Storage continues to be the one major hidden dimension for video and the rising capabilities of Flash memory are set to unleash yet another idea for video portability.
We found the idea in the excellent EETimes, which it calls Pause TV, built around the idea of a TV with a chunk of inexpensive flash memory, instead of a real DVR and inventing the term ‘Flash Pause.’ Devices using this technique are set to be introduced at September’s IFA and IBC trade shows.
It appears the chip vendors (not the Flash makers themselves which would include Hynix, Intel, ST Micro, Micron, Samsung and Toshiba) have been unable to keep quiet about what is a new NAND Flash war. The EETimes article cites chip makers Magnum, Mobilygen and LSI Logic, which are supporting reference platforms for pause TV.
Eventually virtually every audio visual device will include Flash memory at some point in the future and these TVs will use flash memory to pause or rewind a few minutes of ‘live’ TV, which in turn may lead to new advertising models on TV.
The prototype TVs allow the pausing of live TV without a hard disk drive. DVRs usually add around $250 to the price of a device, whereas this flash addition might be absorbed comfortably into the existing TV price levels, which are falling rapidly.
Back in February 2004 Faultline made what we thought was a bold statement that the numbers of LCD and other flat screen TV devices would rise at double the pace that industry analysts had pegged it, with something like 25 million devices being shipped in 2008, at a retail value of around $1,760, generating some $22.5 billion at the factory gates. Even though this was the MOST aggressive forecast by almost double the nearest other forecasters, today we have a flat screen display market worth $84 billion with TVs about to make up $30 billion of that, a full year ahead of our projection.
This has meant that even DisplaySearch, the NPD owned researcher, which looks at nothing else, has consistently under predicted the market, and that the suppliers have all had to undergo colossal price cutting and the constant search for differentiators. Last month Sony said that it would bundle a web video conversion box into every Bravia TV set, which means that everyone will be able to watch internet video on TV. So new ideas like Pause TV or Flash Pause, will take off like a rocket and in 12 short months become automatic on every device after first street availability during the latter part of this year.
The EETimes reports that Magnum Semiconductor already has a Pause TV reference design, saying that it won’t record a full movie, and just enables pause and replay which are among the more popular commands on a DVR, and that it takes TV in any form that it arrives, and transcodes it into H.264 so that it takes up less flash memory.
Will it be enough to pause a program for the first 15 minutes or so, so that it is possible to fast forward through advertising, you betcha. The article discussed 4GB of flash and two hours of DVD quality video, so this actually represents a genuine threat to the future of hard disks in DVRs. Some of the suppliers are talking about a ten year lifetime for these chips, as well as bringing them out retrospectively for existing TV sets for around $40 and even bundling them with DTT solutions such as the DVB-T and ATSC services in Europe and the US in a single set top box.
That price is well within impulse purchasing levels and will naturally give rise to yet another concept, which is if these recordings can become portable, then this content can be plugged into portable devices, or other TV sets, just like a DVD. So the pause system can be like a DVD player. Sure it’s another potential opportunity for piracy, but it’s another potential differentiator for consumer electronics companies that also happen to offer portable video devices, like Sony. Take the flash out of the TV, put it in the PSP, easy. Although that’s not planned for the first generation of devices.
And just where would that leave the advertising market, if 200 million devices each year flooded the industry with free DVR-like function, all of which could be used to ‘avoid’ broadcast advertising? It would speed up the DVR revolution overnight and accelerate the shift to internet delivered programming and the fall of the traditional broadcast TV model.
And if our experiences with the LCD flat TV screen market are anything to go on, this will all happen about double the rate that any forecaster is comfortable predicting.