What’s that you say?  Blu-ray trounced HD-DVD?  Sure it did – at least as far as you’re concerned.  But over on the other side of the world they’re playing a different movie, complete with stock villains that include pirates, mad scientists and monsters that aren’t dead even after you’re sure they’ve been killed.

The fuss is over a new disc technology designed specifically for the Chinese market called – we’re not making this up – China Blue High Definition disc, or CBHD.  The last time we heard the name China Blue it belonged to a prostitute, memorably played by Kathleen Turner in Ken Russell’s loopy Crimes of Passion.  That irony may be too corny even for Hollywood, but let’s follow the plot anyway.

The original China Blue

As you’d expect, the story begins with a crime.  Movie piracy in China is big business; the MPAA estimates that as much as 93% of the movies sold there are bootlegs.  A typical price for a pretty good pirated DVD – easily available in almost any Chinese city – is 6-10 RMB, which is more or less a buck in US terms.  In other words, cheaper than a cup of coffee over here.

If you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em, or so went the reasoning from Hollywood, already up to its keister fighting illegal downloads, never mind pirated discs.  The logic went that if you offered a legit copy that was affordably priced, people would buy the real thing instead of stealing it. Hence the decision to try to sell authentic studio DVDs in China for around $3.00 a pop. It’s a tiny finger in the dike, but a even a few thousand sales (out of a market of many millions) was judged to be better than nothing.

The new China Blue

Cheap and legal has proven to be a reasonably promising strategy in more developed markets; it’s been working for iTunes, to greater or lesser degrees. In emerging markets where consumers are much less affluent but no less eager, it’s wishful thinking to expect similar successes. China’s (and India’s) nascent consumer cultures are already very comfortable with cheap or free bootleg software; just ask Microsoft.

The latest battle moves us from DVD to Blu-ray, which Hollywood hoped would inject new life into the declining market for disc sales, at least on this side of the Pacific.  And it has, to some degree.  But why not simply sell BD discs in China just like here, even if you have to sell them more cheaply?  Because it costs nearly $3 million to tool a disc pressing plant for Blu-ray duplication, as opposed to around $800k for a CBHD plant.

Cheap upgrades to HD for disc pressing plants was the major reason why HD-DVD existed in the first place; that and because Toshiba and Sony couldn’t agree on how to share the new market, thus giving us the last format war.  Once Toshiba cried uncle on HD-DVD, its basic technology was “embraced and extended” by Chinese engineers, who now claim the intellectual property rights to CBHD.  This assertion no doubt produced some guffaws in the boardrooms of Tokyo and Osaka, but with CBHD moving from possibility to reality, nobody’s laughing anymore.

Any physical similarities between this Shinco CBHD player and a Toshiba HD-DVD player are, er, next question...

This is particularly true of the Hollywood studios, which had already tried fighting fire with oil by offering 60¢ movie downloads in China as an “alternative” to file sharing.  Its latest accommodation raises the ante into the HD space, with Warner Brothers announcing that it will support the CBHD format in China, along with Blu-ray everywhere else.  The cost for titles like Harry Potter, The Golden Compass and Speed Racer among others translates to roughly $7-10 per high def movie, or about a third of what we pay here for a Blu-ray disc of the same title.

The idea of paying three times more for something than someone else pays for the same thing because they’re more likely to steal it than you are is certainly a novel commercial concept.  While we don’t expect to see Wal Mart slashing prices in stores that experience more shoplifting, we do expect that the CBHD decision will quickly come back to bite Hollywood where it hurts most – in the wallet.

Any cursory look through the web will offer dozens of DVD (and now Blu-ray) players for sale with region-free disc capabilities.  How long will it be before we see region-free machines that also play CBHD?  Prediction – not very.  Once that happens, what’s to stop Chinese entrepreneurs (or anyone else) from selling them to places they weren’t meant for, like the USA?

When (not if) that happens, American consumers will rightfully ask why they should pay $20-30 for a movie when they can get the same high-def, 1080p presentation for $7-10. Frankly, we don’t think the trivia games and coming attractions you get (but don’t use) with BD Live offer a particularly compelling answer.

At some point in all this, movie executives will be thinking of their counterparts in the music industry, still gamely asking for an $18.98 list price on a CD, and wonder if law school wasn’t such a bad idea after all.  Or international economics.

