I figured yesterday's package of digital-television
stories was coming at the right time when,
twice in the last week, co-workers came up to share their "I
bought an HDTV" stories. When a technology has found an
audience in the ranks of my non-gadget-addicted colleagues,
it's definitely on its way to the mass market.
I'll have another chance to see just how mass-market
digital TV is at my
Web chat today. Stop at 2 p.m. ET or submit your questions
early -- I'm interested in hearing about other
viewers' experiences with over-the-air digital reception.
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Surveying HDTV Prices
Meanwhile, now that I'm on the subject of digital
television, I'd like to throw in some things that didn't make it
into print.
The first is the latest installment in my ongoing survey of
HDTV pricing. As I've done twice before this year, I went
shopping at a handful of sites -- Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit
City, Costco, Dell and Gateway -- to see what two
types of HDTVs would cost. The first was an LCD measuring
30 inches or larger, while the second was a "microdisplay"
rear-projection set measuring 40 inches or larger.
30-in. LCDs:
* Olevia: $1,690 (Amazon)
* Sceptre: $1,700 (Costco)
* Westinghouse: $2,000 (Amazon)
(In May, $1,800 was the price floor.)
40-in. and larger microdisplay:
* Zenith 44-in. rear-projection LCD: $2,300 (Best Buy)
* Optoma 50-in. DLP: $2,500 (Costco)
* Zenith 52-in. rear-projection LCD: $2,520 (Amazon)
(In May, $2,380 was the minimum price for a 42-in.
microdisplay set.)
The price decreases since my last survey
don't amount to much, but what the numbers hide somewhat
is the way name-brand sets no longer always cost thousands
of dollars more then the less-recognized brands. For instance,
30-inch LCDs from such well-known TV and monitor
manufacturers as Philips, Viewsonic and Zenith only cost a few
hundred dollars more on Amazon these days.
Coloring HDTV's Future?
My second bonus feature of today is a report on
something you won't see in HDTVs until next year -- a new
display technology developed by an Israeli firm called Genoa Color
Technologies, which I was briefed on in mid
June.
Genoa's pitch is simply "better color." By using five colors
to create the spectrum of hues in a television image instead of
the usual three (red, green and blue, RGB for short), Genoa
says it can put more real-world colors on the screen.
Having done a little work in desktop publishing in my
time, I knew immediately what Genoa's marketing vice
president, Simon Lewis, was talking
about. People who live in Photoshop or Quark XPress have to
deal with what's called the "color gamut" -- the range of
colors you can get with the four colors of ink used in most
printing. This gamut excludes some colors, such as bright
metallic silver and gold.
