According to China-based All View Consulting (AVC) via Digitimes, LCD TV sales in China from January to May accounted for 80.3% of total TV shipments. LCD TV shipments were 13.78 million units and worth CNY58.93 billion, about US$8.7 billion. China’s total TV market was 17.16 million units and CNY66.91 billion in revenues.
I wonder what 20% of China’s TV market is composed of? Plasma? Rear projection? CRT? Something else?
There is no doubt China will become the largest market for TVs. China’s rate of economic growth is faster than any other country and with more than one billion in population. Market research company, DisplaySearch, predicts shipments of flat panel TVs including LCD and plasma in China will increase from 31 million in 2009 to 59 million in 2014 and become the largest LCD TV market by 2012. Of course, no one knows for sure what will happen in the next four years but growth is quite likely. For more info check out DisplaySearch’s press release.
DisplaySearch also expects CRT will effectively disappear from the China TV market in the next five to ten years. I personally don’t think CRT TVs will ever completely disappear from any market let alone China where hundreds of millions live impoverished. According to DisplaySearch, there are 450 million CRT TVs in China. Unlike newly built flat panel TVs these old tubes tend to be more resilient. The last CRT TV we owned lasted more than 20 years, so the one we have now still has a ways to go. I also see no reason why a working CRT TV would be replaced by a Chinese who could consider it a luxury item, even five, ten years from now. If you have an unwanted 34-inch flat wide CRT Sony XBR (i.e. 34XBR960) in pristine working and cosmetic condition, I would be more than happy to take it off your hands.
Google’s Android was the only smartphone OS that experienced growth during the three month period ending in May according to comScore. Android increased its market share by four percent to 13.0%. One major note is that this period is prior to the beginning of sales of Apple’s hugely successful iPhone 4. Nonetheless, Android is growing and growing fast.
Research In Motion (RIM) remained the number one smartphone OS in the United States with a 41.7% market share, a slight decline from 42.1%. Apple also experienced a slight reduction of its market share from 25.4% to 24.4%, but keeping its position at number two. Microsoft remained at number three with 13.2% down from 15.1%. With Android at 13.0% and experiencing rapid growth it is likely that Google’s smartphone OS will overtake Microsoft when comScore announces its next smartphone market share report. Palm was a distant number five with just 4.8% market share, down from 5.4%.
The total number of US-based smartphone subscribers is 49.1 million, but bear in mind that comScore’s data tap smartphone subscribers who are 13 and older. I know of a few who are younger toting smartphones and I’m sure you do too, so the actual number is certainly higher.
I am visiting South Korea at the moment and the two main smartphone brands LG and Samsung are focused on bringing more advanced Android-based smartphones as quickly as possible. The iPhone 3GS is getting old but the iPhone 4 isn’t out yet. Samsung in particular is accelerating its Android development and has introduced some fantastic models including the new Galaxy S, which by the way is being promoted by nearly every mobile phone store on every street in Seoul. LG’s Android-based smartphone Optimus is also being heavily advertised. I chose to go with Motorola’s Motoroi because of its superior display, which is a 3.7-inch IPS LCD sporting a class-leading 854×480. Class-leading in South Korea at the moment. Read SKTelecom Motorola XT720 Motoroi Review: 3.7-inch IPS Android 2.1 Smartphone In South Korea for my initial thoughts.
4K2K. Quad HD. Whatever these terms refer to, YouTube is supporting them via an “Original” option in the video settings (source: The Official YouTube Blog). Let’s try to figure out what these terms mean. I will be using the term “pixel format” to refer to things like 1920×1080; resolution is not the right word as it refers to pixel density and shown as pixels per inch (PPI).
4K2K refers to a pixel format of around 4000×2000. Pixel formats and aspect ratios differ for digital film standards (source: Wikipedia):
According to the Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI), a joint venture among Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony Pictures Element, Universal, and Warner Bros. Studios, 4K2K refers to motion picture with a pixel format of 4096×2160 (source: DCI Digital Cinema System Specification Version 1.2, in PDF).
It can also refer to a simple doubling of 1920×1080 pixels in the horizontal and vertical directions to 3840×2160, resulting in the quadrupling of the total number of pixels from 2,073,600 to 8,294,400. And hence the term Quad HD. A more technically correct term would be Quad Full HD since you can fit four 1920×1080 screens. Full HD is yet another industry jargon for 1920×1080 and usually associated with progressive scanning at 60 fps.
