Posts Tagged ‘Blu-ray’

TV, Over The Air and Everywhere!

Published on Friday, 10 May 2013 14:35
Pete Putman
0 Comments

In a Bloomberg story from May 3, Aereo chairman Chet Kanojia is calling the TV networks’ bluff. Aereo’s “streaming terrestrial broadcasts over the Internet, one antenna at a time” service, which is expanding to Boston, has stirred the ire of News Corporation (parent of Fox) and CBS.

Executives at both networks, having suffered two setbacks in court, have threatened to shut down their broadcasts completely and move to cable/satellite distribution exclusively if Aereo doesn’t relent and pay a retransmission fee to carry their New York City signals.

Kanojia was quoted in the article as saying, “The reality is, they want to get paid twice, and Aereo is just an excuse to articulate that business strategy. Good luck to them.” Practically speaking, CBS and Fox would face several logistical hurdles to pull this off, not the least of which would be answering to Congress if they did shut down their terrestrial transmitters, viewed by at least 15% of the American public.

Strangely enough, both network’s sugar daddy – the National Football League – has yet to be heard from in this kerfuffle. The NFL has repeatedly stated it does not want to sign rights deals that would restrict broadcasts of its games to pay TV channels, giving only Monday Night Football to ESPN. If CBS and Fox decided to pull their 8VSB power plugs, what would Roger Goodell say?

More importantly, how does Goodell feel about Aereo carrying NFL games for which they haven’t paid any rights? The NFL is scrupulous about enforcing so-called “public” performances of NFL games outside of bars, restaurants, and other places of public accommodation. They’ve even come after churches for hosting free Super Bowl parties in the past. So, where’s the indignation at Aereo?

I suppose if CBS and Fox went ahead with their threat, we could always fire up that ol’ Blu-ray player or smart TV function many of us don’t use. In a Home Media story also published on May 3, the Nielsen Company announced that Blu-ray Disc and transactional video-on-demand (VOD) “made significant gains as the primary means for consumers to acquire home entertainment movies and TV shows in 2012.”

According to Nielsen, 83.6% of consumers used a DVD or Blu-ray player to watch video at home, while 45.1% of the sample audience used video game console and 44.1% favored digital video recorders. The number of respondents who preferred streaming rental movies increased by 32% in the past six months of 2012 compared with the same time period in2011.

During the same interval, 29% more opted for transactional VOD to watch TV shows, 12% more preferred using Netflix to watch movies, and 24% more jumped on board subscription video-on-demand services to watch TV programs.

Intriguingly, 14% more survey respondents said they bought a Blu-ray movie over 2011, while 25% said they preferred Blu-ray for TV shows. (I assume that meant mostly boxed sets?)  And you may be surprised to learn that adult female respondents who use the Internet are more likely to buy movies or TV shows on optical disc than adult male respondents.

The rise in popularity of streaming and transactional VOD may be due to the fact that of 56% of all households with broadband Internet access now have at least one TV set connected to the Internet. So says The Diffusion Group in a recent report. Streaming media players lead in the connected category for accessing streaming services, followed by video game consoles like the Xbox and PlayStation platforms. Connected Blu-ray players came in third, followed by smart TVs.

The NPD Group sees that pecking order changing soon, stating that by next year, connections through dedicated streaming boxes (Apple TV, Roku) and smart TVs will eclipse connections via Blu-ray players — another sign of people moving away from movies on discs. They also found that 40% of households with Internet-connected TVs watch videos from Netflix, 17% watch YouTube videos, and 11% watch movies and TV shows via Hulu.

So, is streaming the hot ticket? Not necessarily, unless you have the patience of a saint, says a story on the Streaming Media Blog Web site. Conviva, a company heavily involved in research and development of more effective and reliable streaming solutions, analyzed over 22 billion (yes, BILLION) video streams in 2012 with an eye toward reliability. These streams included Netflix, ESPN, HBO, Viacom, VEVO, MLB, USA, NBC, and others, said the story.

