HDTV Expert - Ken Werner at Digital Signge Expo 2012

Ken will be attending DSE in Las Vegas on March 7-8, 2012.

Posted by Pete Putman, February 22, 2012 12:17 PM

Peter Putman is the president of ROAM Consulting L.L.C. His company provides training, marketing communications, and product testing/development services to manufacturers, dealers, and end-users of displays, display interfaces, and related products.

Pete edits and publishes HDTVexpert.com, a Web blog focused on digital TV, HDTV, and display technologies. He is also a columnist for Pro AV magazine, the leading trade publication for commercial AV systems integrators.

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HDTV Expert - Dish Network Hops Over the Top, by Ken Werner

In World War I, going “over the top” of your trench into often-withering machine-gun fire took tremendous courage – and ended the lives of millions of soldiers.  The consequences are not as dire for the new management team at troubled Dish Network, and the company is light-heartedly hopping over the top with the help of two kangaroos as mascots and logos.  Still, new CEO Joe Clayton is dramatically remaking his company’s mission – and the company’s health, if not its survival, is in the balance.

As he demonstrated at his company’s press presentation at CES, Clayton is a huckster of the old school – and a brilliant one.  In keeping with the presentation’s (and Clayton’s) over-the-top style, recorded cheering and applause accompanied Clayton’s appearance with a live joey – that is, a young kangaroo.   The other half of the mascot/logo team is Hopper, an adult kangaroo.  Why?  We’ll get to that.

One of Clayton’s favorite words was “new.”  He was presenting, he said, a new Dish, with a new brand, new mascots, new management team, new CEO (him), new corporate partnerships, new logo, new products, new services and promotions, new website, and new advertising.

Dish’s transformation is striking.  Instead of being primarily a satellite TV provider that is steadily losing market share to competitor Direct TV, the company’s new focus will be to provide a whole-home set-top box (STB) fed by broadband.  Satellite services will remain, and be enhanced, for those without broadband access.

As well as being Dish’s new logo, Hopper is the name of the company’s new “whole-home” set-top box (STB), and will be the conduit for, in Clayton’s words, “more music, more movies, more magic.”  Joeys are small satellite STBs for TV sets in other rooms.  Hopper includes a 2 terabyte hard drive  and stores hundreds of hours of programs.  With “Prime Time Anytime,” which includes Sirius XM Radio, you can automatically and simultaneously record all prime-time programming from the four major networks, plus two additional programs of your choice, and you can simultaneously play back four of them to different Joey satellite STBs throughout the house, and TVs can be controlled separately as long as each one has a Joey.

Dish’s purchase of Blockbuster last year was not greeted with unanimous praise, but Dish is incorporating Blockbuster@home, and its ability to stream 10,000 different movies, into its services.  If you don’t have access to broadband, there is Blockbuster unplugged, which downloads movies via satellite to your Hopper hard drive at less than real-time rates.

Communications VP Stephanie Pence quoted research that says 87% of TV households subscribe both to pay TV and broadband, with 83% of Netflix subscribers still maintain pay TV subscriptions.  And that is the new Dish’s target.  Dish will supply something approximating a cable TV experience using just your broadband connection.  If you want a free sample, you can register on line for the “Dish Test Drive” and receive 24 hours of typical content.

Back to Joe Clayton:  “The Dish brand will start growing again in 2012.  We are re-launching our company and restoring our brand.”  The ad campaign will roll out this quarter.

This is going over the top with a vengeance and cable should be worried.  Even if Dish does not get the viewer experience and pricing quite right, somebody else will, and soon.  Once that happens, what will the much-hated cable companies have to sell?  Only the broadband pipe that carries other peoples’ content.

Ken Werner is Principal of Nutmeg Consultants, specializing in the display industry and display technology.

 

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

HDTV Expert - Dish Network Hops Over the Top, by Ken Werner

In World War I, going “over the top” of your trench into often-withering machine-gun fire took tremendous courage – and ended the lives of millions of soldiers.  The consequences are not as dire for the new management team at troubled Dish Network, and the company is light-heartedly hopping over the top with the help of two kangaroos as mascots and logos.  Still, new CEO Joe Clayton is dramatically remaking his company’s mission – and the company’s health, if not its survival, is in the balance.

