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Washington, D.C. (February 18, 2008) -- Flat-panel High-Definition TV sales jumped 27 percent in December compared to November, according to a new study from Pacific Media Associates.
The research firm says that consumers also were more likely to buy larger-screen sets in December, the height of the holiday shopping season.
However, Pacific Media says Plasma took a back seat to LCD sales in December.
“One important development in December was that Plasma models continued to lose ground to LCD,” said Rosemary Abowd, a Pacific Media vice president. "LCD already dominates the market below 45 inches, but in December, LCD took 50 percent of the larger 50-inch to 54-inch size segment."
The study said Plasma's unit share fell to 17 percent in December in the flat-screen category.
Pacific Media also found that retailers held the line on most set prices in December with the average street price falling just one percent in December compared to November.
But consumers still found their discounts with 17 of the top 20 best-selling units dropping in price as much as 10 percent in December.
Posted at 08:07 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
OK, power trippers. Here's another weapon in the fight against high electricity bills, a power meter called Watts Up? that asks a question but knows the answer to what's abusing power around the house.
You know the major offenders -- the refrigerator, the electric clothes dryer and, in the summer, the dehumidifier -- but we're taking on "recreational" electricity here. It's the hi-def televisions, DVD players, audio-video receivers and iPod speaker docks.
Watts Up?, from Electronic Educational Devices of Aurora, Colo., comes in four versions: a basic $96 model to the $236 Watts Up?.net, which transfers data over the Internet. The entry-level Watts Up? I tried works much like another power meter I tested about eight months ago, the $20 Kill A Watt. Plug in the meter to a wall outlet, then plug your HDTV or iPod dock into the meter's outlet.
Though both produce similar results, the Watts Up? is better on several counts. Where the Kill A Watt requires the user to do some math to figure out the monthly electricity costs of your equipment, for instance, the Watts Up? does the computation. All you do is supply the cost per kilowatt hour -- how the electric company measures power -- from your latest electric bill.
So I knew immediately that if I left my monster 60-inch plasma on the entire month, it would consume 337 kilowatt hours and, at 18 cents each, cost $60.60. It also told me that during a single viewing session, the television consumed anywhere from 425 to 633 watts. (That's a gruesome watts count, equal to about two refrigerators.)
This plasma might look great, but it'll never get Energy Star approval. A Toshiba HD-A30 HD DVD player, however, earned its Energy Star rating by consuming only 0.7 watts in standby. Compare that to the 5 watts sucked up in standby by the Oppo DV-981HD DVD player.
But in full operation, the Oppo (12 watts) would actually cost less per month than the Toshiba (17.75 watts). With that information, I would turn off the Oppo completely (no standby) after each use but leave the Toshiba in standby mode.
The Watts Up? also measures cumulative cost -- how much you've spent on power since you first started testing the HDTV or DVD player -- and can detect when your equipment has exceeded a designated power threshold. If you suspected a refrigerator was using too much electricity, the Watts Up? could tell you how often it uses more than, say, 100 watts. Excessive power consumption could mean a bad motor or low freon.
Plasma vs. LCD: Where did it go wrong for plasma? Everyone wants an LCD set now. Not me. In the 42- to 50-inch category, plasma still has the better hi-def picture.
LCD beat plasma to 1080p and convinced consumers that the higher resolution is automatically better. Under 42 inches, LCD is the way to go. In a bright room, LCD is the way to go.
But a plasma's picture, with deeper blacks, better depth perception and wider viewing angle, remains the best.
Posted at 07:52 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

This was a blog post from David Pogue of the NYTimes, technology. He interviewed a Best Buy employee who was able to clear up some misconceptions and misinformation on HDTV. Great read.
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Interview by David Pogue
According to the Consumer Electronics Association, this Sunday’s Super Bowl will inspire the sales of 2.4 million high-definition TV sets. That’s a lot of plasma. (And L.C.D., and projection sets.)
In my weekly CNBC/Times video today, I pulled what I thought would be a brilliant stunt: I’d interview a TV salesman at Best Buy, firing a lot of typical confused-consumer questions at him. Then, during playback of that interview, I’d keep pausing the tape to correct him or interject little asides.
Well, the “correcting him” bit didn’t work at all. Steve at the Best Buy in Norwalk, Conn., was amazing, easily one of the most fluent HDTV experts I’d ever met. He was unstumpable.
So here’s a paraphrased version of what I learned or confirmed from him. If you’re among the HDTV shoppers who have yet to buy your set for the big game, maybe the advice here will help you out.