The result? 60% of all streams experienced quality degradation. Re-buffering affected 20.6% of streams interrupting programs, while 19.5% of the streams were impacted by slow video startup and 40% were plagued by grainy or low-resolution picture quality caused by low bit rates. (Check your home broadband speed sometime between 9 and 10 PM, using CNET’s Broadband Speed test. You may be shocked by the results!)

Drilling down, 60% of views were impacted by stalls, low resolution or buffering. 39.3% of streams were impacted by buffering and 4% (900 million streams) never started at all. And while many consumers are watching on a screen capable of displaying high-quality (HQ) video, 63% are viewing below HQ resolution anyway. Hate waiting in line? Conviva said that in 2012, a staggering 124.8 billion minutes were spent in buffering.

You know what? I think I’ll just go read a book. (No, make that an e-book. Wait, I have to download it first! Buffering…buffering…buffering…)

‘Black Friday’ takes on a whole new meaning

Published on Wednesday, 05 December 2012 18:14
Pete Putman
0 Comments

A story posted on the Home Media Web site states that overall consumer electronics retail sales for Black Friday declined by 5.6% from last year.

According to research firm NPD, many categories of electronics underperformed on the day after Thanksgiving. The flat screen (LCD, plasma) TV segment was one of them, with sales revenue dropping by 6%. NPD attributed this to lower average retail prices for TVs ($333 vs. $367 last year). 40% of all TVs sold had 32-inch screens, but for an average price of $194.

Interestingly, sales of TVs with screens larger than 50 inches increased by 65% Y-Y, with the 65-inch and larger category accounting for 6% of all TV sales, compared to 1% a year ago. It wasn’t hard to find 60-inch plasma and LCD sets for well under $1,000, and Sharp has discounted its 70-inch Aquos model below $2,000 on more than one occasion this year.

Notebook computers didn’t fare well, either. Sales of Windows-OS models were off by 10%, and some of that might be attributable to consumer resistance to the new Windows 8 operating system. (According to NPD, Windows-OS notebooks account for 89% of all notebook sales.) Apple-OS notebook sales were essentially flat.

The most interesting part of the story was about Blu-ray players, which saw a spike in sales of 20% Y-Y. However, revenue from BD player sales declined by 9%, no doubt due to some “bargain” door-buster pricing such as Wal-Mart’s $39 Blu-ray player offering.

The Home Media story quoted NPD VP and analyst Stephen Baker as saying that the spike in sales of BD players was due more to their ability to stream content from Netflix and other online movie services. “This speaks to people trying to get content [from the Internet] onto their televisions and not necessarily getting a single device that doesn’t give them flexibility [between physical and digital media],”he stated.

Baker also said that sales of Roku, Apple TV, NetGear, and other streaming devices were also up significantly on Black Friday. Earlier reports of Blu-ray disc sales ramping up during the same time period apparently had more to do with bargain-basement pricing on these discs, including some specials for less than $10.

From the sound of it, Black Friday wasn’t all that swell for retailers, who traditionally peg that day on the calendar when their balance sheets turn positive for the year.  That means you are likely to see even better deals on televisions as we get closer to Christmas and move into the January football playoff season.

Ho-ho-ho!

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Published on Monday, 26 November 2012 17:16
Pete Putman
0 Comments

I haven’t run a Letters column on HDTVexpert.com in several years. And there’s a good reason for that: With everything else on my plate these days, I keep forgetting to do it. (That was Steve Martin’s favorite excuse, as I recall: “I forgot!”)

Even so, I find that there are certain questions that keep popping up after my classes and presentations, not to mention after some of my more controversial articles. And there’s no better time to address some of them with the holiday shopping season now upon us.

So let’s get started!

*****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Q. What (kind of) (brand) (size) TV should I buy?

A. Not surprisingly, I get this question a lot. But you may be surprised at my answer: Whatever you like.

The fact is; TV prices have never been lower. I spotted numerous Black Friday specials where TVs were selling for less than $10 per diagonal inch. Imagine that! You can pick up major brand 42-inch LCD TVs for less than $400 now. $900 will buy you a major brand 60-inch plasma TV (that price was $1000 a year ago). Heck, you can score a 70-inch LCD TV for $2,000!

