Rebecca Day

LG is pushing Smart TV, an updated remote control and its Ultra HD lineup at CES this year, the company said in a pre-release Monday of its CES introductions. In addition to the 84-inch Ultra HD model that recently began shipping, LG will trot out a 55-inch OLED again, after showing one at CES 2012 with unrequited plans to launch by year end. A spokesman told us the 55-inch OLED will make it to market this year in the “premium” category for the upscale customer. He said LG doesn’t typically announce pricing for upcoming products at CES.

Westinghouse Digital will bow Ultra HD TVs at CES for “a broader market,” the company said Thursday. It will field four models including standard 50-, 55- and 65-inch screen sizes, along with a 110-inch model that will be available as a custom order. All of the 3840 x 2160 Ultra HD TVs will be available in Q1, Westinghouse said. Rey Roque, senior vice president-marketing at Westinghouse, said the company’s Ultra HD line will “change expectations across the entire TV marketplace,” saying consumers will be “amazed” by the display resolution and “delighted with the affordability.” Sony’s 84-inch Ultra HD TV has a suggested retail price of $24,999, and LG’s 84-incher comes in at $5,000 less. Questions to Westinghouse on price and panel supplier weren’t answered by our deadline. LG Display, which supplies panels for the Sony TV, said it would show 55- and 65-inch Ultra HD TVs at CES (see separate report in this issue). A salesman at Sony Style in New York told us his store has sold five units of its Ultra HD TV.

Following relatively flat projected volume of $304 billion in 2012, semiconductor revenue is projected to grow 4.9 percent next year to $319 billion, according to International Data Corp. Growth of less than 1 percent this year resulted from numerous market factors including weak PC demand, price deterioration in memory, semiconductor inventory rationalization, a slowdown in China, economic issues in Europe and Japan and the impact of the looming fiscal cliff on corporate IT spending in the U.S., IDC said.

Heavy pricing pressure continues on TVs, we found in a scan of post-Christmas shopping deals both in-store and online Wednesday. Hhgregg continued to hammer its email list with offers, promising sale prices up to 30 percent off and an additional 5 percent savings on TV and appliance purchases of $499 or more through Saturday, according to its mailer. The leader deal is a $149 ProScan LED-backlit TV, it said, followed by a Samsung 43-inch model chopped by $100 to $399 and an LG 60-inch plasma on sale at $799, down from $1,399. The four-day sale follows a Christmas Day pitch from hhgregg offering a 10 percent shave on prices for online purchases of $499 until midnight.

Daniel Kippycash, formerly with SpeakerCraft and Crestron, is now wearing two hats after being laid off by SpeakerCraft earlier this year, a casualty of SpeakerCraft’s ill-fated Nirv multi-room audio system that Nortek pulled due to overlap with SpeakerCraft sister company Elan’s home control system. Kippycash Friday was named executive director of Digital Delivery Group (DDG), a consortium of regional CE specialty distributors that calls itself “more than just a buying group” and a “strategic resource” for vendor partners and dealers.

CE retailers with brick-and-mortar locations are pulling out the stops with last-minute shopping deals five days before Christmas, we found through viewing email blasts and a scan of websites Thursday. A day after ShopperTrak projected that Saturday would be the highest grossing day of 2012 at retail stores, retailers turned up the noise a notch hoping to snare procrastinators and deal hunters.

Smartphones continue to “steal” market share from portable game players and point-and-shoot digital cameras, according to data from ABI Research. Annual shipments of handheld game players are on track to drop 4 percent worldwide in 2012 compared to last year and nearly 13 percent in the more mature North American market, ABI said. Digital camera shipments are expected to fall more than 11 percent in 2012 compared with 2011 and nearly 20 percent in the North American market, it said.

"Free Shipping Monday” spawned a frenzy of last-minute online shopping ads up to and including Monday, as retailers tried to pry more dollars from the fists of deal-savvy consumers, we found in a scan of e-commerce sites. Hhgregg tried to steer customers into a store for immediate purchases prior to Free Shipping Monday, blasting its email list Sunday with the promise of a $20 shave off the price of the 16 GB iPad 2, in stores only, and for an unspecified “limited” time. The hhgregg email also trumpeted the fourth-gen 16 GB iPod Touch at $199.99, but that was the same price as on the Apple website, we found.

Some 4.7 billion pre-recorded optical video discs will ship next year, representing a 3 percent decline from 2012, according to Digital Tech Consulting. Despite competition from streaming services, pay-per-view and DVRs, however, the optical disc business, while declining, will still be “relevant for some years to come,” Myra Moore, DTC president, told us. “Even with increased competition from [over the top] OTT content and TV Everywhere initiatives, [Blu-ray disc] shipments are expected to show significant growth,” experiencing a 26 percent compounded annual growth rate from 2012-2017, she said. Although there’s “significant saturation” for video optical disc playback devices in mature global markets, “the installed base in other parts of the world is still building,” Moore said. While the disc business will continue to shrink, “it’s not reasonable to expect it to disappear in the near future,” she said. Standard DVD shipments will continue to comprise a smaller share of the video disc market as Blu-ray discs gain share, DTC said, with DVD share expected to shrink from 79 percent of global shipments in 2013 to 46 percent in 2017. The crossover point for global Blu-ray shipments to pass DVD shipments will occur in mid-2016 at roughly 2.25 billion unit shipments, according to DTC data. Worldwide Blu-ray shipments are projected to grow from 770 million this year to 2.5 billion in 2017, DTC said. DVD shipments, meanwhile, will fall from 4.1 billion units this year to 2.1 billion in 2017, it said. Meanwhile, paid OTT content, on a title basis, will grow from 1.3 billion titles in 2012 to 5.5 billion titles in 2017, DTC said.

Amimon plans to license its IP and technology for the Wireless Home Digital Interface standard to third-party semiconductor companies and CE brands for next-gen CE, PC and mobile products, the company said Monday. Until now, Amimon was working with other companies including Sony, LG, Belkin, Asus, Sharp and HP on its chipsets for wireless HD audio-video links, Uri Kanonich, senior director, sales Americas, told Consumer Electronics Daily. The licensed technology from Amimon will enable wireless delivery of uncompressed high-definition video and audio, with “zero delay” and picture quality equivalent to that provided by a wired cable, Kanonich said. Companies won’t be demonstrating their own chipset technologies at CES, Kanonich said, but the company’s decision to license its technology was based on “a few companies approaching us” about licensing the technology. Licensing talks are still “behind closed doors,” he said. The licensing program will enable third parties to integrate Amimon’s IP into their own chipsets and “tailor it to their own market needs,” in interactive displays, PCs, cameras and other products, he said. The upgraded Amimon technology includes lower latency, a two-way data link in parallel with the video, and reduced power consumption, the company said. Amimon will demo its technology at CES with a wireless touch screen running Windows 8, enabling a real-time wireless video link between a base processing unit and the display, it said. Amimon said its WHDI technology offers features beyond those currently found in standard WHDI, including support for video resolution up to 4K x 2K, multi-cast, advanced control links and increased range. On the competitive environment, Kanonich said, many companies have attempted multi-room AV solutions based on Wi-Fi using proprietary solutions based on compression that have led to latency and robustness issues. With Amimon’s technology, each application will use only the power it needs to support a specific use, he said, saying the video needs for an Ultrabook vary greatly from those of a professional camera. The semiconductor market revenue potential for wireless AV chipsets, while still young, could reach the multi hundred-million-dollar level, he said.