In less than 24 hours all full-power broadcast TV stations in the U.S. will flip a switch to stop broadcasting their analog TV signals and will only broadcast TV signals in digital. And for millions who are unprepared, it could mean lights out on their favorite TV shows.
If you are a consumer electronics maker looking for profit in a time when would-be customers are counting their pennies, what do you do? One tactic: launch a new line of pricey products.
Three-dimensional TV is coming to a living room near you. But will the technology spur a consumer spending spree like digital and high-definition TV did before it? Or will 3D end up being the next big flop?
As anyone who has walked into Best Buy lately knows, the prices of high-definition TVs are in a precipitous freefall.
With the flick of an eight-foot switch at midday Monday, the Southern city became the first market in the U.S. to make the change to digital-only broadcasting
The announcement this week that Sony plans to work with other television makers to eliminate the need for set-top cable boxes could not have gained more affection at Fortune magazine's Hollywood digital test lab - also known as my living room.
If you're looking for a deal on a flat-panel TV or home theater system, this may be the time to act.
Despite all the noise about a belt-tightening underway, one industry survey estimates that consumers will buy 3.9 million new televisions in time for Super Bowl Sunday.
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts says he remembers walking around the Consumer Electronics Show five years ago with Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt. He recalls seeing a big presence from his rivals in the satellite-television business. His own industry, by contrast, was nowhere to be found.
Several retailers will sell equipment enabling analog television sets owners to continue to view programming after the 2009 nationwide switch to digital broadcasting
In less than 24 hours all full-power broadcast TV stations in the U.S. will flip a switch to stop broadcasting their analog TV signals and will only broadcast TV signals in digital. And for millions who are unprepared, it could mean lights out on their favorite TV shows.
If you are a consumer electronics maker looking for profit in a time when would-be customers are counting their pennies, what do you do? One tactic: launch a new line of pricey products.
Three-dimensional TV is coming to a living room near you. But will the technology spur a consumer spending spree like digital and high-definition TV did before it? Or will 3D end up being the next big flop?
As anyone who has walked into Best Buy lately knows, the prices of high-definition TVs are in a precipitous freefall.
With the flick of an eight-foot switch at midday Monday, the Southern city became the first market in the U.S. to make the change to digital-only broadcasting
The announcement this week that Sony plans to work with other television makers to eliminate the need for set-top cable boxes could not have gained more affection at Fortune magazine's Hollywood digital test lab - also known as my living room.
If you're looking for a deal on a flat-panel TV or home theater system, this may be the time to act.
Despite all the noise about a belt-tightening underway, one industry survey estimates that consumers will buy 3.9 million new televisions in time for Super Bowl Sunday.
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts says he remembers walking around the Consumer Electronics Show five years ago with Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt. He recalls seeing a big presence from his rivals in the satellite-television business. His own industry, by contrast, was nowhere to be found.
Several retailers will sell equipment enabling analog television sets owners to continue to view programming after the 2009 nationwide switch to digital broadcasting
Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott and his deputy, Sam's Club CEO Doug McMillon both say they are excited about the holiday shopping season.
As Best Buy gears up for its important high-definition TV sales months, a new survey from the No. 1 electronics retailer reveals that almost 90 percent of Americans still don't understand HDTVs - and close to 50 percent underestimate the cost of buying one.
Circuit City on Wednesday reported a steep first-quarter loss amid a big drop in TV sales and warned that it expects more sales volatility ahead as it charts a turnaround strategy.
In October 2003, Karl Kamb, then a 40-year-old Hewlett-Packard vice president, made a presentation that persuaded CEO Carly Fiorina to take her company into a new line of business: flat-panel telev...
Let's pause for a moment amid the worshipful buzz before the launch of Apple's iPhone in June to consider the heretical notion that Steve Jobs might be promising more than he can deliver.
Apple's answer to the digital media adapter is finally here.
Feel like a tech dinosaur? Here's how to join the 21st Century without going broke.
Super Bowl XLI is expected to generate a buying frenzy for high-definition, flat-panel televisions, with an estimated 2.5 million consumers saying they plan to purchase an HDTV before the big game Feb. 4, a retail industry group said Wednesday.
Kick yourself - hard - if you didn't buy that $990 Westinghouse 37-inch, 1080p LCD TV back in December. Unfortunately, industry watchers say this year's Super Bowl TV deals probably won't be as juicy as those holiday blowout bargains.
