TV Prices Falling Faster [NYT Bits Blog]
Are you looking to buy a new HDTV during the holidays? If you're looking to get a new television for the digital transition or getting hooked up to high definition content, the NYT's Bits blog indicates that television prices may be falling fast in the next six weeks due to the challenging economic situation we find ourselves in. Retailers are very concerned that consumers are keeping a tighter grip on their wallet, and are expected to respond by slashing TV prices.
An expert on TV prices is quoted in the NYT article, telling consumers to look for these prices.
Paul Gagnon, DisplaySearch’s director of North American TV market research, predicts the following prices in the coming weeks:
- 19-inch high definition LCD: $199
- 32-inch HD LCD: $399-$499
- 40-inch 1080p LCD: $799-$999
- 42-inch HD plasma: $599-$699
- 50-inch HD plasma: $899-$999
I hate to tell you what I paid for that 50-inch plasma TV in my living room only 3 years ago. Ouch. But the NY Giants sure looked great yesterday, coming from behind to beat the Steelers in high-def!
First it was the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) asking the FCC to allow a public comment period before voting on approving white space devices, now several professional sports leagues are joining the NAB, along with several members of Congress. The National Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, and NASCAR (the very entitiy that received a $350,000 "buy" from the FCC to paint one of its race cars with a digital transition message) have petitioned the Commission for a public comment period prior to the FCC's vote on white spaces.
White space devices were the subject of an FCC technical report earlier this month that indicated white space prototypes
still have some issues with interference with broadcast television signals and cable television.
I know I sound like a broken record, but rather than jumping quickly into a vote on a controversial technology that has not yet succeeded in fully proving itself, shouldn't the FCC should focus its efforts on getting the nation ready for a successful digital transition next February? It's just 113 days and counting and I worry it will be no cake walk.
CableTechTalk does a good roundup of all the news on Comcast's rollout of DOCSIS 3.0 cable broadband - complete with a 50 Mbps tier. DOCSIS 3.0, as
I've talked about here before, is the next evolution of cable broadband technology, with the capacity of bringing speeds of up to 150 Mbps.
Needless to say, we are watching the progress of DOCSIS 3.0 very closely. As more and more large, bandwidth-consuming applications become attractive and available to our customers, we will be ready to offer access to them at blazing speeds.
Have you used Google Earth? It's a neat product that you can download for free from Google that displays satellite imagery of the entire world. Users can zoom in to look at detailed images of points of interest. Because of the amount of image processing power that Google Earth does, the news that Google is releasing a mobile version for the iPhone is surprising.
If you're familiar with the product, you'll probably be as amazed as I was at the screenshots on the device. If you download Google Earth for your iPhone (also free), you may want to use your wi-fi connection for browsing - this article indicates there is some significant latentcy downloading Google Earth's satellite images over the 3G mobile network.
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