#  #  #

In today’s TV market, there’s a superior technology out there called plasma.  It invented its own category so thoroughly that lots of people say plasma for any flat TV, like Kleenex for a tissue.  It enjoyed happy years where there was little to no market competition.  Everyone loved and continues to love it.  Yet plasma already seems well on its way to joining the CD, FM radio and DV cassettes in the inexorable slide toward technology obsolescence.

Why?  Because LCD TVs are cheaper to produce and more profitable to sell than plasma; because the major manufacturers have already made huge investments in LCD plants, and because, well, that’s pretty much it.

Before we go any further, know that we have no intrinsic beef with LCD, the technology that’s pushing plasma out the door.  Well, that’s not exactly true, we really do wish big-screen LCD technology was better than it is.  We don’t like its finicky viewing angles; sit on one side of the room and the picture looks fine, sit on the other (or stand up) and it’s washed out.  We don’t like its inability to keep up with fast action like sports, which is why LCD manufacturers knock themselves silly with fixes like 120 Hz and now, even 240 Hz refresh rates.  Most of all, we don’t like that its color and black levels — the meat and potatoes of a good picture — still don’t equal those of plasma, much less CRT (remember those?), another obsolete technology that was, by the end of its life, better than either plasma or LCD for pure picture performance.

Actually, that does sound like a beef, if not a rant.  We apologize, but the apology would be more sincere if LCD TVs were simply better performers. Some of the best ones have gotten to be pretty good.  The worst ones (no names will be mentioned) make us nostalgic for analog. For most TV manufacturers, that’s not a good enough reason to stick with plasma, although several key makers have announced that they’ll do just that – at least for the present.

Panasonic is one of them, and they’re about to become the plasma kings by default.  Their plasma technology has always been very good, thanks to a talented engineering culture, economies of scale and some astute acquisitions early in the game. The company’s latest sets have been very good indeed, and now that Pioneer and its standard-setting Kuro sets are leaving the market, perhaps soon to be followed by Hitachi’s excellent plasma models, Panasonic will likely take the title of “best” TVs out there.

Samsung and LG both claim to be sticking with plasma, although LG was a bit coy before saying so publicly.  But one look at the names who’ve already left plasma for good tells you what time it is.  Sony, RCA and Toshiba may have been sourcing their plasma sets from other manufacturers, but at least they were in the game.  Now they’re not, and neither is Vizio, Fujitsu or JVC.  Even Sharp, the all-time LCD champs, once marketed a couple of plasma models.  Just don’t mention it to them now.

So is plasma still worth thinking about for a TV purchase?  Sure – in fact, it may well be your best purchase, if picture quality is your primary concern.

If it’s not, enjoy your LCD set.  At least until OLED and other superior display technologies become market friendly.
#  #  #

Mainstream consumers have already become resigned to self assistance when shopping for CE, which is why people now spend the equivalent of two full work days researching a TV online before buying one in the store. The cost of trained, commissioned salespeople has largely been eliminated from the mainstream CE retail market. One consequence of this shift has been somewhat lower prices for consumers.  The other is that more than one in four CE products are returned to the store, most for the simple reason that consumers couldn’t get their purchase to work the way they expected.

Buying a complicated product without expert help may be frustrating, but it’s easy compared to setting one up correctly and figuring out how to use it.

Which begs the question: Is it possible for consumers to self-assist when it comes to product support? And another question: If not, where will they find the help they need?

Technical support as we know if for consumer electronics – not counting PCs, which are a different support animal altogether – is the one place left where consumers still have an expectation of knowledgeable help from a live person, whether on the phone or face to face. The role of the support technician in the “trouble ticket” is not only crucial to the frustrated consumer, but also to the manufacturer who made the product and the retailer that sold it.  Historically speaking, the tech rep, whether based in Bangor or Bangalore, serves as the point of last resort between a misbehaving product and the returns window or trash can.

Because home electronics have become so complex, support technicians now come in two flavors.  Type A is trained to support a single brand (think manufacturer help lines) and Type B attempts a more “system” oriented approach, like Geek Squad or one of the many independent specialists you can find through CEDIA or other trade organizations.

In today’s connected households, the value of support Type A is quickly becoming obsolete, almost quaint.  A customer who buys a new Sony TV and connects it to a Toshiba DVD player, Samsung audio system, Comcast cable box, Linksys media sender and Sanyo VCR won’t find much help from a Sony help line when they aren’t able to get a picture.  A manufacturer’s rep is only trained on the manufacturer’s own products. This model works fine for a camera; for a Blu-ray player, not so much.

