Chinese consumer electronics company Haier demonstrated its Eye-Control TV at the IFA show.
“To use the set, you sit in front of a black rectangular sensor positioned at chest height,” reports Engadget. “There’s some calibration involved when moving from person to person, chasing a circle around the screen with your eyes. Once calibrated, you’re good to go.”
The user’s eyes move up and down and/or blink in order to change channels, adjust volume and perform other basic television controls. Eye movements are also used to access and navigate the user interface featuring pictures of videos.
“The use of pictures certainly seems the most intuitive method for navigating around videos — there’s a definite learning curve here, and it’s hard enough to select pictures — we couldn’t really imagine toggling through small text,” notes the post.
“This doesn’t feel quite ready for market — it’s a compelling concept, nonetheless,” suggests Engadget. “And using the human eye to control a display that you’re already staring at anyway does seem to have some merits.”
The post includes a 2-minute video demo of the retina-controlled system from the IFA show floor.
At IFA 2012, Panasonic featured its 145-inch 8K plasma display panel that boasts image quality 16 times that of regular full HD.
“Developed in partnership with Japan’s NHK, the prototype is merely a proof of concept for the broadcaster’s planned 2020 launch of Super Hi Vision TV,” reports Engadget.
According to this review, the screen is “truly awe-inspiring,” with rich detail and no discernible pixels in view. No release date has been announced, but it’ll be a long while before this screen gets to mass market.
In a related post, Engadget reports that Panasonic also showed its new 103-inch demonstration display at IFA.
The plasma panel offers 3D to up to five different viewers, so long as they’re in the correct visual sweet spot. It is glasses-free with a 4K2K screen. Although the colors don’t quite pop when compared to Panasonic’s 145-inch 8K display, it’s still impressive, according to Engadget.
The posts include video and images from the Panasonic booth at IFA.
LG’s 55-inch OLED TV made its debut at last year’s CES in Las Vegas. It’s back at the IFA show in Berlin, but this time with 3D capability.
The sleek, 4-millimeter screen, complete with carbon fiber backing “looked great,” notes Engadget.
“At 55 inches, it’s no goliath compared to the 84-inch TVs we’ve seen this week from Sony, Toshiba and even LG, but the company claims this 55-inch model is the largest OLED HDTV available,” explains the post.
In related news, Engadget reports that LG touted some big products at IFA, including an 84-inch UD 3DTV and the 55-inch OLED HDTV, but it also has smaller items in its arsenal, like the 29-inch EA93.
“The company announced its 21:9 aspect ratio monitor, the 29-inch EA93, just prior to IFA. The IPS monitor boasts a WQHD resolution (2,560 x 1,080 pixels) and supports four-way split-screen view,” details Engadget.
The wide-screen aspect ratio is the same found in a movie theater, making this screen an ideal choice for viewing Blu-ray discs.
Both posts feature videos and slideshows form the LG booth at IFA.
“MakerBot Industries was already arguably the best known name in the emerging home 3D printer market with its Cupcake and Thing-O-Matic printers,” reports GigaOM. “But the launch of the Replicator printer in January at CES exceeded MakerBot’s best projections and it’s prompting CEO Bre Pettis to imagine even more possibilities with 3D printing.”
Before the Replicator, MakerBot had sold 7,500 units overall. Now the company is at 13,000 units.
The Replicator comes fully assembled and ready to use. It costs $1,749 or $1,999 for a model that produces two colors. Its price and ease of use are propelling its success.
Pettis is beginning to imagine the future of 3D printing. “I want to find ways for people to make money and turn their cutting edge ideas into cash,” he says. “When you take Americans, who are so innovative and will fail until something works, and put a machine in their hands that [makes] anything, it’s volatile. We will have an explosion.”
According to Pettis, the economics make sense for entrepreneurs. The article details more of his ideas, writing that a “kilogram of plastic starts at $42 dollars and can create almost 400 chess pieces. Now with Replicator, the typical buyer profile is changing.”
“While it used to be hackers and programmers that were interested in previous printers, Replicator now attracts all kinds of customers, from industrial engineers and designers to parents, teachers and hobbyists,” he concludes.
Google+ is now being used by companies for private, internal communications. “It’s the latest part of Google’s strategy to push Google+ into everything that it offers to Web users,” reports Technology Review.
