Local reports suggest that Canal Plus is pulling the plug on its 3DTV test channel (channel 18) with sources saying that only about 30,000 viewing homes have bothered to tune into the service. A Canal Plus spokesperson is quoted as saying that there are too few 3D programmes on offer and too few 3D-enabled TV sets in consumers’ homes. Broadcasts [...]
Attracted by market prospects for mobile TV, Israeli maker of TV chips for mobile devices Siano Mobile Silicon is planning a push into the US in 2012, with the possibility an initial public offering filing as early as 2012, reports Bloomberg. Chief Executive Officer Alon Ironi said that Siano had held conversations with bankers and was considering a US filing [...]
Consumer behaviour and TV set maker strategies are resulting in widely diverging TV product ranges across the world. While the industry is truly global, regional differences are increasing. For 3D, the most enthusiastic regions are Western Europe and China, while the mix of 3D in North America actually declined in Q3’11, according to the Q4’11 NPD DisplaySearch Quarterly TV Design [...]
Findings from customer experience analytics firm ForeSee’s annual Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index show that after seven years spent jockeying for first place in the Index, Amazon and Netflix are headed in divergent directions. Amazon climbed two points to score 88 on the study’s 100-point scale, registering the highest score from any retailer in 14 consecutive studies. Meanwhile, Netflix’s well-publicised blunders [...]
According to the latest NPD DisplaySearch Quarterly TV Cost and Price Forecast Model, average US street prices for all LCD TV sizes up to 46″ will be below $1,000 for the first time, and all 32″, including high frame-rate LED models, will be below $500. Many other pricing milestones will be reached during the holiday season in 2011 as well, [...]
Leading Japanese telco NTT DoCoMo has reached a basic agreement with five companies — Fujitsu Fujitsu Semiconductor, NEC Corporation, Panasonic Mobile Communications, and Samsung Electronics — to establish a fabless joint venture company by the end of March 2012 to develop and sell semiconductor products for mobile devices. The joint venture company, leveraging the six investing companies’ strong backgrounds in [...]
Sky Deutschland has confirmed to the Financial Times German edition that its deal to show Paramount-branded movies is not being renewed. Instead, says the FT, Sky Deutschland is concentrating on soccer. On December 1, it launched its Sky Sport News HD channel, and over the past month or so had secured exclusive coverage of all of the Italian Serie A [...]
A catastrophic rocket failure just before Christmas – although unrelated – and a technical hitch has forced Russia’s Krunichev State Research & Production Centre to postpone severely the planned December 27 launch of SES-4 by ILS. Krunichev and Russia’s Roskosmos have not elaborated on the reasons for the delay, but local sources suggest that defects in the Proton/Breeze-M rocket’s booster [...]
Japanese electronics giant Sony is to exit its S-LCD manufacturing joint-venture with South Korea’s Samsung. Samsung will pay $940 million to Sony for complete ownership of the venture. Sony and Samsung have worked together on flat-panel LCD production for the past seven years and industry reports made it clear last July that Sony was looking to exit the arrangement. “In [...]
Chinese government officials have confirmed a January 1 2012 launch date for the country’s first 3DTV channel. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), China’s broadcasting regulator, is working on the project with the country’s state broadcaster, China Central Television, and with regional TV stations from Beijing, Shanghai and three other areas. “The launch of the 3DTV trial [...]
