Familiar script: Home entertainment spending slips
Spending on home viewing of movies and television, on a downward spiral in recent years, fell again in 2011 as sales of DVDs and rentals at video stores dropped.
Total U.S. consumer dollars spent on home entertainment — including DVDs, video on demand and online streaming — declined 2.1 percent to $18 billion for the year, according to industry group DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group. Consumers continued to shift to lower-priced rentals from companies such as Netflix and Coinstar’s Redbox kiosks, eschewing outright ownership.
The DEG pointed to bright spots, including a 20 percent jump in sales of high-definition Blu-ray discs that topped $2 billion for the first time. “The industry’s performance clearly stabilized in 2011,” it said in a statement. (The top choices for the year? “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1,” followed by “Part 2″ at No. 2)
Meanwhile, Hollywood is trying to reinvigorate interest in movie ownership with a cloud-based digital locker called Ultraviolet that allows viewing anytime from Internet-connected devices. The consortium that runs Ultraviolet, in an announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, said movie studios will offer hundreds of titles with the Ultraviolet option this year, up from a paltry, initial 19.
More than 750,000 households have registered with UltraViolet to create digital libraries since last fall’s launch, Mark Teitell, general manager of the Ultraviolet consortium, said in an interview. Photo Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Nokia’s Weber devises U.S. plan of attack
If Nokia’s big challenge this year is getting back in with US consumers and operators, it should be a busy 2012 for Chris Weber.
Weber – who heads the Finnish company’s business here – took a moment with us at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to lay out some of his plans a day after AT&T announced it would sell Nokia’s Lumia 900, and a day before the Lumia 710 goes on sale at T-Mobile USA.
Weber told Reuters that he has to first find a way to convince enough consumers to at least try out Nokia’s Windows Phone-based devices, to at least give them a chance.
In this regard, he expects a lot of help from T-Mobile in the form of flagship phone status in their stores. This involves 6 Lumia display locations in each store, a poster out front, and a center island display to top it all off. At AT&T, Weber says, details on a promotional assist from the carrier are “still being worked out.”
But if the AT&T keynote announcement of eight LTE devices yesterday was anything to go by, Weber may have to fight harder for attention there. Weber also needs to gain attention at other U.S. operators, such as Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel.
To do this, the executive promised to bring out a broader range of phones and more devices exclusive to carriers.
“We’re going to have a broad portfolio with multiple devices, mutiple price points, multiple user experiences and multip operators. That’s a lot of multipes,” Weber said. Asked about other operators, he said: “Certainly Verizon is a very important partner in that equation.”
Dish’s kangaroo pitchman doesn’t cooperate
Dish Network went kangaroo-crazy at this year’s CES. Not only did a mascot in a kangaroo suit greet attendees at its press conference, but CEO Joe Clayton took to the stage cradling a wallaby, which resembles a small kangaroo.
Whilst Clayton cuddled the marsupial, someone whispered in the audience: “Does PETA know about this?”
The kangaroo schtick promotes the company’s new set-top box, the Hopper, and its smaller counterpart, the Joey. Together, the devices will let Dish customers record six shows at once that can then be watched in four rooms.
Clayton told me after the show he spent his Sunday at a photo shoot at a farm outside of Las Vegas, posing with kangaroos. He said it was hard to keep the animal still and he had to be careful not to step in kangaroo dung.
Meanwhile, Dish hired trainers and photographers to snap photos of attendees with a live kangaroo and wallaby on Monday. The lines proved longer for the wallaby — the kangaroo was jumpy and looked like he’d rather be anywhere than the Venetian at lunchtime during CES.
Check out this video of the kangaroo “model” to see what we mean by “jumpy”:
Microsoft switches off CES
Microsoft, one of the most visible superpowers at the Consumer Electronics Show, has decided its keynote and booth at the upcoming event in January will be its last.
