2009 has been a busy year. Among the developments: manufacturers have been rushing to cut power consumption, we’ve seen the arrival of Sony’s PS3 Slim, and analogue TV has begun to disappear from our screens. But this is all very much a question of “out with the old”. So, in with the new: press releases are bringing in news by the barrowful about 3D TV, and HDTV has begun to take hold both in the UK and abroad.
3D TV looks set to explode onto the consumer-electronics scene.
Sony recently announced plans to record 25 matches of the forthcoming 2010 World Cup in 3D, although no plans have yet been sealed to broadcast the content – fingers crossed for future proud owners of the 3D-Ready TVs that companies such as LG plan to release in 2010. 3D TV is joined by 3D Blu-ray as one of 2010’s proud expectations – the Blu-ray Disc Association has now finalised its specification for the new 3D discs. Manufacturers and studios will no doubt see this as a ‘go’ to start developing products and content that many expect to see arrive within the next 12 months.
HDTV is beginning to snowball – the UK’s Sky+HD service now offers 37 HD channels since the launch of MGM HD earlier this week, and Sky has recently made inroads into the German market, for example, where it now offers seven HD channels. Freeview HD has also begun broadcasting in the UK, albeit with just two channels initially. The service will roll out across the country over the next few months, and various broadcasters have announced plans to add HD channels to the service in the medium term.
Internet-capable TVs are yet another corner of the market that’s seeing massive growth. Four of the major manufacturers have now introduced TVs with internet access to one degree or another. Recent research suggests that as much as 20% of HDTVs sold in Europe in the next calendar year will have some form of internet connection.
Whatever happened to OLED?
But what haven’t we heard much about? For a start, way back in April, Adobe announced plans to install its Flash player in TVs by the end of the year, which is surely an important step in bringing full internet content to the TV screen. There’s been no more news on that, so we’ll keep an eye out for any progress.
Budding screen technology OLED has also kept pretty quiet: After we all made a big fuss about Sony’s 11-inch XEL-1 in spring 2009, we’ve not yet heard any plans to introduce ‘proper sized’ screens for the general public. Perhaps this will all change at the CES trade show in January – you can, of course, expect a full round-up of developments from the team at Televisions.com.
[...] we’ll come right out and admit this isn’t what we’d predicted. OK, 3D topped the bill, and that’s what we said it’d do – but it was pretty hard to miss the [...]