Vizio Continues To Grow

More good news from the upstart little-TV-company-that-could.

The Retail Bridge: Vizio Continues To Pick Up Market Share

Despite the sinking U.S. economic situation, HDTV maker Vizio reported Tuesday that its products accounted for more than 10 percent of all North American flat panel TV sales in the third quarter, placing the low-cost maker third behind Samsung and Sony in terms of overall flat panel TV shipments.What's more, the company continued its upward year-over-year trend by selling more than 800,000 units in the quarter. Given this growth and its position among value-oriented shoppers, Vizio said it expects to post a 50 percent quarter-to-quarter increase this year for Q4 on particularly strong holiday sales.

In a way, Vizio is like the Hyundai Motors of the video world: initially they were cheap and poorly regarded, but the company worked hard to improve their quality while still delivering low price points, winning fans and converts in the process.

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This Week In CE Pro: 720p Obsolete?

CE Pro: Is the 720p HDTV Still Necessary?

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Vizio Strives For Greenest Televisions

Vizio, the upstart little-TV-maker-that-could is pushing the envelope with regard to energy consumption.

Electronic House: Vizio Adds 32-inch EcoHD to Energy Friendly LCDs

The comapny has announced that all of its LCD models now shipping to the U.S. and Canada meet or exceed Energy Star 3.0 requirements. Nine
of Vizio’s models exceed the Energy Star rating by 25 percent, the company says, and all of them are RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) compliant too.
The 22-inch and 19-inch LCD models even consume less energy than a standard 60w light bulb, Vizio says.

It almost goes without saying, but that appeals to my frugal nature.

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Best Buy Busted For Bogus Billing?

CE Pro and Consumerist are both reporting shady dealings by Best Buy in selling their HDTV video calibration services.

CE Pro: Is Best Buy Misleading Customers Over HDTV Calibration?

Consumerist: Best Buy Caught Using Sneaky Sneaky Tricks To Sell HDTV Calibration Service

While helping my father look for an HDTV at the newest Best Buy in Charlotte, NC this Sunday, I came across their demo display of their color calibration service. On the left side of the demo, they had a HDTV tuned to ESPN, and on the right, there was the exact same model of TV presumably tuned to the same station, but with a far superior picture. The difference between the two was remarkable; the left one was grainy and blurry while the right one looked sharp and detailed. Thinking that something was not right, I took a further look at the demo and realized that the inferior tv on the left was turned to plain old ESPN, and the superior tv on the right was tuned to ESPN HD. What's even worse is they had a box for their Black Tie TV Protection Plan strategically placed so that when looking at the display from most angles, it covered up the ESPN logo on the left tv as to disguise the fact that it was not an HD channel.

Aside from the fact that monkeying with the picture settings to make whichever brand of TV is on promotion that week look best is as old as the CE biz, what’s surprising and newsworthy is that there are Best Buy drones who even know how to adjust a TV’s picture.

Seriously though, deceptive marketing like this is bullshit. What's even more egregious is that Best Buy touts itself as using ISF calibration, which is not only the Gold Standard for video calibration, but quite costly to achieve certification in. If the clowns at Best Buy actually knew what they were doing, they wouldn't need deceit to promote the benefits of video calibration. Incidents like this make legitimate AV professionals look bad by association.

In my opinion, video guru Joel Silver, owner of the Imaging Sciences Foundation should be horrified at having his brand sullied by Best Buy's actions, and should seriously re-evaluate his business relationship with them.

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The End Of The VCR

It's official.

CE Pro: JVC Finally Ceases Production of Standalone VCRs

Some people out there consider HD DVD and DVD players to already be outdated technologies.
So what about VCRs? Does anyone even remember VCRs?
JVC apparently does.
The company has announced it will stop manufacturing standalone VCRs, thus ending global sales of the videocassette players when current inventory runs out, reports the Nikkei Business Daily. Wonder what took so long. (via EngadgetHD)

Heh, I thought that it had already happened!

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Over At Marketnews: Cool New DVDO Edge Scaler

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Vizio seeks to rebadge as a "high-end" TV company

Vizio, the TV brand that other brands love to hate, is looking to make some changes.