YouTube has conveniently listed all 4K2K titles for anyone with the bandwidth and just as importantly a 4K2K-capable display for the complete experience. On the list these are the titles that allow you to view the video in the Original pixel format, as of this writing: Life in the Garden, Surf NYC, 2nd Movement for Violin, and Lupe. Secret World seems to be limited to just 1080p.
I watched these 4K2K titles on a 1920×1080 LCD and was fairly impressed except that there were too many artifacts related to compression/decompression. On the other hand, I captured the screen (above, cropped to 512 pixels wide) and the quality of the image was outstanding. For quite some time most of us will be relegated to enjoying 4K2K videos on less-than 4K2K displays. Display and capture devices capable of 4K2K are incredibly rare and expensive. For example, JVC’s DLA-RS4000U reference series 4K2K home cinema projector has a MSRP of US$175,000.
What’s next?
Ultra High Definition (UHD) is the next step after High Definition (HD) and 4K2K/Quad HD. But before we get into UHD we have to understand where we are with HD. The ATSC standard was developed by the Advanced Television System Committee for digital TV transmissions with a maximum pixel format of 1920×1080. ATSC replaced the analog NTSC TV system on June 12, 2009 in the US. The maximum pixel format of 1920×1080 runs at a maximum frame rate of 60i where the letter ‘i’ is interlaced and the 60 refers to frames per second. This can also be shown as 1080/60i. According to the ATSC standard progressive scanning for the highest pixel format include 1080/30p and 1080/24p. Progressive scanning at 60 frames per second is not terrestrially broadcasted but can be created with the deinterlacing process in the TV or an external box. Non-broadcast material such as Blu-ray has 1080/60p. So that’s HD; what is UHD?
The NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, official English name: Japan Broadcasting Corporation) Science & Technical Research Laboratories developed UHD, which is also referred to as Super Hi-vision. The pixel format jumps to an amazing 7680×4320 and the frame rate to 60p. The short form would be 4320/60p. (All HDTV and UHDTV feature a 16:9 aspect ratio.) Super Hi-vision was demonstrated at World Exposition 2005 in Aichi, Japan on a 600-inch display. On November 2, 2005 NHK successfully transmitted Super Hi-vision signals between Kamogawa (Chiba prefecture) and its Science & Technical Research Laboratories). The distance between the two locations is 260km and is connected via optical cables. Super Hi-vision video and audio were uncompressed and transmitted using Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM). You can find more information at NHK.
The waterproof and durable Casio canU 502S once offered by LG Telecom that has been in use for the last five or so years needed to be replaced. The outer casing is indeed quite durable and is unsurprisingly bulky for a rugged phone. The 2.2-inch LCD has solid colors, sharp fonts and sports a 320×240 pixel format. The keypad has a really solid feel to it. I found the LED flash to be quite useful when dark; there is a dedicated flash button. The Achille’s heel on the canU 502S, also known as G’zOne TYPE-R in Japan, is the battery pack’s hinges; they break. There are two, but when one breaks the battery starts to wiggle and at times will lose its connection to the phone forcing you to turn it on again. For the last week I’ve been using good old fashion tape to solve this problem, but the tape was stretched to its limits. The canU 502S proved to be quite durable and for quite some time, but it was time to move on.
I asked those who are in the know regarding the best carrier in South Korea. Interestingly this is exactly the opposite of what I had done in the US: the phone was the most important. I wanted the iPhone so I moved from Verizon to AT&T. Not the smartest move but I really had to experience this new iPhone at the time. The gamble paid off: the iPhone’s revolutionary multitouch UI was fantastic. But I was stuck, for two years, with unreliable connections. For example, every year I visited CES in Las Vegas, it was almost impossible to get a reliable data connection. It wasn’t so bad at home but it wasn’t that great either. (I become contract-free from AT&T this month. What should I do? Any tips?)
In South Korea I was recommended by a few whom I trust that SK Telecom (SKT) is the best carrier. I don’t know how you can prove or disprove that SKT is the best, but I had no reason to doubt. I then proceeded to spend considerably time online researching phones on SKT. This was my wish list for the perfect phone: a really good display, email, Internet, texting capabilities, and the option to use it with a prepaid SIM card in the US. There were many tempting phones but I decided on the Motorola Motoroi.
