Sharp recently announced that it will begin selling its 108” LCD TV in the U.S. in September and if you are planning on buying Sharp’s 108” TV you may want to hold off on that next Ferrari.
Big TVs always have been expensive. If you are looking beyond mainstream you are quickly in the five figures, which can be hit with 63”-65” plasma and LCD TVs. High-end premium TVs such as Sony’s 70” Bravia XBR currently sell for about $30,000, while Panasonic’s 103” plasma TV has held the top spot with about $70,000 for more than a year. Adding inches on top of that will cost you quite some cash, at the tune of $23,000 per inch.
Retailers have begun selling (link to German website) Sharp’s LB-1085 108” LCD TV in Europe with prices starting at about 120,000 Euro – about $185,000 at the current exchange rate. Expect this TV to be a very special order, as you cannot simply pick it up (which will be quite difficult considering the TV’s weight of 430 pounds), but will have to wait 16 weeks until the device will be delivered.
Besides its large size, the TV does not provide unexpected technical features (sorry, no quad HDTV). The resolution is 1920x1080p, the brightness 400 cd, the contrast ratio 1200:1 and the response time 6 ms.
Sharp maintains that the LB-1085 will hit these shores this September and we are quite certain that the TV won’t cost $185,000 here. But plan on spending about $150,000, our sources indicated.
Do you remember the good ol’ days of YouTube? Back when a private company owned it and you could post and view whatever you wanted up there and no one would say a word because, well, it was practically bankrupt and copyright owners knew they wouldn’t get anything out of a lawsuit? Those were the days, weren’t they?
Now, after a $1.65 billion buyout by Google, YouTube is not only a veritable junkyard for all the crap we didn’t watch a couple years ago, but a bloated mess that costs too much to operate, has a huge lawyer target on it, and barely incurs revenue.
And to make matters worse, Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, has no idea what to do about it.
Speaking to The New Yorker, Schmidt said that it “seemed obvious” that Google should be able to generate “significant amounts of money” from YouTube, but so far, it has no idea what to do.
“The goal for YouTube is to build a tremendous community….In the case of YouTube we might be wrong,” he said. “We have enough leverage that we have the leverage of time. We can invest for scale and not have to make money right now, he said. Hopefully our system and judgment is good enough if something is not going to pay out, we can change it.”
YouTube has loads of traffic but hasn’t been able to make money on it, whereas Hulu is successfully selling against its free, legal TV programmes and movies
June 19, 2008 5:00 PM
Google’s YouTube was recently given a kicking by billionaire “blog maverick” Mark Cuban, who pointed out that Hulu is kicking YouTube’s Ass. It doesn’t have more visitors or serve up more videos, of course. However, Hulu has 100% legal premium content that it can monetize — TV programmes such as Sex & The City, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and movies such as Juno and Lost in Translation — and YouTube, basically, doesn’t. Indeed, if it did, YouTube could be forced to remove them.
What makes it even better for Hulu is that it can exploit YouTube. As Cuban says:
Hulu posts clips, not full episodes, clips on its YouTube channel and elsewhere on YouTube. Those clips are preroll AND overlays AND post rolls promoting Hulu and its full episodes of shows and movies. All of which costs Hulu the ginormous cost of ….nothing. From which it generates traffic to its Hulu site on which it sells, to the point of often selling out, display and preroll ads. That’s the ultimate arbitrage. We pay you nothing, and you send us traffic that generates ad revenue for us.
The economics are straightforward, and bad news for YouTube:
the more traffic Hulu generates, the more money it makes. The more traffic YouTube generates, the more money it loses… Maybe they think they will make it up with even more volume?
What YouTube can do, of course, is copy Hulu and offer longer, legal content that it can sell against. To this end, it has emailed its content partners as follows, says Sillicon Alley Insider:
Long Form Content
You now will be able to upload and monetize videos in your account that are longer than 10 minutes. This feature is exclusively for partners. Independent Film makers that partner with us will now be able to upload their feature films on our site. Please note that for long form content, the maximum file size is 1GB.
That’s enough for a full-length movie at YouTube quality. Whether these “independent film makers” will come up with enough good stuff to take on Hulu, which is backed by NBC Universal and News Corp, is another matter. It’s better than nothing, which is pretty much what YouTube has at the moment.
Comment (added later): Hulu is US-only and has a limited amount of content, but it is still new: it was officially launched just three months ago, on March 12, 2008. For more on the background see Hulu starts private beta, while NBC rubbishes iTunes business, below.
This guy is freakin’ hilarious on NBC’s “30 Rock.”
“I’ve been single for seven years and as I get older, I think all I want is to be loved. The world becomes a place where you think, let everyone else have it. Let them all fight over jobs and money . . . You want things in life that are lovely.”
Letterman toys with this guy. Very funny, watch here.
And in case you don’t know who Spencer Pratt, don’t worry, you’re not really missing out. But watch this funny video explaining all about MTV’s “reality” show, “The Hills” and it’s cast.
ABC’s “Cavemen” was only #5 if that gives you an idea of what to expect. If you’re going to make a sitcom based on a commercial, the AFLAC duck has got to be your first call. Anyway, I had a crush on the daughter from “My Two Dads” so they really shouldn’t have messed with that one. A mix of old school and newer shows…..some of these clunkers lasted for several seasons, quality be damned!
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Danny Bonaduce, Dennis Rodman and Dustin “Screech” Diamond are heading into the ring to compete in CMT’s upcoming reality series “Hulk Hogan’s Celebrity Championship Wrestling.”
Also on board are Todd Bridges (“Diff’rent Strokes”), super-heavyweight boxer ButterBean, Trishelle Cannatella (“The Real World”), Erin Murphy (Tabitha Stephens on “Bewitched”), Frank Stallone, ’80s pop star Tiffany and Playboy playmate Nikki Ziering.
They will compete to be named “Celebrity All-Star Wrestling Champion” based on their performance in various challenges that will include mastering complex wrestling moves, talking trash and working an audience.
Production on the eight-episode series is under way in Los Angeles for a fall premiere.
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