The world’s largest software company, which has long tried to boost the profile of its consumer business, usually puts up a huge duplex on the floor to show off its games, phones and other gadgets running its products at the Las Vegas jamboree. CEO Steve Ballmer is a regular keynote speaker, as Bill Gates was before him.
But the company is now admitting what it has said privately: that a show right after the holiday season just doesn’t fit its consumer product cycle. That is to say, Ballmer rarely has much new to say, when all its Xbox, phone and software news is done and dusted for the year.
In the words of Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s PR chief: “Our product news milestones generally don’t align with the show’s January timing.”
It will certainly save Microsoft valuable time and resources getting ready for the show, which yields an uncertain return at best. Remember, Apple conquered the consumer electronics market without exhibiting at CES at all.
The company says it will still attend CES to meet up with customers and partners and will keep its relationship with the Consumer Electronics Association, the industry group which organizes the show.
It’s hard to see the upside for the association, which must fear further big-name defections from its marquee event. But it says it has already had expressions of interest from other exhibitors in taking over Microsoft’s show floor space, and is not bearing any grudges.
Sprint: When all else fails, call a magician
After bigger rivals Verizon Wireless and AT&T stole the limelight at the Consumer Electronics Show with promises of multiple advanced phones for this year, now Sprint Nextel is trying to grab some attention with a stunt of its own.
In an intentionally mysterious invitation, the No. 3 U.S. mobile provider says it has enlisted the help of illusionist David Blaine to show the world how “Sprint’s making the Impossible Possible” at a New York Event scheduled for February 7.
Sprint’s promising that the event will be “a lot of fun” but it is mum on whether Blaine plans relive his Times Square encasement in a block of ice or his vertigo stunt in Bryant Park.
Instead the operator, which has been working for years to narrow customer losses, will embark on “yet another industry first.”
Will it finally report net growth in contract customer numbers? Sign an iPhone distribution deal? Make the troublesome Nextel network disappear? Or simply unveil a new gadget?
It seems most likely that Sprint will unwrap a new high-speed wireless phone. So if you’ve any ideas on what kind of phone requires a magician to illustrate, do let us know.
Photograph: Reuters of David Blaine performing a stunt in Central Park in 2008
CES: Please turn off your phones and your Wi-Fi
English literature teachers, please tell me if I’m wrong to call this ironic.
The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is all about technology, and pack journalists and tech experts all over the world say that wireless will be the next big boom. So why are various companies at this year’s CES begging and in some cases instructing people not to use their wireless devices or their Wi-Fi connections?
Here’s an email that my colleague Alexei Oreskovic received.
Alexei:
We have all heard of or experienced Wi-Fi challenges at high-profile events.
Please help our sponsors demonstrate their products. We ask you to turn off your phone before you enter Showstoppers tonight. If you can’t do that, please turn off Wi-Fi access on your smartphone and other mobile devices, including all mobile hotspot devices and anything else that acts as a mobile access point.
This is an increasing industry-wide problem common to press conferences, meetings and other high-profile events that rely on Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi was designed for homes and other small spaces with more modest Internet demands. Wi-Fi was never intended for large halls and thousands of people packing an arsenal of laptops, smartphones, tablets and hotspots. Perhaps the entrepreneurs, innovators and journalists attending ShowStoppers tonight can improve this? Got an idea? Send it to me by email.
Closer look at Google’s Honeycomb
Google stole the show from Verizon at the opening keynote at CES, showing off its new Honeycomb software, the first version of the Android operating system specifically designed for tablets.
Android developer Mike Cleron wowed a packed hall with a quick spin around its features, including a new-look home screen, pixel buttons, multitasking, smooth video and an eye-catching 3-D mapping tool that lets you ’tilt’ the view to get a better idea of what you are looking at.
Google has posted a video of the new system in action on YouTube.
CES: Nvidia’s Huang and the wireless curse
Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia’s plain-talking chief executive, may want to hit the blackjack tables while he’s in Las Vegas.
