For the first time, TiVo is offering a DVR at no extra charge to customers who agree to a two-year service contract. The company announced promotional pricing on TiVo Premiere and TiVo Premiere XL DVRs through Dec. 31. TiVo is positioning the promotions as bundles combining lower-priced or no-charge DVRs with increased monthly fees of $19.99. Standard TiVo monthly subscriptions were previously $12.95. TiVo Premiere is priced through the end of the year at “$0 down with a two-year commitment” of $19.99 monthly, or $99 with a one-year commitment. Buyers keep the box in either case. A sales agent told us this is the first time that the company has offered a TiVo DVR free, and he called the package the “best deal” of the three promo options. He said $19.99 is the new monthly fee for TiVo service. The price of the step-up TiVo Premiere XL also dropped to $299 with a $19.99-per-month one-year commitment. Consumers can choose the front-loaded option of $499 with a one-year contract at $12.95 monthly. The promotions are being offered at Best Buy stores and direct from TiVo. TiVo will penalize customers, cellular carrier-style, for early contract termination. Its website says the fee will be the lower of the amount of monthly subscription fees remaining on a one-year monthly subscription commitment or the retail value of the TiVo box minus the upfront price of the box, less the difference between the service bundle plan’s monthly fee and $12.95 for each month of the subscription that has been fulfilled.
Fashion eyewear suppliers Marchon and Oakley each will use CES exhibits to show 3D glasses paired with a new generation of 3D TVs that don’t require active-shutter eyewear.
Recent election results don’t bode well for the CE industry’s goal of a national e-waste recycling law, CEA president Gary Shapiro told journalists at the annual CES Press Preview event in New York Tuesday. Shapiro said Republican support for states’ rights “and a lot of talk among newly elected people and some of the old ones who are listening to the tea party” movement indicate that “unless there’s a Constitutional justification,” there’s not going to be a national recycling effort in the near future.
There are four trends to watch at January’s CES, CEA executives said Tuesday at the group’s annual CES Press Preview in New York. Demand for portability has created a segmented mobility environment with a wide variety of offerings across form factors and use-cases, CEA said.
Costco shoppers are getting an early look at holiday shopping deals. At the Brooklyn, N.Y., Costco this week, we saw a bundle promotion for Panasonic 3D products that runs through Nov. 15. Consumers who buy the displayed 46-inch TC-46PGT24 plasma TV ($1,699), $229 Essentials pack including two pairs of 3D glasses and two 3D movies, and the $189 DMP-BDT105 Blu-ray player qualify for a $420 instant rebate at checkout. Bundled movies are Coraline and Ice Age. The display included a demo facilitated by Panasonic’s 3D glasses kiosk. Calls to Panasonic to find out what type of promotion will follow the current one, and whether Avatar will be included in the next Essentials pack, weren’t returned by our deadline.
Hhgregg’s fiscal Q2 net income dropped $1 million year-over-year to $3.9 million, CEO Dennis May said on its earnings webcast Tuesday. CFO Jeremy Aguilar said the double-digit “peak to trough” change in the business from July through September, led by drops in appliance and video sales, was “as dramatic as I've seen in 35 years.” The company is “seeing stabilization” now, he said. May said he didn’t want to give the impression that “comps fell off the table. … It was just a dramatic swing from things going along pretty robust to not so robust at all.” Comparable store sales dipped 1.5 percent for the quarter, the company said. A decline in vendor support along with increased selling promotions to drive market share reduced margins in video, he said.
Larry Weber, inducted into the CEA Hall of Fame last month for contributions to plasma display panel technology and its commercialization, has set his sights on the next major breakthrough for the 50-year-old technology. Weber told Consumer Electronics Daily he’s working in his garage lab in upstate New York to reduce the power use for plasma displays by as much as 20 to 40 times.
With Dolby’s licensing revenue from CE products in decline and projections for PC shipments lowered, executives said in their fiscal Q4 2010 earnings webcast last week that the company will focus on “new geographies,” online content, smartphones and mobile entertainment devices for long-term growth. For the fiscal year, Dolby reported total revenue of $922.7 million, compared with $719.5 million the previous year. Fiscal year net income was $283.4 million, compared with $243 million.
ESPN Research + Analytics released results Thursday of what it called “the most extensive body of 3D research ever done,” conducted during ESPN’s telecast of the 2010 World Cup soccer matches from South Africa and comprising more than 1,000 test sessions at the two-year-old Disney Media and Advertising Lab in Austin, Texas.
Growth in the number of 3D screens worldwide and the rise in 3D movie releases led to a 69 percent revenue increase to $65.3 million for RealD, according to the company’s fiscal Q2 2011 earnings report, while net loss was $5.1 million, $0.12 per share, compared to a net loss of $5.4 million, $0.22 per share, for the second quarter of fiscal 2010.