Frankly, it’s hard to go wrong these days. Prices are so low that even if you grow disenchanted with your purchase after a year or two, you can just recycle it and buy a new one. To put things into perspective, add up what you pay for mobile phone service annually, plus the cost of a smart phone that you’ll get rid of in two years.

Is that number on the high side of $1,200? For about the same amount of money, you could buy a pair of 47-inch LED-backlit LCD TVs. Or a fully-loaded “smart” 3D LED LCD TV with Web browser. For what my 42-inch Panasonic TH-42PZ80U cost me in September 2008 ($1,099), I can now buy two 42-inch 1080p plasma TVs and get more HDMI inputs with reduced power consumption. Amazing!

Here’s a tip: No need to rush out and grab a TV before Christmas. The best deals are typically in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, so if you can wait that long, you’ll see some huge savings. But even if you just gotta watch your favorite college or pro team on a new TV, you’ll still find some great prices through the next four weeks.

 

Q. You’ve always been a big advocate for plasma. Now you’re telling me that plasma is going away. How can that happen? Don’t people care about picture quality?

A. It’s simply a matter of economics. The TV-buying public has voted and voted overwhelmingly for LCD technology. One of the major consumer preference studies commissioned earlier in 2012 revealed that residents of the United States generally prefer big, cheap TVs, and don’t care much about the display technology, or Web browsers and 3D. They just want more screen for the buck – and they’re getting it, judging by current retail prices.

Does plasma still have an edge over LCD in terms of picture quality? Well, if you prefer deeper blacks, wider viewing angles without color shifts, and colors similar to what the best CRT TVs and projectors could produce back in the day, then plasma is the way to go.

But LCD TVs are often sold on form factors – how thin they are, how light they are, and how cool they look when turned off and sitting in your living room or family room. Some folks like ‘em because they’re so bright and are largely unaffected by high ambient light levels. And you can’t buy smaller plasma TVs (<40 inches) these days. Last time I looked, the 2nd-largest screen size category in terms of TV sales was 30 to 39 inches. That’s 100% LCD territory.

Plasma TVs are only made by a handful of companies (Panasonic, Samsung, and LG). Plasma TV shipments have been steadily declining over the past five years, aside from a little bump a couple of years ago. Plasma’s share of all TV shipments in Q2 2012 was about 5.5%, which means that more CRT TVs were shipped worldwide than plasma models. (You could look it up.) Simply put; people just aren’t buying it.

Pioneer got out of the plasma TV business almost 5 years ago because they could not compete on price and volume. Panasonic once predicted it would be shipping 11 million plasma TVs a year – that number is now less than half, and Panasonic has been forced to idle a good portion of its plasma fabs as a result of declining demand. (That’s also why Panasonic is now pushing 42-inch, 47-inch, 55-inch, and eventually 60-inch LCD TV screen sizes.)

It’s hard to argue with the numbers.

 

Q. Now that TV prices are so low, should I still have my TV calibrated?

A. Not really. Just about every TV I’ve tested has at least one preset picture mode called “cinema” or “movie” or something like that. If you switch your TV into that mode (or one of the ISF Day or Night modes if present), your TV will be “close enough for government work” when all done.

To be sure, go into your picture menu and check to see that (a) brightness is around 45-50, (b) contrast is about 75-80, (c) sharpness is set to zero, (d) color temperature is set to “mid” or “warm,” (d) and any “auto” gamma, black level, contrast, or brightness modes are disabled or also set to zero.

I’ll wager that you’d be quite happy with your TV’s picture quality after all that. And you will have saved yourself quite a few dollars that can be put to better use, like your monthly pay TV subscription. Or a sound bar to overcome the acoustical limitations of super-thin TVs.

I should add that I still see some value in calibrating home theater projectors, even though some of them also come with “cinema” and “movie” picture presets. Getting the best projected image quality in a darkened room is a very different and more complex process than getting acceptable TV image quality in a fully-lit room.

