71" 21:9 TV

Hi

I'm starting a new electronics brand and one of the LCD/LED backlit screens I am manufacturing is a 71" 21:9 3D TV .

I would love some input on what you all think.

I am going after a niche market of people whose taste is not catered for by mainstream brands. I look around in electronics stores and everything looks the same. Who decided that all TV's should be rectangular black plastic boxes.

Also, I don't think it's acceptable that TV's come with such poor sound quality that you have to buy a whole new amp and speakers. They all seem to have assumed that we will sacrifice almost everything to get a TV that's just a little bit thinner. The blu ray, cable-box and speakers need floor-space so I don't gain much benefit. Plus I don't want to drill into my living-room wall to hang it.

I think 71" 21:9 TV's are wide enough to hold decent speakers- they could even be used to cover the vertical black bars for 16:9 content and then slide out for 2.35:1 in a similar way to the curtains at the movies when the previews end and the movie begins.

The 58" that Philips and Vizio sell is not quite big enough for me (although they are both cool).

What do you think? are there a bunch of people out there in my niche who prefer chrome to plastic and want a TV that is optimized for movies instead of desperate housewives and with quality surround sound built-in?

It's not that you are from Missouri You're just skeptical which I understand. If you look at all the no-name junk TV brands out there, you'll see that it's not really far fetch at all.

Anyone can start an electronics brand if they have the drive to do it and enough money. My business is normally in the intellectual property space. I fund inventors to bring their products to market. The funds come from PE firms, hedge funds and wealthy individuals (I live in New York where they all live)

Making electronics is a lot easier than new inventions because at least people know what the product is and we know that there is a market for it. As Cavx says, brand recognition is the hard part. People tend to assume that brands they haven't heard of are low-end junk and they are normally right.

A significant portion of the TV's currently on the market are not made by the company that owns the brand. Philips are made by Funai here and TPV in Europe. The most popular LCD brand here, Vizio, have never made a single TV. It was started in 2002 by one guy(you may remember it because it would have smelt fishy to you). As the largest selling brand in the US, they still only have 120 people. I think it's inspiring!

Contract manufacturers will make TV's for anyone with the cash. They will even do all the distribution and servicing. Even Sony are trying to go that route.

I found the capital for this to be easier to raise because the chances of losing everything is significantly less than with new inventions. Even if it doesn't make a profit, it is unlikely that we would get nothing for the stock.

I'm not telling you this because I need your approval, I want people to know how "possible" it is. I wish more people would do it. Large brands have a vested interest in holding back the latest technology because they don't want to make their stock obsolete or devalue it. They also don't make products for people like me. If I could already buy the product I want, I probably wouldn't do it.

I have already ordered my panels, Inverters and drivers etc - they are on-route to my assembler. One way or another, I'm making TV's. If they sell or not is a different matter. Worst case, I'll be left with a few thousand really wide TV's in a warehouse somewhere.

To me, the brand of the panel inside is more important than the one on the enclosure.

Hey Hopeful Fred

I agree with your points. There are some exceptions where niche players attract a significantly higher price than the large brands. Look at Bang and Olufsen. I love their marketing!

I don't plan on competing with $8000 projectors. If people have a dedicated room, money for an anamorphic lens and a quality screen etc, they should go that route. I am making (or should I say, having made) TV's in a price range that is less than half of that at the top end. I plan on targeting a niche that isn't currently served by existing brands.

My panels will be made by one of the top 5 panel makers and I'm only using grade A New panels. All of the features you mentioned are already part of the spec and in some cases, significantly exceeded. The exception is the color management system. I'd love to understand a little more about what you'd like to see in that respect and where your source material currently comes from (blue-ray, dvd, download, stream etc). I started this thread to get input so I can market something that people want so your help is really appreciated. You obviously know you stuff in this area. To the extent that it's viable, I will make changes based on this kind of input.

Sony has significant economies of scale and definitely don't sell at a low price point. In my opinion, they aren't even that good anymore (well not like they used to be).

With the caveat that I haven't been through their books with a fine tooth comb, I think their problem is:
- There isn't as much "economy of scale" in panels as you might think and panels are 80% of the total cost (give or take)
- They have to fund an enormous fixed cost infrastructure in plant, equipment, R&D, retail outlets and hundreds of thousands of employees -I don't have that issue
-They are riding on the back of multiple failed content platform launches.
-Technology moves so quickly that they are forever having to discount to dump old stock - I will make less and focus 3-4 models
-With all that fixed infrastructure, they can't exactly make fewer TV's - their pricing has to account for a percentage of the output being sold at a loss (I don't)
-The backdrop to all of this is falling sales and increasing competition - I don't plan on competing in the mainstream or selling enough for anyone to notice

In many ways, the smaller guys are better placed to profit in this market. I have a lot of respect for what Vizio are doing. Because of them, thousands of people in lower income brackets can afford 65" 3D movie screens. They make a profit while Sony can't seem to make money in this business .

