As Circuit City hurtled inevitably toward bankruptcy, “we did what we could to protect Sony in any possible way, yet support Circuit through the transition,” Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow told reporters at a New York media briefing Thursday. “It’s a balancing act” that “took a lot of management attention and a lot of financial attention to minimize the potential damage it would have to Sony and at the same time make sure that we didn’t damage Circuit City,” said Glasgow.
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.
HDTV owners “know HD programming when they see it and hear it” -- and they want more of it, SmithGeiger Senior Vice President Chris Lang said Friday. The Digital Entertainment Group commissioned SmithGeiger to poll 1,100 HDTV owners in the U.S. and 1,100 others in Japan and the U.K. in late August and early September on their satisfaction with HD and their “predispositions and preferences” regarding HD packaged media formats like Blu- ray.
A magistrate judge is recommending that a Miami trade show producer be held in contempt for ignoring a preliminary injunction barring him from promoting an event called ACES 09 in apparent violation of CEA’s CES trademark. Producer Justin Finochiarro knew that using “ACES” was prohibited under the injunction, but used it anyway, in “bad faith,” said Judge Andrea Simonton. CEA, which sued Finochiarro in April, wants him fined $5,000 for each day he ignores any contempt order. Simonton recommended $100 as the daily fine. U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro, who must rule on Simonton’s recommendations, set Monday as the deadline for objections.
No royalty pricing is set for Macrovision’s coming “connected platform,” a company spokesman said Wednesday. Lauren Landfield, Macrovision vice president of corporate finance and investor relations, did cite royalties in remarks to the recent Maxim Group Growth conference in New York as a last-minute stand-in for Chief Financial Officer James Budge (CED Oct 9 p1), the spokesman said. Royalty rates Landfield cited for its connected platform were “rough estimates that are highly subject to change” once the platform is “fully developed,” the spokesman said. The platform “is still in the early works and has yet to be released, so the pricing has not been confirmed,” he said.
The Consumer Confidence Index plummeted to an all-time low in October, but consumers are eager to buy new TV sets, the Conference Board said. Of 5,000 households polled through Oct. 21, 9.2 percent plan to buy a new TV set in the next 6 months, the Board said. That’s down from 10.8 percent in September, before the economic crisis hit, but higher than October 2007’s 8 percent. Still, “the impact of the financial crisis over the last several weeks has clearly taken a toll on consumers’ confidence,” the Board said. “Consumers are extremely pessimistic, and a significantly larger proportion than last month foresees business and labor market conditions worsening. Their earnings outlook, as well as inflation outlook, is also more pessimistic, and this news does not bode well for retailers who are already bracing for what is shaping up to be a very challenging holiday season.”
Sony expects to sell a million fewer Bravia LCD TVs and 30,000 fewer Blu-ray players globally this fiscal year ending March 31 than it forecast in July, the company said Wednesday as it released Q2 results. It was in keeping with Sony’s announcement a week ago that it had downgraded its operating income forecast 57 percent from a July prediction, citing a stronger than expected yen and damage to its electronics business from the global economic crisis (CED Oct 24 p6).
Shoppers at CompUSA’s 17 stores in Florida, Texas and Puerto Rico can buy the AccessHD 1080D DTV converter box for a penny plus tax when redeeming a $40 NTIA coupon, the chain said Tuesday. CompUSA is offering the box at the same $40.01 price online, where it’s also redeeming coupons. TigerDirect, a sister Systemax subsidiary, sells the box for $40.01 at its online store. The $40.01 offer has been active for about 10 days, but CompUSA only began publicizing it Tuesday. “Most competitors'” converter boxes cost $59.99, the chain said. Of other NTIA-certified online sites we visited Tuesday, only FreeDTVShop.com was selling the AccessHD 1080D DTV at its $59.99 list. SolidSignal had it for $42.99, Happy Iguana for $48.99, Amazon for $49.99. Previously, only EchoStar’s TRA40CRA was priced at $40.01. Both the AccessHD 1080D and the TRA40CRA have analog passthrough, but neither is Energy Star-compliant.
Panasonic, working with Comcast, debuted the industry’s first tru2way HDTV sets Wednesday at Chicago-based AV specialist Abt Electronics. Besides Abt, Circuit City stores in Chicago and Denver and Ultimate Electronics stores in Denver will sell the two Panasonic tru2way plasma TV models - - a 42W set at $2,300, and a 50W at $1,600, Panasonic executives said. Other retailers in other markets will be announced in early 2009 as Comcast brings more tru2way services online, but a Comcast spokeswoman wouldn’t say whether those announcements will be made at CES.
Retailers taking $40 DTV coupons are “the real winners” in the $1.5 billion NTIA converter subsidy program, not the consumers the program was billed as helping, the Technology Policy Institute said in a study released Wednesday. The NTIA declined comment on the study Thursday, referring us to the CE Retailers Coalition, which couldn’t be reached.
CEA expects that industry largely to weather the economic crisis and post respectable gains this holiday selling season, CEA economist Shawn DuBravac said Tuesday in a conference call. CEA sees videogame hardware unit sales rising 3.5 percent this holiday compared with last, and AV revenue rising about 4.7 percent, DuBravac said.