 

Q. You seem to have it in for Blu-ray and 3D sometimes. Why?

A. I don’t have any particular bias against the Blu-ray format. I own five Blu-ray players and have a sizable stack of movies (as well as a Toshiba HD-DVD player and a stack of HD-DVD discs. Any takers?). And there’s really nothing else out there that compares in image quality to movies on Blu-ray.

What I have taken other analysts, reporters, and public relations companies to task for is ignoring the shifting sands of public opinion, which now clearly favor electronic delivery of movies and TV shows via streaming (Amazon, Netflix, Vudu, and Hulu) over physical discs; the sales and rentals of which are in a steady decline.

I have long maintained that the average consumer doesn’t really care if they own a physical copy of a movie – they just want to be able to watch on their schedule. And for better or worse, streaming services satisfy that desire. Never mind that the picture quality isn’t always that great, or that the stream locks up from time to time. People value convenience and price over quality most every time (it’s an old axiom of economics), and Netflix and Amazon give it to them.

If and when Internet speeds get fast enough on a consistent basis, I’d bet that most consumers would be happy to stream HD movies from a ‘cloud’ server and drop the discs altogether. Or load them onto flash memory for viewing on multiple platforms, like tablets. Why do you think so many WiFi-enabled Blu-ray players have been sold in the past couple of years? It’s for the access to Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu.

Be honest now. How many movies do you have sitting unwatched on shelves in your house, still in their original shrink wrap? Birthday presents? Holiday gifts? Impulse purchases? Who knows from where they came. Unfortunately, it’s hard to get rid of used DVDs these days – even the local libraries don’t want them. Times are changing.

As for 3D, which seems to come along every other sunspot cycle, it was just too expensive and too confusing to the average consumer, who (as I stated earlier) just wants a big, cheap television. The early lack of 3D movie content (caused by exclusive Blu-ray “bundles”), competing presentation formats (active vs. passive vs. autostereo), and scarcity of 3D TV channels (DirecTV’s 3D channel has all but been shut down) just added to the problem.

3D has its place, and right now it’s better suited to larger screens in controlled viewing environments, such as movie theaters and theme parks. TV manufacturers don’t spend much time promoting 3D anymore – they’re just trying to figure out how to get you to buy a new TV these days; any TV.

So 3D will just become a another bell and whistle that you can embrace or ignore on your $800, 55-inch super-thin LED “smart TV” next January.

 

Q. Is there really that much difference between indoor TV antennas? You’ve tested a bunch of them – isn’t it more about marketing hype than anything else?

A. There are many folks out there that are trying to “huckster” people out of their hard-earned cash with “enhanced” or “high-performance” indoor antennas that are little more than a variation on the 60+-year-old bow tie design.

A good example would be the Clear Cast X1, which is little more than a bow tie in a solid plastic housing, connected through a l-o-n-g piece of small diameter, lossy coaxial cable.  This antenna doesn’t work substantially different than a $5 bow tie that Radio Shack used to sell.

Yet, Clear Cast got quite a few people to shell out $70 for it (including me, but that was for testing purposes, not because of a condition of temporary insanity in my part!).

I’ve seen expensive antennas made out of old satellite dishes and UHF yagis. I’ve seen loop antennas, “placemat” antennas, and cylindrical antennas. (Remember the $400 Terk “tanning lamp” HDTV antenna from the late 1990s?)

The physics of TV antennas haven’t changed much since the 1940s and 1950s. Most antenna designs you see now are similar to patented designs from back then, only with some tweaks or enhancements. That said; there are some clever “placemat” antennas available for sale now, and the best models I’ve tested so far are made by Mohu. (The Walltenna isn’t too shabby, either, and Winegard’s FlatWave is a decent performer.)

I’ve gotten a few more models in recently for reviews and will probably just re-test the entire batch soon to establish a new baseline. From experience, I’d say that you don’t need to spend much more than $50 for a good performer, unless you want an amplified version. That will run you another $20 – $30.

But you should be cautious about indoor antennas that sell for three figures – you may be buying more marketing hype than anything else. Caveat emptor!

