Blu-ray is still not selling, says DisplaySearch, but perhaps its time is about to come in the post Thanksgiving sales in the US, which may see the introduction of sub-$200 branded devices and sub $150 second tier players. The company plans a post Black Friday (Sale day) webinar to tell if the strategy has worked. Don’t hold your breath, it will take a while to take off.
DisplaySearch also has its quarterly Large Area TFT LCD report out and says that trends for 120Hz panels, those that go more than double 60 frames a second, reached 3.6 million units in the past quarter up 57% from the second quarter, which constitutes something of a trend. The 120Hz panels accounted for 16% of all 32 inch screens and 27% of all 40 inch screens.
That Verismo Networks PoD device that we wrote about a few months back has been named for launch as the VuNow set top, delivering what it calls its MyVu service, which lets you run ANY video from the internet directly on your TV, and the device includes search capabilities. Deliveries will begin on December 15 it says, and it has some kind of partnership with Wi-Fi distributor Netgear with more such deals to follow. The set tops are tiny ‘ around 3 by 4 by 1.5 inches and therefore portable and we know an SD version will be $99 and a little more for HD. Presumably they will be sold exclusively in the US to start with, what else?
Warner Music results for its fourth quarter showed revenues down 1.5% to $854 million which would have been slightly worse on a constant-currency basis. US revenues fell 5.4% while international grew 3.7% but mostly through currency fluctuation. Income from continuing operations was just $6 million and the company has $411 million in the bank. The good news was the growth of digital revenue to $167 million, now 20% of the total only up slightly from the third quarter, but up 28% from this time last year.
DVB-H chip specialist DiBcom is pleased to have landed its DVB-T/DVB-H hybrid chip into a new LG Electronics phone the KB770 multimedia phone with a touch screen. The device is aimed at countries where operators might want to offer DVB-T access now, and later add DVB-H services. Sounds like they are describing France, Spain and several central European countries, as well as Germany. The device has a 3 inch 400 x 240 pixel touchscreen display which makes it neat for watching TV.
The latest 007 movie A Quantum of Solace produced over $300 million in revenue worldwide in its first three weeks according to Sony Distribution which includes $70.4 million in ticket sales in the its first weekend, the best ever for a Bond movie. The film cost $200 million to make.
US researcher ABI reckons that set top box sales will peak in 2012 and then head into a bit of a decline and says that basic set tops are already sliding. ABI believes that more and more function will go into the network, such as ad insertion, and that devices will no longer need to get cleverer and cleverer each year. ABI said that set tops may have their function placed into residential gateways and gaming devices like the Xbox 360 and the move to take internet video straight to the TV will also play a role in the set top demise. Not quite sure how you can handle Placeshifting from within the network, and that’s the next big thing to hit set tops we reckon, which means we probably don’t agree with ABI on this one.