Geek Squad would prefer you to replace, not fix. Surprised?

Support Type B – we do it all — is the direction that live support is moving toward. Unfortunately for consumers, it’s no longer free, in fact, far from it.  Even the most basic in-home service call starts at around $100, a lot of scratch for the end user, and unfortunately, not profitable for the company that sent the technician.  This is why a house call from Geek Squad, and until recently Firedog, quickly becomes less of a service visit and more of a sales pitch to buy more stuff.

Given that the average tech support rep with four years experience now makes around $15 per hour (though these wages are rising), it’s hard to visualize a national force of expert technicians that will be able to address the intricacies of HDMI handshakes, IP addressing and other mainstream tech nightmares.  It takes time to become an expert with these skills, and it costs money to train these reps.  Someone who’s genuinely good at it will eventually gravitate to better paying work.

The result of all this is that we’ve already arrived at the point where truly expert tech reps are in short supply, and the complexity of today’s typical systems may be over the head of today’s typical support representative.

To demonstrate, we’ll describe a recent service call from Cablevision, a major cable TV, Internet and telephone service provider which is theoretically able to put skilled technicians in the home as a matter or course.

A Wirewize user recently upgraded an HD cable box to a model with DVR functionality.  Cablevision gave the customer the choice of picking up the new box in person at a service center for free (self-assistance), or having a tech rep install it at a cost of $35.  Since the user was tech savvy, he opted to change the box himself for free, only to find that the new box produced a loud ground loop hum through the home theater speakers.

Ground loops are a fact of life in many A/V systems.  Solving them is a bit of a black art, but in many, if not most cases, the cable or satellite box is a primary culprit. In this instance, the problem was immediately traced to the cable box.  An in-home service call would be necessary.

The Cablevision rep showed up on time, armed with a new box.  The new box produced the same loud hum as the old one, which befuddled the rep.  Disconnecting and re-connecting wires only confirmed the box as the culprit.  The rep, trained only to get picture and sound from his company’s product, tried his best, replacing the cable wire, the in-wall cable jack and the plugs at the end of each coax connection, all to no avail.  Common ground loops were clearly beyond his training.

A call to his supervisor yielded the puzzling answer that the rep’s only responsibility was to get the Cablevision box to produce picture and sound through the TV, which would obviously negate the purpose of the surround sound system.  The rep was ready to give up.

Because the customer was experienced in these matters, he showed the tech rep how a simple transformer (on hand) would isolate the grounding from the cable line.

Zip zip zip and the noise was gone, though this slap-dash solution (shown below) could not be used permanently, as changing from 75 ohms to 300 and back again would eliminate many of the user’s digital cable channels.

This simple trick solves the ground loop, but you'll lose some channels.

The service rep was impressed with this demonstration, but unable to solve the problem he came for.  A request for a true isolation transformer –  a small accessory costing around $30 at retail – was met with a blank look, as the rep had never heard of one, never mind having one in his truck.

The impotence of this service call was naturally followed by written complaints to Cablevision, which nearly a week later, have been given no response.

Since the Wirewize user knows where to find said problem-solving accessory, the question is not so much what to do as who should pay for it.  But a less technical — read ordinary — consumer would now be faced with a major choice.  Clearly a loud ground loop buzz is not acceptable, but the cable company won’t fix it.  What to do?  Switch to another provider?

An average cable TV bill might mean $100 or more per month to the cable company.  If the customer switches to another provider, that’s $1,200 in recurring annual revenue that’s been lost.  All for lack of a small accessory part and, more importantly, some additional training for the service rep.

Whether in the long run consumers will be willing to accept the idea of support as a paid premium, rather than a freebie that comes with the product, remains to be seen.  But until those economics settle themselves, the supply of truly qualified tech support will continue to be wildly outstripped by demand, as is unfortunately the case today.

#  #  #

Would anyone bother to say this anymore?

In general terms, producing something of “better” quality is about incurring cost, in both human and monetary capital.  Higher quantity, as a rule, is based on saving cost wherever possible.  In a world where a new DVD player is cheaper than a night out at the movies for the family, the disconnect between these two philosophies — and the near term future of the electronics landscape — becomes pretty obvious.

To demonstrate, let’s set the WABAC machine to a simpler time and place.  If you don’t remember the first viable time-travel technology, we’ll wait.

