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Category: hdtv

  • One-stop Shop For Blu-ray Licensing Could Reduce Prices


    A "one-stop shop" for Blu-ray player and disc licensing is being set up by Panasonic, Philips and Sony.

    The trio are currently in talks with Blu-ray Disc patent holders, according to Blu-ray.com.

    It reports that the new company, which would be led by former head of IP at IBM Gerald Rosenthal, would have its HQ in the US and offices in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

    The rationale behind the licensing entity is to offer a single license for Blu-ray Disc products at attractive rates.

    That’s certainly something that would be widely welcomed if it meant Blu-ray prices dropped.

    The proposals include a flat fee to produce Blu-ray products.

  • Indian Satellite TV Is Propelling Worldwide Market


    The worldwide market for pay-Direct-to-Home (DTH) satellite television rose significantly in 2008, with an estimated 18 per cent rise in subscriptions, reports In-Stat.

    It suggests the primary reason for this increase was strong growth in the Indian market, which more than doubled to about 9 million subscribers at the end of 2008.

    Mike Paxton, analyst with the high-tech market research firm, said India now has five pay DTH satellite providers with a sixth expected to enter the market early in 2009.

    "Additionally, in the Asia/Pacific region, China is likely to introduce a pay DTH satellite service in 2009 or 2010, which will help sustain strong growth in Asia," he said.

    Recent research by In-Stat found the following:

    • There will be nearly 200 million DTH pay-TV subscribers worldwide by 2012.
    • Worldwide revenues will eclipse USD $142.7 billion by 2011.
    • Eastern Europe had the strongest regional subscriber growth rate in 2008, with an increase of 63.5 per cent over 2007.
    • Subscribers in Russia more than doubled from year-end 2007 to Mid-2008 to nearly 3.8 million.
    • Digital visual interface (DVI) and high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI), are related, high-bandwidth, unidirectional, uncompressed digital interface standards.

  • On2 Technologies 1080p Video Encoder Improves Image Quality and Compression Performance


    On2 Technologies has announced a 1080p video encoder aimed at improving image quality and compression performance in battery operated devices and consumer electronics.

    The new hardware design, the Hantro 8270, supports H.264 Baseline, Main and High Profile video along with 16Mpixel JPEG still images.

    Mika Hakala, SVP and general manager(Embedded Solutions) at On2 Technologies, said it incorporates proprietary technologies for video stabilization and automatic scene change detection.

    With a minimal clock frequency requirement – less than 250MHz needed for 30fps 1080p video – Hakala said the Hantro 8270 is highly suited for low powered chipsets and is intended for wireless, consumer and surveillance applications.

    The technology is designed to improve the viewing experience for transcoded content such as movies and TV shows, and consolidated streams from multiple cameras typical to surveillance systems and live event coverage.

    The video stabilization feature improves the quality of captured video by counteracting the effects of camera shake.

    Analyzing each frame of raw video, undesired movement is removed by cropping and re-positioning the frame. The process is executed prior to encoding, and thereby increases overall compression efficiency.

    "With power consumption a critical design issue for semiconductors, maintaining a low overall clock frequency is an imperative," said Hakala.

    "A key challenge in designing a 1080p encoder is the transfer and encoding of the data needed with a clock frequency acceptable to the chip manufacturer.

    "Through efficient pipeline utilization and smart parallelism for key functions, we have not only met, but exceeded our customers’ expectations for 1080p video."
    The Hantro 8270 will be available for licensing from March.

  • Samsung Leading Global TV Brand, Full HDTV Sets Now Fifth of Market


    Samsung has maintained its place as the world’s biggest TV brand for the third year running.

    With a 21.9 per cent market share, the South Korean electronics manufacturer is some way ahead of second placed Sony, according to DisplaySearch.

    The findings are published in the researchers latest Quarterly Global TV Shipment and Forecast Report.

    They also show that the 1080p share of global TV shipments exceeded 20 per cent of units for the first time in Q4 of 2008.

    China remained the largest market for TVs on a unit basis, accounting for just over 19 per cent, followed by Western Europe and North America at just less than 19 per cent.

    However, on a revenue basis, North America remains the world’s largest TV market despite strong quarter-on-quarter (Q/Q) revenue growth in Western Europe.

    LCD TV picked up market share in every region, with especially strong share gains in China and Eastern Europe.

    As the brand leader, Samsung remains clear at the top, holding its revenue share nearly unchanged at 21.9 per cent, more than 7 share points higher than second placed Sony.

    Sony, however, enjoyed the strongest share growth and Q/Q revenue growth among the top five.