As he demonstrated at his company’s press presentation at CES, Clayton is a huckster of the old school – and a brilliant one.  In keeping with the presentation’s (and Clayton’s) over-the-top style, recorded cheering and applause accompanied Clayton’s appearance with a live joey – that is, a young kangaroo.   The other half of the mascot/logo team is Hopper, an adult kangaroo.  Why?  We’ll get to that.

One of Clayton’s favorite words was “new.”  He was presenting, he said, a new Dish, with a new brand, new mascots, new management team, new CEO (him), new corporate partnerships, new logo, new products, new services and promotions, new website, and new advertising.

Dish’s transformation is striking.  Instead of being primarily a satellite TV provider that is steadily losing market share to competitor Direct TV, the company’s new focus will be to provide a whole-home set-top box (STB) fed by broadband.  Satellite services will remain, and be enhanced, for those without broadband access.

As well as being Dish’s new logo, Hopper is the name of the company’s new “whole-home” set-top box (STB), and will be the conduit for, in Clayton’s words, “more music, more movies, more magic.”  Joeys are small satellite STBs for TV sets in other rooms.  Hopper includes a 2 terabyte hard drive  and stores hundreds of hours of programs.  With “Prime Time Anytime,” which includes Sirius XM Radio, you can automatically and simultaneously record all prime-time programming from the four major networks, plus two additional programs of your choice, and you can simultaneously play back four of them to different Joey satellite STBs throughout the house, and TVs can be controlled separately as long as each one has a Joey.

Dish’s purchase of Blockbuster last year was not greeted with unanimous praise, but Dish is incorporating Blockbuster@home, and its ability to stream 10,000 different movies, into its services.  If you don’t have access to broadband, there is Blockbuster unplugged, which downloads movies via satellite to your Hopper hard drive at less than real-time rates.

Communications VP Stephanie Pence quoted research that says 87% of TV households subscribe both to pay TV and broadband, with 83% of Netflix subscribers still maintain pay TV subscriptions.  And that is the new Dish’s target.  Dish will supply something approximating a cable TV experience using just your broadband connection.  If you want a free sample, you can register on line for the “Dish Test Drive” and receive 24 hours of typical content.

Back to Joe Clayton:  “The Dish brand will start growing again in 2012.  We are re-launching our company and restoring our brand.”  The ad campaign will roll out this quarter.

This is going over the top with a vengeance and cable should be worried.  Even if Dish does not get the viewer experience and pricing quite right, somebody else will, and soon.  Once that happens, what will the much-hated cable companies have to sell?  Only the broadband pipe that carries other peoples’ content.

Ken Werner is Principal of Nutmeg Consultants, specializing in the display industry and display technology.

 

HDTV Expert - March is Read an eBook Month If Youre Canadian, by Ken Werner

Award-winning Canadian eBook and print author Rita Y. Toews (Prometheus, The Centurion, and The Price of Freedom, among others), convinced the Canadian Parliament to name March 2012 as “Read an eBook Month.”

How did she do that, HDTVexpert asked in mid-February.  “The effort,” Toews said, “was two years in the making.  I researched how to go about it, and then talked to my MP [Member of Parliament].  She was polite but not enthusiastic.

“I then talked to Betty Kasischke, President of EPIC [The Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition], who helped draft a resolution.  Epic had been interested in a similar resolution for the U.S., and they wrote to [President] Obama, who never answered.”  Toews gave the resolution to her MP, who was now enthusiastic and took the prepared resolution to Parliament, where it passed quickly.

HDTVexpert:  Do you think “Read an eBook Month” will encourage additional eBook and eReader sales?

Toews:  It probably won’t have a lot of practical effect.  But it provides an umbrella for events organizations might want to organize and it provides legitimacy.

HDTVexpert:  Do you think eBooks promote reading?

Toews:  Yes.  Young people love them. I have a two year old granddaughter who is fascinated by anything that lights up, and children with autism relate to eReaders and computers better than they do to human beings

HDTVexpert:  From your perspective as both a writer and reader, what makes a good eReader?

