Public, Education and Government (PEG) operators should focus on Internet TV, not 3D, as the cutting-edge technology for the near future, said Matt DeHaven, principal engineer for Columbia Telecommunications, during a technology briefing Monday sponsored by the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors. “The real format of the future” for PEG operators is online multimedia content, whether SD, HD, 3D, or social media, DeHaven said. PEG operators have to think more about interactive media “as a way to reach folks out there” and less about the type of video format they're using to reach people, DeHaven said. Quality is important because cable companies will show “an increasing desire” to carry PEG channels in an HD format, he said. “They're not going to want to have anything on their system that doesn’t look good,” he said. HD will offer PEG operators better resolution for computer-generated text and graphics used in government and education programming, DeHaven said, as HD becomes “the baseline for the public.” DeHaven cited industry data forecasting that 50 percent of TVs will be Web-enabled by 2015. Most support content services such as Netflix, YouTube and Roku, other user-generated options are well-suited to PEG operators, he said. Free developer kits enable “anyone to develop an HD channel for free,” and cost-efficient Web streaming and on-demand client platforms are available, too, he said. He also cited “YouTube clones” that allow operators to make local versions of “YouTube-like forums” tailored to a community’s interests. “3D is starting to feel pretty inevitable,” DeHaven said, though “a year ago I might not have felt the same way.” But 3D is “still immature” as it relates to the markets and scale of operation of most PEG operators and requires “significant investment” in technology, skill sets and staffing, he said.
Iriver said Target will be the exclusive retailer of its $139.99 Story HD e-reader that’s due in stores July 17. Iriver said the 7.3-ounce e-reader is the lightest in its class and the first to use E-Ink’s 768 x 1024 display that’s said to have 63.8 percent more pixels than other e-readers. The iriver Story HD uses a Cortex A8 chipset and has access to “millions” of e-books at the Google eBookstore, iriver said. Using a side-loading SD card slot or USB connection, users can add to their libraries with other books or documents, iriver said. Target also sells the Sony Digital Reader Pocket Edition for $179 and three Amazon Kindle models priced at $114, $139 and $189. A Target spokeswoman said the iriver reader and accessories will be located on end caps in the electronics aisle of Target stores. She didn’t respond to our question about how Target would position the iriver device versus the Kindles or Sony Reader. Already released in Europe, the iriver e-reader can operate for six weeks on standby or for 14,000 page turns from a single charge, iriver said.
Apple’s next iPhone, rumored to be a 4G LTE model, will be “significantly more expensive to make” than the current iPhone, according to IHS’s Teardown Analysis Service. That’s leading analysts at IHS to speculate whether the next iPhone will be the expected 4G LTE model or something else.
Demand in the tablet market “may not be quite as strong as recent media hype suggests,” said a report International Data Corp. released Friday. IDC said seasonal trends typically found in more mature consumer electronics and computing categories “had a notable impact on the burgeoning media tablet market.” Despite a 28 percent drop in tablet shipments in Q1 2011, shipments are expected to grow to a higher-than-expected 53.5 million units for the year, up from a forecast of 50.4 million units, IDC said. A challenging Q1 owed to concerns over macroeconomic issues and a “post-holiday letdown” that took a toll on demand, IDC said.
Valens Semiconductor, which secured $14 million in second-round financing this week (CED July 7 p5), remains on track to ship HDBaseT chipsets to manufacturers of TVs and connecting components in time for delivery of products “early next year,” a company spokeswoman told us Friday. HDBaseT, along with DiiVA (Digital Interactive Interface for Video & Audio), is competing to be a next-gen networking technology in the home combining uncompressed and protected audio and video, Ethernet and control through one Cat5/6 cable. HDBaseT claims its technology can transmit power up to 100 watts, while DiiVA, officially specified at 5 watts, has demonstrated power transmission up to 24 watts.
Demand in the tablet market “may not be quite as strong as recent media hype suggests,” said a report International Data Corp. released Friday. IDC said seasonal trends typically found in more mature consumer electronics and computing categories “had a notable impact on the burgeoning media tablet market.” Despite a 28 percent drop in tablet shipments in Q1 2011, shipments are expected to grow to a higher-than-expected 53.5 million units for the year, up from a forecast of 50.4 million units, IDC said. A challenging Q1 owed to concerns over macroeconomic issues and a “post-holiday letdown” that took a toll on demand, IDC said.
Uncertainty about demand for the rest of the year caused TFT LCD panel makers to scuttle plans for price increases in mid-June, said a report from DisplaySearch. Panel makers originally expected to boost manufacturing capacity utilization to an average of 90 percent in Q3, but the demand outlook is now expected to keep it at 85 percent through September, DisplaySearch said.
Energy management won’t be a consumer-driven profit opportunity for the custom installation market anytime soon, according to panelists on “Pioneering Technologies for the Custom Integration Industry,” part of the recent Lifestyle Technology Summit in New York.
Halfway into its second year, 3D TV is struggling for respectability amid gloomy market research projections and slowing interest in 3D movies at cinemas. The negative press prompted Shawn DuBravac, chief economist at CEA, to publish a blog post last week refuting negative research reports and defending progress of the technology. “Despite all of the hype and all of the panning, 3DTV is on the exact trajectory we would expect a new segment like 3DTV to experience in the early years of its adoption by consumers,” DuBravac said.
Impressive advances in cordless phone features are getting lost at retail, where limited sales help on the retail floor and limited space on advertising tags make it difficult for manufacturers to get the message out. “The box has to be the salesperson,” said Susan Bartolucci, marketing specialist for Panasonic.