The Android 2.1-based candybar smartphone from Motorola sports one of the best displays out there: a 3.7-inch IPS LCD with a 854×480 pixel format. The original Droid share the very same display, which won DisplayMate’s DisplayMate Best Video Hardware Guide Award for both smartphones and the entire mobile display category. You can check out a detailed review of the Droid’s amazing display at Motorola Droid vs. Google Nexus One. Here are some major points of the display: very bright, black is very black, contrast ratio is amazing, and colors are accurate. Text is really sharp, colors are great, viewing angles are superb for a phone and the blacks are really quite black, during the day. I watching TV on it as I was getting ready to sleep. The experience was new and unique but I could see that black levels could be better. This was one moment when I wished I had an OLED-based smartphone; it would have done much better. A FM radio is built in, not the streaming kind but a real one. I walk a lot in Seoul so being able to listen to the radio is quite nice. Call quality is superb and the cellular signal rarely drops below the maximum of six bars.
I don’t particularly like the slight buldge on the bottom right (in portrait orientation) but I do understand its purpose: a better feel when taking photographs or videos. Still, I would have prefered a perfect rectangle instead. The auto-focus 8-megapixel camera comes with a fairly large xenon flash. Since I usually prefer photos using natural light I generally keep the flash off. Unfortunately the Motoroi isn’t very good at taking low-light photos, but it isn’t any worse than the average smartphone. Video can be captured at 720p but I don’t think the hardware is quite up to the task. There seems to be some problems during recording and playback. There is a slight hesistation and playback isn’t as smooth. During video capture that was a brief pause and that showed up during playback. It may be related to an underpowered CPU, a less-than-optimized Media Browser app, a slow microSD card, the Android OS itself or a combination. I’ll probably be dialing down video capture to just 640×480 just to ensure seamless capture and playback.
My phone was provisioned around 10:30am and I got excited so I immediately started to setup email, browse the Internet, and download some choice apps for reading RSS feeds (NewsRob), killing processes and applications (Advanced Task Killer), an InstaPaper-compatible app called EverPaper, and Facebook. I took some pictures, checked email, read RSS feeds, browsed the Internet, opened a few built-in apps: Maps, T map (a SKT GPS navigation app, Quickoffice, etc.), texted some messages and talked on the phone a few times. Then it happened: I received a battery warning sign. I had 15% left. By 4pm the Motoroi’s battery was completely dead. That’s just 5 1/2 hours. Sure I did quite a few things that might have drained the battery, but 5 1/2 hours is simply terrible. Thankfully an extra battery comes with the backage, but unfortunately I didn’t bring it along incorrectly assuming the Motoroi would last the entire day. There are some other things that are disappointing.
The body gets hot to the touch. Maybe it is the hot and humid weather in Korea, but the temperature on the back toward the upper half is uncomfortable. I thought about rooting the Motoroi and installing Android 2.2 Froyo in the hopes of improving multimedia performance, especially 720p video playback, but I fear the Motoroi will become thermally unstable and become too hot to handle. This is minor compared to the next problem that has been driving me nuts.
For some odd reason the Motoroi has a mind of its own. It wants to reboot from time to time. I’ve tried to single out the cause by deleting widgets and apps, killing processes, doing hard resets, etc. but it doesn’t seem to be helping at all. After googling for some time I found Droid users complaining about a similar issue. The Droid and the Motoroi are close relatives so I assume what’s bugging the Droid is probably bugging the Motoroi. The only course of action that seems to solve this problem is to get a replacement unit. I hope the next one is stable. I’ve contacted the local SKT store where I purchased the Motoroi from for an exchange. I plan to get a replacement tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted.
Update: I returned the defective Motoroi and got another one. The new one was defective too. Just like the previous Motoroi this one had a mind of its own and rebooted several times a day. I had had enough. I returned the Motoroi and cancelled. I am so relieved! (You have 14 days from the day you sign up to cancel the agreement in South Korea.)
I really liked the display and Android was rather snappy on a relatively slow smartphone. The map app helped me get to places since I’m not familiar with the geography here. Email setup was very simple and convenient thanks to Gmail integration.
I really didn’t like the virtual keyboard and the Android’s method of suggesting words when I type: instead of suggesting right where I am typing the suggestions are on a different line and there are a LOT of suggestions. I much prefer the way the iPhone works where suggestions are right there where you are typing.
The camera is too slow and I had to reduce the quality to about 2 or 3MP to get the camera to work quickly enough. Low-light photography? Forget it. The Motoroi is about as good as compact digital cameras from about three years ago. Video is completely smooth at only 640×480. Don’t get fooled with its 720p HD video capture capable: it can do it, but it isn’t usable.
The one thing I decided that I am not going to do for some time: buy a Motorola smartphone. I’m back to my Casio canU 502S: the battery lasts for days, doesn’t ever reboot by itself, is waterproof (a wonderful feature since it is monsoon season in Korea right now) and has a real mechanical keypad that feels so good after unsuccessfully touch typing on a glass display.