There?  Great.  Take a look around and acclimate yourself. The president just resigned from office. Homer and Marge are thinking about high school graduation.  There’s a wire between your remote control and your TV.

The home electronics boom is in full flower.  Less than 20 years after Sony first broke into the American market, “Made in Japan” has stopped being shorthand for cheap, shoddy goods.  Now it’s a mark of techno cool  So cool in fact, that in just a handful of years, the US consumer electronics industry will basically sell out and be sold out to Japan.

The rising new stars of that technology era, companies like Sony, Sharp, Panasonic, Hitachi and Toshiba, were all begun by engineers, electrical repairmen, even telegraph makers. The kind of people we affectionately know today as geeks.

Having conquered the US market by fair means and foul, the Japanese companies competed with each other for this greatest of commercial prizes in exactly the way that engineering geeks would be expected to compete – by out-doing each other in feats of engineering.

Back then, companies would spend trillions of yen coming up with ways of making a TV’s color more accurate, and reducing an audio receiver’s distortion by a hundredth of a percent.  Engineers care deeply about these kinds of things, and for a long while, it was assumed that consumers did too.

Correction: Was Outstanding

Coming back to the present day, we see that history does in fact repeat itself in the way that noted economist Karl Marx described; first as tragedy then as farce.  Today’s Japanese economy is tumbling faster than its own pickled finance ministers, and the original stars of Japan’s export-driven economy – consumer electronics – are under siege by a new Chinese competitor that’s just as aggressive as Japan was a generation ago. And many times the size.

What’s more, China Inc. and its massive manufacturing economy doesn’t care much about foot lamberts and signal to noise ratio.  It cares about making and selling as many things as possible to as many people as possible.  The best way to sell a lot of things to a lot of people is to make them as cheap to buy as possible.  The best way to make something cheaper is to cut corners – i.e., reduce the quality.

Which brings us back to the disconnect, or better put, the “problem” of high quality.  And the bigger problem for the many manufacturers – most of them Japanese – that will have to face the changing reality, and find viable ways to live within it.

Now they don't even bother to do that

With consumers in America now voting with their pocketbooks or what’s left of them, it’s no wonder that $4,000 TVs aren’t competitive with $1,500 TVs, no matter how incrementally better they are. For the rising middle classes in China, India and other developing markets, cheaper will trump better any and every day, at least for the immediate future.

Which is bad news for every electronics company that owes its historical success to the idea of making better/cooler stuff than the other guys.  Which is to say just about all of them. The bone yard of the electronics world is littered with brands and products long forgotten. Nobody but diehards and collectors remember Motorola TVs, Fisher stereos, Akai VCRs and DBX processors.

Pioneer just left the TV business. JVC just consolidated its US operations. Sony just announced serious layoffs, as did Panasonic. Yet at the same time, the TV market continues to grow.  That means more people are buying new sets based on price, not performance.  And not caring much about foot lamberts either.

Companies that used to be good at invention had better learn to be good at re-invention, and pronto.  Otherwise they’ll find themselves alongside the same US electronics companies that they gleefully battered all those years ago — on the pages of eBay.
#  #  #

Today the Pirates exist to let Pittsburgh residents know when it’s not football season. Chevrolet  has gone hat in hand for a government bailout. And Circuit City, in an effort to raise pennies on the dollar for the bankruptcy trustee, has begun selling off its remaining inventory at closeout prices that are still higher than the everyday online prices available from its still-living competitors.

The changing face of CE retailing

How this mess happened in the first place will keep observers busy for years. The fallout is what matters, and for almost everyone that doesn’t employ royal blue shirts under a big yellow sign or boast “low prices every day,” the demise of Circuit City is not happy news.

Where to begin? Let’s look at the situation through a few different eyes.

Consumers who never even shopped at Circuit City will be affected. Circuit served as a useful counterbalance to market dominance by any one or two retailers. Circuit City was competition that kept the other stores on their toes with pricing and policies, and made them try just a little harder to please customers. Circuit’s web site was arguably more effective than its brick and mortar competitors, and the company pioneered conveniences like “online purchase/in-store pickup” that are now taken for granted. When you’re number two you have to try harder. Now that number two is gone, how hard does number one have to try (whoever that turns out to be)?

