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SHOW REPORT: CES 2005 |
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If there was a theme at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, it had to be this: “We manufactured it, because we could!” Pocket projectors, super-sized plasma, flat screen TVs with built-in digital video recorders and LCD monitors with LED backlights were all part of the scene. The show was its usual wall-to-wall self, jammed full of attendees, manufacturers, reps, and members of the press in all three halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Indoor traffic was even heavier due to an unusually cold and rainy weather front that lingered over the area and even produced some snow on Friday. It was hard to know where to start, what with so many booths featuring televisions, set-top boxes, video servers, video recorders, DVD players, and a host of go-between magic boxes. The major players showed up as they always do, but there were numerous “who’s that?” companies showing flat screen TVs – many of which were made in China. As usual, there were plenty of showstoppers and attention-getters on hand. Samsung solidified its claim to having the largest plasma TV with an amazing 102-inch diagonal model, the Z-102 (nope, no price yet) and also announced a model number for the previous record holder, the 80-inch HP-R8072 (again, no firm MSRP).
Figure 1. Samsung’s 102-inch
plasma TV stole the show
Across the aisle, Sharp stole some of Samsung’s thunder with its largest-in-class Aquos 65-inch LCD TV (no price or delivery schedule yet), which puts this technology neck and neck with plasma in virtually all screen sizes. Down the hall, LG had its 71-inch MW-71PY10 plasma TV out for inspection along with a big screen LCD version, the 55-inch 55LP1D. And Panasonic was a player with their 65-inch plasma TV, first shown at Cedia Expo.
Figure 2. 65 inches is a whole
lotta LCD to get
Of course, size isn’t everything in this market. Samsung and Sony showed there’s more than one way to get better color out of TFT LCD monitors by using light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to produce a pair of drop-dead beautiful 46-inch 1920x1080 monitors. Samsung’s is the LNR460D ($12,999 MSRP) and it is claimed to achieve 105% of the NTSC/SMPTE-C color gamut. Sony’s Qualia 005 version is essentially the same product and will sell for a similar price. BenQ went them one better with the DV4680, even though it uses a conventional cold-cathode backlight. That’s because this 1920x1080 LCD TV sells for $9,999 MSRP and includes a digital TV tuner for ATSC broadcasts. (In fact, many of the larger LCD and plasma TVs are following the FCC mandate and including ATSC tuners, although not always CableCARD slots.)
Figure 3a-b. Samsung’s (top)
and Sony’s (bottom)
The biggest news was all about price. If you are in the flat screen TV game, you must think you’re on a roller coaster ride – one that’s all downhill! For the past few years, the Korean companies led by Samsung and LG pushed and pulled their way to better market share with unceasing price slashing. Now, the ‘big 3’ Chinese manufacturers (Chi Mei Optoelectronics, AU Optoelectronics, Chunghwa Picture Tube) are pulling the same trick, flooding the market with LCD and plasma product while driving down prices and margins for everyone. Here’s a couple of examples: Westinghouse Digital will bring out a 42-inch HD (1280x768) LCD TV with digital tuner for $2,495, and Vizio has already reached that MSRP with their P42Hde 42-inch HD plasma TV. Hong Kong-based reseller Moxell will have the MH-463HU (46 inches, 1366x768, $4,499) and 50-inch GP-650D (50 inches, 1366x768, $5,199) plasma TVs in stores by March.
Figure 4. Moxell (ProView) and
Vizio will both have this
Never heard of these guys? How about Norcent or Erae? Maxent? Any of those ring a bell? They’re all U.S. trading companies who are importing flat screens from Taiwan and China by the boatload and helping drive prices down even more. All of them exhibited at CES and each one had numerous LCD and plasma offerings in their line. These companies are causing many sleepless nights for executives in Korea and Japan… Over on the projector side of things, InFocus, BenQ, and Mitsubishi showed just how small a projector can be manufactured with a trio of palm-sized ‘pocket projectors’. The illumination source? Why, none other than sequentially switched red, green, and blue LEDs. Of course, you won’t get more than a few dozen lumens out of these boxes, but they’re so doggone cute!
Figure 5a and 5b. Good thing there
weren’t any
After years of deep slumber and a diffident response to Texas Instruments’ DLP promotional and branding efforts, the major players in LCD projector manufacturing finally woke up and ‘smelled the coffee’, as the old saw goes. The result was the 3LCD pavilion, sponsored by Sony, Panasonic, Hitachi, Epson, Fujitsu, and Sanyo. Inside, you could find both 720p and 1080p rear-projection TVs using high-temperature polysilicon panels, and there were a few 720p and 1080p front projectors on hand, too. Fujitsu’s LPF-D711W front LCD projector looked particularly clean and crisp at their Venetian Hotel suite. This is the first native 1080p front projector for home theater and will retail somewhere in the $25,000 range, putting it up squarely against Sony’s Qualia 004 SXRD and JVC’s DLA-HD2K offerings.
Figure 6. Fujitsu is the first
company to bring a 1080p LCD
On a related note, PerkinElmer’s Cermax division had a demo at the Mirage Hotel of just how good their compact and economical xenon arc lamp can look in both front and rear projection applications. These lamps, which can operate from about 300 watts to 800 watts, have far superior spectral output than UHP and related mercury-vapor lamps and make an enormous difference in flesh tone rendering.
