The LED Backlight LCD TV’s Time Is Coming

LED LCD TVs

While most companies are experiencing the economic crunch amidst heavy discounts and thinning profit margins some are looking forward and beyond the situation are looking for ways on how to offset their losses.

Apparently, many flat screen tv makers are banking on the newer LED LCD TVs to get them through the current dip and perhaps take advantage of the predicted boom in this new LCD technology.

A Reuter’s report on this indicate a time frame:

“Going forward, the entire market will shift to LED. LED is the best television technology made available so far,” Sue Shim, Samsung’s senior vice president in charge of visual display sales and marketing, told the Reuters Global Technology Summit this week.

Research firm iSuppli forecast LCD TV LED revenue will soar nearly nine times to $1.4 billion in 2012 from $163 million in 2009. Globally, LEDs are being increasingly used in a wide array of applications including lighting, notebooks, mobile phones and televisions.

“One of our consumer surveys showed 78 percent of them were willing to pay up to 50 percent premium,” said Shim of Samsung.

Source: Reuters.com.

Why are LEDs becoming popular? This may be due to the fact that LED LCD TVs are more energy efficient and are capable of saving up to 40% power. This is perfect for the increasing number of people who are looking to greener living.

The most obvious stumbling block for this thing to take off is the price as LEDs usually cost up to 50% more compared to conventional CCFL LCD TVs. But the consensus is that these will be overcome in the years to come as production prices go down and as more and more competition comes into the picture.

My next probably flat screen TV purchase would probably be one of these babies. Is it the thinnest LG LED LCD TV that I talked about in my previous post? Only time will tell.

In the mean time, I will hold on to my Polaroid lcd tv repair course survivor. hehe.

 

New Sony Bravia WE5: More than 50% OFF… on power consumption!

Sony Bravia WE5 Image courtesy of http://www.sony.co.uk/article/id/1234253950778

Here’s another goody goody from Sony who just launched another cutting-edge LCD HD TV called the Sony Bravia WE5. It is touted to be the world’s first TV using the micro-tubular Hot Cathode Fluorescent Lamp (HCFL) backlight that enables it to save more than 50% in terms of power consumption.

Other energy saving features include the intelligent Presence Sensor which detects whether the viewer has left the room. If he has, the Sony Bravia WE5 powers down further by switching off the picture but maintaining the sounds. This is a pretty clever feature which we could all have used all this time.

Further, since using flat screen TVs as computer monitors is becoming more and more popular, this Bravia model also has a power down feature when it stopps receiving a signal from the computer for a certain amount of time! Neat.

And finally, here’s the kicker— the StandBy mode consumes no power!!! It actually turns itself off but saves the state it is in so that when you turn it back on, you can proceed right where you left off. Pretty handy while watching those online movies or those DVDs. They finally found a way to use flash based technology in our televisions!
This feature is much like the hibernate mode of the Windows OS where you can turn your PC or laptop off while in the middle of doing something but you can continue right where you left off upon turning it back on! I think this feature is pretty cool!

This Bravia model is actually part of a line of Bravias that have been Eco-labeled by the EU. I guess this is the industry’s answer to the EU’s challenge of creating more energy efficient LCD and Plasma TVs or else they will push for the phasing out of the plasma TV.

Other eco-labeled Bravia models: » BRAVIA W5500, BRAVIA E5500, BRAVIA V5500, BRAVIA™ S5500

 

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?