Manufacturers who sold through Circuit City are even more unhappy. Not only have they lost a major retail presence, they now have even less clout with the remaining big box stores on what to carry and for how much. Venerable brands like Onkyo and Boston Acoustics just lost their biggest customer. Worse, the loss of Circuit City means that more people will buy their CE at discount megastores, where profit margins are so low that manufacturers are loathe to sell there. Look for fewer products from fewer brands from now on.

Now let’s take a few glances around the horn at the rest of the fallout. Obviously, Circuit City shareholders are left holding the bag. Commercial landlords across the country just lost a keystone tenant. Ad agencies just lost a major account. TV, newspapers and radio just lost a huge sponsor. Thousands of workers just joined the bread line.

In a culture that genuinely seems to believe in the Lombardi dictum, there isn’t much sympathy for companies that don’t “win,” especially if they’re not very good at playing their own game.

But if you think that Circuit City’s demise is just one more example of a lousy company meeting a just fate in a Darwinian marketplace, think again. Because if being number two is an untenable position, Circuit City won’t be the only major U.S. business failure of the year. Just the first.
# # #

The commercials themselves were worth missing for a snack or potty break, probably topped (or bottomed) by GoDaddy’s witless plug for “enhancement”.  But one particular commercial was more interesting in theory than in practice – the loooong spot for Hulu.com, which actor Alec Baldwin hammily described as “an evil plot to destroy the world”.  Um, great tag line, guys.

Hulu is, among other things, a web site that lets you watch TV shows and movies for free through your PC and a broadband connection.  The selection is limited to licensed content by several major content studios, including NBC, which essentially made the Hulu commercial a house ad, but never mind that.  The point is that you can watch TV for free (and legally) on Hulu – as long as you watch the advertisements.

In fact, you don’t really have a choice other than to watch the advertisements.  This isn’t live TV, where you can skip commercials by changing the channel.  It’s also not your DVR which used to let you skip commercials altogether but now only lets you scan past them.  This is TV with “limited interruption” that can pop a logo onscreen whenever it feels like it.  Guess how often that’s going to be?

Would Comic Book Guy use a Blackberry?

For years now, we’ve been hearing entertainment companies bleat about the decline of the traditional revenue models in their industries.  The sky has been falling everywhere, they say – people steal music rather than buy it, they listen to iPods not radio, they read web sites not magazines, they watch DVDs instead of going to the movies.

In this worldview, the consumer is the greedy one for expecting entertainment for free or near to, not the record or network executive trying to hold on to that second Maybach and wanting $20 for a re-packaged greatest hits CD or $40 for a Blu-ray disc of a public domain movie.

Some of this is certainly true; consumers really do expect a lot for just a little or in some cases, free.  But what’s troubling about the concept of “free 2.0” is that there’s always a cost to someone, even if not always a direct one.

Let’s start with an easy example — think stealing music doesn’t hurt anyone except greedy record executives?  How about the band that just lost a royalty check and some promotion or touring money, or the new artists that won’t get signed because of dropping revenue?  How about the graphic artist that does the covers, the printing company that does the booklet, the distributor that ships to online and offline retailers?

The usual answer you’ll hear from the file thief sharer is that artists can now sell themselves directly on the web, without the greedy record company gouging everyone.  So far we haven’t heard a good reason why consumers will suddenly become altruistic and spend money when it’s going to the band instead of the label, though it could happen.

The film and TV alibis are just as insulting, only this time the shoe is on the other foot.  We’re not watching enough advertisements?  Excuse us, but we now routinely sit through 10-30 minutes of commercials every time we go to a movie theater.  If we watch the movie on TV, we have to have the station logo (advertisement) in our face throughout. Even if we buy the movie on DVD we’re still not safe; there are plenty of discs with commercials, many of which make it difficult and confusing to skip past the plugs.

This is why Hulu is both exciting and enraging.  On the one hand, it’s nice that you can (theoretically) go online and check out that Sopranos episode that you missed whenever you want (not that HBO has signed on to Hulu).  Frankly, it’s been a bit mind-blowing that it took so long for this obvious idea to hit the streets.  We don’t even mind that you have to bear with the sponsorship intros, commercials and logo interruptions.  Hey, it’s free, right?

On the other hand, consumers already do pay for content.  Live TV?  How about $40-100 per month in cable or satellite bills?  Which doesn’t include pay per view or the fact that one third of every hour of “free” TV is taken up by advertisements.