The iPad natively supports MP4 video playback, and that’s it. If you have a lot of AVI, DivX or MKV files it will take a good part of your life to convert them to MP4. But there is a more efficient way. Not all, but a good many, videos are encoded in H.264, which is the codec that is compatible with iDevices. The AVI, DivX or MKV are just wrappers. Change the wrapper to MP4 and you’re ready to rock with your iPad in no time. That’s the idea behind Avidemux 2.
Avidemux can change the wrapper to AVI, MPEG, MP4, OGM, FLV and MKV. I’m no expert when it comes to this type of stuff but I randomly picked out an AVI file (The Book of Eli
So I redid the process with different settings. The AVI file was encoded in Xvid so instead of keeping the video as copy, I chose MPEG-4 ASP (Xvid). Avidemux unpacked the bitstream again and that took 26 seconds but the encoding portion now took a bit less than 22 minutes. This time the video quality was better and the video was quite watchable, but the video wasn’t as smooth as the original AVI. There was a bit of pixelation and the color was a bit off; patches of green appeared surrounding some video elements. There might be other settings that could be modified to get better results but my initial thoughts regarding Avidemux isn’t completely satisfying. I could also be doing something wrong. I am certain your experiences will vary. You might get better results with videos that are encoded in H.264, but I am not sure.
Avidemux makes use of a more efficient method of changing video file formats. Instead of re-encoding the entire video Avidemux changes the wrapper. In some cases this can be done in just minutes but your results will vary. This test was conducted on a 2009 17-inch unibody MacBook Pro with a 2.8GHz CPU and 4GB of RAM.
I like my high-tech gear bare, but the iPhone 4 might require a case. Not really to protect it from bumps and scratches but more to prevent it from signal degradation. It is difficult to find that perfect case since most degrade the aesthetics of the iPhone 4. I think ElementCase might be that case: it protects, looks good, and helps maintain the iPhone 4′s antenna signal strength, especially if you’re in a weak-signal area.
The Vapor case from ElementCase is CNC machined from a solid block of aircraft-grade aluminum. In other words this is a unibody aluminum case. The sexy block of aluminum is also anodized resulting in a hard protective coating. Sexy. Check. Protection. Check. And here comes third element: the Vapor is lined with a shock-absorbing material that ElementCase is claiming to be “very high tech”. Shock absorption is good, but that high-tech material also “helps maintain the iPhone’s antenna signal strength.” I hope it works.
ElementCase is taking Vapor pre-orders for a cool price of $79.95 and will ship July 12th. I think I prefer the ElementCase to Apple’s Bumpers but I can’t be sure since I haven’t had the pleasure of actually seeing or touching it. Be patient since shipping may take up to 2-3 weeks. More information can be found at ElementCase.
Lenovo’s chairman Liu Chaunzhi on Steve Jobs:
We are lucky that Steve Jobs has such a bad temper and doesn’t care about China. My theory is that a manager needs to be the string on which he puts one pearl after another. But Jobs himself is a big pearl.
That’s what he shared with the Financial Times. Well, sorry to burst your bubble Mr. Chaunzhi, but Apple plans to open an Apple Store in Shanghai this Saturday. The Shanghai Apple Store will be located between the IFC Mall and the Oriental Pearl TV Tower. And by the end of 2011 the big-pearl bad-tempered Steve Jobs & Co. expects to open 25 stores in China. I guess Lenovo’s luck ran out.
PS: I don’t get Chaunzhi’s pearl analogy but this is an interesting coincidence: big-pearl Steve and an Apple Store next to the Pearl Tower.
That’s a lot of interesting names. Founded in 2009, Aava Mobile’s goal is to build open-source mobile device platforms for the OEM/ODM markets. The company just brought out a prototype based on Intel’s Moorestown CPU that runs the MeeGo OS. Carrypad has a photo of the prototype running an early MeeGO UI and it looks okay though I don’t quite understand what some of the icons mean on the browser. MeeGo seems icon-centric as opposed to Windows 7 Mobile’s text-centric UI.
Intel’s original plan was to power smartphones in 2010. Moorestown, the codename for the company’s CPU targeted at mobile phones, is claimed to be very power efficient yet have enough ooomph for video conferencing and HD video playback. The smartphone market is growing fast and is expected to hit more than 220 million units in 2010, based on IDC’s estimate of 54.7 million smartphone shipments in Q1’10. Intel is just getting into the game, but the company is now planning for Moorestown-based smartphones to hit the market in 2011 instead of this year. I expect Intel will have a solid showing at CES 2011. The smartphone market is definitely heating up.
