Home Theater View

Well, Gizmodo was wrong...

Last month I pointed out that Gizmodo declared the HD-DVD wars over with Blu-Ray victorious due to better studio support.  This week, four major studios lined up behind HD-DVD.  With Sony and Columbia firmly behind Blu-Ray, this is shaping up to be an interesting format war.

Bill Hunt over at The Digital Bits suggests that a format war is better than the situation we had at the launch of DVD - where nobody other than Warner was promising to support the format.  He goes on to say that if hardware vendors provide universal players, actual format could be irrelevant. 

In the long run, sure, but what a waste!  Dueling marketing dollars, more expensive players, and consumer confusion mean slower uptake.  Plus, it's possible that consumers simply tune out format wars at this point - as evidenced by DVD-A vs SACD (more on this later).

Michael Gartenberg over at JupiterResearch points out that first-to-market advantage is overrated - early adopters will buy whatever is available - and it's the mainstream consumer you need to worry about.

True - and the existence of JVC's tape-based D-Theater proves that the earliest adopters will do anything to advance the state of prerecorded HD - but I'd take this a step further: these formats have a lot to prove even without a format war. 

Nobody has shown me evidence that mass market consumers actually want higher resolution discs:

• Even if you have a really large and high quality display, well encoded anamorphic 480p DVDs are acceptable, and on anything less, HD doesn't offer a dramatic improvement. 
• DVDs are now selling as impulse buys in supermarkets. Will consumers be willing to pay more for HD discs (to justify higher manufacturing and mastering costs)?
• Sure, some Star Wars fans will buy the Holy Trilogy again for the fifth time in higher resolution. But what about regular titles, and regular consumers?
• Will stores be willing to stock additional SKUs to accomodate HD discs in addition to regular DVDs? 
• Finally, will something else come along while consumers are waiting for the format wars to resolve themselves?  Even assuming that demand will materialize, how long is the window to ramp up mainstream HD-DVD/Blu-ray going to be open?  DVD-Audio and SACD were done in at least as much by the MP3/iPod distraction as anything else.  Wait too long, and you give broadband/hard drive solutions a chance, or perhaps Kaleidescape to become affordable.

-avi

Digital TVs as Oversized Picture Frames

Convergence is such a loaded word.  Often people assume it means that your TV is networked to your TiVo which plays MP3s off your PC.  While that vision is well and good (and my 4 year old assumes everyone lives that way), most people adopt point solutions that meet their needs at much lower price points.  It’s not just home theater; even in the PC world, this is true.  Sneakernet is a prime example: rather than wire up their homes to share files, many people burn a CD or DVD, or put the files on a USB keychain drive and then walk the files over – thus using their sneakers – to the other PC.

SanDisk does a great job of enabling this slightly lower tech, less featured, mainstream-useful form of convergence.  Disclaimer: I think SanDisk is a great company for a lot of reasons, not least of all because they send me basically everything they make, sometimes without my having to even ask for it.  One of those products showed up the other day, their latest iteration of their Photo Viewer.  For $30 – 50, the first version of this product was cheap, ugly, and performed as advertised: plug the unit into your TV, place the memory card from your digital camera into the unit, and your pictures appear on your TV.  Simple, useful functionality included a remote control, the ability to rotate the picture, and basic slideshows.

Today’s version is a sleek gray/silver box, about the size of a thick checkbook. Aesthetically, it perfectly matches every gray/silver digital TV on the market. It still sells for under $50. It still has composite video outputs (limiting it to 480i resolution), but the user interface is dramatically better, it now supports xD memory (used in Fuji and Konica-Minolta cameras), it plays back the MPEG movies digital cameras take, and it plays back MP3 files and can use them as background music for slideshows.  In a naked push to increase memory card sales (the largest part of SanDisk’s product portfolio), it also has an additional memory card slot in back to allow you to move pictures off your digital camera’s memory and onto the secondary memory. This lets you create a master slide show always available for viewing on your TV, even when the other memory cards are back in their cameras.  I actually found this feature quite useful, and could envision this as a perfect “grandma gift” – whenever you come over, you upload the latest pictures to the rear memory card, leaving the memories behind.  [audience: awwwwwww.]

At the very high end of the market, Roku has a Digital Media Player that displays high resolution photos from memory cards or off a networked PC.  It’s beautiful, and, Roku, if you’re reading this, I want one.  But it costs $299, and the SanDisk product is likely “good enough” for most people.  Roku should watch out, too – if SanDisk’s next version supports high resolution output, Roku will be limited to the market segment that cares about home theater networking.

-avi

New posts coming, been on the road

Content is coming (eventually), I've just been on the road.  Some products that are in for review over the next few weeks:

• THX multimedia surround sound system
• AC power filter/surge suppressor
• mini subwoofer with proprietary technology
• TV digital photo viewer
• headphones of all varieties (wired, wireless, in-ear, noise cancelling - you name it)

I'm also evaluating several different HDTV antennas, and may also write about LG's HDTV tuner/upsampling DVD player, JVC's D-ILA (LCOS) RPTV, a pair of front projectors expected in shortly, and Yamaha's new RX-V2500 THX Select receiver.

-avi

Cables: Are Other Monsters Lurking About?

There have been several new entrants into the A/V cables market lately. 