This new offering goes hand in hand with Google’s online email, calendars and document editing services, all of which are used by companies for internal use already.
“Google+ will now be offered alongside those, allowing employees at companies that sign up to have internal discussions using the network, share documents, and schedule video chats,” according to the article.
This move puts Google+ into direct competition with existing social networks like the Microsoft-owned Yammer. Only time will tell if such a move into the workplace will help Google+ to compete with social media giants like Facebook and Twitter.
Google+ for businesses is currently free, but businesses should expect a pay model by 2014.
As evidenced by two recent events, Twitter is in the midst of changing “from being a kind of real-time information utility to being a global media entity,” which has led “the company to restrict access to its API, in order to control as much of the content flowing through its network as possible,” according to GigaOM.
In the first event, “the company abruptly yanked Tumblr’s ability to connect to Twitter’s friend-finder API, and in the second it bragged about how positive its recent partnership with NBC was around the Summer Olympics,” notes the post.
Tumblr was disappointed by the move, which wrote in a statement: “To our dismay, Twitter has restricted our users’ ability to ‘Find Twitter Friends’ on Tumblr. Given our history of embracing their platform, this is especially upsetting. Our syndication feature is responsible for hundreds of millions of tweets, and we eagerly enabled Twitter Cards across 70 million blogs and 30 billion posts as one of Twitter’s first partners… We are truly disappointed by Twitter’s decision.”
The future is unclear for Twitter, suggests GigaOM, and only time will tell its fate.
“The only question that remains is whether enough users want Twitter to become that kind of media entity, with all the controls and restrictions and advertising messages that come with it. It’s possible that — as some have argued — the third-party developers who are complaining about their treatment by the company are no longer relevant… or Twitter may have miscalculated badly, and sealed its fate as yet another media entity scrambling to promote its ads to a declining user base, just as MySpace did,” explains the post.
In increasing numbers, consumers are using their large flat-panel TVs to watch online video, play music, view photos, access social media and more.
“The trouble is, this is primarily being done via plugged-in PCs, or add-on boxes like Apple TV, Microsoft’s Xbox, and Roku players,” the Wall Street Journal notes. “They use separate remotes and are accessed via separate inputs on the TV.”
In response, TV manufacturers are offering smart TVs. “Their pitch is that you can switch between, or even combine on one screen, regular TV and Internet content, without adding extra devices and remotes, or switching inputs,” explains the article.
Walt Mossberg decided to “check in on the state of the smart TV.” He did so by using the latest Samsung unit because of its popularity and touch-based remote, along with its Smart Interaction concept, “which uses a camera and microphones built into the TV to support voice control, gesture control and facial recognition,” he writes.
While Mossberg found that the 46-inch ES8000 worked well for watching cable, conducting Skype conversations, streaming TV and movies through Netflix and other services, he also found the Smart interaction to be “unreliable and awkward.”
“I focused my testing on the Smart Interaction, the new remote and the latest version of the Smart Hub, Samsung’s built-in interface for apps and Web content,” he notes. “The TV easily hooked up to my cable box and allows you to control many functions, like turning the TV on or off or launching apps, by saying ‘Hi, TV’ then speaking a command,” with built-in mics on the TV or remote.
But in many cases, Mossberg’s commands were ignored or interpreted incorrectly. “Gestures were similarly frustrating,” he writes. Same goes for face recognition, which rarely, if ever, worked.
“There are flashes of a great future merging regular TV and the Web on the Samsung Smart TV,” he concludes. “But it needs work.”
A recent study by J.D. Power and Associates reveals that only 11 percent of consumers purchasing HDTVs are motivated by 3D capabilities.
The “2012 High Definition (HDTV) Report” was released last week, based on research of 1,000 consumers who purchased HDTVs during the past year.
Price is often a factor, according to Sara Wong Hilton, a director at J.D. Power and Associates. Another is the requirement of special media players or 3D glasses, which many find to be an irritating necessity and expense.
“The study said that 75 percent of customers surveyed gave price as the primary motivation for making their HDTV purchases,” reports TV Technology. “This was followed by brand reputation (60 percent), positive reviews (37 percent), past brand experience (36 percent), construction quality (33 percent), styling (29 percent), and ease of use (21 percent).”