We’re not sure Hulu is going to catch on.  So far the content selection is pretty thin, and what’s up there doesn’t necessarily stay there – some shows are only available for a limited time.  With DVR ownership having doubled in the past 2 years, viewers don’t need to go online to see shows they missed, they’re able to time shift them at their leisure.

But if you want a good look at the future of free TV content, look no further than your PC and Hulu.com.

#  #  #

Considering how much juice Apple and its various products have in today’s market, it’s hard to believe that it was only about ten years ago that the company was pretty much given up for dead.  Its market share of the computing world was frozen at around 3%, mostly ghettoized in publishing and media production.  Its product line was more confused and self-cannibalizing than General Motors – did anyone ever know the difference between a Performa and a Quadra?  Then-market leader Michael Dell said Apple should shut down and give the money back to the shareholders. Sony was rumored to be thinking about buying Apple out altogether, very much on the cheap.

Proof of the power of prayer

Things are, er, slightly different now.  Apple could buy out Dell for cash. Now there are rumors of Apple buying Sony instead of the other way around. Microsoft tries to copy Apple’s look and feel (yet again) by hiring one of their main interface designers to create Vista.  The result is millions of customers clamoring for a return to Windows XP.

It’d be easy to give the iPod’s popularity the credit for all this.  It not only brought in a cash cow, it familiarized many millions of users with the simplicity and elegance of Apple’s operating system.  Even those who would never switch their PC to a Mac swear by their clickwheel, or these days, their Touch. Or their iPhone.

But Apple’s advantage goes much further than the iPod.  It is perfectly positioned to be a winner in the next generation of consumer electronics products.  It excels in areas where the traditional CE market leaders – Panasonic, Samsung et al – are at their weakest, namely interface design and software implementation.

Before you say so what, consider how interchangeable today’s hardware has become.  The old way of establishing “product differentiation” was to make a better widget. Manufacturers would tout that their TVs had a better picture than the competition, or their receiver sounded better.  These days, with so many TVs to choose from (and many of them looking plenty good in the store with an HD feed), consumers choose on price and styling as much as “quality”.  Go into a Best Buy and the AV receivers and speakers aren’t even connected – are you really going to buy one versus the other based on “better” sound?

So what differentiates today’s CE products?  Software and usability, and this is where the traditional market leaders are generally clueless.  Ever try to navigate the setup menu of a Yamaha receiver or a Hitachi TV?  Ever want to do it a second time?

Most receiver OSDs make Atari look good

Imagine that configuring and calibrating your home theater was as easy as it is with Apple TV.  Imagine that finding shows on your DVR from Cablevision, Time-Warner, Adelphia or whoever else was as easy as finding tunes in your iPod.  Imagine having Apple simplicity inside your AV gear – regardless of which brand you buy.

A typical DVR interface from your cable company

Beauty isn't always skin deep

Why did Microsoft’s OS win out over Apple’s back in the 1980s?  Because Bill Gates figured out that it would be better to be a software company and let hardware makers like IBM, Gateway, Compaq and others build the machines while DOS (later Windows) ran them.  Conversely, Apple decided to remain a closed system of hardware and software.  They tried licensing the Apple OS for the proverbial five minutes, but when Steve Jobs returned to the company in the late 1990s, the clone licenses were revoked.

Now the shoe’s squarely on the other foot.  While Microsoft has tried (and tried and tried) to get its operating system into the CE space — witness Windows CE and Windows MCE for just 2 examples – each effort has flown like a lead zeppelin.  At the same time, Apple has so far kept the major CE makers at arm’s length, but the strategy has served to increase interest, not diminish it.

Who’s the next big player in consumer electronics?  Hint: the company won’t be based in Japan, Korea or China.

#  #  #

Sure, your cable provider now has a few dozen titles they’d be happy to let you have on demand.  They’ll even let you watch it day and date with the movie’s DVD release – provided of course, that you pay for both the disc and the VOD.  We regret that we weren’t asked to participate in the focus group for that idea.

DirecTV says it’s got over 700 movies on demand, but if you subtract the duplicates and the titles that aren’t really movies, like “About Inside NFL”, the actual number is much less impressive.  Fortunately it’s not as disappointing as Dish Network’s paltry selection, which constitutes a smaller movie collection than we have on our own DVD shelves.

