LOS ANGELES -- Blu-ray Disc adoption four years after introduction is tracking “slightly below” where DVD was after the same period, Billy Law, Nielsen director of home entertainment measurement, told the Entertainment Supply Chain Academy’s Edge Conference on Thursday. Still, Blu-ray “remains promising,” and its title-by-title sales share is increasing relative to DVD’s, Law said.
Paul Gluckman
Paul Gluckman, Executive Senior Editor, is a 30-year Warren Communications News veteran having joined the company in May 1989 to launch its Audio Week publication. In his long career, Paul has chronicled the rise and fall of physical entertainment media like the CD, DVD and Blu-ray and the advent of ATSC 3.0 broadcast technology from its rudimentary standardization roots to its anticipated 2020 commercial launch.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, which hailed passage Friday by New York’s Legislature of the country’s 23rd state e-waste law, said it “effectively negates a nearly year-old industry lawsuit challenging New York City’s 2008 e-waste recycling law.” A statement Tuesday by CEA and ITI didn’t say whether they plan to withdraw their challenge. It also stopped short of saying whether they would support the state e-waste law.
IFA organizers have taken another implied slap at CES, beckoning “industry insiders” who want a “four-month head start” on global new technology introductions to visit the Berlin show in early September. CES, produced by CEA, is four months later, in early January. “Global players in the consumer electronics industry have shifted their focus to Europe, with over 500 million high-income consumers, and to IFA, which inspires trends and powers volume sales at the right time for year-end holiday sales,” organizers said last week. “In the European market, IFA excels as the world’s largest CE trade show. It’s the stage that companies use to reach global media and buyers -- and it is the venue that manufacturers and retailers leverage to introduce new technologies to the world.” For example, IFA organizers said, “the first 3D TVs were introduced at IFA 2009 -- again in September, again four months before rolling out to hype and hope to the rest of the world.” The first IFA was held in 1924, where “attendees marveled at early vacuum tubes and radio receivers,” organizers said. “Today, IFA is the largest consumer electronics trade show on the planet, with a long history of world premieres.” CEA President Gary Shapiro fired back with a statement Friday suggesting that IFA lacks “the global importance” of CES because it refuses to be audited and makes “bogus” claims about show attendance, exhibit space and world firsts. The European trade show body, UFI, “accredits shows which meet standards, including [through] an independent audit,” Shapiro said. “Almost every major European event is accredited by UFI. To my knowledge, IFA is not accredited in part because it refuses to be audited by UFI standards. Ironically, International CES is one of the few [non-European] events accredited by UFI! Just what are they hiding?” Shapiro also urged his IFA counterparts to “be honest in comparisons.” Calling one’s show the world’s largest CE trade event “should mean you have the most trade attendees or exhibit space,” he said. “CES 2010 released an independent audit of 126k attendees. More, we count these attendees only one time -- not every day they come. IFA is the biggest consumer electronics show if ‘consumer’ describes their attendee rather than modifies ‘electronics.’ And we certainly have more exhibit space -- even ignoring how they double- or triple-count the footprint of space. Maybe they claim this because they add hall aisle space.” Shapiro also wants IFA to “be honest in your claims of firsts,” he said. “Funny how 3D was shown at 2009 CES yet they claim it was introduced at their show nine months later. Lots of other bogus claims, as we can’t both have the worldwide premiere of so many of the same products! But yes, they can have credit for the radio at their show in the 1920s.”
Days after a federal judge in California threw out the EcoDisc lawsuit that alleged DVD format licensors had conspired to put the green DVD developer out of business (CED April 29 p4), EcoDisc has resurfaced in the U.K. under a new British subsidiary. That subsidiary, EcoDisc U.K., says a British replicator, Software Logistics in High Wycombe, northwest of London, has begun taking orders for the half-thickness disc, which holds the same amount of data as a DVD5.
Sony this fiscal year plans to “aggressively launch 3D-related products, network services and other new businesses with the aim of future growth,” the company said Thursday in reporting results for the year ended March 31 in which it swung to a $342 million operating profit from a year-earlier loss ($1=93 yen, the rate in effect March 31). However, sales fell 6.7 percent to $77.6 billion on a 19.9 percent decline in Sony’s core CE sector, now called Consumer Products and Devices.
With just less than a month to go before the June 11 launch of ESPN 3D, ESPN and Comcast on Wednesday announced that Comcast is the first cable affiliate to sign on to distribute ESPN 3D to its digital cable customers. ESPN is in “active discussion” with other cable affiliates about ESPN 3D distribution deals, spokeswoman Colleen Lynch told us. ESPN announced an ESPN 3D distribution deal with DirecTV in late March (CED March 30 p9).
The public interest benefits of allowing the major studios to use selectable output controls (SOC) to beam first-run movies to pay-TV homes before their release on DVD or Blu-ray, “outweigh the limited impact on consumers who rely on unprotected outputs on the set-top box,” the FCC’s Media Bureau said Friday. It granted the MPAA’s request for waiver of SOC rules with conditions, as had been expected (CED Dec 1 p5). “We believe that providing consumers with the option to view films in their homes shortly after those films are released in theaters will serve the public interest,” the bureau said.
Panasonic expects “unpredictable” business conditions in the year ahead “despite a recovering world economy,” the company said Friday. Still, despite the uncertainty, Panasonic issued robust forecasts for the year ending next March 31, saying it expects total sales to jump 19 percent and operating profit to rise 31 percent. Panasonic wants to be the world’s top green CE company by 2018 when it marks its 100th anniversary, the company said.
"We now have seen how satellite radio performs in what was this terrible recession,” and the experience “bodes very, very well for our future,” Sirius XM CEO Mel Karmazin said Tuesday on a quarterly earnings call. “What we found is that consumers love our product. They stuck with us in spite of the 10 percent unemployment."
It’s not necessarily so, as a Natural Resource Defense Council blogger recently suggested, that the e-waste bill that just cleared the New York State Senate has “broad industry support,” CEA spokeswoman Jen Bemisderfer told us Tuesday.