Toews:  The perfect eReader is still coming.  Readers need a longer battery life.  I don’t find color important but I can see why some people want it.  The addition of color can make eReaders attractive for comic books, cook books, and other kinds of books that don’t work well with current eReaders.

The concept of flipping through the pages conveniently is very important.  In my reading group, what was holding people back from eReaders was the inability to flip forward and backwards.  When I sent people the KAIST link [see below], they said “Wow!   This is what we’ve been waiting for!”   The combination of the KAIST interface with flexible screens would make a really effective eReader.   Then you could run your fingers along the edge and have the feeling of flipping the pages.  Wouldn’t that be cool?

Toews maintains a well-designed Website, ebookweek.com.  One of her current links is to the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) Institute of Information Convergence smart eBook interface prototype (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rVyBwz1-AiE).   The interface really does permit intuitive book-like page flipping in both directions.  One should ask about the hardware, software, and power overheads required to make this excellent interface work.  But Moore’s Law is still working, so it should just be a matter of time before the interface can be implemented in a practical way, if it isn’t already.

HDTV Expert - The Flood of USB-powered Monitors is Coming, by Ken Werner

At the ShowStoppers show-within-a-show at CES last month, HP was showing what its European distributors call a ”hot desktop” monitor.  (This was new to the company, HP’s Jim Christensen told me, but it is apparently an already-defined category in Europe.)  The targeted applications of what HP calls the HP Compaq L2311C Docking Monitor are hotel rooms and business desks.  Plug the USB cable from the monitor into your laptop and you’re automatically connected to the monitor and the Internet.

A more typical application was shown by Toshiba at the PEPCOM show-within-a-show.  (There are three of these events for media and analysts at CES, each run by a different company.  We go to the events because it is easier to talk to personnel from the exhibiting companies, and the reps are more likely to be knowledgeable than those you meet on the show floor.  There is also free food and drink, a time-honored way to make sure the press shows up.)

Toshiba showed 14- and 15.6-inch USB 3.0-powered monitors.  They will also work with a USB 2.0 cable, but require two USB 2.0 ports to supply the needed power.  The monitors have 1368×768 pixels.  Both models will ship in March, the 14-inch at $199, the 15.6-inch at a price to be determined.  Each unit comes with a leatherette combination stand/case.  These units were only a few of the USB-powered monitors to be found at CES.

DisplayLink supplies the technology that drives these USB-powered monitors, with the USB display controller contained on a chip embedded in the monitor itself.  The controller is also available in free-standing adaptors for supplying video signals to AC-powered monitors via USB connections.

In their booth in the Las Vegas Convention Center South Hall, DisplayLink was featuring their USB 3.0 chips, which can drive monitors up to 2560×1600 pixels.  There were several USB 3.0-powered monitors from DisplayLink customers in the booth.  An interesting one was an  AOC 15-inch, available for only $130 at Best Buy, a newly aggressive price point for USB-powered monitors of this size.  The AOC unit has no switches or controls.  The USB receptacle is protected by a fold-out kickstand.  Plug the USB 3.0 cable into the monitor and it turns on, with the controller contained in the embedded DisplayLink adaptor.

Also in the booth was a more elegant model from Lenovo for $199, and  AOC has a 22-inch for $199.  DisplayLink was also showing a variety of docking stations and monitor/audio adaptors available from various vendors.

Why the explosion of USB-powered monitors now?  On the technical side, the sharp recent reductions in power consumption of LCD-monitors, combined with the greater power available from the USB 3.0 socket (compared with USB 2.), has solved the power problem.  In addition to that, said DisplayLink Product Manager Theo Goguely, USB monitors are inherently global products, independent of AC power and plug differences in different markets.  You don’t have to include a different power brick or outlet wart for each market, which makes for a multiplicity of SKUs.  In fact, you don’t include a power brick or outlet wart at all, which results in a significant saving of hardware, packaging, and shipping costs.  USB-powered monitors are on the verge of becoming standard, reasonably priced notebook accessories.