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber commenting on Consumer Reports’ iPhone 4 signal testing results:
So we seem to be nearing consensus. With strong reception, bridging that antenna gap doesn’t matter much. With weak reception, bridging that gap is enough to lose the signal.
OK… my question is: How do you know whether you’re in a place with strong reception or a weak one? Mike Gikas from Consumer Reports had three or four bars, which I think all of us would consider at least not weak, before going down to zero bars in about five seconds. All thanks to putting his pinky on “the spot” (read The iPhone 4 Spot). I guess help is on the way: Apple is working on a patch that will help you get a better feel for reception strength in your area (read iPhone 4 Reception Issue: Signal Formula Error?). So my recommendation, for now, is to find out whether you’re living, working, commuting in areas that have weak or strong receptions. If they are weak then I would hold off on the iPhone 4, no matter how painful that could be. Unfortunately, I live in an area with very weak AT&T signals. Pooey.
The original Holga is a 1982 creation. It sports a 60 mm f/8 plastic lens, makes use of all 120 medium-format films and has shutter speed settings of 1/125 and “B”. The original intention via Lomographic Society International:
The unassuming Holga is here to save you from a future of digital pixels and images shared on small screens on cameras or phones. We have all become numbed with photography, there is no denying it, but a chunky camera made almost entirely of plastic has been put on this Earth to save us. It will reawaken your vision, fill you with joy, make you see beauty when you thought it had disappeared forever, and bring out sunshine on a cloudy day.
The plastic contraption took fantastically unique pictures. And it was certainly fun to play with. But the Holga was downright ugly. Here’s something far more aesthetically pleasing, conceptually anyway, yet holding to that old tradition of having a lot of fun while taking pictures: Holga D.
Holga D is a digital camera, an absolutely minimalist toy digital camera. It doesn’t even have a viewfinder*. This design concept, conjured up by Saikat Biswas, is based on absolute minimalism, which might have been influenced by his studies at Pforzheim University of Applied Science in Germany:
Even though Holga D is a digital camera, in order to achieve its simplicity, it reduces the feature set to absolute minimum.
The design is the result of ruthless and thorough elimination of everything superfluous and in the end a rectangular body and a few buttons are left for the sole purpose of having a lot of fun taking photographs. Because you don’t have a viewfinder you need to wait to see how your photos turn out, kind of like a film camera of old. I think Biswas succeeds with the Holga D concept as it will certainly inject a bunch of fun back into digital photography. After thinking whether or not I have fun taking pictures, I admit I have become quite obsessive about capturing that perfect photo that I often forget to enjoy the process, the moment, the discovery.
Although billed as a toy camera the Holga D makes use of last-generation image sensors: either a full-frame or 1.5x cropped. A full-frame image sensor in a minimalist body like this would be simply outstanding! Megapixels would not at all be a concern and neither would these: vignetting, chromatic aberrations, barrel distortions, etc. These photographic defects are characteristics that will make photographing with the Holga D marvelously imperfect.
A black and white circular E Ink screen shows the remaining frames, whether the picture will be in black and white or color, a square or rectangle and how much battery power is left. The use of E Ink enhances visibility anywhere you might happen to be, reduces power consumption considerably, and brings four indicators into a concise symmetric design. The E Ink display and the shutter release key share the same diameter.
Everything looks delicious, sans one. The Holga D might technically be a toy camera but I would guess the majority that buys and uses this camera, if it ever gets made, will be adults. Adults who are into photography. These adults would not be wild about the idea that a pencil, pen or paperclip is required to change the ISO setting. The dimple on the ISO dial is an all-together failure. Biswas incorrectly assumes that photographers using the Holga D wouldn’t want to change the ISO setting often. So he made it almost impossible to change unless you had a sharp object handy. No doubt, Biswas has a great sense of design, but I wonder if he has spent enough time with a camera to get a gut-level sense of what it entails to take photographs in full-manual mode. (Update: Yes he has. Check out his Flickr photographs. They are most beautiful!) As most of you may guess, in manual mode, all settings are changed and quite often, including the ISO setting. My recommendation: simply replace the dimple with the bump. Voilà! Perfection.
By tastefully blending an absolute minimalistic product design that strips away every unnecessary detail to the bare photographic tool with function-focused buttons, indicators, old and new technologies Biswas succeeds in evoking a powerful desire for the Holga D, a thoroughly modern digital camera deliberately limited to fulfill the experience of film-based photography. If only the Holga D was real.
* One of the accessories is a viewfinder made of a single piece of clear plastic with embossed markings for square framing.
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