 

Q. You’ve been predicting recently that projectors are on the way out, and that large LCD screens are going to replace them. Yet, I continue to see market forecasts that projector sales will increase substantially each year. How do you explain that discrepancy?

A. What I’ve stated on more than one occasion is that the availability of large and inexpensive LCD screens (TVs and monitors) will have an impact on projector sales for small to mid-size rooms. That would be conference rooms, meeting rooms, boardrooms, and classrooms that seat anywhere from half a dozen to 50 people.

And I am not making this up. As I travel across the country teaching classes for clients, presenting at major trade shows, and just informally talking to AV consultants, designers, dealers, and systems integrators; I hear again and again that this is actually happening, and not on a small scale.

Apparently, the major push for dumping projectors and moving to a one-piece high-resolution display that doesn’t care about ambient lighting is coming from clients, who see Sharp’s 80-inch LCD TV for $3,999 at Costco and Best Buy and wonder why they can’t put one (or two) in their company offices.

From what I’ve heard, this is a strong trend at financial institutions. Based on early responses to threads I’m running on several LinkedIn groups, it’s also happening in classrooms. Shipments of large LCD and plasma monitor supports are running far ahead of rear-projection frame and supports.

The math behind it is easy to figure out. A two-piece projection screen (usually motorized) and ceiling-mounted projector wind up costing far more than the 80-inch TV (yes, dealers are installing those and getting a multi-year warranty on them). And there are no lights to dim, and no lamps to replace. I don’t have any empirical data on mean time between failures (MTBF) for these large TVs. But so far, people seem very happy with them.

Keep in mind this old saw: A one-piece display solution is always preferable to a two-piece display solution. That’s what’s driving this trend.

 

Enough! Time to close up the mail bag and enjoy the rest of the month before CES hits. Happy holidays!

When a Butterfly Flaps Its Wings – Pete Putman

Published on Wednesday, 26 September 2012 17:11
Pete Putman
0 Comments

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the decline in television sales and how manufacturers are scratching their heads trying to figure out a way to kick-start consumer interest and get those cash registers jingling again, as the all-important 2012 holiday selling season is barely two months away.

 

Misery loves company. Hollywood is in a similar pickle as declining sales of movies on optical disc and increasing use of streaming video-on-demand (SVOD) are challenging revenue projections, particularly for ‘weak’ theatrical releases that could previously count on back-end physical media sales to make up revenue.

 

The steady decline in optical disc sales and rentals since 2005 has been well-documented by myself and other industry analysts, and has been tracked and confirmed by a number or research organizations. While it is true that Blu-ray disc sales continue to grow, they haven’t made up for the drop-off in DVD sales and rentals – and are unlikely ever to do so.

 

What’s ‘hot’ these days is streaming and playback of movie and TV show files on portable devices. On a flight back from California last week, the passenger next to me enjoyed Battleship on an iPad, downloaded from iTunes. While making a trip to the restroom, I noticed at least ten other passengers watching video on tablets, e-readers, and even a smart phone.

 

In contrast, just about every laptop I spotted appeared to be open to a word processor or spreadsheet program. I had my Toshiba laptop with me on the flight, along with a couple of Blu-ray movies, but the combination of a tight middle seat and a very large passenger to my right made using my laptop difficult, so I opted to read an eBook on my Nook Simple Touch instead.

 

But I digress. In a recent Home Media article, Viacom CEO Philipe Dauman was quoted as saying that the continuing decline in optical disc sales has led Hollywood to change their economic model, forcing producers, directors, and actors to share in the risk of a movie and reap any rewards at the back end instead of getting a large upfront payment.

 

“We don’t mind sharing the upside [of a movie with talent] as long as we don’t have a downside, or we have a sharing of that risk,” said Dauman. “Digital revenues are growing, but it’s not a perfect transference [with disc sales] at this point.” As a result, Viacom is one of many content owners seeking to make up revenue by licensing programming to SVOD companies Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video.