The company that’s really breaking through in new video delivery is the one that’s done the best job in old video delivery – Netflix.  While we wish someone would arrest the company’s ad department, which has been clogging our monitors with unwanted popups for way too long, we have to hand it to the guys with the red envelopes.  People love their service, which is cheap, reliable and fun.  They’ve become more than a household name, they’re now a verb.  And they’re about to do to the cable companies what they did to Blockbuster – hand them their lunch.

At the recent CES Expo, LG announced it will market a TV that has the Netflix “Watch Instantly” service built in.  Which in essence is nothing more than an Internet connection and a simple user interface.  The company had already introduced a Blu-ray player with the Netflix service, and Samsung has done the same.  More Netflix on demand is available with the Xbox and through TiVo, and through a relatively cheap add-on box by Roku.  With any of these “solutions” you’ve got access to what Netflix claims as 12,000 movies and TV episodes.  Ok, so a lot of that is dreck you didn’t want to watch on TV for free, never mind through a paid download.  But it’s still a much better library than anything else that’s out there and legal.

We’re not saying it’s game over for Time Warner, Comcast or Cablevision. But how much do you want to bet that the experience of selecting and purchasing movies will be better with Netflix than it is from your cable or satellite provider? Engadget did a nice job comparing the current Netflix players; we wish they would have contrasted them to the lame, slow-as-a-pig interfaces we’re all used to from the cable or satellite company.

It’s going to take some years before all the necessary technologies improve with Netflix and other on demand video services.  For now, Netflix movies sans disc are stereo only (no Dolby Digital surround), and even when titles are available in high def, the video quality isn’t always what we’d expect.  That’s what puzzled us about the Blu-ray not mattering argument – if BD is viable for only 10 years, it’s still a hit, and it’s been with us 2 years already, with all its growth ahead of it.  Consumers obviously prefer the best quality to feed their fancy new HDTVs, and until there’s more 1080p content from the satellite companies, BD is still the best game in town.

But not everyone cares about 1080p and ultimate picture and sound.  A lot of people prefer convenience over quality (hence the iPod), and in that respect, Netflix is just what the doctor ordered.

Now if they’d only leave us alone with the popups.

#  #  #

In case you haven’t already heard, on February 17, 2009, all analog television broadcasting in the U.S. will cease and be replaced by digital television (DTV) broadcasts.  If you’re not aware of this rather momentous news, don’t blame the manufacturers, the retailers, the FCC or Consumer Electronics Association, all of which have fought the good fight and spent many millions to educate the public and promote the DTV transition.

CEA even went so far as to create a “Convert Your Mom” educational program, starring Florence Henderson of Brady Bunch fame as “America’s Mom.”  As an aside, we’re genuinely puzzled by the CEA’s seeming fixation on the Brady Bunch, whose theme song was also used for the organization’s CEKnowHow sales training program. Hint to CEA: everyone under the age of 40 and over the age of 41 is rolling their eyes.

Back to our point – the end of free TV.  Well, not really.  Just the free analog TV that people watch through an antenna, instead of paid cable or satellite TV delivery. Those old over-the-air (OTA) analog broadcasts are being replaced by free OTA digital TV broadcasts, which are also received through an antenna.  In other words, it’s an upgrade for everyone, what’s the problem?

Well, if you get your television programs from your local cable company, you probably don’t have a problem, though you might.  If you do, it’s up to your cable provider to make things right for you. If you get DirecTV or Dish Network, you probably don’t have a problem. Then again, you might.

On the other hand,  if you’re one of the estimated 7% of people in the U.S. who watch TV only through an antenna, don’t receive any pay TV services, and still have an old analog (non-digital) TV, the airwaves will go dark for you on Feb 17.  Your TV will not be able to display any programs without (at the very least) a digital converter box.

The DTV converter box is a small device that goes between your antenna and an old analog television.  The antenna connects the to the converter box and the box connects to the TV, either through a coaxial cable connection (also called an RF or simply “Antenna” connection), or through the standard yellow-red-white cables for composite video and analog stereo. Feel free to check out Wirewize’s glossary for more information.

The box converts the digital video broadcasts into analog video that any TV can display. The boxes are simple and relatively cheap — $40-70 each. A government program was even set up that would allow eligible households to get up to two coupons, worth $40 each, toward the purchase of eligible DTV converter boxes.

For various political and economic reasons, the analog shutoff date had been delayed through the years (the original date was 2007), but until last week, the Feb 17 date had been firmly fixed.  That day was chosen because it falls between two of the year’s biggest TV events, the Super Bowl and March Madness.

