New Technology TV

As electronics manufacturers push to make High Definition Television the mainstream television format, they face continuing difficulties caused by the high definition DVD format war and a lack of knowledge about high definition television technology in general displayed by a lot of consumers.

Some leading electronics manufacturers have recently announced that they will form the Wireless HD Consortium. The Wireless HD Consortium is made up of NEC Corporation, Sony, LG Electronics Incorporated, Matsushita (Panasonic), and Toshiba; along with a newcomer dedicated almost exclusively to wireless technology: SiBEAM.

In efforts to break the deadlock between their rival high definition digital video disc formats, Sony and Toshiba are both offering special promotional deals that combine equipment and movies during the holiday season.

As television screens needed to watch modern High Definition Television are expected to drop down to prices that make them more universally appealing to consumers, a new television technology is emerging which could eventually take its place. Chi Mei Optoelectronics in Taiwan has recently produced an LCD screen that far exceeds that of the best high definition television screens on the market today.

While people generally don't like to watch television on their computers- as indicated by a number of PC's specifically designed for the living room that have flopped over the years- they are receptive to watching TV just about everywhere else and mobile phones are no exception. People have actually been able to watch TV on mobile phones in the United States for several years now, but the number of choices of channels is limited as it the geographic area where such service is available.

Most of the time when it comes to new electronics technologies, consumer demand encourages prices to decrease. Typically, when a new type of electronic technology is introduced into the marketplace, its price is extremely high. High to the point of being cost prohibitive for the typical consumer to buy it. Fortunately there are a few people or businesses who have to have this new device. They buy these devices and fuel the development of more efficient ways to produce the electronic device. When a product can be manufactured and distributed more efficiently the price comes down more and more people can buy it, which fuels the development process further. It's a self reinforcing process where the cheaper the technology gets, the more people buy the technology, and more people buying the technology results in more money being invested in the further development of the technology. It's a process that creates a downward spiral in price and an upward spiral in technological sophistication.

It's no secret that new types of technologies are popular choices for holiday gift giving. In fact, many electronic retailers are depending on this an preparing to take advantage of it for the coming holiday season.
Wal-Mart in particular is focused on beating out the competition when it comes to the pricing of high definition televisions. According to Wal-Mart's chief of electronics and toys, Wal-Mart offers better prices than its competitors on eighty eight percent of its flat screen TV's and is working hard to bring the prices down on the remaining twelve percent of the flat screens.

One truism about the new is that it displaces the old. The same is true for television technology. Newer technologies like Plasma screen, LCD screen, Digital Light Processing, and now Laser TV's are making the old fashioned cathode ray tube TV much less attractive to consumers. The cathode ray tube, which is the technology that televisions have used since the inception of the technology, have a number of drawbacks that newer technologies have less of or have avoided completely.

Back in the olden days, the only type of television set you could get was a simple cathode ray tube. Now there are a huge variety of television technologies out there, all with their own individual benefits and pitfalls. While the cathode ray tube will probably be phased out over the next few years, LCD, Plasma, and Digital Light Processing televisions are all becoming increasingly popular.

In yet another bid to merge the related but parallel worlds of televisions and computers Pinnacle Systems has released the PCTV HD Pro Stick. The unit runs about one hundred and thirty dollars and is supposed to be an easy way for people to watch television from a variety of sources over their computers. It comes in the form of a unit about the size of a cigarette lighter with a USB connection on one end and a male coaxial cable connection on the other, software to enable its use on your computer, and a detachable antenna to enable it to pick up over the air broadcasts.

The war between Sony's Blu-ray and its rival HD-DVD format made by Toshiba has been raging for quite some time now. Both formats were intended to be the dominant format of High Definition Digital Video Disc, but were introduced virtually simultaneously and have gotten in the way of each other attaining dominance in the market. This isn't too surprising given the memories of the VHS/Betamax video cassette format war back in the eighties. Like VHS and Betamax, the Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats aren't compatible with each other and only one is expected to survive the war. This has essentially frozen the market both for the discs and the players because no one wants to get stuck with a machine that only plays the losing format or discs that can't be played by any machines.

In all of the hype surrounding high definition television, one type of technology that's frequently overlooked is the high definition upconverter. A high definition upconverter is able to convert standard definition programming into a picture quality that will be acceptable as high definition programming.

The war between Sony's Blu-ray high definition digital video disc it's rival, Toshiba's HD-DVD format is still raging with no end in sight. Both formats can record all of the data necessary for a full length movie in High Definition Television format, and were released almost simultaneously. Both take advantage of blue laser technology which can encode data on a disc more finely than the read lasers that are used for normal DVD's and CD's, enabling the disc to hold far more information than the older format despite being the same size. Although they use the same type of technology, subtle differences between the two keep them from being compatible so anyone who buys a player for one format won't be able to play the other format without buying the other player.

It seems that High Definition Television has hit another snag that will get in the way of it becoming mainstream. While High Definition Television technology has been popular in Japan for years, there have been a number of impediments to the high resolution, wide screened television format being widely adopted in the United States. These barriers have included high cost, lack of availability of supporting equipment, and an inability to educate consumers about the new technology.