HDTVexpert has some good CES 2006 coverage as well. Of particular note is the discussion of LED lighting, which lasts longer and is brighter than traditional methods.

LED color for TVs can be achieved with separate red, green, and blue diodes, operated either in steady-state mode (sucking lots of current along the way) or in switched mode with fast picture refresh rates. White LEDs can also be put to work with embedded color filters much the same way that CCFLs are used, running continuously or pulsed. The pulsing technique has one advantage — it improves motion detail in LCDs.

But there was a fifth LED lighting scheme demonstrated at CES, and it wasn’t easy to locate. Cree Inc, a manufacturer of LEDs in Durham NC, showed an efficient white LED chip with discrete red, green, and blue elements that could be tuned individually. Several of these chips were incorporated into a backlight that used no more power than a CCFL, but was considerably brighter.

Wherever you saw LED backlights, you couldn’t help but be impressed by color quality. Reds just popped better, greens were appealing but not over-saturated, and formerly difficult colors like amber yellow and turquoise came to life in a way they’d never be seen on plasma screens or with CCFLs.

HDTVexpert - The Front Line: CES 2006
HDTVexpert - What You Really Need To Know About CES 2006

Evan Powell has a review of CES over at Projector Central. He mentions a bunch of things about CES of course, but to me the most interesting was his statements about Sharp’s new 1080p projector.

Sharp gave a great demonstration of their new Z20000 1080p model. They showed it with three different sources–a pristine 1080p source, Blu-ray 1080i DVD, and conventional 480i component video. Three distinct levels of image quality were obvious. The 1080p source was exquisite, and showed the true potential of the projector. Blu-ray DVD looked very good, but it was clearly a step down. It is definitely better than standard DVD, but it falls short of the best possible high resolution sources. The image quality with Blu-ray on this particular 1080p projector was not much different than that which is available on the better 720p projectors on the market today.

A couple questions come to mind. First, this projector seems to accept 1080p signals. This is a good sign! I assume it was through HDMI. What was the source? The second: why was Blu-ray 1080i? Blu-ray players can do 1080p, so why didn’t Sharp use one of those models? Third: why was the difference between 1080p and 1080i so acute? I would have expected a much smaller difference.

And another note about the article. Mr. Powell mentions the large price gap between 1080p and 720p products. He obviously hasn’t seen all the 1080p products, because there are many that aren’t at the $20k price point he’s comparing against. Rear projectors, in particular, are much less expensive.

Review: Consumer Electronics Show, 2006

According to the Consumer Electronics Association, 2006 will see HDTV sales outpace normal (analog) TV sales.

According to sales projections issued yesterday by CEA, HDTV sets will outsell analog sets by 89 percent in 2006, reaching total unit sales of 15.9 million and contributing to over $23 billion in total DTV revenue.

CEA also reported that growth of DTV sales grew 60 percent to $17 billion in 2005. CEA attributed DTV sales growth to the growing popularity and competitive price declines of flat panel displays such as LCD and plasma. Combined, these displays accounted for 40 percent of all DTV sales by dollar. Analog and digital LCD TVs combined for $3 billion and four million units. Plasma TVs sold nearly two million units for a total of 4 billion in dollar sales.

This is great news for HDTV owners. The PS3 and Xbox 360 both support HDTV. This spring both Blu-ray Disc (BD) and HD DVD launch. HDTV is now becoming mainstream, and therefore more and more HDTV programming will become available.

What a great year!

CEA - 2006 IS THE YEAR OF DTV, FORECASTS CEA

Uncompressed HD video requires a lot of bandwidth. Which makes Radiospire Networks’ accomplishment all the more amazing.

Radiospire Networks today announced the first high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) chipset solution that enables wireless HDTV connectivity without compressing the video signal, eliminating the picture degradation and encryption problems caused by compression. The new chipset provides a cost-effective solution for building products that allow flat panel displays to be placed up to 15 feet away from other video and audio equipment without running cables across the room, sacrificing image quality, producing latency issues, or jeopardizing copyright protections.

Yahoo! Finance - First Uncompressed Wireless HDMI Chipset Enables Cable-Free HDTV Setup While Retaining Wired Image Quality

There is much debate in gaming circles these days about HDTV, Blu-ray, and 1080p. That’s because the (1) the Nintendo Revolution doesn’t support HDTV, (2) the PS3 is also a Blu-ray player, and (3) the PS3 puts out 1080p. This post only addresses point 1.

It seems that Nintendo’s decision not to support HD may have been a bad one. Currently 10 to 15 percent of Americans have and HDTV in their home. By the end of 2006, that number will be 26%, according to a recent survey by Panasonic. That’s phenominal growth.

This can only mean that acceptance of HDTV is finally snowballing. HDTV purchases have only been growing slowly because we were at the beginning and it takes some time to build up momentum. But now that momentum is here and more and more people are putting those lovely HDTV television into their family rooms.

Are you listening Nintendo? Maybe HD support would be a good idea after all? Hmmm?

Yahoo! Finance - One in Four U.S. Households Expect to Have HDTV Within in 2006

So does Hollywood and Congress actually have committees that think up ways to shaft consumers?

If the legislation were enacted, one year later it would outlaw the manufacture or sale of electronic devices that convert analog video signals into digital ones–unless those encoders honor an anticopying plan designed to curb redistribution. Affected devices would include PC-based tuners and digital video recorders.

