ray player compatible burner for say… $400?
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*H\DTV *
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Mitsubishi Laser-DLP screen --Link credit to Mark Reilly and Jeff West
Essentially, these are DLP televisions with a twist: Instead of a white incandescent light source, the new screens use high-powered, 3-color, solid-state lasers, originally developed for fiber-optics (and similar to the laser in your DVD player, but much smaller*). The secret is the ability of a laser to maintain a focused (or coherent, in laser-speak) beam. Incandescent light spreads out as distance from the light source increases, explaining why a big-screen rear-projection TV looks washed out. Laser light, on the other hand, remains tightly focused, no matter the distance, creating a much more intense light on the screen
Like the coming wave of 1080p sets, laser-based displays will likely be introduced into content drought. Until broadcasters begin adhering to S-RGB color ranges (or, even better, the nascent Japanese xvYcc standard) there will be precious little content that will take advantage of the full range of colors the sets will be able to display. Of course, once content is available, everything else will look like black and white.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/technology_news/2576401.html
T6 Comment: The promise of light weight , low power and color beyond any current high end display. 5 years to market minimum.
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Phillips Drops Fluorescent TV Backlights; Will Focus on LED’s
Philips has quietly dropped its advanced; blinking fluorescent backlights for flat televisions, and will instead focus on LED backlights, which are smaller.
This puts an end to the technology designed to dramatically reduce motion blur and smear on flat LCD televisions, a notorious problem with those types of TV sets.
Instead of emitting constant light, like in current LCD TVs, Philips' scanning backlight emitted bursts of light, which tricked the human eye into seeing sharper images.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2102932,00.asp
T6 Commentary: Phillips had been showing this at Infocomm and CEDIA for a few years and it does appear to minimize or at least fool one into thinking the fast moving image looks sharper. I have always compared the application of this technology to watching people under a strobe light at a dance club. The individual actions appear to be ‘captured’ by each pulse or blink of light. A similar process is used in high speed film recording. The very fact that manufactures are looking for every trick in the book to improve fast motion clarity (reduce smear) is all about selling to the main sales motivation to HD and Plasma – Sports.
It is both interesting and telling that Phillips has decided the ROI from sales with this highly touted feature are not enough to continue its production. End user apathy? End users still bowled over by the upgrade from NTSC CRT to HD Flat panel to spend more cash for less smear?
As a hockey fan I notice a huge difference between NTSC and HD, AND I really, really notice the smearing on LCD’s and plasmas – more so then the average baseball or football fans would.
(Though NASCAR and F1 fans are very aware of it). If I recall Phillips showed lots of hockey and racing during the demos. Look for this to be a big deal again in 3 years.
For a more detailed explanation of why the strobe effect ‘fools’ the eye into seeing ‘clearer images, check the following link:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=69880
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Feds To Ease Analog-to-Digital TV Shift
… that a significant number of U.S. households still rely on analog signals. In 2005, the FCC estimated that more than 15 million households in the United States received their television signals through over-the-air analog broadcasts, and an unknown additional number used a combination of both basic cable and analog signals.
In 2005, Congress allocated $1.5 billion fund to create a coupon program to subsidize the consumer purchase of analog-to-digital converter boxes. It also instructed the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to set up and administer the program.
T6 Commentary: Finally congress gets its act together and comes up with a plan to keep those 19 million or so folks who get TV from analog off air antennas only. Unfortunately there are great gobs of legal holes which just cry out for abuse. There are no rules to prohibit single homes to obtain multiple converters and then resell them via ebay. In further news – there are 19 million people who still get American Idol via antennas that Ralph Kramden used ! Apologies for the costal bias but wow!
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* Tech Arcane *
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Robotic age poses ethical dilemma – link Credit to Mark Tallent
The Robot Ethics Charter will cover standards for users and manufacturers and will be released later in 2007
The government plans to set ethical guidelines concerning the roles and functions of robots as robots are expected to develop strong intelligence in the near future,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6425927.stm
T6 Commentary: Oh, what will become of our creations. According to this charter Tech support may very well soon be getting support calls from real end users!
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* New Media *
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Bandwidth doubled for NCAA streams
While CBS Corp. is doubling the amount of bandwidth available for viewing NCAA tournament games this year, it will still restrict the number of viewers to keep the system running smoothly.
the site is aiming to accommodate up to 300,000 viewers at any given time
Once that limit is reached, fans will be diverted to online "waiting rooms" until enough other users leave to allow new ones in
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17534783/
T6 Commentary: More evidence for the disappearance of net neutrality. Certain events put increased demands on the internet backbone, why wouldn’t broadcast networks demand preferential treatment ? Which do you want more – reliability in connection with any website or your favorite sports content\TV show?
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* Working Knowledge *
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Under the Hood: Console is more than just a DVD Player
With so much attention focused on the Playstation and Wii game systems these days, ZapIt was able to come under the radar with a game box suited more for the whole family than just the younger generation. The Game Wave is like Trivial Pursuit on steroids, with a DVD player thrown in for fun.
The game's developers wanted to create an interactive board game-type console that families could use to play classic card games like Blackjack, with six remote controls and embedded DVD playback for watching movies.
The target retail price for the system was $99. Hence, the target cost to manufacture the product in China had to be around $50. The design team at Nytric came close enough to maintain the $99 retail price. The system is actually in stores now for roughly $80.
"We needed a very low-cost media processor that could do MPEG playback, yet still had enough resources that would allow us to program the games," said Jon Clarke, head of Nytric's hardware design team. "In addition, we wanted an integrated DVD navigator so we could process the DVD VOB files to handle playback of commercial movies."
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197800232&printable=true.
T6 Commentary: Why would eetimes – the voice of IEEE- choose to run this article?
1. Designed to be a $99 dollar game console with DVD player which sells for $80.
2. Plans for a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray by 2009.
A Cheap multi function unit with upgrade potential.
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Check out T6’s ‘Culture Corner’ with links to bands you should know and Inspired technical links from those who inspire me.
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All quoted material is the copyright of the respective sites and \ or authors- except were noted or comments are clearly mine.
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All t6 commentary opinions expressed are mine alone and are not necessarily those of Crestron Electronics, its employees, associates or even their families. Just my big mouth
