LG, Sharp, Chunghwa Fined For Price-Fixing

TWICE: LG, Sharp, Chunghwa Fined $585M For LCD Price Fixing

More details are in concerning the $585 million in criminal fines being levied against LG Display, Sharp and Chunghwa Picture Tubes by the Department of Justice's (DOJ) antitrust division for LCD panel price fixing.
In a release by the DOJ the three companies have agreed to pay the fines for their roles in conspiracies to fix prices in the sale of LCD panels. Of the $585 million in fines, LG Display will pay $400 million, the second highest criminal fine ever imposed by the department’s antitrust division.

Not to underplay the seriousness of the allegations, but's good to know that the US DOJ doesn't have any other pressing issues to devote their resources to.

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Hitachi scales back plasma production, partners with Matsushita

Washinton Post: Hitachi to clip plasma panel production

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Hitachi Ltd (6501.T) said it will shrink production of plasma panels and buy them from Matsushita Electric Industrial Co (6752.T) in a bid to cut losses on its flat TVs in a market dominated by rival LCD technology. The world's No. 4 plasma TV maker will buy fabricated glass panels -- the high-end part of aplasma TV -- from Matsushita in a step that some analysts say could be part of a slowwithdrawal from the business.

Sad news for fans of Hitachi's video business, but a sobering glass of reality in the face of a tough, tough marketplace.

Hitachi has always made top notch panels, but have never really scored much in the way of market presence. Certainly, the general lack of new product at CEDIA Expo hinted that they planned on scaling back their efforts.

On the bright side, Matsushita's panels are also first rate, so I expect the quality of their offerings to remain high, and I expect the partnership to benefit both companies.

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What's in store for Hitachi?

Looking around the Hitachi booth at Expo, I've really got to wonder what the future holds for them in the video category.

Granted, they've bowed a really cool looking 50-inch Plasma that's only 1.5 inches deep. But the planned 42, 50, and 60-inch models aren't slated to be released until Q2, 2009. If history has anything to teach us, it's more likely to be Q4. That's a long way off.

Mostly, I'm just dissapointed in their decision to permanently scrub the 85-inch model that was supposed to have been released this year.

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Samsung And LG Swap Panels

To make a long story short, Samsung will buy 37-inch panels from LG, while LG will buy 52-inch panels from Samsung.

CE Pro: Samsung, LG Cross-Purchase LCD Panels

Unless you've got an up to date scorecard, it's hard to keep track of who really made the panel for the television you're looking at in the store. On the other hand, with quality going up even as prices erode down, does it really matter? I'm old enough to remember when AV snobs sneered at any CE product that was not "made in Japan." Those guys are a dying breed. Most consumers are unconcerned about whether or not their panel came from Japan, Korea, or Taiwain.

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Panasonic Debuts Web-Enabled Plasma Televisions

Further blurring the lines between AV and computing, if there even is a line between the two anymore.

Panasonic Ships Web-Enabled Television

CE manufacturer Panasonic got into the internet-connected HDTV game on Tuesday when it announced the availability of its new PZ850 series of Viera plasma HDTVs. Initially launched at CES in January (and reported here in The Retail BRIDGE), the Viera line's built-in connection gives users direct access to a variety of internet-based content, including sites like YouTube, Google's Picasa Web Album and Bloomberg.

I already knew that these units and ones like them are the next big thing, but seriously, how cool is that?

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Flat Panel Power Consumption: Who cares?

This comparison chart from CNet was brought to my attention by regular Lee Distad's Professional Opinion reader Charles Farley.

CNet: The chart: HDTV power consumption compared

Charles' comment was that sweating the cost of elecricity for your $5000 television is like being concerned about the price of gas when you own a Bently.

I concur. The expression "straining at gnats while swallowing camels" comes to mind.

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As I've been saying all along, Flat Panel TV's are low-maintenance

See, there's stats to back it up, too!

Marketnews - Gadget Talk: First-Ever Brand Repair Rates for Flat-Panel TVs

Although many manufacturers might be banking on one technology coming out superior to the other, this isn't the case: there was no difference in reliability between LCD and plasma TVs, both of which had a very small 3% repair rate. Kudos to Panasonic, which took top ranks with just a 2% repair rate in both LCD and plasma categories.
Other highly-reliable LCD brands included Sony, Sharp, Samsung, Toshiba, and JVC; and in plasma, a gold star also goes to Pioneer and Samsung. Although they haven't been on the market for a full three years to qualify for the longevity tests, Consumer Reports says that the reliability of the latest Olevia and Sanyo LCDs, and Hitachi plasmas, looks "promising".

This ties into what I tell people all the time, which is "buy a real brand." Trouble comes when you save a few bucks by buying a no-name piece of crap. Stick to the big manufacturers, and you are far more likely to have an enjoyable TV owning experience.

