February, 2008 | HD TV PROFESSOR

Month: February 2008

More Trouble for Olevia

February 29, 2008 | Ibex Marketing

Syntax-Brillian, the company behind the Olevia brand of HDTVs, has fallen deeper into hard times. After delaying and revising last quarter's financials, the company made a shake-up of top management and a changed their business model. Part of those changes included abandoning their LCoS rear projection television business. Now they are late again with their financials for this quarter, and reports indicate that the NASDAQ is threatening to delist their...

Verizon Plagued by Success?

February 28, 2008 | Ibex Marketing

A news story in the Wall Street Journal last week reported that Verizon was having problems with a shortage of HD set top boxes for its FiOS television service. FiOS is the company's service that provides telephone, high speeed broadband Internet, and television to homes over . The problem appears to be that Motorola has not been able to keep up with the demand for the FiOS HD set top...

HD DVD for $50

February 27, 2008 | Ibex Marketing

Blu-ray has won. HD DVD has been vanquished. But did you expect the prices to fall this fast? Check out the Microsoft Xbox 360 Web site: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/x/xbox360hddvdplayer/default.htm. Microsoft is offering the the Xbox 360 HD DVD player for $49.99. And that apparently still includes five free HD DVD titles. Microsoft has put a tidy disclaimer on the page: Microsoft has discontinued production of HD DVD players. From this time forward,...

How Real is IPTV?

February 26, 2008 | Ibex Marketing

As many readers are aware, I'm a big fan of IPTV which some people call "Next Generation Television". I'm convinced that it will reshape how we watch video. In fact, it already has; consider YouTube. But some people wonder if it's a practical solution. Well, consider this. According to a recent issue of The Bridge, the Diffusion Group has released a study that predicts 162 million households worldwide will be...

Samsung’s 32″ 1080p LCD HDTV

February 25, 2008 | Ibex Marketing

I try to explain to people that you need to sit close enough to an HDTV that you get a cinematic experience; a small screen across the room won't give you the benefit of the fine detail available in the HD image. If you use the screen size calculations in my book, Professor Poor's Guide to Buying HDTV, you'll find that the optimum distance to sit from a 32" 1080p...

Digital Converters, Almost for Free!

February 22, 2008 | Ibex Marketing

Well, once again I get to publicly proclaim that I was wrong. In an earlier entry in the HDTV Almanac about digital TV converters, I wrote "wait until the end of 2008 to buy one. By then, competition will likley drive the price down to below $50, so you will practically get the converter for free." Who knew that the "end of 2008" would come so quickly? Wal-Mart already carries...

So Long, CRT!

February 21, 2008 | Ibex Marketing

If you've been in any consumer electronics store in the United States within the past year, you may find this next item surprising, but here goes. According a industry-watcher DisplaySearch, LCD TV shipments surpassed CRT TV shipments for the first time in 2007, accounting for 56% of the 28.5 million units. CRT stands for "cathode ray tube" and refers to what many consider a "traditional" television that relies on a...

The Dark Side of DTV Transition

February 20, 2008 | Ibex Marketing

We're now less than a year away from the end of analog broadcasts for local television stations, and we keep finding out little tidbits of information that indicate that the transition may not be as smooth as we might like. Last week, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin testified before Congress that as many as 5% of users who get converter boxes will find that they will still lose television service. It...

Madness for Free!

February 19, 2008 | Ibex Marketing

The NCAA Men's Basketball Championship tournament starts in just one month. Also known as "March Madness", this marks the 18 days of the year when normal people who have no interest at all in basketball the other 347 days of the year become rabid fans of some little-known Cinderella school. Office pools, heated discussions about the chances of the Sweet Sixteen teams, and sleep deprivation become familiar features of the...

High-Def DVD: It’s Over!

February 18, 2008 | Ibex Marketing

I was probably one of the first to pick HD DVD as the winning format in the high definition video disc contest. It had the backing of enough of the Hollywood studios to be competitive. Warner Brothers had a clever multilayer design that would play in both DVD and HD DVD players. The Blu-ray camp did its best to drive the porn industry to HD DVD. Movies that were "exclusively"...

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