The ongoing battle between Foxconn-led Sharp Electronics and Chinese TV maker Hisense continues unabated as Sharp piles on litigation. Sharp has filed complaints against alleged Hisense product development practices as well as claimed misuse of the Sharp TV brand that Hisense licenses in the U.S. market. At the same time, further pressure on Hisense is […]
Archive | Televisions
The Coming 1K/2K to 4K Upconversion Disconnect
A couple of months back I received a distressed email from a reader. It seems he bought a new 4K TV and eagerly hooked up his DVD player, believing his new UHD would make his old DVDs look lovely. You can guess the inevitable: disastrous results. Imagine blowing up a postage stamp-sized photo to billboard […]
U.S. IPTV Providers Are No Longer Bucking the Trend
U.S. cable and satellite TV providers have been buffeted in recent years by subscriber loss. Indeed, the only segment in the U.S. pay TV market in the past several years to routinely post net subscriber gains have been the IPTV providers—principally AT&T U-Verse and Verizon FiOS. But the telco run of subscriber gains that marked […]
Sharp/Foxconn Undeterred In Bid To Reclaim Sharp Marketing Rights
Terry Gou, chairman of Taiwan-based Hon Hai Precision Industry, the parent of electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn, is looking to expand the company’s global footprint using its recently acquired majority stake in Sharp Corp., but Hisense is standing in the way. In recent weeks, Gou’s companies have been the focus of almost daily news articles concerning […]
CES at 50: Lessons Still Not Learned
Gazing at faded black-and-white photos from the first CES, which occurred 50 years ago this week in New York, it’s tough not to laugh at the antiquated gear that was considered cutting-edge at the time—fat tube black-and-white TVs when 23 inches was considered “big screen,” giant wood console cabinet TV/record player/radio combos, “portable” TVs that […]
Next-Generation TV: What’s Next?
Next-generation TV (aka ATSC 3.0) got top billing at the recently concluded U.S. National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) event and for good reason. The need for broadcasters to adopt a next-gen system—especially one that incorporates a blending of terrestrial broadcast and IP—is obvious especially since everything “television” (more and more an amorphous term) is getting […]
Samsung Rallies Industry Support For `QLED’ TVs
Samsung has started making it known throughout the consumer video display industry that it would like anyone involved in the development, production and sale of display devices enhanced by quantum dot technology to begin referring to those devices as “QLED,” short for Quantum Dot Light Emitting Diode,” displays. Samsung is hoping that broad-based use of […]
Is History Repeating Itself in Japan?
One of the starkest trends in the consumer electronics industry over the past 15 years has been the collapse of Japan’s once mighty TV industry. Formerly iconic brands with immense global reach have shriveled in the face of intense pressure from South Korea’s one-two punch of LG and Samsung and a glut of low-cost competition, […]
Nagra TVKey Looks To Eliminate Set-top Boxes Around The World
Swiss-based encryption-systems developer Nagra used last month’s CES 2017 to showcase a new conditional access (CA) platform that can eliminate the set-top box (STB) from the pay cable and satellite TV business paradigm, while bringing television manufacturers a potentially lucrative ancillary revenue stream. The company demonstrated at the show its TVKey platform, which is being […]
Many Monstrous Notes at CES 2017
While wandering around CES 2017, I was reminded of that scene in Amadeus, in which the Emperor Joseph II decides that the new opera by Mozart had “too many notes.” (The actual quote is “monstrous many notes” and referred to Mozart’s “The Abduction from the Seraglio,” but I digress.) That’s what I felt about CES—monstrous […]