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Industry Opinion: Trends in Television (2/10/2007)

By Yasmin Hashmi, HiddenWires

This month's focus is on television and video, and having recently returned from CEDIA Expo in the US, I can safely say that larger screens are on the agenda! In addition, manufacturers have been busy developing a range of technologies to improve picture quality and improve the appearance of their products, but while many of these innovations are intriguing, we are left wondering how they will affect the custom install market. So we asked a number of leading lights what trends they see, what recent innovations they think are important, and what we can expect over the coming months. Here are their replies:

Ed Taylor, Vice President of TV Market Research and TV Team Leader, DisplaySearch

Now that MDRP (microdisplay rear-projection) TV and CRT are clearly in decline, the most interesting trend will be the battle between LCD and plasma. LCD has been winning the long-term technology war due to economies of scale for panel manufacturers which produce panels for the IT market etc., whereas plasma panels are for TV applications only. In addition 1080p LCD TVs offer more cost-effective production and therefore better margins; more brightness which gives an advantage in brightly-lit showrooms in a retail environment; and lower power consumption.

Plasma however, is making somewhat of a comeback with its own line of 1080p models, and also yields purer blacks since it is a self-emissive technology. Finally, unlike LCD, plasma does not need video compensation chips to compensate for motion adjustment.

While the battle will be waged for the heart of the 40-52" TV market, other interesting TV developments are OLEDs, LED backlights enabling 100,000:1 LCD TV contrast ratios, 2-4 times brighter plasma TVs with 2-4 times higher contrast, wireless HD, 3D TV, wider than 16x9 TVs (2.35:1), more colours, and a wider colour gamut.

Stuart Tickle, Managing Director, AWE

For the past five years the trend has been the massive growth from CRT to flatpanel TVs, and this has enabled the average screen size in the typical consumer's home to increase significantly. People used to aspire to a 28" TV, then a 32" widescreen, whereas now it's a 42" or 50" flatscreen.

HD-ready screens took off more quickly than anyone thought, even quicker than the HD sources themselves, so you have the majority of consumers watching standard definition TV on HD-ready TVs, but as HD disc, TV and gaming formats become more widespread, so the investment in HD-ready screens is becoming justified. In fact consumers now want cheaper or even free-to-air HD content. Currently, offerings such as Sky HD are price-prohibitive for the average family, and terrestrial HD free-to-air seems to be years away due to current bandwidth restrictions.

The demand for full high-definition screens is also rising sharply, despite it being virtually impossible to pick out the differences between HD-ready and full HD in screen sizes below 50". While this is often simply specification chasing by consumers, for those wanting the absolute best for gaming and movies, full HD screens are the better choice.

The other trend is price erosion, which was over 40% last year alone! This seems to be stabilising now and several manufacturers are thankfully returning to focus on quality rather than price. What surprises me the most however, is that you can look at last year's best screens that at the time we thought couldn't get much better, and then out comes something new that blows them all away! I do not currently subscribe to the 3D TV concept or anything crazy like that, but the continuing technical improvements in picture quality year on year are remarkable.

Graham Goodbun, Service and Technical Manager, Plasmavision, Fujitsu General (UK) Co.

The trend for downward spiralling prices is having an adverse effect on any technology innovation, apart from cheaper manufacturing processes. I'd like to see less focus on pricing and more on the kind of technical innovation that gives a higher quality product, if only for the custom install market. A few manufacturers, including Fujitsu, are making genuine progress with signal processing, specifically with de-interlacing the 1080i HD format and improving SD picture quality. 1080i has become the de facto HDTV standard, and SD programming is likely to be with us for years to come, so it's innovation in these areas that will make a real difference to picture quality - something you'll already see on some current models and certainly on next year's screens.

I also don't think that consumers should get too hung up on full HD panels at this point in time. Upscaling SD material to fill a 1920 x 1080 resolution puts enormous strain on the video processor, and many normal HD-ready and even SD-resolution screens can, and do, look very good with any currently-available signal, and are often comparable to more exotic models when showing 1080p material. UK customers are beginning to see what high quality in-built processing can do instead of chasing the numbers on pixel 'real estate'.

Ed Martin, Technical Manager, PSCo

The most exciting technology I have seen recently is a preview of BIC (Burn-In Compensation) technology which confronts the main criticism of plasma displays - the burn-in effect which causes repetitive or static images to appear as burns or watermarks in subsequent images.

I also think that screens will get larger and larger, becoming less expensive, and new tools will be developed that make installation much easier and quicker.

Mike Gabriel, Head of Marketing, Sharp Electronics (UK)

By 2015, we predict that the average size of an LCD TV in a European home will be 60 inches. We're already seeing a trend towards bigger screen sizes in the trade, and we expect this trend to continue into the mainstream market over the coming months: people are expecting more size for their money. This is why Sharp is looking at a strategy involving LCD screen sizes of 42 inches and above. Ultimately, we're encroaching on the territory of plasma. By the beginning of 2008, we want to be number one in largescreen LCD.

TVs with a built-in digital tuner are an important innovation - not only meaning fewer extra boxes for the consumer, but also reducing energy consumption. With over 90% of our LCD TV range now manufactured with a built-in tuner, Sharp is demonstrating its commitment to delivering a complete digital television solution to the consumer in one product, ahead of the digital switchover.

Rob Bond, Business Manager, Flat TV, Philips Consumer Electronics UK

At Philips we have found that people are ready for technology to be less obtrusive. They want to surround themselves with attractive objects that have personal meaning or that contribute to the harmony of their environment. There is also a big trend moving away from more hard and angular masculine design toward more calm and soft feminine design elements.

In response to this, Philips is introducing the Aurea TV. Whether switched on or off, the Aurea has been designed to completely blend into the home interior. When the Aurea is switched on, it provides a seamless immersive viewing experience, while when it is switched off, it has been designed to give a harmonious, high-end feel and blend into its surroundings.

Steve Venuti, Vice President of Marketing, HDMI Licensing, LLC

In many ways, displays lead the market in defining new functionality. The upcoming line-up of displays that we will see over the next few months is no different. Increased resolution and new colour technologies, all in the name of increasing the video fidelity and quality, are continually being enhanced and refined. 10-bit panels, offering the ability to present billions of colours (Deep Colour) rather than millions of colours, is one way displays are increasing the quality of the picture. The ability to refresh the picture at 120 times per second, rather than the current 50 or 60 times per second, provides sharper motion sequences and yet another feature that adds to the realism of the picture. Also look for displays capable of the new colour standard, called x.v.Color, which expands the available number of colours beyond the traditional sRGB colour spectrum, essentially expanding the palette of available colours by 60%. And finally, although we are just entering the world of 1080p resolution, don't think we will stop there. 1440p displays are around the corner.

All of these new and wonderful features will require more and more bandwidth, and more bandwidth requires an interface and connector that can handle high-definition. HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) provides the pipeline that can handle the bandwidth and features required for these new display technologies. HDMI is an uncompressed digital interconnect standard that accommodates both video and audio over one cable. HDMI can support up to 10.2 Gigabits per second of bandwidth - which is over twice the speed of what is required for a pure 1080p uncompressed signal, so you can be sure that faster refresh rates, increased resolution and enhanced colour functionality, as well as a host of other future capabilities, are supported by this forward-looking interconnect standard.

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