August, 2009 | HD TV PROFESSOR

Month: August 2009

OLED HDTV Update: LG 15″ This Fall

August 31, 2009 | Ibex Marketing

Now please don't get excited. There is little news in today's entry except to confirm what I've been saying all along; OLED HDTVs remain off in the future. And the Sony OLED TV that is already on the market does not count because it is not HD, though its astronomical price alone would probably disqualify it. So over the weekend news broke that LG announced plans to start shipping an...

Musical Chairs: The DTV Converter Market

August 28, 2009 | Ibex Marketing

Remember playing "musical chairs" when you were a kid? The adults would make sure that there was one less chair available than kids, and then set you marching around in a circle until the music stopped, and then the kid who didn't get a seat was eliminated? And the process repeated until one final victor was crowned? Little did we realize that we were getting metaphorical training for capitalistic enterprise....

World’s Biggest HDTV Gets Punted

August 27, 2009 | Ibex Marketing

Beware of chasing after superlatives. Those seeking to create "The World's Whatever-est Thingie" sooner or later learn a lesson about hubris. Sooner or later, someone else will end up making a Thingie that is more Whatever than yours, and your creation will be relegated to the ash heap of other Thingies that are less Whatever. But on some occasions, the lesson takes another form, and often is the result of...

Is That a Hard Drive in Your HDTV?

August 26, 2009 | Ibex Marketing

Okay, now I'm really puzzled. I had (well, I still have) a Panasonic DVR that we loved to use. It made recording programs off-the-air so much easier to use than the old VHS recorder it replaced. But with the end of analog broadcasts, it's now just a somewhat complicated DVD player. And aside from TiVo, I'm not aware of anyone who is offering a DVR with digital tuners. The reason...

3D HDTV Is Unstoppable

August 25, 2009 | Ibex Marketing

I don't know exactly how it will happen, or even whether or not I think it's a good idea, but brace yourself; 3D television is coming to a living room near you. Just as the local cinema created demand for the color television and stereo sound (and later, surround sound) that are now standard features for home entertainment, the rousing success of 3D feature films is going to drive content...

Blockbuster: Closing Shop?

August 24, 2009 | Ibex Marketing

In an investor phone call last week, Blockbuster CEO James Keyes pointed to unmanned kiosks as the possible future for the company's movie rental business. He stated that plans call for 500 kiosks to be in place by the end of August, and more than 2,500 up and running by the end of this year. Ultimately, there could be 10,000 kiosks in operation by the middle of 2010. At the...

Video in Your Magazine

August 21, 2009 | Ibex Marketing

And now for something completely different. When subscribers to "Entertainment Weekly" open up their copies of the September 18 issue (if they live in New York or Los Angeles), they will find an ad from CBS promoting the network's new lineup for Monday nights this fall. That's no so amazing, until you find that you will actually be able to watch clips from the shows in the ad. Yes, there...

DIY Mount with Extra Features

August 20, 2009 | Ibex Marketing

I have a woodworking shop, I do odd jobs and repairs around the house, and I'm a bit of a packrat. As a result, I've got all sorts of tools and gadgets and spare parts down there somewhere. So when it comes time to install a typical wall mount for a flat panel HDTV, I've got the stud finders and levels and other tools I need to get the job...

Truth Patrol: “The Portable Pocket HDTV”

August 19, 2009 | Ibex Marketing

Hammacher Schlemmer is known for its unusual and hard-to-find products, but this latest item would make be think twice before relying on the company's accuracy in describing technology products. The description of their Portable Pocket HDTV is very straightforward in what it says: This is the pocket-sized, portable color HDTV that receives high-definition digital broadcasts. That's pretty clear cut, I'd say. But wait, read the very next lines in the...

DVD Archiving at Risk

August 18, 2009 | Ibex Marketing

I am not a lawyer, though it seems hard to be a consumer these days without the training. As I understand it, however, we have the right to make archival copies of the content that we buy (or license) such as computer software or music CDs or DVD movies. This protects our investment so that we can recover the content in the event that the original copy becomes permanently incapacitated....

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