 

Some movies are produced exclusively for DVD and Blu-ray sales. This is a big part of Disney’s revenue stream, as they are the largest producer of packaged media. But Disney has already taken steps to move to a SVOD model, ramping up a digital delivery portal two years ago to transition away from physical media for its ‘direct to disc’ releases.

 

The explosive growth of packaged media in the 1980s and 1990s – something Hollywood vigorously fought against at the start – turned out to be a very profitable business in the end, and strong sales on VHS and DVD after a theatrical run made it possible to ‘greenlight’ some movies that otherwise would have been major box office flops. (The Austin Powers series is a good example.)

 

But the butterfly started flapping its wings about seven years ago with the first stirrings of streaming video (YouTube). That gentle breeze has now turned into a storm, with movies and TV shows watched across an almost bewildering variety of platforms.

 

And that storm is impacting TV sales as well. With new e-readers from Amazon and the latest iPhone now coming to store shelves, buying a new TV or upgrading an older model isn’t at the top of nearly as many holiday shopping lists as it would have been two years ago.

 

Even the digital video recorder – an integral part of the transition to digital TV a decade ago – is threatened by SVOD. A recent Advertising Age article points out that media companies and ad buyers are anticipating a day in the near future where demand for ‘anywhere, anytime’ playback will displace the ability to skip advertising.

 

According to Alan Wurtzel of NBC Universal, “Video on demand is going to play a major role in how people consume video going forward.” Subscribers to  SVOD services can already watch recent episodes from major broadcast networks and a few pay TV channels ‘on demand’ on almost any device, but they give up the ability to skip advertisements.

 

Not surprisingly; TiVo, the company that basically invented the DVR, is in the thick of this transition. The article quoted Tara Maitra, senior vice president for TiVo’s content and media sales and operations, as saying that consumers really don’t care how they access programming as long as it is on their own terms.

 

What does all of this portend for the display industry? Simply that consumer demand, going forward, won’t be for big, cheap, and thin televisions stuffed with apps and other goodies. No; it will be for small, ‘go anywhere’ displays that offer higher resolution, brighter screens, improved viewing angles, and enhanced sound. And consumers will demand improved wireless access with higher broadband speeds to fully enjoy movies and TV shows, served up from ‘the cloud.’ (Can’t have a storm without clouds!)

 

It all starts when a butterfly flaps its wings.

 

(This article originally appeared on Display Central on Monday, September 24.)

Life (and Death) Go On In The Projector World

Published on Tuesday, 29 November 2011 19:36
Pete Putman
0 Comments

Three news items in the past few days are all focused on front projectors (pardon the pun). And each of these news items has a decided air of uncertainty around it, which of course reflects the sluggish economy and a looming paradigm shift away from projected images to self-contained, larger-than-life display technologies.

 

The first item is courtesy of Engadget, who reports that Sony is getting ready to bring a $28,000 4K-resolution projector to the home cinema market. They won’t be the first (Meridian previously offered the JVC 4K D-ILA platform for about $200K), but they will be the cheapest.

 

This announcement, which will no doubt be one of Sony’s big PR blasts at CES 2012, raises a few questions. First, who needs 4K resolution? That represents four times the detail on a full 1920×1080 image, and there isn’t any content available to consumers (yet) that is authored at that resolution.

 

Sure, HDMI v1.4 supports 4K. And you could certainly master a 4K Blu-ray disc, although at current disc capacities, you’d be limited to about 30 – 45 minutes of content with aggressive MPEG4 compression. But for now, 2K (or, more accurately, 2,073,600) pixels represents the upper limit for home viewing.

 

That gives rise to the second question: How will Sony scale 2K content to fit the 4K imaging devices, which are almost certain to be SXRD LCoS chips? It’s not just a line-doubling job. No, scaling 2K to 4K is akin to scaling standard definition video to the 720p HDTV format. And what will 720p broadcasts look like on this projector?

 

Third, how big a screen would you need to actually see the difference between 4K and 2K source material? I’m thinking that the typical 92-inch 16:9 screen at 12 feet isn’t going to cut it.

 

The second news item comes from Quixel Research, who reports that USA sales of 3D projectors for home use increased by 121% between Q2 and Q3 of 2011. That number represents 16% of all home theater projector sales, which sounds pretty impressive.