“Half of the customers responding to the survey said they purchased 41- to 50-inch sets,” adds the post. “The poll also showed that LCD displays were more popular than LED or plasma models and that Vizio led the field in customer satisfaction, scoring 887 on a 1,000 point scale.”
Maxwell Wessel discusses the inevitable disruption of television in a guest blog for Harvard Business Review. Wessel is a member of the Forum for Growth and Innovation, a Harvard Business School think tank focused on disruptive innovation.
“Periodically, technologies or business model innovations allow start-ups to enter industries offering services that are generally cheaper and more accessible, but of far lower quality,” he writes. “However, over time, these start-ups tend to invest in performance improvements in such a way that allows them to displace industry incumbents.”
Already, for a fraction of the cost of cable, consumers can subscribe to streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu Plus, which may not have all desired content, but are becoming increasingly viewed as “good enough” alternatives.
And as more people opt into these disruptive services, “the big studios and distribution companies, armed with their outrageous overhead structures, will be unable to compete with small production studios designed to leverage novel distribution channels at much lower cost,” writes Wessel.
But he also notes that a change in the overall ecosystem will be difficult (though not impossible and still inevitable) because it is currently built around “multi-billion dollar wire infrastructures” and a consumer base in need of high-speed wireless Internet access.
Change on a massive scale will happen slowly, according to Wessel. “Academics have noted that disruptive cycles take place over periods of 15-30 years. Even if those cycles are faster than ever with the ever-falling costs of distributing information, educating the public about new ideas, and producing innovative products, it will still be a number of years before we see meaningful change.”
In a recent survey conducted by market research company Lab42, it was found that 66 percent of consumers prefer Web retailers to brick-and-mortar stores and about 73 percent of survey participants do nearly half of their shopping online.
“Shopping online allows us to skip the lines, crowds, travel expenses and the hassle of parking,” notes Mashable.
The Web can also be a great place to find bargains. Nielsen recently reported that nearly half of all U.S. smartphone owners regularly use shopping and deal apps such as eBay, Amazon, Groupon and LivingSocial.
“About 45 million smartphone owners access shopping-and-commerce apps each month,” details the post.
Lab42 created a great infographic to help visualize the data. One interesting statistic: “45 percent of online shoppers have bought something online that they would not buy in person.”
Recent numbers indicate that smartphone sales have surpassed PC sales, “meaning that smartphones are rapidly becoming the most common device connected to the Internet,” according to Business Insider.
This is affecting habits both within and outside of the work environment.
Apple is winning at mobile enterprise because of the rising BYOD (“bring your own device”) culture in the workplace. According to Goog Technology, more than 72 percent of its clients had a BYOD program, offering “formal support for users to access corporate information on their personal devices,” notes the post.
The iOS platform is becoming increasingly popular in the workplace, reports Business Insider: “Between 65 percent and 74 percent of all new phone activations per quarter for the last year and a half have been with iPhones, according to Good Technology.”
That data is even more tilted in Apple’s favor when it comes to tablets. The iPad is the clear favorite, responsible for more than 90 percent of all tablet activations.
“Don’t count the competition out: IT departments are growing to accept Android, as they work through some of the complications — such as more device types and platform updates — presented by Android,” explains the post. “And Microsoft, of course, still has many strengths in the enterprise and an aggressive new product strategy to build on them.”
Nearly 100 million tablets were sold in 2011. That’s a big number, especially considering the tablet craze only began with the launch of the first iPad two years ago.
“Tablets and smartphones will not completely displace PCs. But they will quickly overwhelm them in terms of unit sales,” suggests Business Insider, adding that “when, where, how and to what degree this occurs will have tremendous implications across many businesses and industries.”
According to a report from BI Intelligence, it’s estimated that tablet sales will reach 400 million units by 2016. The report offers four reasons:
1) “The average sales price of tablets are falling.” Even the all-powerful iPad’s price has dropped 11 percent since its launch in 2011. This drop has much to do with the introduction of the mini tablet by Amazon and the likely appearance of more such devices soon.
2) “Increased penetration in existing markets. Increased adoption will be driven by falling prices and the tablet market’s subsumption of the e-reader market, which sold more than 20 million devices in 2011,” writes Business Insider.
3) “Tablets are disruptive.” Tablets are far better for media consumption than any PC and are cheaper alternatives for consumers.
