Omnipresent Big Screens

Where isn't there a big flat screen TV?

As ubiquitous as they seem, you ain't seen nothin yet.  They will be EVERYWHERE.  The bathroom in the mall, every 10' in the mall, every subway car and station, vending machine, gas pump, etc.  Everywhere.  The implications for the wireless industry by 2020 have only mildly been evaluated...but if you think the iPhone sucks the network dry, wait until there are WAN supported LANs that are feeding all of these broadband sucking devices.

I'm typing this on my G5 Mac with a 30" Cinema screen (look above...i'm a normal human and my setup is not suitable for a magazine ad) As a means to watch a film, or multitask, it's phenomenal.  I won't admit what I paid for it in 2004, but it is truly a gift that keeps on giving.  I love it...but I love the TV in my family room more (we have no TV in our living room)...the Pioneer Elite FHD1 Plasma 50" monitor.  It's extraordinary. It also gets extraordinarily hot, and is quite heavy.  Green it's not.  Beautiful it is...and EXTRAORDINARILY expensive.  But it too is the gift that keeps on giving.  There is nothing quite like watching Zack and Cody on this precious monitor.

when I purchased these two monitors back in the middle of the decade they were extravagant...today they are par for the course. Well, the size is anyway. This week my 17 year old received a 32" 1080P flat screen TV for XMAS.  It costs me $250 at Costco.  20X less than I paid for the 50X plasma.  Wow.  The mid-90s extravagant purchase has become the typical TV. Was all this predictable? what are we going to display on all these monitors? Ads? Weather (like at the Shell station)? truly personal content (as in Minority Report)?

I met with the Chief Strategy Officer of AMD about five years ago in Austin.  AMD has always been, to me anyway, the "little brother" of Intel.  To me, AMD was always about Jerry Sanders.  He had driven the company to be one step ahead of Intel from a technology standpoint, but was in his own way a flamboyant businessman in what is truly an "engineer's world" - semiconductors.

but I digress.

Billy had it right on the nose: they have ramped capacity so much and so widely that the price has dropped to the cost of a nice dinner for two couples.  I must say that my plasma screen TV looks RADICALLY better than my 17 year olds LCD flat screen.  Not all 1080P monitors are created equal.

Back in 2004 Billy told me:

1. Big screen TVs, which China - even then - owned, would take over the earth and by the time of the olympics in 2008 would be "super cheap".  In late 2004 60% of the big screen TVs were made in China.

2. Billy thought Qualcomm's MediaFlo was dumb. He saw no market for wide-area broadcast video to mobiles.  He saw tremendous value for LAN distribution, but unlike Intel, they were non-investors in WiMAX.

where isn't  there a big screen TV?  as I mentioned, I purchased a "Proscan" LCD 32" LCD 1080p TV for my 17-year-old for XMAS from WalMat: $300.  Amazing.

So picture this: big HD tvs everywhere with IPTV or other Broadband wireless connections.  Hopefully broadcast



from the press:

For Orbotech, the sector with the most potential for strong growth over the coming two years is equipment for inspecting LCD TV screens of all sizes. Analysts are unanimous in their view that over the four major sales events of the period Black Friday, Christmas, the day after NewYear's day, and the Chinese New Year LCD screens were and will be among the big hits. Sales are not collapsing this year, nor is inventory too large - so expectations are that screen makers will put into effect the plans they have on the shelves to make large investments in new and existing production lines. Some investments have been announced and were put into action, and some are on the way.

The main driver for the LCD screen market, which will bring a lot of gains to Orbotech, is the plummeting sales of "old technology" CRT televisions in developing countries, primarily China, and the concurrent move to LCD screens. According to analysts, 2009 should see a sharp 40% drop in CRT television sales, compared with a drop of about 15% in each of the previous three years. That is, even if the overall TV market grows only 5% next year, the LCD niche will grow more than 22%. Nearly every expansion of a factory, or building of a new one (and in China 7-8 new factories are planned) means a lot of orders for Orbotech, since it has a market share of over 70%.

The 2009 Charging Mat Conspiracy

I ran into Paul a the airport last night and our desultory conversation on the recent Chargers victory morphed into a discussion of charging mats.  This is one of the tech industry's "buzz" products of this year and likely to be featured at CES in Las Vegas  in a couple weeks.  These nifty, efficient systems permit the charging of your gadgets without the hassle of connecting a power-charging wire.  That's right - a "wireless" technology. Brilliant!


Of course this is not an entirely new idea.  There have been lots of methods of charging devices that we use often and require virtually constant charging.  How many can you think of?  Well,  your car battery does not really count, but it's a novel system: the battery is needed only to start the car, after that a charging system consisting of an alternator, a voltage regulator and a battery.  Your car could run without the charging system for an hour, more or less, depending on what else you had running (such as the lights, heater, wipers, etc.).  But I digress.  


The car is a bad example because all the user needs to do is put gas in it and drive it.  The car tells you when to put gas in it.  If it needs a repair, it lets you know.  If it breaks, new ones have you push a single button and somebody comes and helps.  there are other items that need to be charged all the time, including the variety of gadgets below:


1. the battery for my drill - there are two, grab/swap and go
2. my logitech wireless mouse - it's an awesome mouse and I need to charge it (if I forget) once a week
3. electric tooth brush: this one (is also a clever one) and uses the same induction as the wireless mat
4. Cordless telephone: same principle as the mouse and drill battery; a stand with a physical connection
5. the Flip Mino HD - this one uses a USB charger, one button releases the USB connector

Then, there's the device I need to charge the most: my cell phone.  You would think the device that I touch the most, use the most (well the mouse is probably up there) and am always with me would have a desk style charger.  Nope.  With my cell phone (a Nokia flip) need to pry out a plastic piece the size of a pencil shaving with my fingernail to put in the mini USB charger:

Why is this? Why is the device that I need to charge the most often (plug/unplug at least once/day) is such a pain to connect?

I have concluded that there is a conspiracy by agents from the "wireless power mat" industry inside all phone companies to make it as hard as possible.  Otherwise why would it be this way?

Tired of Verizon Wireless?

I'm tired of Verizon Wireless.  But as we both know, there is little one can do against "the system".  Oh I could switch to At&T or T-Mobile or Sprint, but why bother?  From what I've read that's no better.

Today's debacle began when I decided to modify my contacts online rather than on my handset. I wanted to do that as I've got several different numbers for a person that i've mis-labeled.  When I'm at a trade show and I need to reach him I end up waking up his wife as I've got his mobile number stored as his office, his office stored as his home, his home as his mobile.  Anyhow, it SHOULD be a snap to fix this up on my hand-dandy desktop...BUT NO! When I went back to www.verizonwireless.com/backupassistant (as instructed by my handset) I'm redirected to the "welcome to back assistant" page which informs me I need to download this application to my handset.  Well, yea...duh...I did that last year guys.  And I've been using it since then...

so....once more into the #611 breach....

And I get customer care agent #1 (Shashandra from Atlanta) who I spend 10 minutes describing my problem too...until she gets (I think) the simple problem, whereupon I'm moved to Customer Care person #2, who never really understood this problem, who puts me on hold for 5 min so I can talk with the "expert" #3 who tells me to "delete backup assistant from your handset and re-download it and run it again"

gee thanks.  I never would have thought of that on my own.  pleasure to spend 30 min with Verizon Customer Care today!

so helpful.