Is the Japanese TV Business Facing Extinction? - Page 2

Not true. You forget about the digital converter coupon program?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon-..._converter_box

The Japanese will go down the tubes, compliments of low wages in China.
Cheers, Pete

It's called......spending time talking with friends and family members, playing board games, card games, etc...
Available now!

Yea - I've got a basement HT and all, 130" screen w/7.1 yada-yada, totally love it for weekends and "big" events. Invite neighbors over, etc.
We are also in a monthly euchre club for the adults while the kids "play" the old fashioned way.
(many people outside of Michigan seem to not know about euchre, a fun card game, learned in college)

Trying to put a sense of balance to all this.....................stuff we call MUST items. I'm guilty at time also.

Back to the OP subject, I bought my 1st HDTV in Feb-2005, 7 years ago, for $2k. It replaced my 1990 50" Mitushibishi beast.
What did I get for being an "early" HD adopter?
A 42" 720p Sony "slimline" - 14" deep - sorta ugly silver framed HDTV, with useless side speakers taking up real estate.
It's paid for, still works after 7 years - on original bulb - , still in the family room.
(Cable till late 2008 did not carry HD content, so went OTA with nice big antenna.)

I've not replaced it yet......cause its still working!
Many-many times I've had the itch to go...bigger (yes a 50-52" would fit exactly in same space) and 1080p.
However, balancing $$ among needed must items vs wanted items, plus the longer I wait the better and more mature the tech will be.
>>Price points have continaully dropped and spec/feature improved year-year.

Like personal computers, HDTV's will/are becoming a commodity.
Nothing wrong with that is there?
I'm the guy who help fund the R&D of PC's, spending my own $$ on hardware/software 1984-1997 $38k, when I added that up was so shocked, and looked back at the roller-coaster the PC ramp up was.

I agree. I think by now most people have replaced their tube sets and their rear projection behemoths. It's simple market adjustment. When the tech evolves to where it makes the plasmas and LCDs obsolete then we'll see another surge.

A better form of home entertainment sounds good to me,but remember by what your predicting means:No more TV must begin at the extinction of cinema from the death of moviemaking??I definitely subscribe to some sort of screen-based entertainment,afterall the likes of THE HOBBIT part 1 begins in earnest at the beginning of 2013,with part 2 to follow in 2014 for a bluray/BD3D release somtime in 2015,so in reality we probably wont even have gotten as far as a 4k source to feed this new super resolution,but like 1080p,1080p bd/3d it is supposedly gonna be a 4k oled/crystal led future to show off the latest bluray 4k sourced movies.As possibly the greatest lyricist of our time wrote in 1994 then in 1995 sung "and the year 2000 wont change anyone here" 2020 isn't a million miles away...

I can agree with what Audioman1 is saying but it is a little bit scary isn't it..the way technology is changing our our world. Maybe I am a bit old fashioned.

UltraMegaKiller-definition??

or will they just beam a signal directly into the brain??

Didn't you know? They're already doing that.

Yeah, I see..... that accounts for the hair loss....

Just heard over the news from Taiwan...
Foxconn just became the largest shareholder of Sharp, I guess we can mark it as the demise of another formerly great Japanese company.

Demise? Based on that logic a company like Samsung is dead since over 50% of its shares is owned by foreigners.

I doubt it's the foreign ownership that's the sticking point. Issue is whether Foxconn is doing this
a) to rebuild the fallen Sharp brand as a way of moving the Foxconn organisation up in margins
b) mainly for the Sharp LCD manufacturing capacity & tech

If it's the latter, then yes - demise of the brand.

Mind you Foxconn is also basically Apple's manufacturing division. They have a stmbiotic relationship where Foxconn is doing what Apple would do, but off the books - And tablets/smartphones are the lead revenue drivers for the partnership of this duo. With Apple reducing reliance on Samsung for LCDs, this purchase could simply be Foxconn doing b) above in order serve a very important customer.

I'd stick the fork in.

It's a shame. My first ultraportable laptop was a Sharp Actius A100, way before the days when anyone used the term "netbook". It was a great product with an incredible screen. But Sharp just never had the marketing skill to parlay its screen expertise into a real market foothold. Like many if these Japanese electronics brands they were just ill equipped to cope with the changes of the era of consumer democratisation and they lacked the scale of local presence in the US as well.

I think Televisions will not die as some think. There definitely will be some television manufacturing plants closing their doors, but in the end there will still be companies selling TV’s. The industry will basically boil down to who is left standing after the storm. BUT! I do think the quality will go down the toilet. Companies will cut corners and use cheap materials. I think extended warranties will be a necessity when buying a new TV due to a high failure rate of most TV’s. On the flip side of the equation, I think cable and satellite companies will be forced to lower their rates and give more options to customers. I think the advances of On-line contend and internet connected TV’s, cable and satellite companies will have to compete with price and options. With all the current and future entertainment options that are out there, everybody will still need TV’s, just not as many as before. Just to put everything into perspective, the cheapest television on the market is still better than the black and white television I grew up with. My father went out and purchased one of those “HUGE” Zenith TV’s that was mounted inside a cabinet with a swivel base, and “HUGE” speakers mounted on each side. This thing weighed a billion pounds. So, where ever it got delivered and set up in the house, it stayed until the television stopped working. The cheapest television on the market as of today would be considered High End compared to my fathers Zenith.