4) “Multiple emerging markets are ripe for tablet disruption.” The report notes that “tablets have only started making their way into the enterprise — a hardware market that will top $420 billion this year.” It mentions education as another opportunity, noting that “U.S. K-12 schools spent about $5.5 billion on textbooks in 2010, and college students spend hundreds of dollars per semester on textbooks they’ll only use once.”
Even amongst the giants of music streaming, financial situations are unstable. Both Spotify and Pandora, two streaming services with millions of users, are losing money because of music royalties, according to The New York Times.
“Pandora, which went public last summer, has never had a profitable year, and in its most recently reported quarter lost $20 million on $81 million in revenue,” writes NYT, also reporting that “Spotify’s accounts for the last year, recently filed in Luxembourg, show that it lost $57 million in 2011, despite a big increase in revenue, to $236 million.”
Pandora, which offers both free and paid services, relies most heavily on advertising for revenue, but can’t earn enough to offset its royalty costs. “Last year, Pandora paid $149 million, or 54 percent of its revenue, for ‘content acquisition,’ otherwise known as royalties,” notes the article.
Spotify was able to earn 83 percent of its revenue from subscriptions, with 4 million of its 32.8 million users paying the $5-$10 monthly fee rate.
Its royalty negotiations with labels are private, but “Spotify’s chief executive, Daniel Ek, has said that the company had paid in its history about 70 percent of its income ‘back to the industry.’ But a closer look at its recent financial statements shows that the ratio may be even higher,” reports NYT.
It’s difficult to predict what might solve the music industry’s issues, as declining sales over the past decade make it difficult to imagine record labels will lower their royalty rates. “But the graveyard of failed digital services, and the financial struggles of Pandora and Spotify show that the music industry hasn’t yet figured out the balance between licensing costs and how much money a digital service can make,” concludes the article.
According to new figures from Nielsen and Kantar Media based on TV viewing data from ad targeting company Simulmedia, many U.S. TV advertising campaigns are failing to reach a “large portion of their target audiences,” reports the Financial Times.
The data shows that “in many cases as many as three-quarters of marketers’ TV ad impressions are viewed by just 20 percent of their target audiences,” notes the article.
Multi-million dollar campaigns for Axe body spray and Progressive insurance, for example, are falling far short of expectations.
Even as viewing habits are changing, “TV ad spending remains the bulk of many companies’ marketing budgets,” explains the article. In fact, U.S. advertisers are still expected to allocate 42.2 percent of their total spending to TV ads this year, a figure up from 39 percent five years ago.
While the allocations are still proving to be profitable, a change should be considered in light of those evolving viewing habits, says David Cohen, global chief media officer at Interpublic’s Universal McCann.
“When you are sitting fat and happy, there is not a lot of impetus to make a change,” he suggests. “But I am fairly certain that whether we like it or not, the horse is out of the stable.”
Analysts attribute recent cost-cuts at NBC, which included the elimination of about two dozen jobs on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” to Comcast focusing on “improving the financial performance” of the network.
In an opinion piece published in Multichannel News, Gary Arlen writes that this reported 10 percent decrease in payroll for the “Tonight Show” staff (Leno reportedly took a significant salary cut to avoid further layoffs) won’t likely be detectable to the average viewer, perhaps making it a good move for Comcast.
“More significant to the TV industry as a whole — and especially to the growing stable of Comcast-owned content channels — are the implications of this cost-cutting,” suggests Arlen.
“Beyond the lavish pay scales for celebrities (both in front of and behind the camera) is a new TV economic landscape,” he writes. “Improved, and admittedly costly, technology is bringing down the price of production and making possible new kinds of appealing entertainment. (Let’s not even talk about el-cheapo reality programs.)”
This new landscape includes individuals with online video channels and hundreds or thousands or more subscribers.
“These conditions and more are paving the way for what I’ll call ‘good enough TV,'” notes Arlen. “Certainly, second-tier cable channels have survived for years on ‘adequate’ quality shows: well-produced made-for-video movies and series that would have qualified as ‘B’ films a half-century ago. They’re good enough for prime time, a launch-pad for young talent and a sinecure for past-their-prime performers.”
Google’s financial infusions into its YouTube channels, much of it designated for original programming, is a great example of the “good enough TV” ethos, writes Arlen. “Other ‘good enough’ shows take advantage of the interactive capabilities that young producers can now create on a financial shoestring.”