    Samsung was also the overall unit shipment leader and was in the top three rankings in each technology category (except OLED) and led LCD TV shipments.

    Sony enjoyed strong Q/Q revenue growth, but its year-on-year (Y/Y) revenues declined by 7 per cent due to ASP erosion. LGE rounded out the top three TV brands worldwide at 11.5 per cent revenue share.

    It also maintained a very slight advantage over Samsung in the high growth emerging market segment.

    The report also showed that despite the difficult economy and concerns about consumer spending, demand for larger screen sizes grew during Q4 2008.

    The share of TVs shipped at 40"+ screen sizes reached an all-time high of 23 per cent, up from 19 per cent in Q3 2008 and 18 per cent in Q4 2007.

    This was largely the result of significant discounts by manufacturers and retailers, both hoping to avoid excessive inventory after the holidays.

    The volume weighted average price for 32"+ TVs fell 19 per cent Y/Y during Q4 2008, while under 32" was unchanged from a year ago.

    Global TV shipments fell more than 5 per cent Y/Y in the last quarter of 2008 to 57.7M units from more than 60M units a year earlier.

    This is the first Y/Y decline in total TV shipments for more than two years.

    Due to ASP declines, total TV revenues fell even more, declining by 7 per cent to just over USD $30 billion despite flat panel technologies picking up more than 10 per cent unit share.

    Combined flat panel TV revenues — which includes LCD, plasma and OLED technologies — posted the first annual decline in a given quarter, falling 3 per cent Y/Y despite 17 per cent growth in unit volume with falling prices affecting revenues.

    Globally, flat panel TV share surged from 57 per cent in Q3 200808 to 66 per cent in Q4 2008 as rapidly falling LCD prices stimulated a shift from CRT to LCD, especially at smaller screen sizes under 40".

    Annual LCD TV shipment results for 2008 as a whole were 105M units, up 33 per cent Y/Y.

    DisplaySearch said the positive results also pushed LCD TV past CRT TV worldwide for the first time on an annual basis and mark significant progress in the transition from tube to flat panel technologies.

  • Sony's New BRAVIA WE5 Cuts Power Use by 50%


    Sony is making some impressive ‘green’ claims with its new BRAVIA WE5 series of Full HD LCDs.

    Dubbed the "eco TV", the electronics giant says that the WE5 is equipped with the first-ever micro-tubular HCFL backlight. It claims this is the key to its ability to cut power consumption by more than 50 per cent.

    The WE5 is the flagship of the new BRAVIA line-up, which Sony says consumes an average of 20-30 per cent less power than last year’s range.

    Among the WE5’s other energy saving innovations is an intelligent Presence Sensor that detects the body heat and movement of anyone sitting within normal range of the screen.

    Sony says that if the viewer leaves the room – to answer the door or during a commercial break – the sensor activates an energy-saving ‘picture off’ mode, while leaving TV sound on.

    The picture turns back on as soon as the viewer re-enters the room. If no movement is detected in the room – perhaps when the viewer has fallen asleep in front of the screen – the set automatically switches to standby after 30 minutes.

    The new BRAVIA also has an Energy Saving Switch that is able to cut electricity bills even further, the electronics company claims.

    It says that other televisions draw a small amount of power when they’re in standby or even when switched off.

    Flipping a conveniently-placed switch on the WE5 will turn the set off completely. Switch back on again and the TV returns immediately to its previous state.

    It’s intended as a smarter, more convenient alternative to manually unplugging the TV when it’s not in use.

    Obviously, Sony is keen to stress that the WE5 can deliver in terms of picture quality as well.

    Aside from its eco credentials, the Full HD 1080p LCD panel has Sony’s new BRAVIA Engine 3 and Motionflow 100Hz technology with Image Blur Reduction.

    The new BRAVIA line-up is due for release in the spring. The BRAVIA WE5’s other green credentials include:

    • Full HD 1080p (40, 46-inch) LCD TV
    • Smart Presence Sensor switches off picture when set is not being watched
    • Energy Saving Switch reduces power consumption to zero
    • Easily accessible, energy-saving ‘Eco settings’
    • Reduced energy consumption
    • Space-saving design cuts transportation carbon emissions

  • SiS Launches HDTV chipset For Full-HD Digital LCD TV Market


    Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) is to enter the HDTV market with a ATSC HDTV SoC chipset designed to be implanted in LCD TVs.

    Although it names no names, the Taiwanese company says SiS328 has already been widely adopted by major TV brand vendors for their next generation high quality Full-HD digital TVs.