Q: Is there a lot of consumer confusion about HDTV?
A: Oh, man, you have no idea. People come in here absolutely clueless. Or furious, because they bought an HDTV set, got it home, and discovered that the picture doesn’t look anything like it did here in the store. Because they don’t realize they need a high-def *signal* to feed that set. For example, they need to replace their cable boxes with digital ones, or put an antenna on the roof.
[D.P. adds: According to a study by the Leichtman Research Group, 50 percent of HDTV owners aren’t actually watching any high-def shows on them… but 25 percent of them *think* they are.]
Q: Isn’t it true, in fact, that standard-def broadcasts actually look *worse* on a high-def TV?
A: Unfortunately, yes.
Q: Don’t you guys deliberately put the store-display screens in “torch mode,” cranking the brightness and contrast all the way up to catch shoppers’ eyes?
A: We don’t adjust the sets to look that way; that’s the way most sets come from the factory. It actually makes the set look a lot worse than it will when you get it home and get it properly calibrated.
Q: Oh, you have to pay someone to come over and tweak the set?
A: You really should. We offer that service as part of installation.
[D.P. adds: How did I know he was going to say that?]
Q: O.K., here we go. One-word answer: plasma or LCD?
A: They both offer an amazing picture these days. In the better sets, the traditional flaws of plasma (like burn-in) and LCD (limited viewing angle, not very deep blacks, weak fast motion) have been largely eliminated.
The plasma screens still have glossy surfaces, though, and LCD sets are still brighter. So as a rough guideline, plasma has truer color and does better in darker rooms, and LCD has more vivid color and does better in bright rooms. (LCD is also lighter and more energy-efficient, but usually costs more for the same-size set.)
Q: OK, how about this one: 720p or 1080p?
A: These are measurements of how many fine lines make up the picture.
You’d think that 1080p is obviously better than 720p. Trouble is, you won’t get a 1080p image unless you feed it a 1080p signal — and that’s hard to come by. There’s no such thing as a 1080p TV broadcast (cable, satellite, anything), and won’t be for years. Even most games, like Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, generally send out 720p (or less).
So the *only* way to get a 1080p picture on a 1080p set is to buy a high-def DVD player (Blu-ray or HD DVD). That’s the only way.
[D.P. adds: Even then, you won’t see any difference between 720p and 1080p unless you sit closer than 10 feet from the TV and it’s bigger than 55 inches or so.
And even then, you’re not getting any additional sharpness or detail. Instead, as CNET notes, you’re just gaining the ability to move closer without seeing individual pixels: “In other words, you can sit closer to a 1080p television and not notice any pixel structure, such as stair-stepping along diagonal lines, or the screen door effect (where you can actually see the space between the pixels).”]
Q: But a 1080p set costs a lot more than an identical 720p set, doesn’t it?
A: Yeah.
[D.P. adds: At this point, he showed me two plasmas, same brand, same size, same model line, mounted one above the other: one 720p, the other 1080p. The fancier set cost $2,000 more — and the image quality was pixel-for-pixel identical.]
Q: What’s the best-selling size?
A: It used to be 42 inches. Nowadays, 50-inchers are more common, and even larger, because prices have dropped so much.
Q: Is a bigger screen always better?
A: Depends on whether you ask the husband or the wife.
If you sit 8 to 10 feet back, a 50- or 60-incher is not too big. But you don’t want to overpower the room. If the screen dominates the room, it almost discourages relaxing, because it just towers over the space.
Q: What about rear-projection sets?
A: They’re great. And they’re often overlooked, because flat panels are all the rage. But the truth is, once you mount a flat-panel TV, it’s just as thick as today’s rear-projection sets (several inches from the wall).
Meanwhile, the quality of the rear-projection sets is amazing; it’s been improving every year. The downside is that you can’t sit as far off-angle as you can with a flat panel. But rear-projection sets offer the biggest size at the best price. And they weigh almost nothing. One person can lift one.
[DP adds: Except you do have to replace the bulb every few years, which can cost several hundred dollars… UPDATE: Although not on LED-driven sets!]
Q: How come you guys don’t have the remote controls on display?
A: We don’t like to put them on display, because every time I turn around, somebody’s turned a bunch of the TVs off.
Q: So of all the sets here, which is the very best one to buy for the Super Bowl?
A: Well, all of them will give you an absolutely great picture. But there’s one thing that none of these sets can do: they can’t make the Giants look good.
[D.P. adds: I’m not touching that one. Happy ’Bowling!]
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