HDTV

In last month’s CEDIA Highlights post, I noted two projectors that broke through the clutter (and there was a lot of clutter: my in box has dozens and dozens of press releases). There was a third announcement that caught my eye, and, surprisingly, it, too, was projector-related.

THX is now certifying home projectors.

On the surface, this does not seem surprising – THX certifies just about everything. In fact, don’t they already have a certification program for displays? It certainly seems like they did. (Actually, they did – but only as part of their commercial theater certification program.) THX is starting out with ludicrously expensive Runco models, but the program should trickle down to more affordable home projectors, rear projection televisions, and flat panel displays.

Not everyone loves THX. First of all, it’s a licensing program. It costs money to get the logo, but doesn’t offer anything concrete in exchange; theoretically, if your product meets all of THX’s specifications, you could be THX-certifiable without actually being THX-certified and pass the savings along to your customers. A bigger issue is that THX’s specifications are based on a specific philosophy. On the audio side, the philosophy includes notions of how a speaker should be constructed (small satellites, big subwoofers, and a specific crossover type and crossover frequency), how soundtracks mixed for commercial theaters should be adapted for the home environment, and how rear speakers should be integrated into a system. Reasonable people at, say, a speaker manufacturer, could disagree on an aspect of the technical approach that THX certification demands, but because the THX logo is respected in the market, they may lose business by building things their way instead of THX’s methodology.

THX Certified Display testing includes the following:

• Front of Screen (FOS) Testing
  • Luminance
  • Contrast
  • Color Gamut
  • Gamma
  • Uniformity
  • Max Resolution
• Video Signal Processing Testing
  • Scaling
  • Deinterlacing
  • Motion/Video Conversion

I am 100% confident that there will be controversy over THX’s video specifications. I couldn’t tell you what specifically will cause hand wringing – or whether it will be a specification of omission: THX’s video certification program was been rightly villified several years back for certifying terrible letterbox transfers; the specs simply didn’t go far enough in that case.

Still, I believe that, on balance, THX is an incredibly positive force for home theater audio and video reproduction. If you assemble a THX-approved system, even from different vendors, you know that the individual products will perform to a certain set of specifications, and that they were designed to complement each other. I also appreciate the notion of a certification program in the first place. Sure, Vendor X has a good reputation, and Vendor Y has a powerful brand. But THX drives the entire industry, for better or worse, towards a unified A/V philosophy. Aside from buying every component in your system from a single brand — as if that were even possible (outside of Sony and Samsung) — THX assures a level of uniformity of purpose and performance in home theater products. I like that.

-avi

To all the PR people trying to set up meetings with me at CEDIA this weekend: I’m not there. I just got back from CTIA before heading out again early next week, and CEDIA just didn’t make it onto the schedule this year.

Of course, I’m following the show remotely. So far, only a couple of announcements have really broken through the clutter, and they’re two projectors that offer clear value propositions:

• Sony’s 1080p VPL-VW50 SXRD front projector, which brings essentially the same technology from the $25,000 Qualia line (that then showed up in the $10,000 VPL-VW100 front projector, and then again in a line of Bravia rear projection TVs) down to $5,000. In the U.S., where big screen TVs have long been available (along with the floor space to put them) mid-priced projectors often sell well. Overseas, where a projector is replacing a big screen TV, not supplementing it, budget projectors tend to do better. Regardless, $3,000 – $5,000 is a sweet spot for pricing, and now performance follows. Sony can claim it uses unique technology for superior image quality, which fits nicely with its brand history (and just might be true. I personally prefer the slightly smoother picture from SXRD/D-ILA technologies compared to DLP or LCD).

• At the opposite end of the price spectrum, if you’ve got hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on a Bentley, you may want to consider a Runco Signature Cinema SC-1 instead (starting price: $250K. More if you want the 2.35:1 version). And a 40 foot screen for your home theater. While you might think there is no market for such ridiculously expensive toys, think again: when I last spoke to TI, they admitted that a fair number of professional DLP products aimed at commercial theaters end up in the homes of the super-wealthy film enthusiast. Or at least the super-wealthy conspicuous consumer who needs the absolute best of everything.

-avi

Woot.com has built on its relationship with InFocus and yesterday the one-item-per-day online outlet store flexed the power of its unique retail model: it sold out an allotment of 450 new (not refurbished) 61" ultrathin (6.85" deep) DLP RPTVs over 22 hours for $3000 each.  InFocus sweetened the deal further with a $500 rebate.  This TV typically cost $5,000 – $8,000, and includes 2 ATSC tuners, an NTSC tuner, a Windows CE-based web browser, and all the trimmings.

With woot’s flat $5 shipping, this leads to some remarkable statistics:

Item Quantity: 450
Item Price: $2,999.99
Total Sold: $1,349,995.50
Last Order time: 10:05 PM Central Time (new items are offered at midnight, Central Time, so that means the entire sale took 22 hours)
Order Pace: a $3,000 TV sold every 2 minutes, 55 seconds, or $61,094.47 an hour.
Shipping Cost: $5
Shipping Total: $2,250
TV Weight (w/ stand): 189.5
Total Weight: 85,275 lbs
Rebate by Infocus: $500
Infocus Payout: $225,000

Obviously, Woot will be paying a bit more than $2 grand to ship 85,275 lbs. of merchandise direct to customers’ homes. 

In marked contrast to most Woot items, the order pace started slow – very few items moved in the first hour, as customers digested the information about the set and asked spouses for permission.  If you follow the flow of conversation in Woot’s forum, you find a clear pattern: initially, woot regulars whined about the high cost of the item (some Woot items sell for as little as $10 or $20).  Then, as word got out about the deal, a flurry of new customers posted their excitement and celebrating their purchasing savvy (or impending divorce due to differing monetary priorities — in one case, if the poster is to be believed, marriage counseling would be a far better use of his $3,000 than an HDTV). Woot appears to be following the Costco model and broadening its customer base by offering higher end products to be found in what was always designed to be a bit of a treasure hunt.

The key question other retailers must ask is how this will affect pricing going forward.  Will consumers tune out Woots as one-time sales – almost like a lottery win – or will this drive down pricing as customers expect to find "finds" going forward?

-avi