CE Pro: Vizio Rebrands From Discount to ‘High End at Affordable Price’

According to ONE/x, Vizio's ad agency, Vizio will soon be marketing a surround-sound system with a wireless subwoofer for HDTVs. Vizio previewed the sound bar at CES earlier this year and says it will "compete with products from Sony, Samsung and others.""We want consumers to associatepremiere audio quality, along with images, when they think about Vizio," says Jason Wulfsohn, creative director at ONE/x Wulfsohn.

To date, Vizio has achieved market hegemony by catering to the "good enuff" market. Performance-wise their displays are hardly stellar, but they're cheap.

However, I'll be the first to admit that while I'm a huge video snob, I see things that regular consumers either can't see, or simply don't care enough to pay more for. For an awful lot of Sam's Club shoppers, good enough is "good enuff."

That said, regardless of "high-end" or "low-end" designations, if their TV's lacks discrete codes for programming them that means that it's a "retail" TV as opposed to a custom channel one.

However, Vizio seems to be happy with how they've positioned their products, so bully for them.

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Mitsubishi Chases The Upscale TV Market

TWICE: Mitsubishi Unveils ‘Premium’ TV Focus

In an effort to stay out of the price wars in the entry and mid-range TV businesses, Mitsubishi showed dealers and the press here last week its 2008 DLP rear-projection and LCD TV lineups that will all be positioned as “premium” lines for its retail partners.
...
Frank DeMartin, Mitsubishi Digital Electric America marketing VP, said the company opted to position its entire assortment as “premium lines” this year in an effort to distance itself from the pricing pressures that continue to increase in the entry and middle tier segments of the flat-panel and rear-projection TV business.

Mitsubishi's timing here is absolutely fascinating, given that in the past Quarter, Pioneer has all but abandoned the high end display market, and Fujitsu has packed up their marbles and left the flat panel market completely.

I'm all in favor of upscale video, don't get me wrong. But it's a tough slog, and the bottom line that Fujitsu and Pioneer both discovered the hard way is that being "exclusive" means not selling very many units, which makes it harder to see a profit.

Mitsubishi makes superlative video displays, but is this ploy going to work? Clearly they don't think they can walk the same big box path that Sony does: putting on airs of quality while still being flogged on price. Despite being one of the most heavily discounted brands in big box retail, Sony still carries a cache with customers, and they sell a lot of televisions.

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Pioneer Exiting Plasma Business

Kind of a big deal.

CNN: Japan's Pioneer to stop making plasma panels, warns of FY loss

TOKYO, Mar. 7, 2008 (Thomson Financial delivered by Newstex) -- Japan's Pioneer Corp said Friday it will stop making plasma panels amid intense competition and will instead outsource the production of plasma panels for its television sets.

More on this later.

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Motivational Quote of the Day

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Bird and Fortune explain the markets, as only brit comics can

I'm compelled to take time out from my busy schedule of holiday dissolution to bring these to your attention.



Extremely long, but well worth watching every minute.



Meet the Advisor



It's Credit and it's Crunchy

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This Week in Marketnews: Scalers for fun and profit

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Off Topic: Not all one hit wonders go away to die quietly

I don't know what's more remarkable, that 80's one-hit wonder Animotion is still around, or that they are amazingly well preserved for their age.

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Tim Wilson's "I could be wrong" as social commentary

Tim Wilson, "I could be wrong."

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Samsung unseats Vizio as #1 TV brand

More evidence of the tospy-turvy Christmas retail season we're in for:

CNet.com Samsung regains TV lead; Vizio back to No. 2

A sense of order has been restored to the North American TV market this quarter.
A few months after newcomer Vizio stunned the flat-panel television industry by ranking No. 1 in market share for the second quarter of 2007, the old stalwarts have reclaimed their positions. Samsung moved back to No. 1 in overall flat-panel shipments with 11.8 percent of the total market, according to DisplaySearch. Vizio fell to No. 2 with a 10.2-percent share, down from 12 percent the previous quarter. The rest of the list includes Sharp at 10 percent, Sony at 8.6, and Funai (which makes the Sylvania brand) at a 7.2 percent share.
Samsung was able to regain its position because it has a strong presence in both the liquid crystal display (LCD) and plasma markets. Vizio is ranked No. 2 in LCD, but not in the top five of plasma vendors. Another key difference is Samsung sells mostly through national retailers, while Vizio's products have been popular in club stores.

