Five key home A/V trends for 2009The recent States-side Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has given us a glimpse of the direction that most CE manufacturers are undertaking this year. That said, some of the CES products may never show up in Asia given their US-centric functionalities. Netflix movie download and other similar online features for example, are unlikely to show up in Asia anytime soon. Some of the contraints for such services include limited Internet availability and bandwidth constraints. Nevertheless, we're betting our chips on these five significant developments.
1. LCD and plasma standstillThe bottom line is that both flat-panel TV technologies will co-exist in 2009. On the one hand, LCD TVs will equalize plasma's traditional black-level advantage via LED backlighting. There'll be more vendors launching such panels in the following months, though their premium pricing will be a hurdle for mass adoption. On the other hand, upcoming plasma TVs such as Panasonic's Neo PDPs will be thinner and run with less electricity. So in essence, it's a tie between the two camps, though we reckon the plasma market share will continue to slide with most vendors pushing out more LCD TVs.2. Connected TVsOnline pay-per-view movies download are far from taking off in Asia, but this will not deter more TV manufacturers from integrating networking functions into their panels this year. This will serve as an extension to the ubiquitous USB input to bring multimedia content off your home computers into the living room. With added Web connectivity and Yahoo widgets, these connected TVs will also allow live news, edutainment and other information downloads. The next frontier may well be full-fledged emailing and Internet surfing right on the big screen.3. DLP fights backDLP home theater projectors have taken a beating from their 3LCD and LCoS counterparts and have fallen behind in past months. This is about to change with the marriage of PhlatLight LED lighting and DLP technologies. For starters, there won't be any infamous rainbow anomalies that result in distracting streaks of colors onscreen. Instead of an average 2,000-hour lamp life, such bulb-less projectors will easily last five times longer and with better brightness uniformity. We already know that PhatLight will also deliver better hues, but it has yet to prove itself in black-level reproduction.Tags: Plasma, Light-emitting Diode, TV, DLP, projector |
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