Accell has been an OEM for others’ products for a while, and has decided to launch their own brand.  The packaging isn’t especially eye-catching, but the products are well priced and well constructed.  Accell sent over a large box of goodies around the beginning of the year, and I’ve been using them interchangeably with traditional AV brands such as Monster and Acoustic Research with no noticeable performance problems.  I haven’t seen them distributed anywhere at retail yet in New York/New Jersey, so that could be a bigger hurdle than anything else.  (I wrote a report for JupiterResearch -- where I used to head up home theater research -- on home theater distribution models; it should be published soon.)  Secrets of Home Theater – for whom I’m a Staff Writer – has a short review of Accell’s cables as well, faulting them primarily for the unopenable packaging.

Belkin is well known for their computer cables, and you could easily make the case that A/V cables are a logical brand extension for them.  While their analog audio cables are nice, I’m particularly impressed with the DVI-to-HDMI breakout cable.  It’s long and shrink wrapped in a semi-flexible plastic jacket.  The overall construction is top notch, and the moderate stiffness can save the cable’s life by preventing sharp bends. I have nothing on hand to compare it to, but I’m using it to connect an LG HDTV tuner/upsampling DVD player to JVC’s 50” D-ILA (LCOS) HDTV, and there were times during the 720p World Series broadcast that I could tell which direction the player had shaved in. The packaging looks fabulous, the pricing is competitive with Monster, and I’ve started seeing the Pure AV line at retail.  If my experience is a guide, it should do well.

Note: Belkin's packaging is semi-openable, as it has a pre-cut “window” in the back.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t extend far enough into the rounded box, so you can put your hand in, but can’t get the actual cable out without resorting to a chainsaw.

-avi

New LCD contender: Samsung reinvents CRT?

The rumors of the CRT's demise may have been overstated. Gizmodo dug up this Nikkei Electronics article reporting how Samsung has developed a 32" TV using proprietary CRT technologies that allow a total cabinet depth of just 15". Now, it's still going to be heavier than a comparably sized (and much thinner) LCD, but if they can keep prices down to current CRT pricing levels (under $1,000 for HDTVs), this could be a killer product. The article describes how difficult an engineering challenge it was to acheive; production is expected to ramp up throughout 2005.

Keys here:
Samsung is once again demonstrating impressive investments in R&D
If LCD prices come down enough, it will kill off even "thinner" CRTs. Samsung may be betting that's a ways off, and in the meantime they can sell thinner CRTs to the majority of the market which cannot afford to pay thousands for thinness.
...or not. Samsung may simply be hedging their bets (they're big players in LCD panel production), and displaying their willingness to participate in all markets. This is basically taking a page from Microsoft's playbook - invest in everything, so no matter what ends up on top, you win.

-avi

Is HD-DVD (the format) Already Dead?

Interesting analysis over at Gizmodo, particularly the charts highlighting market share for the studios. I think it’s premature to declare the format wars over well before any product actually reaches the US market – so many things could go wrong for either camp.

As I’ve written before (here and here, and here), a bigger issue is whether there’s much of a market for prerecorded HD content in the first place. Anamorphic DVDs cross the “good enough” threshold for most people – even on HDTVs. Star Wars on DVD - remastered yesterday, but shot in 1977 – looks spectacular on my 7’ screen, and most consumers watch on considerably smaller televisions. There’s concern about buyer fatigue (speaking of Star Wars, this is the fourth time I’ve bought it already), killing the DVD golden goose by introducing any format confusion, and pricing.

Ah, pricing. Yes, all the players are going to be backwards compatible (who cares about the technology – if a red laser DVD costs $29 at Wal-Mart, you can just it in any kind of player). But if the disc itself isn’t backwards compatible, you need to either have two separate SKUs – retailers hate that – or put two discs in the box – doubling the cost of media.

So will HD releases be more expensive? Will consumers pay extra to get both formats? If consumers won’t pay more for both discs, then studios will have to go the multiple SKU route. In that case, the HD format will be limited to a high end niche, and for titles big enough to get shelf space. That’s enough to get me excited about the format – I’m a sucker for anything that promises a noticeably better picture. It probably has a bit more appeal than the old videophile-only laserdisc (which never got out of low single-digit penetration), too, as DVD has considerably broadened the home theater audience. Even so, it is unlikely to be a mass market product or replace DVD as a format.

-avi

Unusual Home Theater Accessories

One of the hottest areas of home theater – consumer electronics in general, actually – is accessories. Accessories have high margins for everyone in the chain, don’t require frequent discounting, and (compared to TVs, anyway) don’t take up much shelf/inventory space. Now, when you think of accessories, you probably think of cables, remotes, and perhaps furniture. There are other interesting opportunities, such as label makers. Yes, label makers, one of the most critical tools in any home theater owner or installer’s toolkit. All those wires look the same when they’re plugged in, so if you don’t label them, you’re asking for trouble. But paper labels rip, and, let’s face it, you can’t read your own handwriting anyway.

Dymo sent over their model LabelPoint 200 over a year ago, and I’ve used it to label both ends of every audio, video, and power cable since then. I still haven’t run out of the original label cartridge, so this appears to be an exception to the razor/blade business model. The handheld shape and soft touch plastic coating make it easy to hold, though the unusual arrangement of the qwerty keys makes typing a hunt-hunt-hunt-and-peck affair.

Recently, Brother sent over a P-Touch 1400, which they promised would perform better than the Dymo. And it does, because it manages a few tricks especially useful for tagging wires: it prints vertically across for short text tags, and it will automatically print horizontal text on either end of a label strip – wrap it around the wire, and you can see the text on either side of the tag. The alphabetical keyboard arrangement is no easier to use than Dymo’s and the unit is physically larger. Either unit is a must, and the Brother is highly recommended.

-avi