Satellite TV on Your Cellphone?

Samsung Cellphone TV Cellphone

Honestly, I’ve never been a fan of watching TV shows on your cellphone. I mean what’s the use? I don’t get it. If you go out, you go out! If you want to watch TV, stay home! Portable video games are another matter though but that’s a blog post for another day.

Well, anyway, here’s some news for the cellphone TV crowd. Soon you’ll be able to watch satellite TV on your mobile phones. Well, if you are in Europe that is. Satellite TV operators like Freesat Fom Sky will soon be able to send out television shows into mobile phones as the EU commission is expected to grant new rights to broadcast such. The recipient of the new rights are Inmarsat and Solaris, a joint venture between Eutelsa and SES-Astra, who will be leading efforts to raise more interest for this new TV technology. But there are some obstacles that they need to hurdle first.

Here’s an excerpt from a report made by Times Online about this.

Broadcasting via satellite removes the cost of investing in a new broadcast network, but pan-European broadcasts could be hampered because most TV rights are sold by territory.

In addition, the threat of legal action from the expected failed bidders, ICO Global and Terrestar of the US, could also hold up broadcasts.

Read the rest of the report here: Satellite TV coming to a mobile near you

These companies are now jockeying to be in a good position for when this thing explodes and becomes more mainstream. In the US, for example, there are indications that more and more people are watching TV on their mobiles as I reported in this TV watching statistics post.

 

Win a Samsung LCD HD TV and a Blu-Ray Player!!!

Win a Samsung LCD HDTV Model-LE19R86 + SONY Blu-Ray Player Photo courtesy of TheSun.co.uk

Yep, you read that right. Still reeling from my Polaroid LCD TV problem, I somehow had the luck of stumbling into this Sun contest that is giving away a brand new Samsung LCD HD TV (Model Samsung-LE19R86) and a Sony Blu-Ray player! Now I’m more depressed. It would have been good tidings for me if I was a UK resident as the competition’s only open to them. Bummer. Deadline for joining the contest is April 6.

LCD TV Sales are up in US and UK

Speaking of Samsung, I hear that despite the dreary worldwide economic conditions they are still selling products! Well, apparently, the LCD TV segment in the U.S. in general is still doing good despite the upheavals in our financial markets. Samsung is still leading the pack with a market share increase of 5% which brings it to 26% market share! That is double the market share of its closes rival Sony at 13% market share. This market report indicated that the LCD TV market grew by about 20% in January and February on year! That’s just amazing.

LG Electronics, in Europe, likewise reported positively with a whooping 50% in sales!

Where can you attribute this surge in sales? According to CEO of Samsung, Lee Yoon-woo, it can be explained by the huge reduction in prices of the LCD TVs. The VP for LCD Division of Samsung, Scott Birnbaum, on the other hand, used a bit of psychology in his explanation:

“People are trying to replicate that movie theater experience,” Birnbaum says, driving them to buy bigger and bigger TVs. Bigger TVs have always been considered better, but when a TV gets larger, the quality of the image has to increase too, or the picture looks grainy and suffers from motion blur. “Now companies are doing 120 and 240Hz refresh rates, and doing three interpolated frames for every real frame you’re seeing” to get quality up to par with size, Birnbaum says. That quality improvement is driving consumers to upgrade from older flat-screens, or winning over reluctant tube-TV owners.

I kind of agree with both explanations but I have another one. People are buying up LCD TVs because of the bad economy! As I have pointed out in my previous post where I called on everyone who had the cash to buy a new TV this year, flat screen TV prices are cheap because of the speculation that demand will drop. So when people saw how much they dropped, people bought TVs because they don’t have anything else to do but stay home and watch TV to ride out the depression!

Now, has anyone seen a cheap Panasonic Neo PDP Z1 or Philips 37PFL7603D? I’m thinking it’s one of those or I’m off to UK to join a contest…

Recommended read: Why Are Samsung’s LCD TV Sales Still Booming?

 

New TV Technology News: Lasers and Coffee

Newest and Future TV Technology

Just when you think that televisions got nowhere else to go, here comes the clever humans who says otherwise. First is the Laser TV which is touted to be the ultimate plasma TV replacement. Laser TV is not just a concept but an existing technology right this very moment but I know of no final product being sold in the market yet, although I’ve been hearing news of its appearances in tech and trade shows that would indicate its debut into the consumers arena is inevitable in the foreseeable future.

A laser TV is basically a rear projection television with lasers being used to project images instead of the power-hungry mercury lamps that are being used by traditional rear projection TVs. Three lasers at the back of the TV, having the colors red, green and blue, combine to produce the colors needed to create the images. The result of this innovation is an increase in the gamut of colors that can be created. Current televisions can only produce 30 to 40% of the colors that human eyes can perceive. With lasers, TVs will be able to create up to 90% of the colors that the eyes can differentiate. That’s definitely rich and would be most stunning indeed. Even the blackest of blacks would be achieved by this technology because lasers basically just turn off when an absence of color is required. The result would be televisions that can display colors at very high fidelity and that is less power consuming. Laser televisions are reported to be 75% more power efficient than conventional plasma televisions.

There are two companies that I know right now that are actively pursuing this technology: Novalux and Mitsubishi.

Television made through Coffee Stains!

The other television technology that’s being enthusiastically eyed by clever humans will come from stuffs most unexpected—coffee!!!

Basically, they discovered that the process whereby coffee stains are created can be used to in electronics that would make televisions thinner, lighter and more power efficient. I’m no coffee drinker but if this is the case, well, hey I’ll have coffee on my TV anytime! The details of this coffee science is still sketchy to me but they’ve tried explaining it in this report on using coffee for the next generation of televisions.

Image courtesy of Softpedia.com

More of the latest TV technology in future posts.