SAN DIEGO -- Vizio has “capacity allocation agreements” to ensure “sufficient supply” of LCD panels and other components into early 2009, John Morriss, vice president and general manager of Vizio’s core products group, told DisplaySearch’s TV Supply Chain Conference Thursday. His remarks seemed directed at critics who have speculated that tight panel supplies would squeeze smaller LCD TV brands out of the market Q4 because of their competitive disadvantages to global brands like Samsung and Sony.
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.
Low-power TV’s Community Broadcasters Association wants consumers immediately to redeem any coupons that will expire in 10 days, even if it means buying “the wrong box” -- one lacking analog passthrough -- the group said Friday. Those who buy such a box should leave it in its carton and then exchange it for an analog-passthrough model when one becomes available, CBA said in an announcement it billed as its “last attempt to help!”.
Blame “poor planning” at NTIA for dooming an effort by low-power TV, begun and ended last week, to promote Microprose analog-passthrough converter boxes to consumers whose coupons are about to expire, the Community Broadcasters Association said in response to a reader query on its KeepUsOn.com Web site. But according to our reality check of developments in the Microprose-CBA story, CBA misjudgments figured as much as any other factor in the Microprose “debacle,” as a CBA vice president called it Thursday when his group cut all ties to Microprose and its Web store.
The only Microprose converter box certified coupon- eligible is its MPI-500, and it doesn’t have analog passthrough, NTIA confirmed Wednesday. That’s contrary to a Community Broadcasters Association announcement a day earlier suggesting that consumers should hurry to order a certified Microprose box with analog passthrough before their coupons expire (CED May 21 p3).
Getting analog-passthrough DTV converters to consumers whose coupons are about to expire is the goal of a tie-in low-power TV’s Community Broadcasters Association debuted Tuesday with box supplier Microprose. But Microprose was delisted as a certified supplier, apparently because it’s against NTIA rules to redeem coupons for pre-orders, as Microprose was doing, an agency spokesman said.
The FCC’s discovery in the last year that many DTV makers “have been selling units that ignore FCC rules requiring V-chip 2.0 compatibility” shows why the agency should consider requiring automatic software update capability in DTV sets and set-top boxes, six consumer, civil rights and disability groups told FCC Chairman Kevin Martin in a letter last week. But CEA thinks automatic update mandates are a bad idea and the FCC lacks the authority to impose them, it said Friday.
The FCC should cancel notices of apparent liability accusing Best Buy and Circuit City of “willfully and repeatedly” violating the analog labeling order, or reduce the proposed fines to zero, because the agency had no authority to impose or enforce labeling rules on retailers, the chains said in separate replies filed Monday at the commission.
DTV coupon orders topped 13.3 million through the week ended Friday, surpassing 60 percent of the 22.25 million in the program’s “base” phase, when all households are eligible to apply, NTIA data showed. At the rate through Friday of 103,600 coupon requests a day, the 22.25 million would run out by Aug. 4 if all are redeemed. If they run out, 11.25 million coupons in a “contingent” phase will be offered to households getting TV only through antennas.
The “good news” for Sirius Q1 was its “very strong” subscriber and revenue growth, CEO Mel Karmazin said Monday in a quarterly earnings call. But another quarter of FCC inaction on its proposed merger with XM was the “bad news,” Karmazin said.
LG “factors in” a 5 percent import duty on coupon- eligible converter boxes when it sets wholesale prices on its Zenith boxes, spokesman John Taylor told us. He stressed that he can’t speak for other makers. HR-5635, introduced in March by Reps. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, and Ron Kind, D-Wis., would suspend the duty and mandate refunds to payers applying within 90 days of enactment. Retailer Greg Hephner of Hephner TV & Electronics told the House Subcommittee on Contracting and Technology last week that the duty raised his costs “several dollars” soon after he ordered boxes from a vendor he didn’t identify. HR-5635 is needed to “reform this tariff so that the government would not be assessing a special tax that increases the costs to us of the very products it is trying to subsidize,” Hephner said.