Figure 7. Can you guess which projection
As proof that projectors are true mainstream products, both Optoma and TI showed all-in-one home movie projectors with built-in DVD players, 5-watt stereo speakers, and a powered subwoofer. The TI version, to be sold by Radio Shack, goes by the Cinego D-1000 brand, while the Optoma version is called the MovieTime DV10. Look for a MSRP of $1,399 on these products, which will be competitive with InFocus’ ScreenPlay 4800 (now selling at a Costco near you for $1,399 with screen, check newspapers!) These were but a few of the products that stood out at the show. While it would take me 3 days and about 10,000 words to cover all of them, here are some that stood out, along with pricing and manufacturing trends that will shake up the CE display world in 2005. One Step At A Time: Philips has come up with a scanning LCD backlight for a few of its LCD TVs, both as an energy conservation measure and also as a way to minimize motion blur, something all TFT LCD monitors and TVs suffer from. JVC has also ‘hatched’ a different scheme to improve perceived motion response and it’s called Genessa. It uses 32-bit processing to drive a quick-shot panel driver, and their demo appeared to work quite well. Doing Our Own Thing: Canon and Toshiba have partnered to bring to market yet another flat-panel imaging technology – and this one might turn out to be the best yet. It’s called the Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display (or SED, for short) and the easiest way to describe it is as a super-flat CRT. A 36-inch prototype with deep, rich blacks, crisp motion, fine picture detail, and saturated CRT-like colors was privately screened at the show. Alas, no pricing information was available, although Toshiba representatives claimed it would be competitive with plasma and LCD and that a 50-inch version would come to market soon.
Figure 8. Photographs can’t
do justice to the image quality
Can You Feel The Heat? Panasonic executives prepared an elaborate presentation and demonstration of the advantages of plasma over LCD, no doubt concerned about the oncoming tidal wave of LCD products from China. Their position was that LCD would hold the market below 32 inches; LCD and plasma would co-exist between 32 and 37 inches, and that plasma would rule the day above that. My position has been for some time that LCD will take over the market up to 42 inches before very long, and nothing I saw at CES leads me to believe otherwise. (LCD picture quality is still an issue, though.) With several models of 42-inch LCD TVs coming out at $2495, they are head-to-head with plasma right now, and the 45-inch and 46-inch LCD products are coming down in price pretty quickly. What Buyers Want: A study released by analysts Pacific Media Associates just prior to CES took responses from 1200 potential buyers of big-screen TVs and found out that the number one issue was (drum roll, please) price. Not screen size, not imaging technology, but price. (Now you know why the Chinese LCD and plasma manufacturers and importers are scaring the hell out of everyone!) The same study showed that many buyers hold the belief that plasma TVs still have a problem with burn-in and longevity (not all of them do), and that plasma and LCD technologies are still very expensive compared to rear-projection microdisplay. However, the same group objected to the size of rear-projection TVs when compared to plasma and LCD sets. Do the math: Flat screens + lower prices = lots of sales! Reports of Our Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated: Both LG and Samsung had demonstrations of super-thin widescreen CRTs. The Samsung models were only 14 inches deep, compared to 20-inch models used in their current DTV sets. LG’s version requires just a tad more depth at 15.7 inches with a 30-inch wide screen. Tubes rock!
Figure 9. What is this, a new chapter in the Star Wars saga?
We Are Very Sure (We Think): I participated in a panel on the second day of CES titled “2005: The Year of The Microdisplay”, along with executives from Texas Instruments, Sharp, and LG. The consensus was that 2005 was indeed a big year for all kinds of microdisplay technology, but that the flat panel dudes were catching up in a hurry with larger screens and lower prices. Best guesses were that the microdisplay crowd would be secure above 52 inches for some time, as LCD and plasma technologies would take over the lower screen sizes within 5 years. Rear projection still remains the easiest and least expensive way to create big images, particularly at HD (720p and 1080p) resolutions. Now, if they could just start using those xenon lamps… Never Say Die: Even though Philips and Intel have given up on the LCOS “beast”, there are still plenty of other companies giving it a try, most notably Sony and JVC. In fact, several companies in China are manufacturing LCOS panels and a few new models were announced at the show, including eLCOS’ VAN eHD70 .7” diagonal panel. This 1920x1080 pixel imager is supposed to have 4000:1 contrast and less than 10 milliseconds response time. Straighten Up and Fly Right: Silicon Image, who has the unenviable task of maintaining and updating the DVI and HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) standards, has announced an HDMI interoperability program to ensure that HDMI-equipped DVD players, receivers, set-top boxes, and TVs actually work with each other. They’ve also come out with low-cost HDMI receivers and a brand-new HDMI-equipped video scaler and processor chip, the SiI 8100.
Figure 10. OK, now this is downright silly.
Who Needs Real Logs, Anyway?: Panasonic had an “HD Concept’ exhibit that featured a 50-inch plasma mounted as a virtual fireplace, complete with a roaring fire recorded on HD media. There was also a double-hung window backed up by another 50-inch plasma showing an imaginary back yard, blue sky, and puffy clouds. Weird stuff… Stay tuned through the next few months as I focus in more closely on many of the technologies and trends mentioned in this report. We’ve only scratched the surface! |
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