You've been waiting for the high sign for years, so here it is: If you want to buy a flat-panel TV, now's the time to do it. Thanks to competition and overproduction, prices have dropped like a roc...
Plus: Answers to all your flat-panel questions
Shares of No. 2 electronics retailer Circuit City tumbled nearly 19 percent Tuesday after the electronics chain stunned investors with an unexpected third-quarter loss.
Best Buy Co. Tuesday reported higher third-quarter earnings that nevertheless fell short of Wall Street forecasts - and cited stiff competition for computers, TVs, CDs and other products.
The annual trade show known as Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies (CEATEC), under way here this week, is the Japanese equivalent of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), except about two years more advanced. We've come here, along with some 200,000 gadget-happy Japanese consumers, to see what American consumers might expect to see at home in 2008.
One day last July, two naked men lowered themselves into a hot spring in Hakone, a Japanese tourist town known for its beautiful lake and views of Mount Fuji. One was a pallid, curly-haired 63-year...
One day last July, two naked men lowered themselves into a hot spring in Hakone, a Japanese tourist town known for its beautiful lake and views of Mount Fuji.
In 1903, an Eastern European immigrant and one-time street peddler named William Fox built a 149-seat movie theater in a penny arcade in Brooklyn.
Movies, video games, MP3 players, and TVs. Is there anything that Sony doesn't make?
ASK CANON CEO FUJIO MITARAI to explain how he turned a floundering Japanese electronics maker into one of the world's most profitable technology giants, and he's apt to tell you about an Internal Revenue Service auditor named Greg. It was 1966, and Mitarai had been put in charge of accounting at Canon's new U.S. subsidiary. In its first year the venture reported a profit of just $6,000, a sum so paltry it aroused suspicion at the IRS. After scouring Canon's books for a month and verifying that its U.S. earnings were every bit as meager as claimed, Greg, the agency's lead auditor, offered Mitarai some free advice: Deposit your accounts receivable in the bank, close the company, and go home.
What's the single most-important thing on Super Bowl night?
Ask Canon CEO Fujio Mitarai to explain how he turned a floundering Japanese electronics maker into one of the world's most profitable technology giants, and he's apt to tell you about an Internal Revenue Service auditor named Greg. It was 1966, and Mitarai had been put in charge of accounting at Canon's new U.S. subsidiary. In its first year the venture reported a profit of just $6,000, a sum so paltry it aroused suspicion at the IRS. After scouring Canon's books for a month and verifying its U.S. earnings to be every bit as meager as claimed, Greg, the agency's lead auditor, offered Mitarai some free advice: Deposit your accounts receivable in the bank, close the company, and go home.
Your old TV set may well go dark in 2009, and believe it or not, that's a good thing.
HERE'S CAUSE FOR HOLIDAY CHEER: PRICES FOR FLAT-PANEL TVs and computers have been falling like snowflakes. (If it seems to you as if prices are drifting up, perhaps it's because the elves have been...
While today's most popular TV and computer screens are flat, shares of Corning, which makes the glass for these products, are anything but.
The guts of a next-generation digital video camcorder are splayed on a worktable near Sun Woo Song's desk, although to a visitor's eye they might as well be the innards of a notebook computer or a ...
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Quick. Name this year's best performing tech stock in the S&P 500.
No. 50
Better. Bigger. Faster. Cheaper. And of course, it's not "hot" unless its wireless and portable.
Of the thousands of new product designs that manufacturers sprang on the public this year, which ones qualify as truly great--and why? Check out FORTUNE's second annual design roundup, which focuse...
There is nothing like watching a football game on a humongous flat-screen TV.
Only a decade ago, Texas Instruments, the once mighty company where engineer Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit and essentially launched the modern electronics business, had the look of a f...
It's amazing what buying a home does to you. There's the status change from renter to homeowner. I admit, I find it somewhat laughable, since the bank owns most of it, but let's not fight over a few pennies.
Wireless TVs that fit into your pocket, sleek entertainment systems beautiful enough to hang on the wall and more dirt-cheap printers are expected to be some of the hot trends in consumer electronics this year.
You just gotta have one of those big-screen TVs. We understand. As with sports cars and designer handbags, the lure of luxury can turn the most prudent shopper into a slobbering impulse buyer.
This is the TV that family rooms are built for. The new rear-projection TVs are nothing like their forebears, those old tavern staples that relied on three cathode-ray guns beaming blue, green and red to form images on the screen -- often so skewed that they produced rainbow effects.