Isn't it interesting how the only Japanese brands in the top five are Sony and Sharp? Of those two, Sony is the only venerable brand, Sharp being a relative upstart to the video business. And overall, three of the top five best selling brands can be considered price point, or bargain basement entry level sets. Maybe I'm prejudiced, but I still don't consider Samsung to be a first tier brand for television quality.

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Great new video demo material

For those of you who are still in the business of selling televisions to people, take note. I rented Meet the Robinsons on the weekend. A pretty twisted kid's film. I think the writers were really baked when they did the screenplay.

Visually, it looked awesome running through my scaler upconverted to 1080p. Animation generally looks good when scaled, but this was visually superb. I forsee a lot of retailers playing this to death the way they did with Ice Age or A Bug's Life.

It's funny: I've been out of the retail trenches for years, but I still look at movies and think "Man, that would make a great demo!"

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America's Widening Wealth Gap

Via Paul Kedrosky's Infection Greed



In The Know: Are America's Rich Falling Behind The Super-Rich?

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This week in Marketnews: Digital Security

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Mitsubishi bows super slim rear projection television

The Retail Bridge: Mitsubishi Unveils SuperSlim HDTV Lines

On the eve of the 2007 CEDIA Expo in Denver, Mitsubishi on Tuesday introduced two new lines of SuperSlim LCD and DLP HDTVs.

Featuring the company's low profile UltraThin frame, hidden speakers and a minimalist design, the SuperSlim lines were designed to deliver HD performance in the tightest of installation spaces.
Need proof? Mitsubishi's 46-inch SuperSlim LCD is only 42 inches wide and takes up less space than an ordinary 42-inch plasma.

The SuperSlim DLP models incorporate that same frame along with lighter weight components and a smaller overall footprint. All of the new models support 1080p and include Mitsubishi's x.v.Color color processing capabilities.
Mitsubishi's SuperSlim LCDs are available in screen sizes from 40-52 inches at MSRPs ranging from $2,499 to $5,299. The SuperSlim DLPs range from 57-73 inches and $1,999 to $4,699.

My first instinct was to make fun of Mitsubishi for pioneering cutting edge rear-projection televisions. Given the dominance of flat panel, a cutting edge RPTV is kind of like a really cutting edge buggy whip.

But this is actually pretty cool. I'm a believer in having lots of tools in the toolbox, and the more video technologies we have in the marketplace the better. There are going to be clients and installations for whom these technologies make more sense.

I'll definetely give them a close look when the CEDIA trade show opens tommorow, and report back.

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New York Times cancels Christmas

At least for CE retailers, which is what I thought when I saw the headline. I expected the NYT's Eric A. Taub to put on his Grinch Suit and spill the beans to consumers about what insiders knew all along, that Christmas is not the best time to buy a television.

Instead, he delivers a roundup of the margin pressures plaguing the retail CE business as retail price points plummet and margins dwindle.

NYT: If There’s a High-Definition TV in Your Future, Wait Till After the Holidays

Prices have continued to drop substantially this year. According to the research firm iSuppli, the average retail price of 42-inch HDTVs — one of the most popular sizes this year — has declined to $1,522 from $1,844 last Christmas, an 18 percent drop. Prices will continue to fall, industry analysts say, because the retailers are powerless to prevent the declines. Not only is retail competition fierce, but flat- panel TV manufacturers, especially the Taiwanese contract manufacturers, continue to build new plants and expand production, which has created a glut in panels.

The article does a good job of summing up retails woes. But since it didn't offer consumers any sound advice, I'll let the cat out of the bag myself.

The best times to buy a television are January/February and Mid-Summer, around June/July.

Many retailers suffer from a post-Christmas hangover, and will offer big promotions to juice a little more volume out of the slower months after December. If you're at a shop where the salespeople are still on commission, finding a sales guy who's already blown his December paycheck may give him some incentive to write you a deal.

And since most manufacturers bow their new model televisions in the fall (which in retail means August), June/July is when retailers start to be concerned about motivating older stock out the door. Once the new models that are shinier/prettier/better/cheaper hit the floors, last year's models become very difficult to sell. This is why if you're not obsessed with having the latest and greatest, and if you time it right, you can get a better deal in the summer than at Christmas.

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