 

Ahh, but the devil is in the details, as usual. Sales revenue for 3D home projectors grew by only 14% in the same time period, a trend Quixel attributes to a “recent onslaught of low-cost 3D models” in the channel. Not so impressive, and even less so when you learn that the overall home theater projector market saw a 7% decrease in volume from Q2 to Q3 2011, even though the category saw a 2% increase year-to-year.

 

The culprit? Look no further than plummeting prices on bigger and bigger TV screens. For less than $3,000, you can buy a Sharp Aquos 70-inch LED LCD TV with all the trimmings. And their newest model measures 80 inches diagonally, and will retail for less than $5,000. Who needs a projector when you’ve got a self-contained TV screen that large? (Betcha Sharp shows a 90-inch+ LCD TV at CES!)

 

My belief is that 3D front projection make a whole lot more sense at home than small 3D TVs (less than 55 inches). Most people sit too far away from 3D TVs to get the full effect, and they rarely pay attention to controlling ambient light spilling on the screen.

 

But 3D front projection turns that equation around. It’s easy to get a big 3D image and not spend a ton of money to do it, and screens tend to be placed in rooms where lights can be lowered or shut off altogether, just like in a movie theater.

 

The problem is that projector manufacturers have slashed prices too low, too quickly. Got $2,000 in your pocket? You have quite a selection of stereoscopic DLP and 3LCD front projectors to choose from; of which a few models are tagged around $1,500. That’s a lot less than a 70-inch LED LCD TV costs – for now. But margins are very thin on such products.

 

The last item comes by way of AV Interactive, the top pro AV publication in the United Kingdom. According to their Web site, Sanyo will cease to exist as a brand name by the end of the 1st quarter of 2012 (also the end of the fiscal year for Japanese companies).

 

How the AVI staff found this out is interesting: They got hold of a letter circulated by Panasonic to ‘business partners’ informing them of the decision. (I assume ‘business partners’ means dealers and distributors.)

 

Readers from the pro AV industry will of course recognize Sanyo as one of the top projector brands, fronting an amazingly-large lineup that ranges from ultraportables to 10,000-lumens behemoths for auditoriums and theaters. They’ve also done pioneering work with short-throw projection as well as LED-powered light engines.

 

For those readers who missed the headlines, Panasonic acquired Sanyo in December of 2008 for about $4.6 billon, primarily to scoop up the latter’s industry-leading battery and renewable energy technologies. Solar cell technologies were also in the mix. I found out about the acquisition while having dinner with several Sanyo executives in Osaka that night, which of course made for some very interesting conversations.

 

At the time, I assumed that the Sanyo and Panasonic projector business units could co-exist nicely. Panasonic does very well in high-brightness DLP projectors, while Sanyo projectors are ubiquitous in hotels, classrooms, conference rooms, and even home theaters. But it appears that’s not going to be the case, as Panasonic will instead pull a ‘borg’ move and completely assimilate its prized acquisition.

 

Ironically, the two companies have family ties that go all the way back to the period just after World War II. Sanyo was born when Toshio Iue, a former Matsushita employee and the brother-in-law of Konosuke Matsushita (the founder of Panasonic), began manufacturing bicycle generator lamps in an unused Matsushita plant in 1947.

 

What will happen to all of the Sanyo and Panasonic projector business unit employees is uncertain at this writing; although it’s likely there will be substantial staff reductions. No word yet on whether Panasonic will continue to offer Sanyo-designed appliances (possibly), LCD TVs (unlikely), and cameras and camcorders (also unlikely).

 

What we will see from Panasonic is a wider portfolio of rechargeable batteries and energy-efficient devices. That may be the only legacy of Sanyo to survive after April 1 of next year. Too bad, because I love my Sanyo Xacti 1080p pistol camera and my brother loves his Sanyo 32-inch LCD TV. And I’m sure many readers love their PLV-series Sanyo home theater projectors, too.

 

Tempus fugit…

Catch Us At

  • No events.