Home Theater View

2005 In Review / CES 2006 Review, Pt. 5: Convergence

Part V, the final installment of my post-CES chronicles; each of these posts includes a quick look back on 2005 trends and a quick discussion of products introduced at CES 2006. This installment: Convergence

In 2005…

Windows XP Media Center Edition PC sales finally took off – but as replacements for home PCs (wherever in the home they may reside, not necessarily the living room), and using traditional vertical box form factors, not the electronics-rack-style Home Theater PC. With Microsoft dropping the requirement for TV tuners, many of the XPMCE PCs were just that – regular PCs with a nifty 10 foot user interface for media control. Meanwhile, PVR functionality was integrated into the cable and satellite box in a big way, and moved time shifting into many more homes. The tech media declared place shifting the next big thing. Place shifting, the notion of watching your content anywhere you are using a web browser, was first introduced by Orb Networks (limited to PC-based content), followed by Sony’s LocationFree TV (control primarily of live TV) and then by Sling Media’s SlingBox (which allows viewing and control of nearly all content, including shows saved to a TiVo or ReplayTV).

At CES...

Sling Media introduced a Windows Mobile client for the SlingBox, solving one of the big problems of place shifting: very few people spend so much time on the road that they would be willing to buy a gadget to gain access to their home content. But moving the content to any Windows Mobile smartphone is more generally useful; everyone has some down time in their schedule that could be filled with even more TV! SlingBox for Windows Mobile also bypasses a lot of the services that wireless carriers are hoping to sell to consumers directly, and in this sense, it is an extremely disruptive technology.

2005 In Review / CES 2006 Review, Pt. 4: Media Formats

Part IV of my post-CES scribbles; each of the next few posts includes a quick look back on 2005 trends and a quick discussion of products introduced at CES 2006. This installment: Media Formats

In 2005…

The warring HD disc camps (HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disc) could not achieve compromise, but did not actually ship anything to the market, either. With nearly no support from content owners, SACD and DVD-Audio essentially died in 2005.

At CES 2006…

Toshiba hyped its first HD-DVD player at the modest price of only $499. In contrast, Pioneer announced a single Pioneer Elite Blu-Ray Disc player for $1800. Sony is still expecting to sell PS3’s with BD playback capability (and a reasonable price point), but no live PS3 units were shown at the show. In general, 2006 does not look like the year of prerecorded HD disc adoption. Pricing is too high, the available content library is too small, and there's the whole format war issue. Worse, the DVD revolution is winding down, and even on an HDTV, many consumers will find that DVD is “good enough” regardless of the outcome of the format war.

2005 In Review / CES 2006 Review, Pt. 3: Audio

Part III of my post-CES rantings; each of the next few posts includes a quick look back on 2005 trends and a quick discussion of products introduced at CES 2006. This installment: Audio

In 2005…

Apple’s iPod ate up whatever audio interest there was left after the purchase of that HDTV. The audiophile approach (ignore it and it will go away) didn’t work, the competitive approach (building servers or portable products that compete with the iPod head on) dramatically didn’t work – though there were a handful of exceptions, and the conciliatory approach (if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em) of building iPod docks and add-ons got very, very crowded. One of the more notable exceptions to the “don’t compete with the iPod” rule was Sonos, which piggybacks on existing PC-based music libraries and distributes audio wirelessly around the house. The key to success here is both the flawless user interface and the premium consumer price point. Typical CE pricing would not support the margins Sonos needs to survive, but the Sonos system is still within reach of many consumers, as opposed to custom installed distributed audio systems which can often cost an order of magnitude more.

At CES 2006...

We saw more of everything. Competing with the iPod were several nano clones, Toshiba’s new (and impressive) GigaBeat Portable Media Center, and several Windows Media Center or set top box whole-house server products for storing your music collection (some piggybacking on Intel's new VIIV campaign). The server efforts were at least partly conciliatory, as most included Apple iPod docking capabilities.

2005 In Review / CES 2006 Review, Pt. 2: Speakers

Part II of my post-CES ravings; each of the next few posts includes a quick look back on 2005 trends and a quick discussion of products introduced at CES 2006. 

In 2005…

To try to appeal to the flat panel TV crowd, speaker manufacturers at all price points built flat speakers, small speakers, and speakers intended to be mounted on the wall (some with just one cabinet to simplify wiring, or wireless rear speakers). Big brands did well with these offerings, but they tended to pull sales from elsewhere, not grow the category.  The other approach was to develop a line of in-wall speakers, some with high end pedigrees and/or THX certification. Unfortunately, it takes time for CEDIA installers to pick up new brands (installers are a conservative bunch, as you don’t ever want to have to service something installed in a wall or built into a cabinet), so the jury is still out on this strategy.  To compensate for lower ASPs and margins, most speaker manufacture was moved to Asia.

At CES 2006…

We saw more of the same. What we have not seen yet are Chinese speaker manufacturers selling direct to U.S. consumers under their own brand names, taking the Aperion.com business model and eliminating the middleman (Aperion). That has started in the enthusiast space to a degree with companies like nOrh, but has not moved into the mainstream. Yet.

We also saw one company move decidedly in a different direction: Jamo introduced the 909's, a $15,000 pair of speakers that do not have a rear cabinet.  The idea is simple: no enclosure, no possibility for audible colorations of the sound due to the cabinet. From a market perspective, this makes even more sense - audiophile consumers who are willing to have a free standing set of speakers in their room probably want to show them off.  Why not let them really show off the guts of the speakers by doing nothing to hide them? If Jamo is smart, it will release lower priced versions of the 909's including a center channel and matching surrounds for home theater (the surrounds will probably need cabinets for wall mounting).

2005 In Review / CES 2006 Review, Pt. 1: Flat Panels

I have just returned from CES 2006 in Las Vegas, where 150,000 geeks showed up to gawk at the bodacious sights to see in Las Vegas (103" plasmas) and ignored everything else (it seemed like half the shows in Vegas were dark). I'll be breaking out the next few posts into a quick look back on 2005 trends and a quick discussion of products introduced at CES 2006. 

In 2005…

LCD, Plasma, and DLP TV sucked the life (or, more accurately, the money) out of every other aspect of home theater.  Prices on the big panels dropped enough that consumers who weren’t looking to upgrade did, and in most cases, all the money went to the display.

At CES 2006…

1080p was the spec to beat – everybody had at least one product with full progressive 1920x1080 resolution. New technologies included real world demos of SED and LED-based DLP systems without color wheels. The other big trend holding down pricing is the influx of no-name brands sourcing panels from the same fabs as the big brands and selling it direct for less. In cases where the display/upconversion electronics in the no name brands are good, this presents a major problem for the majors. And even when the quality is lousy, the glass is often the same (or just a generation or so behind), so the specs look good on paper, and the price looks great.