That’s because he’s already had his share of bad luck in Sin City while on stage for a presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show.
About halfway through his presentation unveiling the company’s new Tegra 2 chip, Huang hit a snag when attempting to wirelessly connect to the Web to demonstrate the chip’s multimedia prowess. Huang pleaded with the audience to “spare” him some bandwidth according to media reports.
The crowd of attendees apparently having ignored his entreaty to relinquish their wireless connections, Huang told the audience that they “suck.”
The irony of the technology failings at a conference designed to showcase the wonders of the world of Internet-connected gadgets is hard to miss. But of course, Huang is only the latest of a long line of victims whose presentations have been foiled by wireless woes, including Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Give Huang credit for adding some entertainment to the age of technology glitches.
CES: Portraits in purple prose (part one)
I was going to call this blog entry about this year’s Consumer Electronics Show press releases, “language crimes.” But that’s overheated. I’ll call it “overexcited claims” instead. It’s a sample of the sometimes purple, overwrought prose that press agents produce to show off clients’ products. At shows like CES, where 125,000 people overwhelm Las Vegas to gawk at consumer electronics for several days, there’s a lot of effort to get attention from harried, cranky journalists.
Odd results occur when you pair dramatic words with products that, no matter how much you might love them, don’t lend themselves to such… Byronic descriptions. Often accompanying them are typical buzzwords of the technology public relations corps, which after 15 years still leave me wondering if perhaps I haven’t mastered my native language.
Here are a few (I’ll file more later today and on Thursday):
Redefining the visual experience
Sigma Designs, a leading provider of system-on-chip (SoC) solutions for delivering entertainment and control throughout the home, today announced that it will showcase at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, new products and award-winning solutions that bring the first studio-quality entertainment experience to the living room. For the first time, Sigma will demonstrate its new powerhouse SMP8910 and thin-client optimized SMP8670 Secure Media Processors…
Exciting new series of mobile accessories
MINNEAPOLIS, Jan. 4, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Bracketron, the leading manufacturer in mounting solutions for mobile consumer electronics, today announced an exciting new series of mobile accessories designed for use in the home, office or anywhere in between. The products combine trend-forward color, style and function to fit the unique lifestyles of consumers.
CES: One strip club, one Howard Stern producer and 125,000 friends
In my second day of searching for the most interesting and interestingly written press releases about the Consumer Electronics Show, I came across what appears to be an invitation for 125,000 people:
LAS VEGAS–(Business Wire)– Gary Dell`Abate, best-selling author and long-time producer of The Howard Stern Show will host a party January 8th at Rick`s Cabaret Las Vegas, to which he has invited all fellow attendees of the world-famous Consumer Electronics Show. The club is part of the Rick`s Cabaret International, Inc. (NASDAQ:RICK) group of upscale gentlemen`s clubs.
The party will take place at the club at 3355 Procyron Street at Desert Inn Boulevard, just off the Las Vegas Strip, starting at 10 p.m. Dell`Abate will be in town to attend the CES, which he hosted last year. Dell`Abate will be assisted in his hosting duties by beautiful, raven-haired adult star Daisy Duxe, who has appeared in over 150 popular adult films. She is appearing as part of an adult-star extravaganza at the club, where blonde centerfold model and adult star Prinzzess appears on Friday night January 7th.
“I love the people who attend CES and I think they will love Rick`s Cabaret,” says Dell`Abate, who has been on a nationwide tour in recent weeks promoting his new bestselling book They Call Me Baba Booey. …
Admission to Rick`s Cabaret LV will be free to guests who call 702-367-4000 and request complimentary limo pickup service, or arrive in their private vehicle. Rick’s Cabaret complimentary transportation can also be arranged online at rickslasvegas.com.
That’s all well and good, but if all 125,000 people who are supposed to come to CES this year show up, it could create some tense moments with the fire marshal.