While a lot of people will disagree with me, I think the current path that the large corporates are taking with new technology is massively misguided. It isn't surprising that they are experiencing customer fatigue and a lack of excitement for new product launches. They are becoming almost more niche than me I saw Sony demoing one of their 4k projectors. The amount of money they had spent on the R&D was unbelievable. Yet again they have forgotten the golden rule for new technology in this space which is content, content, CONTENT!

So now the latest batch of TV's are back in the $4000+ range. Cable hasn't even caught up to the 1080p standard yet. In the most part, I see the trend going the other way with the rise in popularity of internet streaming (I looooooove Netflix). I have the most expensive internet package that Time Warner offered me and streaming Netflix is pushing up against it's limit. The guy doing the 4K demo said one movie would have to come on 20 blu-ray discs.... I tried to explain 4k to my wife and I may as well have been trying to explain nuclear physics and rocket science in chinese while standing on my head, rubbing my nose and patting my belly at the same time. BTW the trend part isn't just my opinion, my brother works for a company that makes cable boxes. They are worried about streaming making them obsolete so they are working with the cable providers to lock-in content like live sporting events to slow their imminent demise.

From my point of view, I'm thinking screw 4K, the F...ING SCREEN IS STILL THE WRONG SHAPE FOR MOVIES! (sorry, my inner-monologue curses a lot). The panels are already available without the need for more R&D, just give me one! The guy who gave us the Betamax Video, Minidisc and HD DVD is obviously still working there and still missing the point - Learn a lesson already.

Everyone has things that are important to them. When I see the calibrated TV next to the uncalibrated one in Best Buy - I think, I see the difference, but if they weren't side by side, I wouldn't notice. It's my expectation that a $3,000 tv should come already properly calibrated and Best Buy should stop trying to squeeze more money out of people.

If I see black bars, it ruins my enjoyment of the movie. Being given the choice of losing 1/3 of the picture or 1/3 of the screen size, suddenly 4K feels like the wrong priority for me. A director goes out of his way to shoot an amazing wide shot and these guys are ruining it for me so that desperate housewives and Gossip Girl get a full screen.

I know filling a 21:9 screen means expanding the picture but I have a plan on the content side too. To me it's still preferable to black bars. Black bars is what started me importing electronics from Asia as a 13 year-old. I grew up in the UK where they used 50hz TV's instead of 60hz like here and Japan. The Pal standard had 625 lines compared to 525 lines used in the NTSC standard. Because of this my Pal Nintendo and Neo Geo had black bars covering 17.5% of the screen and the games ran17.5% too slowly. It aggravated me so much that I started a business importing them from Japan and the US to sell in the UK. In some cases, I had to drill through the casing and soldering a scart lead directly to the motherboard so it would work on UK TV's. I know that's a little OCD for a 13 year old but I just one things to be the way they are supposed to be.

I had a laserdisc player then too and was watching 2.35:1 movies on a 4:3 screen and have been wanting a solution for this ever since....

Not my info on 4k. It's what the guy on tv said so it must be true

There was another format that offered good quality (at the time) but hardly anyone bought it. The old laserdiscs.

Convenience counts for a lot. People prefered to rent from the local video store.

I think the days of content coming on any kind of disc are nearly over. Most of the old video rental infrastructure has already closed down. It's all about downloads. Maybe when the Internet providers catch up it could take off. I could see iTunes offering a 4k option for an extra few dollars.

Too much detail stops movies looking movie-like if you know what I mean. Maybe that's why some people prefer plasma for movies. I wish there was 21:9 panel available. I'd use it over LCD any day.

Does anyone pay the extra to rent / buy the HD version on ITunes? I usually go old school because it downloads faster and uses less room on my computer.

I've already decided not to put a TV tuner in. It's not just a cost saving, it's more that I think it's given that most people get TV through cable boxes these days. Well anyone that would buy this.

I've sort of come around to the no speakers thing but the designer wants to show me what he can do on that before I make a decision. I'm probably going to test both options. There is a part of me that can't get my head around selling a high-end TV with no sound capability at all but as the Zen master says "we'll see".

If you don't want to go to Taiwan (which I don't), t he quickest way is to go through somebody who already has a relationship with the panel manufacturer you want to use. There are a ton of companies that sell TV parts but the safest way is to go through one of their named resellers. That information is on their website.

Another way is to go through a contract manufacturer who has a relationship with the panel manufacturer. The number of units you want can have an influence on where you go as well as their design capability. In my case, for my test run, I'm going through a display company that I happen to have a previous business relationship with. Display companies make custom LCD units almost exclusively in the B2B space (business to business because you're in Missouri

I chose this route because they typically work with the sort of volumes I am looking for and more importantly, I think their design capability is superior. I sat in what they call "an innovation session" a few days ago and I was blown away with some of the designs they showed me. Granted these were meant to grab your attention as you walk past a retail outlet and not for home but I want a different approach for a different business model.

Much harder, is the enclosures at my volumes which are too small for injection molding at my volumes and the front Bezel is too large for 3D printing, especially as I want it all in one piece. I'm probably going to have to go the brushed aluminum route over plastic because of this.

I know this is nothing to do with you point, but I also saw glasses-free 3D which is amazing and I've sent them away to see if it could work with consumer blu ray formats.