Planar Systems Clearly Up To Something

I've barely gotten in the door at the Denver Convention Center, and already the drama is flying.

According to a report on CE Pro.com Planar/Runco/Vidikron may soon be Planar/Runco/Vidikron.

Planar Booth Yet to Include Vidikron Brand

Yes, it's premature.But it bears stating that Planar's booth on the CEDIA Expo show floor, which opens at 10:00 a.m. Thursday, doesn't include any apparent references to the Vidikron brand. Internet rumors have swirled recently that Planar, parent of Runco, will drop longtime video brand Vidikron.

Even before Planar Systems acquired Runco and her subsidiary Vidikron, the latter always held a weird position in the marketplace. Vidikron's projection technology has always been superb, but they've always been percieved in the market as a bridesmaid brand: if your custom AV company didn't qualify as a dealer for the industry leading premiere Runco brand, owing to protected dealer territories, you could always sign on as a Vidikron dealer. One industry smartass once quipped to me that Vidikron's relationship to Runco was a case of "Good, but not good enough."

Given that Planar launched their own branded line of home cinema products at last year's CEDIA Expo at more modest price points than Runco's Rolls-Royce-level pricing, you really had to wonder where odd-man out Vidikron would play in their future marketing strategy.

Bear in mind that at press time Planar had not commented on the rumors, but at this point I'm not feeling too bad about our choice two years ago at Systems Inc to not become a Vidikron dealer.

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A&B Sound Closes Stores, Rumour Mill In High Gear

Marketnews reported the other day that storied West-coast CE retailer A&B Sound had closed two of their oldest and best-known locations: Vancouver's Seymour Street and Marine Drive.

MARKETNEWS EXCLUSIVE: a&b Sound Closes Two Vancouver Stores

a&b sound has closed two stores in Vancouver, Paul Girard informed me by telephone before noon Vancouver time today. The stores affected are the Seymour St. store downtown, and Marine Dr. location on the south side of the city.
Currently, five a&b sound locations remain: North Vancouver, Pitt Meadows, Abbotsford, Langford, and Edmonton, AB.
The North Vancouver and Langford stores are new, and had been seen as the new model with a smaller footprint.

In the intervening time since Wally Hucker broke the story, my phone and email have been deluged by Canadian industry contacts who either wanted more dirt, or wanted to tell me some.

Sadly, I must admit that I'm not as well plugged in to A&B Sound as I used to be. In the last three and a half years since Seanix bought them, virtually everyone I knew there has either quit or been fired. Consequently, I've got no really good insights into what's happening on the inside.

Regardless, the rumours about A&B's future are flying. I'm not going to repeat them here, in part because a) if you're plugged in to the Canadian CE scene, you've already heard them, b) if you're a reader in the U.S. you probably don't care and c) I'm already on Seanix/A&B owner Paul Girard's shitlist for some of my earlier (slander-free, I might add) bloggotage about A&B's direction, and further provocation would probably be unwise.

I will say, however, that I have to support Girard's decision to eliminate Seymour and Marine Drive. As old and storied as those locations were, they were still owned by former A&B owner Nick Steiner. It's a Well Known Fact that the rents in those location were steep indeed, which meant making a go of it was that much harder. In light of that, shuttering those locations makes good sense.

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Notes from the Format War

Random Rumoroids (not quite Factoids, if you get my meaning), none of which quite qualifies for their own post.

*it appears that Yamaha's Blu-ray player has been pushed back to Fall, instead of the Spring launch they originally intended. My source wouldn't confirm the underlying reasons, but at this point I suspect that it's perfectionism rather than hedging their bets to see which format will win out.

*a source for another brand, which shall remain nameless, commented to me last week that he was "pleasantly surprised" by sales of their HD-DVD players. However, the aforementioned brand already has a Blu-ray player developed and in reserve, just in case.

*more easily confirmed than the first two items, but Best Buy.ca is flogging select Blu-ray disc titles at CA$19.99 this week. So if you think that Underworld's undergood plot and characterizations could be trumped by Hi-Def visuals, have at it.

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