Very Big, Very Small
By Steve Smith -- TWICE, 9/25/2006
Those are the two directions video seems to be going this year, if you believe the hype.
First off Apple revealed the plans for its long-awaited video player, dubbed iTV. Apple's iTV will not be ready for the market until early next year, but will wirelessly deliver movies to its devices (initially from Disney and its related brands) via the iTunes site. (See story, p. 1.)
At the same time Microsoft finally unwrapped Zune, its digital audio player with a 3-inch screen that probably will have a video capability at some point but has features now that may be (according to bloggers and analysts) a real answer to the iPod and eventually iTV. And last week RealNetworks joined with SanDisk to offer new MP3 players that ship with 32 hours of preloaded music.
Coincidentally all this broke right around CEDIA Expo, when upscale suppliers, custom installers and retailers who want to do more home installations, gathered in Denver to see the newest in HDTV, among other things.
Obviously Microsoft, SanDisk and plenty of other companies are trying to grab part of the iPod market that Apple created. And Apple-watchers, both on the Web and off, along with much of the investment community, have wanted the company to come up with “the next iPod” sooner rather than later. Under the same type of pressure Microsoft is offering Zune to show it won't get sandbagged like it did with iPod.
Is all this handheld video download talk just hype to keep Wall Street at bay and to boost stock prices? Is there a significant market in it?
Take a look at what consumers have historically preferred. Portable audio has been a worldwide winner going back to the Sony Walkman and before that with the first transistor radios. But video? That's a different story. Bigger has always been better, color has always been better than black and white, and stereo has always been better than mono. But handheld TVs have always been a fringe player in the market.
Granted portable DVD players, car DVD players and watching movies on laptop PCs have become accepted. But will consumers buy these dedicated audio/video devices with 3-inch or smaller screens?
My generation gap may be showing, but we are in the high-definition TV age. Regardless of price cuts, consumers will be spending more on a new HDTV than any analog set of years ago for the foreseeable future. Will consumers then plunk down cash on devices with a tiny non-HDTV screen to watch movies that would be downloaded on a handheld player?
My bet is that, in time, they will, but the devices will have to have larger HDTV screens and the ability to take the movies downloaded from iTunes, Rhapsody, et al in HD form and replay them on their home HDTVs.
And speaking of HDTV, the mantra from all the suppliers at CEDIA is that “1,080p is king” and plenty of them showed 1,080p capable sets at the show. The problem is there is little or no 1,080p content available. I won't get excited about 1,080p until plenty of programming is available and the HD DVD/Blu-ray battle is close to being settled.
The other mantra, this time just from the LCD TV suppliers was that, “LCD is king” and that the format will get larger and bury plasma. With all the price moves, additional LCD capacity worldwide and technology improvements there is least a horse race between the two. The product quality, sales and marketing skills of both sides will be tested before we know the outcome of this battle.
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