Just wondering…

CNET - Pro-Hollywood bill aims to restrict digital tuners

Wow, a second industry organization! I have never reported on one before, and today I get two! What are the chances…

What’s the Plasma Display Coalition (PDC) do? That’s easy - dispel myths. So we can finally find out if buttered toast always falls butter-side-down. Okay, so my attempt at humour may have failed, but the organization does have a mandate:

“Although sales of plasma televisions really turned the corner this Fall, our members felt it was time to set the record straight on the benefits and advantages that plasma displays offer,” Palumbo said. “The mission of the group will be to get the plasma message out to the public in a clear and distinct way.”

He said the organization’s promotional efforts will target the grass roots of America, as well as the national media and consumer press.

Who’d a thunk it?

TWICE - Plasma Coalition To Dispel Myths

Most industry organizations are pretty transparent to end consumers. But without them, the world would collapse into a singularity, so it’s good that we have them. And the more the merrier, so I was very pleased to hear that a “group of hardware makers, technology companies and content owners has formed a new alliance charged with developing technical standards for the secure networking of high-definition programming throughout the home.” The group is called High-Definition Audio-Video Network Alliance, or HANA.

And actually, the first thing they’re tasked with doing sounds like a worthwhile endeavour, my snide comments aside.

Among the group’s first projects will be to work with the Advanced Access Content System consortium, which provided the basic copy-protection system used in both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD, to develop technical standards for moving AACS-encrypted content between devices.

Both high-def disc formats are expected to offer consumers the ability to rip content from the discs to a computer hard drive for use in a home network or for transferring to a portable device. Details of how those transfers are to occur and how the content will be protected remain to be worked out, however.

Video Business Online - New high-def org formed

Thomas Hawk has some great reading to do with digital TV, and also has some great photographs. This time he tackles HD Video on Demand:

I’ve said for a while not to expect to see true HDTV video on demand for quite a while. More accurately, despite these little recent announcements from Apple and Comcast and CBS and NBC and ABC, etc., do not expect to see anything truly compelling in the video on demand space until the broadcasters have wrung the last nickel out of their antiquated commercial advertising model and people finally refuse to pay up for overpriced DVDs. Until then expect the studios to drag their feet, sue their customers, and make excuses as to why they don’t innovate.

His article is actually longer than that, so there are more words for your viewing pleasure, if you choose to click this:

Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection: Video on Demand, The Big Pipe Dream in the Sky

One of the next big things coming up in HD is two-way digital cable. (Hmmm, maybe I should put that into my HD Buzz page!) The current CableCARD standard is one-way only. So you can receive all the digital cable you want, SD and/or HD, but video-on-demand and pay-per-view won’t work. Which is just a tiny bummer, isn’t it?

So two-way is the thing. And it’s coming.

Video Without Boundaries, Inc., a leading provider of interactive, media-convergent home entertainment devices, today announced its plans to make interactive two-way digital cable products a retail certainty by entering into agreements with CableLabs® that enable VWB to implement OpenCable™ Application Platform (OCAP™) - compliant middleware on its next generation MediaREADY™ media centers.

VWB joins Panasonic, Samsung, Digeo, and LG in the group of consumer electronics companies to have signed the CHILA agreement.

I only worry that the restrictions imposed by this new standard will be too severe. Will we still be be able to record digital video? What about analog HD? Is that supported?

[via Thomas Hawk]
eHomeUpgrade - Video Without Boundaries Signs CableLabs License for Two-Way Digital Cable Products

The analog hole. It’s a hole that Hollywood desperately wants to plug.

If you display an HD signal on your TV, it might pass through an analog connection to get there. That’s what I do. I have a Rogers HD PVR, and my connection to my HDTV is via component video cables. According to Hollywood, this must not be. Why? Because someone could intercept the analog signal, redigitize it, and distribute it on the Internet. Hollywood doesn’t take kindly to such freedoms.

The proposed bill would permit content owners to insert two separate types of digital codes into programming that would survive the transition to analog.

The bill would then require that any device that received an analog signal would look for those codes, and if it found them, refuse to allow the signal to be reconverted to digital or to pass it on to other devices over unprotected outputs.

The provision would apply to packaged media formats as well as to video-on-demand, pay-per-view, subscription VOD and other types of premium content.

But there are some people opposing this bill, thank goodness.

“We must oppose the sweeping draft proposal to close the analog hole,” Gigi Sohn, head of consumer interest group Public Knowledge said in testimony to the committee. “The prohibitions would require the redesign of a whole range of currently legal consumer devices, including DVD recorders, personal video recorders and camcorders with video inputs. It would also restrict lawful uses of analog product.”

Video Business Online - 11/3/2005 - Debate rages in copy projection battle (free subscription)

Hollywood has come up with a new way to prevent people from pirating movies by actually recording them in the theater. It’s quite an interesting way to do it, and it involves audio, of all things.

All HD-DVD players will have a sensor that looks for inaudible watermarks in the soundtrack of movies. The watermarks will be included in the soundtracks of all major movies released to cinemas.

If a DVD player detects the telltale code, the disc must be an illegal copy made by copying a film print to video, or pointing a camcorder and microphone at a cinema screen. So the player refuses to play the disc.

The mark is made by slightly varying the waveform of speech and music in a regular pattern to convey a digital code. The variations are too subtle to be noticeable to the human ear, but are easily recognised by the decoder in the player.

I can admire the technical details of this idea, but I wonder how well this system works in practise. Hollywood wants to put this idea out there now because the HD-DVD specs are being finalized and they want this to be part of it.

CDRinfo - Audio Watermark Protection For HD DVD