You just gotta have one of those big-screen TVs. We understand. As with sports cars and designer handbags, the lure of luxury can turn the most prudent shopper into a slobbering impulse buyer.
Wall Street may be starting to worry about whether big businesses are going to substantially increase their spending on tech.
Tech companies have seen the future...and its name is the boob tube.
If the wall of your den cries out for a big, beautiful flat-screen TV, but there's no way you can justify forking over the $4,000 it would cost to buy, say, the 42-inch Samsung shown above, stay tu...
It's a sunny Southern California evening in mid-October at the posh South Coast Plaza shopping center in Orange County, and Sony Corp. is throwing a bash. Were you to pass by the roped-off event on...
Like many members of my species--Couchpotatosaurus rex--I am attracted to big-screen TVs. In an ideal world I would park my recliner in front of something like the 24-by 32-foot AstroVision video d...
Ah, the good old days. A slice of pizza was a nickel, a movie was a quarter, and the trickiest decision when choosing a television set was whether to get color or black and white. I typically don't...
Kunitake Ando is all smiles, as you would expect him to be, given that he presides over what is arguably the world's greatest and (next to Santa's workshop) most legendary toy factory. As president...
PLASMA: IT'S A GAS Prices for these wide-screen, superthin TV sets are still inflated, but they're falling rapidly. Should you watch or wait? Here's the skinny on Hitachi's new 42-inch dazzler.
What do television executives call "the most valuable square of real estate in America"? No, it's not Regis Philbin's high chair on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. It's the space on top of your TV s...
Watching TV used to be simple. Scamper out of bed, run downstairs, twist the dial to one of the three channels that got clear reception through the rabbit-ears antenna, and settle in for a glorious...
It's a damp February morning, and Debbie Drake is feeling under the weather. The 33-year-old account manager for a graphic design firm has spent the past few days on her couch, nursing a cold and c...
Gift guide: under $50
You could argue that Sony blew it by sitting out the entertainment industry consolidation of the 1990s. Slow-moving, cautious, and traumatized by its early failures in Hollywood, the Japanese elect...
Confused by "set-top boxes" yet? I am, and by this fall, you will be too. Walk into Best Buy, Circuit City, or any other major consumer electronics retailer, and you'll see the first manifestations...
The off-the-rack gray suit, tie clip, company button, and metal-rimmed glasses mark Yoichi Morishita, chairman of Matsushita Electric, as a prototypical Japanese salaryman. Through patience, hard w...
If you are beginning to think that Japan has lost its flair for product innovation and global marketing, think again. No matter how far down Japan's economy may be, its R&D divisions and factories ...
Meet Dan Seoane. Dan is the Digital Gardener, a Renaissance man of the Internet Age. He is convergence in human form.
I'm not much of a television fan (some evenings I do watch the news), but I'm delighted that TV is going digital. Not because of the larger screens it will bring, but because of the bigger picture:...
Does this sound familiar? You saw a movie in a theater and loved it, so now that it's out on video, you've invited friends over to see it in your living room. Everyone gets comfortable, you dim the...
When Microsoft CEO Bill Gates sat down with Reed Hundt, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, to chat about digital television last May, broadcasters and television manufacturers began...
WHICH TERM you choose to use, whether the electronic superhighway, the infobahn, or the national information infrastructure, may reveal whether you're an interested spectator, a cognoscente, or a p...
ONLY A FEW months ago Jan Timmer, president of Dutch giant Philips Electronics, looked poised to win his high-tech showdown against the Japanese. Since taking over in 1990, Timmer has shaken up Phi...
FOR THE FIRST TIME since Japan devastated the U.S. consumer electronics industry in the 1970s, American companies have a chance to stage a comeback in a mighty market that has annual sales of $32 b...
EVER WONDER why there's no Channel 1 on your TV? Half a century ago, when TV was a baby, there was a Channel 1. But ham radio and aircraft communications on adjoining frequencies caused serious int...
There's still plenty of static ahead for Zenith Electronics. The roughly $635 million the company will get from France's Groupe Bull for its personal computer manufacturing business will give Zenit...
WHEN color television burst upon the world in the early 1950s, the U.S. was in the vanguard: The first commercial broadcasts used a pioneering system developed by RCA. It was the end of the decade ...
If flakes of silicon are swirling about your head like snow during the final frenzy of holiday shopping, welcome to the blundering herd. Digital dilemmas! Electronic enigmas! Big-ticket blues! The ...
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