    A developer of edge core logic chipsets, SIS products are widely used in various applications such as PCs, notebooks, embedded systems, wireless communications, servers, and digital entertainment devices.

    Its move into HDTV chips involves utilising the company’s Digital Nature Video Engine (DNVE) technology, a dual-input HDMI 1.3 receiver, 3D comb filter, two USB 2.0 ports, five analog audio stereo inputs and other features required to deliver ATSC tuning to an LCD TV.

    SiS says products will be available for shipment starting in early Q2.

  • Can Blu-ray Now Be Regarded As"Mainstream"?


    Sales of Blu-ray discs have climbed to such an extent in Europe that the high-def format is now officially "mainstream".

    At least that’s according to the cross-industry trade body, Digital Entertainment Group Europe(DEGE).

    Funded by the major Hollywood studios, the group says sales of Blu-ray software – which doesn’t include PS3 games titles – has increased five-fold in Europe, from 1.7 million units in 2007 to almost 8.5 million in 2008.

    This has no doubt been helped in part by the falling price of the discs, which are now approaching the level of DVDs.

    But the rising number of Blu-ray disc player owners is also fuelling demand for the software.

    Dedicated deck sales in the UK reached 100,000 in December.

    According to the DEGE, there are now over 2.1 million Blu-ray capable games consoles and standalone players in the UK, almost 1.4 million in France and over a million in Germany.

  • Sony Plans Movie and Game on Blu-ray Disc


    Sony is planning on creating a hybrid Blu-ray – with a game and movie on the same disc.

    The move is being viewed as a way to boost the appeal of the Playstation 3 in the face of falling prices for Blu-ray players and the increasing popularity of games consoles such as Wii and XBOX 360.

    The company is currently working on making the most of Blu-ray’s 50GB capacity by basically burning a full-length feature film to the empty space on a game-disc, which typically only uses around 30GB.

    Sony’s director of hardware marketing, John Koller, said that there will be as many as two or three releases of the new hybrid discs this year.

    "There are a lot of developers who say, we have this game based on a movie, wouldn’t it be great to marry these concepts? We will definitely see this stuff this year," Koller told VideoBusiness.

    Whether there is sufficient appeal in movie-based games remains to be seen – especially if Sony refuses to drop the prices of the PS3.

  • Hundreds of TV Stations Switch To Digital Despite Delay Bill


    An estimated 40 per cent of US TV stations plan to make the switchover to digital from 17 February.

    This is despite the recent approval of a congressional bill supporting a four-month delay of the transition from analog to digital TV signals.

    The major networks – ABC, CBS and NBC – have agreed to continue broadcasting in analog and digital.

    However, the three networks only control around 100 of the total 1800 TV stations involved in the switchover.

    The Federal Communications Commission said some 681 – or 40 per cent – have either already ended analog transmission or plan to do so after 17 February.

    By deciding to become all digital, these local stations will free up some of the 700Mhz spectrum in those markets that companies such as Qualcomm have bought the rights to use.

    The switch is intended to free up spectrum for public safety and provide better television viewing.

    The US House of Representatives last week voted to delay the mandatory change by four months – to 12 June.

    President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill into law shortly.

    But the delayed bill gave television stations, which say they’ve spent millions of dollars preparing and educating viewers of the switch-over, the option to transition to all digital on the original date.

    Supporters of the delay were concerned that 20 million mostly poor, elderly or rural households were not prepared due to a shortage of government coupons meant to defray the cost of converter boxes.

  • UK Capital To Begin HD Terrestrial Tests


    London’s Crystal Palace transmitter has been fitted with equipment necessary for high definition test transmissions to be carried out.

    The modulator equipped for test transmissions using the new DVB-T2 transmission standard was provided by Enensys.

    DVB-T2 high definition tests are scheduled to begin later this month.

    Last September, the BBC successfully performed test transmissions in the UK to receive high def pictures compliant to the DVB-T2 standard using a real-time demodulator.

    It was the first time anywhere in the world that a live end-to-end DVB-T2 chain was demonstrated.

    The UK’s analog transmission ends in 2012 but some parts of the country will get the benefit of DVB-T2 as early as this year.

    The current estimate is that in 2009 there will be three HD channels available in the UK, one of which goes to the BBC and the other two going to ITV, Channel 4 or Five.

    According to DigitalSpy, those broadcasters who plan to launch HD services on multiplex B, which is being reconfigured across the UK in tandem with switchover to support HD broadcasts, will take part in the trials.

    Others taking part include transmission infrastructure provider Arqiva and set top box manufacturers Panasonic, Pace, Humax and Sony.

    Ofcom will chair a steering committee overseeing the trials.