Super Bowl here we come! As the leaders in technology adoption, sports fans again will drive the value of a great picture. Will this be the year the ad agency catches up with the real world of quality? Only 60% of Super Bowl spots where airing in HD in 2006 with the average price of the 30 second spot at 2.4 million. It can't be the cost of finishing in HD and creating both an SD and HD master - then what is it?... For example, MediaPost's TV Watch's Wayne Friedman blogs that perhaps consumers don't have the education to know what they're really getting in HD.

I have my ideas of course, but that would cause the advertising industry to come after me and they are much too creative for me.

Survey: 2.5M to Buy Super Bowl HDTVs
Trade group says the big game will trigger big sales.
By Phillip Swann

Washington, D.C. (January 24, 2007) -- The National Retail Federation says 2.5 million Americans plan to buy a High-Definition TV to watch the Super Bowl on February 4.

The group says 1.7 million consumers said they planned to buy a high-def set prior to last year's Super Bowl. This year's survey was conducted by BIGresearch.

"The interest in this year's Super Bowl is higher than in many other years so retailers have an opportunity to win big sales of electronics, team apparel, and food," said Phil Rist, BIGresearch's vice president.

Rist also notes that consumers this year are aware that high-def prices have fallen sharply over the last year.

"As the price of flat-screen televisions continues to decrease, they are becoming more affordable for average consumers, which is contributing to an increase in TV sales," he said.

I am in preparation for a four hour workshop that I will be leading with Tod Mesirow, a well known Executive Prodcuer on show such as Monster Garage and Mythbusters and Tom Vice, Vice President of Operations PlasterCITY Digital Post at NATPE on January the 18th. I was sent this article from a colleague,Tom Fletcher of Fletcher Chicago a leader in Sports Production – very interesting but it makes me think... Sport enthusiasts and the sport TV audience have always been drivers of viewing (TV) technology. That is probably because if you were to measure the amount of time they watch TV it is significantly more than the average non sports TV watcher. So many products cater to this crowd – Pizza companies that deliver, beer, the list goes on and on. Actually if you think abut it, probably the TV remote or as I call it the clicker was probably target to this consumer.

Wonder how many more hours a week a sports fan watched TV than the non sports fan TV watcher?... Some thing to ponder.

This is great news about technology and especially HD! With all these eyes balls seeing quality footage hopefully this will speed up the consumption of HD television purchase.

Just thougth you might be interested in what Red is up to – seems as if they are going to hit the market BIG – hold on....

Some quick advance info for you regarding RED reservations. As you probably know we closed our reservation period for the RED ONE camera, RED 300mm Prime Lens, and RED 18 to 85 Zoom Lens on Oct 31st 2006.

Due to overwhelming demand and continued requests from all over the world, we have decided to open up reservations one more time for a few days at the end of January. The red.com website will be taking reservations from Midnight January 21st to Midnight January 24th (Pacific Standard Time)

Thanks.

+ Ted

Ted Schilowitz
Leader of the Rebellion

I was graciously invited to attend a fancy Panasonic event in NYC on November 29th. This event was to demonstrate the flexibility and endless options of P2 and introduce the new Panasonic platform of AVC-I. In addition Apple and Avid discussed their relationship with this new technology.

I was pleased to see that all of the biggies or at least the majority were present – Fox Networks, NFL Films, CBS…

After the big announcement and demos we were all treated to a lovely dinner at Bobby Van's on West 50th just off Time Square.

My hat’s off to Panasonic in their announcement. I think that the ACV-I technology impact will take much more time for all of us to understand the impact for both the professional application and on the consumer side.