All seemed well and finally on its way until President-elect Obama suggested last week that it might have to be delayed yet again.  It seems the Commerce Department has run out of money for the coupons that subsidize DTV converter boxes. Obama officials are also concerned the government is not doing enough to help viewers in rural, poor or minority communities with the transition — in other words, the people most likely to be dependent on free analog broadcasts with an old analog TV.

Obama’s call for a delay was met with controversy from all directions. According to CEA, there are plenty of coupons available, but bureaucracy is holding up the distribution.  According to electronics retailers, a delay now would confuse the public.  The FCC says that a delay would hurt wireless carriers that are waiting for the airwaves that will be freed up by the transition.  Public safety groups waiting for those same airwaves are also against the delay.  A growing number of lawmakers are for it.

We’ll keep you posted here at Wirewize on other things you ma or may not need to know about the DTV transition.  Whenever that is.
#  #  #

What if we told you that you could dramatically improve the picture in just a few minutes, at no extra charge?  It’s not only true, it’s necessary.

Picture calibration is the process of making adjustments in brightness, color, tint, contrast and sharpness, among other settings.  Virtually every TV has a menu that lets you make subtle (or dramatic) changes to these picture qualities.

You can make most of these adjustments yourself, without professional help. We suggest this as your first step, because we’ve been hearing reports of unscrupulous retailers charging big bucks for bogus adjustments.

Why do you need calibration?  Because when TVs get shipped from the factory, the picture settings are usually pre-adjusted to settings that are too bright and too colorful.  This is so they’ll stand out from other TVs on the retailer’s floor and look attractive under the fluorescent lights of a showroom.

While these settings might make the picture pop in the store, they’re completely out of place in a home setting.  They’re too bright to be comfortable to watch (especially in a dark room), and because the light output has been goosed so high, they consume a lot more electricity than they should.  This is not subtle; everyone with a new big-screen TV gets the second sticker shock when they see their next electric bill.

Making picture adjustments to counteract the factor settings is simple.  Go into the setup menu of your TV and call up the “Picture” or “Video” menu.  You’ll see adjustments for the following:

Brightness – also called “black level,” this setting determines the overall light output of the TV.  It’s usually set much too high from the factory.

Contrast – also called “white level,” this setting determines how present and pure the color white is in the picture.  Also usually set too high from the factory.

Color – this setting controls the saturation (intensity) of color in the picture.

Tint – this setting changes the color emphasis from red to green and usually doesn’t need much adjustment.

Sharpness – probably the most over-used and misunderstood setting.  If you set the sharpness too high, you may actually be making the picture fuzzier.

Color Temperature – this setting isn’t present on every set, but it’s a measure of whether the picture is “warm” (a subtle red-gold cast) or “cool” (a subtle blue cast).

Many sets also have “automatic” picture settings that are usually engaged when the TV comes from the factory.  To make any adjustments to the other picture settings, you’ll usually need to turn these pre-sets off.

So what are the right settings?  A lot of people will tell you that whatever looks best to you is the right setting.  Don’t listen to them.  You can make preferential settings to your taste of course, but you’re better off making them after you’ve adjusted the set to the officially “correct’ settings.

And what are those? A professional with Imaging Science Foundation (ISF) certification will be happy to talk to you about them at length, while they hold up a color temperature meter to your TV and begin writing a bill for $200-300.  They’re right of course; there really are standards to what video pictures are supposed to look like, and if you’re enough of an enthusiast, the money for a pro calibration is likely well spent.  Obviously this only applies to upper-crust TVs – there’s little point to spend half again on a $600 LCD cheapie set from the local MegaMart.

For most folks, we recommend a smaller investment of $25-35 dollars for a good TV calibration disc.  These DVDs will have a series of test patterns, similar to what you see below.  Spoken instructions will guide you through the proper setup and they work for any TV from any maker.

To give you an idea of what you’re adjusting for, notice in the test pattern above that there are two vertical stripes in the “black” area at the bottom right.  One is lighter than the background around it, one is darker.  The calibration disc will guide you through brightness and contrast settings you can make so that both these bars disappear into the black field around them.  Similar procedures will be provided for color, tint, sharpness and other settings.

When you’re done with these adjustments, your movies will look more realistic, your sports will look less unrealistic and you’ll have a set that’s been optimized for longer life.

Worth a DVD?  We think so too.

#  #  #