Panasonic Touts Networking, Connectivity in 2012 AV Lineup

Panasonic is reviving the Technics brand in a line of over-ear headphones designed to compete with the Beats brand, the company said Tuesday at its 2012 home entertainment press briefing. Suggested retail price of the Technics DJ 1200 headphones will be $199, and Panasonic noise-canceling headphones will also retail for $199, the company said. The company last used the Technics brand in a line of turntables for the DJ market, which it discontinued about two years ago, a company spokesman said. The Technics brand still carries “caché,” he said, noting that hip clothes chain Urban Outfitters has carried a t-shirt bearing the Technics name. It wasn’t clear whether the brand would be extended to other audio products in the future.

In 2012 displays, Panasonic is pushing “five pillars” in its TV line: picture and sound performance, ease of use, design, connectivity and energy savings. In plasma TV, Focused Field Drive technology controls light to produce more subtle details in dark scenes, increasing the number of steps of grayscale gradation from roughly 6,000 to 24,576 steps, according to Bill Schindler, consulting engineer. In the LED-based LCD line, new In-Plane Switching panels cut power consumption by about 25 percent compared with last year’s models, the company said. The LED models claim a 178-degree viewing angle. Pricing for plasma TV models range from $429 for the 42-inch TC-P42X5 to $3,699 for the TC-65-inch P65VT50, the company said. LED models range from $249 for a 24-inch model to $2,999 for the flagship 55-inch LED-based LCD model.

Across the line, Panasonic is also touting faster response time, intuitive controls, Internet apps through its cloud-based Viera Connect service and a metal-glass industrial design that stands up to those from Korean competitors LG and Samsung, company executives said. Competition has been fierce on several fronts. Samsung’s outselling Panasonic in plasma TV unit sales last year was due largely to Panasonic “de-emphasizing” its 720p model, a “unit driver” but not a “dollar driver” in the company’s lineup, said Henry Hauser, Panasonic’s vice president for merchandising, home entertainment. Around Labor Day of last year Panasonic’s emphasis shift to the 1080p 50-inch S30 was “highly successful,” he said. Through January, Panasonic “virtually tied” Samsung in plasma unit sales, Hauser said, while seeing a rise in average selling prices. Panasonic was able to maintain a “dollar prominence” during the holiday selling season, he said.

Panasonic executives demonstrated next-gen networking features found in its Viera 2.0 display software including a push function that sends music, an image or a video from a smartphone to the TV screen over Wi-Fi with the swipe of a finger. The 50 VieraConnect apps available for Panasonic TVs include an exclusive Disney app with read-along on-screen copy for children. Series VT and WT TV viewers can browse the Web using Google, accessing any site that supports Flash, according to Merwan Mereby, vice president of content and services. Viera 2.0 will be available for iOS and Android devices, he said.

Consumers will be able to do their own video calibration on Panasonic WT series TVs this year with software and a kit from SpectraCal that calibrates a TV to Imaging Science Foundation specifications. The capability was included on VT series TVs last year as a step-up feature for specialty dealers, but now consumers can perform the same calibrations themselves with the purchase of $199 software and a $299 calibration package, said Joshua Quain, vice president of sales and marketing for SpectraCal. The capability is found on high-end TVs from other manufacturers as well, but Quain didn’t expand on that. The auto-calibration program works over Wi-Fi, Quain said. By calibrating a TV, consumers can reduce power consumption, cut down on eye fatigue, and adjust for different ambient lighting conditions in addition to setting proper color and brightness settings, he said.

Panasonic isn’t planning a 4K TV in its consumer line “at least through 2013,” Hauser told us. A 4K TV will likely appear through Panasonic’s professional unit prior to releasing to the consumer market, Hauser said, speculating that it would be an OLED model when it does hit the market. Panasonic showed a 20-inch 4K LCD TV at CES, which Hauser noted is more difficult to produce in a smaller screen size. For consumer applications, he said, 4K “is a little bit away.”

All but one of Panasonic’s 2012 plasma TV models is 3D, according to Hauser, but the company isn’t shipping glasses with its active 3D TVs this year. Suggested retail price for glasses is $79 a pair, and the new models are lighter, charge faster and last longer than previous models, said Jason Gastman, senior product manager, LED/LCD TV. When we asked Hauser how the glasses will be able to compete with far less expensive ones from Samsung, he acknowledged that the retail price is “high,” but added, “they may be marginally enhanced to allow retailers more flexibility.” Pricing for glasses doesn’t fall under the company’s MAP policy, he said.

Panasonic’s ET5 line of passive 3D TVs, based on Panasonic’s IPS LED panel, will ship with four pairs of polarized glasses, the company said. Hauser said the passive 3D lineup is for the casual user who wants to view 3D in a “family room” setting versus the company’s plasma 3D models that are designed for the home theater. The 47-inch TC-L47ET5 ($1,299) and 55-inch TC-L55ET5 ($1,899) will ship this month and the 42-inch ET5 series model will ship in April, the company said. Like Panasonic’s other Viera models, the ET5 TVs pack built-in Wi-Fi and a browser along with 2D-3D conversion for all content, including streamed content from the Internet. Skype videos can’t be converted, Gastman said. The TVs also include a social networking function for Facebook and Twitter, DLNA for streaming content from a PC or NAS device, four HDMI inputs with Audio Return Channel, two USB inputs and a PC jack, the company said.

For the lifestyle market, Panasonic took the wraps off a 32-inch LCD TV finished in white that will be sold into niche markets starting in June or July, Gastman said. Price wasn’t available.

In home audio, Panasonic responded to consumers’ shrinking interest in multi-channel sound systems with a hybrid soundbar that can stand alone as a conventional one-piece soundbar or detach in three parts to create a 2.1-channel sound system for a larger TV screen. The systems can stream music from a smartphone using Bluetooth and come with a wireless subwoofer. Prices range from $229 to $399 with April shipping.