Waiting for Apple HDTV: the 2006 high-definition TV roundup

[Pioneer's 50-inch 1080p plasma display]]

It is April, so it's time for the consumer electronics manufacturers to announce their 2006 models so that they will be readily available for the holiday season. In no particular order, recent announcements include:

• Monday's New York Times talked about Mitsubishi's colored-laser ultra-lightweight rear projection TV.


• Yesterday, Engadget and HDBeat noted that Pioneer will ship its 50-inch 1080p plasma display to Europe in June (why Europe only, we're not quite sure).


• Panasonic has announced a 58-inch plasma panel (not 1080p by the way) and upgraded is consumer plasmas for one-remote operation.


• And Hitachi now is offering quad-tuner TVs with digital hard-disk video recorders built in.

This is all good, but from a marketing point of view, we'd have to agree with Forrester's Ted Schadler, who was quoted in the Mitsubishi article.

"Television used to be very, very simple," he said. "You bought a big one or a small one that was black and white or color."

That has all changed, Mr. Schadler said. "Now we've got complexity like buying real estate or buying a car or something," he said. "It's just gotten tremendously complicated."

Of course, we know a company that could cut through this complexity and make it simple with an all-in-one HDTV system, just as they were the only company to create an all-in-one Internet computer called the iMac. The big question is when. My bet is June.

Technorati Tags: Hitachi, HDTV, Panasonic, 1080p, Opinion, Marketing, Forrester, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Apple, 720p, Plasma