Devices View – Page 21 – a Techsponential Company

When Manufacturers Don’t Manufacture, What Are They?

April 26, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

I wrote earlier about Outlaw’s new 990 audio processor, and was left with a few questions. They’ve since posted a FAQ that not only answers my questions, but also provides rare public insight into industry practices for cross-company parts sharing. Audio is a lot like the automobile industry – creating a platform is enormously expensive, and companies often share development to keep costs down. Sure, there are a few boutiques that create everything themselves from scratch, but custom efforts are enormously expensive, limiting the potential market size. Outlaw uses the three different models shown below for product development, and so …

Audio / Industry

New/Old Audio Technologies New Again: Part Two

April 15, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

Outlaw just announced a new pre/pro (the surround sound processing portion of a receiver without the amplifier section), the model 990, and its a doozy: a high end version of the company’s 950 for only $1099. More surprising than the product itself is Outlaw’s secrecy about it – while some analysts (including yours truly) were briefed on this last year, this is the first public indication the company has made that they were even working on a new pre/pro, and it should be shipping within the next month or two. The change in strategy was due to the flack the …

Audio

New/Old Audio Technologies New Again: Part One

April 13, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

I seem to have missed this out at CES (and the company is completely quiet on its web site), but AKAI is getting back into surround receivers with a pair of tube receivers. Yes, vacuum tubes. The AVR8500 and AVR8510 are 7-Channel Vacuum Tube Audio/Video Receivers. Both receivers use 7 Dual Triode Vacuum tubes (of “Blue Tube Thermionic” design, whatever that is), one for each amplifier. Tubes actually introduce audible distortion to an audio signal, but the distortion is harmonically pleasing, giving the sound a "warmth" that audiophiles crave. The AVR8500 is rated at 100-watts x 7, and the AVR8510 …

Displays / HDTV

Internet Persistence and Current TV Trends

March 30, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

Home Theater View grew out of business weblogs at JupiterResearch and AskAvi columns written over several years at a personal site, http://www.greengart.com. Thanks to the persistence of the Internet — web pages never really die as long as they’re in Google’s index — one of those old AskAvi columns is now generating a lot of feedback. It seems someone queried Google to find advice choosing a TV, found Column 10, and posted it to a newsgroup. They did this without ever looking at the column’s date (which is on the page, though perhaps not as prominent as it could be). …

Industry

New Online Retail/Marketing/Research Channel: Woot.com

March 24, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

At 1 AM EST every night? morning? something extraordinary is happening to online retail. Woot.com is an online outlet for tech overstocks and refurbs, but its unique business model is opening up some intriguing possibilities for building an installed base for a certain breed of product. The store offers one item per night at dramatically discounted prices – popular items sell out fast, and aren’t replenished. A new item goes on sale the next night. The item descriptions are cheeky, the online forum is relatively uncensored, and the audience is extremely geeky (and proud of it. Though the site definitely …

DVD / HDTV

Product Review: LG LST3510A HDTV tuner/DVD player

March 11, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - 4 Comments.

New connectivity options often drive product design, and DVI/HDMI is no exception. DVI and HDMI are interfaces that allow you to keep the signal in the digital domain throughout their journey, making hookup simpler, and providing a noticeably sharper picture when viewing digital content (such as DVD or HDTV) on digital displays (like plasma, LCD, DLP, or LCOS), as the signal is never converted back and forth to analog at all. I’ve already written about how computer-like interfaces open up the A/V cable market to new entrants, but every product in the A/V chain may need to change as well. …

Audio / Industry

iPod Rips Through “Pretty Face Syndrome”

March 7, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

BusinessWeek has an article in this week’s issue titled, "The Crisp, Clear Sound of Rising Profits" [registration req’d] on B&O’s recent uptick in business. After years of stagnation, the company is rolling out dozens of new initiatives in high end audio systems for exclusive automobiles, yachts, and penthouse suites at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. That’s all well and good, but those are relatively small markets with high investment required to enter. In other words, they’re brand-building activities, not core products. Bose and Harman are exceptions: they make real money in their auto divisions because they’ve built the business …

DVD

Something There Is That Doesn’t Love a Format War

March 2, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

It seems like everybody’s writing stories about the upcoming HD disc format war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray (BD). The technical specs are reasonably locked down, but everything else is up in the air – perfect fodder for journalism/rampant speculation. Gizmodo had prematurely called HD-DVD the winner based on studio support (I called them on it here). More recently, DVDFile.com posted a follow up of sorts – also trying to predict a winner based on the various studios and where they’re currently lined up on the issue. This is pretty hard to do because the studios are about evenly split, and …

DVD

This Disc Will Self Destruct. Interested?

February 10, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

Wired is reporting that Disney has given up on Flexplay’s EZ-D disposable DVD format. The press had a field day getting environmental activists all riled up against the format, but that’s just a sidebar. If consumers found disposable DVDs moderately convenient, then the used discs would end up in the landfill alongside the rest of our disposable society. If the discs were a smash hit, then we’d end up with another color plastic recycling bin for media (which might not be a bad idea anyway. I must throw away hundreds of discs a year, even after AOL stopped mailing them …

Displays / Industry

Consolidation in the Display Business

February 8, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

The New York Times today reports (free reg. req’d) two separate deals: Fujitsu is selling its LCD display manufacturing to LCD leader Sharp, and Matushita (known in the US as "Panasonic") is hooking up with Hitachi to jointly manufacture plasma displays. Bottom line here: prices are dropping too fast to go it alone if you aren’t dominating the field. -avi