It looks like soon everything manufactured in the world will be made in China! The rest of the world will be service industries, agriculture, and raw material production. All manufacturing will be in China. Ok, not all, but probably 80%+. I remember when lots of things said 'Made in Japan". Nowadays the only electronics made in Japan are arcade games. The only electronics made in America are slot machines. Lots of housewares and toys used to be made in Japan. Now it has all moved to China. Japan used to be "cheap foreign labor". Then Japan caught up with America in the average wage department. Now the world looks to China for cheap foreign labor. At least Japan isn't Communist. Now we are forced to patronize Communism.

its not at all true that China todayis run by communists - why anyone is peddling that line in this day and age, I dont know. China is currenlty run by a gang of dictators who are firm mercantilists. Recently a high govt offical there went bold with communist ideas for their economy, wel.....he ended up in prison. Need we say more?

So dont worry, your electronics are not manufactured by communists, just plain old dictators.

I certainly hope the OLED tech doesn't die. Like the best of both the edge-lit and full array LED worlds.

Assembled in America ... a step toward 'made in America'

Hey, I've got a question for you guys I've often thought about myself, I'm curious as to response...
If some upstart American company was able to create a large, (say, bet. 50-80" screen) quality LCD, but cost, on average, 3k-5k+ over the typical overseas screens in the same size, would you buy it?

I know you spend time here, and everybody seems want the next giant FP. BUT people who spent time here are not representative of the general population.

To answer your question: it would be a niche.

The KUROS are recognized as the best TV, PQ wise, ever made, and why they stopped making it?

U zero in SIZE. Well OK, to that I say even Intel, having battled in the speed arena for so long, finally told their customers, never mind about cpu speed, the features are what matters.

Apple is the one company who's been able to charge premium for their stuff, but even they, gotta watch for those fast copy-cats, they cannot rest on their laurels. The copy-cats are ferocious.

On the contrary, with demands for increased wages spiking labor costs by 20-30% per year, the Chinese are pricing themselves out of the "cheap labor" category. They are outsourcing to Vietnam, and increasingly, replacing humans with robots. That is the future. Foxconn had 10,000 robots in 2011, plans for 300,000 by end of 2012, and a million within 3 years. Panasonic had replaced 5,000 workers with robots and 15 engineers to run them. Robots are replacing humans, and for good reason. The job is perfect every time. They don't need pensions. They don't for m unions and demand ridiculous perks. They don't get sick or have sore backs. They can work 24 hours a day....in the dark. I think the next big wave in manufacturing brings it full circle. It will be energy and robotics that combine to make the manufacturing world different. Cheap energy, like vast amounts of natural gas. The USA is the perfect place to set up an automated factory(as long as the idiots in Washington and the idiots running most states don't tax away any interest). We have plentiful cheap energy. We have universities that COULD supply the needed engineers. Transportation of goods is becoming too expensive, so local manufacture is a bonus. So keep your eyes open for factories coming to the USA, filled with Fanuc or Kuka robots.....it may be sooner than you think!

Who exactly is going to buy these "locally produced" products when those sickly, union-forming, 8-hours-a-day-sleeping humans have no jobs? The robots?

There are no jobs doing this kind of work in the US now-nobody would actually be displaced locally. If these kinds of plants show up here, the jobs will come to those supplying the energy, those who mine the metals, those who produce the plastics, truckers, railroads, janitorial, waste, engineers, etc. just like any other business. An entire ecosystem would form around the plants.

Yeah,even i used to think why the Pioneer kuros production was stopped though it was manufactured in china ! And what is more funny is panasonic corp has purchased all the pattens for Kuro,But it has not implemented these technologies in its line of plasma tv's.And its complaining of falling sales figures and profit margins.
All panasonic had to do was to resurrect the old kuro line in there panasonic product line-up of plasma tv.Instead waste enormous funds in improving its own line of plasma tv's that has some bugs year after year.
And kuros failed due to its pricing and was then very expensive to make.But now since the prices have all fallen,Can't the panasonic corp launch the kuro based plasma with the present pice tag !
And iam sure many who want to buy the best 2D plasma will certainly buy it,instead of the newer smart tv's which does everything but produce the picture quality of a kuro plasma.

Everyone in the "know", knows that every Japanese TV maker is losing money.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-11/panasonic-forecasts-net-income-lagging-behind-analyst-estimates.html

http://mashable.com/2012/05/11/panasonic-plasma-tv/