Trust me, the scare stories that retail salespeople use to get you to buy the extended warranty have precious little validity. Feel free to buy an extended warranty if you routinely do so, and if the terms of the warranty agreement and the price are favorable. But don't buy into the hype or bogeymen (DEAD PIXELS!) that might be used to sway you out of one technology, and into another.

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Panasonic uveils Blu-ray player intended to be final nail in HD-DVD's coffin

TWICE: Panasonic Bows Blu-ray Deck With "Final Standard" Features

Panasonic today introduced a next-generation Blu-ray player it said is the first with the format’s Final Standard Profile feature, and will ship it in November.
Final Standard Profile is an advanced function added to the Blu-ray standard, which Panasonic said allows new functions such as picture-in-picture and audio mixing (which allows the consumer to switch the sound between the main and sub windows).
Panasonic’s DMP-BD30 is said to be the first Blu-ray deck to also feature the inclusion of an SD card slot for playback of high-definition content recorded in the AVCHD format. The SD slot also allows for viewing of digital still images recorded to an SD card.

Sounds lovely, but I have a question. When we start seeing SD cards with 50+ gigs on them (and don't kid yourself, it will happen. We're already seeing other flash memory types in that ballpark), why will we need Blu-ray optical discs?

Going back to my previous day's metaphor comparing the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD fracas to the Great War (ie: a senseless and futile waste of resources and lives), is a bigger, better, beefier Blu-ray player the CE equivalent of the Dreadnoughts that European naval powers channelled insane amounts of funds into at the end of the 19th Century: impressive as hell, but ulitimately ineffective at attaining dominance, and obsolete before the conflict was even over?

The smart money is on hi-cap flash memory, and bigger, better high-speed downloads.

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Flat panel sales expected to top $100 Billion in 2007

The Retail Bridge: Will Flat Panel Sales Reach $100 Billion In 2007?

According to a report released last week by market research firm Strategy Analytics, worldwide plasma and LCD television sales are expected to break the $100 billion barrier during 2007. The firm's "Digital Home Entertainment Devices Quarterly Report" said that flat panel sales will reach 73.7 million units by the end of the year and generate retail revenues of $104.9 billion, an increase of 17 percent since last year.

Why the surge? The growing popularity of HDTV is one reason, Strategy Analytics said, with HD-ready sets now accounting for 71 percent of flat panel sales.

I've got another explanation for the growth of flat panel sets. Well, two explanations, actually.

First: as price points erode, they become accessible to more consumers. Translation: if they're cheaper, more people buy them.

Secondly, the growth of the flat panel category (categories, plural?) is also driven by the manufacturers focusing on them, and scaling back their offerings of other technologies, such as micro display rear projection. Look around on retail sales floors and manufacturer websites and you will see a lot fewer DLP and LCD RP TVs this year. When you scale back one technology, and ramp up another, the success of the latter is what Marx would have called an "historical inevitability."

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Today in Gadget Talk: You need to buy a bigger television

Marketnews Gadget Talk: Picking the Right Size Flat Panel

Go ahead, you deserve one!

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Vizio goes from "Who?" to "Top TV brand in US" in one year

Call it a Jack the Giant Killer story.

The Retail Bridge: Vizio Now Top Selling Brand Of HDTVs in The U.S.

"Vizio's rise from the number 15 flat panel TV brand in
Q2'05 to number one in Q2'07 is quite remarkable given the intense competition
in this market and can be attributed to its unique channel strategy," said
DisplaySearch president Ross Young. "Its warehouse club channel focus and lack
of channel conflicts enabled the company to get to disruptive price points which
helped fuel the rapid rise of the warehouse club channel in the U.S. TV market
and caused its shipments to surge.
...
According to the report, Vizio currently claims 12.1
percent of the LCD market and 11.9 percent of overall flat panel HDTV sales (LCD
and plasma). In terms of year-over-year growth, the company jumped 340 percent
in market share since last year. Samsung and Sharp roll out the top three with
11.3 percent and 7.9 percent of the market, respectively.

The lesson here is that brand snobs have sneered at Vizio for being a nobody, but Vizio's disciplined distribution strategy of aggressively catering to the price club and low-end retail channels have allowed them to hopscotch "name" brands for the #1 spot. Contrast that focus with other "name-brand" televisions whose manufacturers want to have their cake and eat it too: who want to see their televisions not only in price clubs and general goods retailers, but also big box CE stores and specialty boutiques! It doesn't work that way: all emphasis equals no emphasis.

Vizio may be a low end television, but as an observer once said about advertising, no one has ever lost out by pandering to the lowest common denominator in America. Vizio knows what they are, and play to their strengths, and the results speak for themselves.

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This week in CE Pro: should you get a Projector or a Flat Panel?

CE Pro: Projector or Flat Panel? Examining the Pros and Cons

This is a subject that is dear to my heart.

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