Ted, The key will be the selection of the new ceo. I'd also like to see some more active, independent and tech-savy directors on board.
Interesting recent responses from Gerry Kaufhold, senior analyst at In-Stat Inc.'s Multimedia Service in Kearney, Ariz.:
"TV manufacturers, TV broadcast networks, and PC manufacturers are
competing for consumer living rooms. And each one has a slightly different act, which is slowly coming together. Virtually every major consumer electronics company will be shipping a digital TV set by the end of calendar 1998. These will initially be at the high end, costing consumers between $1,400 and $2,500. Most people will consider a 36- in. digital TV for $1,500 a good deal; a regular 36-in. TV is about $1,100.
The big downside of using MMX PCs as a digital TV is that the monitor will be too small for use in a living room, and Windows 95 and Windows 98 are way, way too complicated for typical consumers to operate.
Surprisingly, about 50% of today's TV programming is already being produced in digital-TV formats, and most studios have as much digital-editing equipment as they do analog-editing equipment. Studios are ready to go.
All the major semiconductor manufacturers are striking deals with intellectual-property holders and significant consumer electronics OEM customers. Coincidentally, the design-automation industry is just now hitting its stride with design tools that will greatly help semiconductor companies put their newly acquiredintellectual property onto systems-on-a-chip silicon.
Technically, HDTV calls for a wide-angle viewing display. The FCC spelled out 18 modes of operation for digital TV sets, and HDTV is the high-end subset of wide-angle or high-resolution modes. Most digital TVs will support a limited version of HDTV. High-end systems will do true HDTV, with the very wide display screen and ultrahigh-resolution picture quality.
Primarily, for expensive digital TVs, there are two pieces: a digital- transmission system and a display monitor. The display monitor has to be able to work with multiple on-screen resolutions, as well as switch between interlaced and noninterlaced modes. We think that the only way to make an expensive, multiscan, large-screen TV display obsolescence-proof will be to provide many types of inputs: NTSC/PAL analog inputs, SVHS inputs, a VHF tuner input, and at least one kind of digital input, such as an IEEE-1394 input.
One key point is that because the large-screen display is the most expensive part of a digital-TV setup, we believe that the consumer television market is about to undergo a sea change in which the display is disconnected from whatever feeds the signal into it.
We foresee a "dumb" large-screen display with a variety of analog and digital inputs. Consumers can hook up whatever signal source they choose - be it a digital-TV tuner, a cable-TV set-top box, a Direct Broadcast Satellite set-top box, a video game, a DVD player, an Internet appliance, a video CD unit, a VCR, a camcorder, or even an
MMX-capable PC with a Pentium II. Consumers will keep the big-screen display in the living room and connect things to it as they see fit.
This is very similar to the PC model - wherein you purchase any computer and hook it up to any size or resolution display you can find. You can throw away the computer, but use the display on whatever you purchase next. Right now, TV manufacturers don't want to hear about this "dumb display " because it means lower margins. It's a dumb display, after all. But consumers aren't going to sit still for digital TVs that quickly become obsolete.
For living-room applications, it has to be more of a TV and less of a PC. Nobody is going to type e-mail from a couch - they'll spill their beverage. At In-Stat, we have a saying: Nobody has ever had to reboot their TV. That's certainly not the case with a PC. If you have to reboot the system in the middle of the Super Bowl, that's not acceptable. It will be a TV with "interactive" functions, which means that the interactive program guide and up-to-the-minute weather or stock quote services will just be there. Consumers won't have to know how or why it works. It will just work. Consumers may not even know their TV set is accessing the Internet, but they will enjoy the new services that their digital TV set can provide.
It will have the same circuitry as a PC, but the circuitry will be hidden in the background. It will have a super- VGA chip. A lot [of the digital-TV designs] already have microprocessors with an operating system. There will be pieces of the PC in the living room, yes. A complete PC, no. Of course, Intel and Microsoft Corp. will disagree with that. Today's PC-theater products are too closely coupled with the computer motherboard. Everybody knows that PCs are obsolete in two years, but nobody wants their digital TV to be obsolete in two years. The new digital-TV technology will be able to communicate with a computer, probably via IEEE-1394 or maybe even Ethernet. But you'll be able to continue upgrading your PC without throwing away your digital TV set." |
