Swanni's TV Predictions For 2010 By Phillip Swann TVPredictions.com
http://www.tvpredictions.com/swannipredicts123009.htm Washington, D.C. (December 30, 2009) -- Editor's note: Over the last several years, Swanni, aka Phillip Swann (and the president of TVPredictions.com), has achieved an incredible success rate with his predictions for the future of TV technology. Below are his predictions for 2010. 1. Home 3-D Will Flop Again in 2010 If you listened to studio executives, and some Wall Street and tech analysts, you would think that millions of Americans will soon don goggles and start watching 3-D HD movies at homes. Well, think again. While impressive in movie theaters, 3-D HD is not ready for primetime in home theaters -- and it may not be for years to come. Americans are simply not inclined to wear special glasses while watching their favorite films at home. They also are not thrilled with the idea of buying a new 3-D-capable HDTV or Blu-ray player -- particularly when many of them just bought a new HDTV or Blu-ray player in the last year or so! And finally, so few movies (and sports) are available in 3-D that it's crazy to think that Americans will spend thousands of dollars to buy new set-tops, goggles and TVs to watch them. Unemployment is over 10 percent, folks. People are not made of money. They are not going to go bankrupt just so they watch Avatar in 3-D at home. Get real! 2. AT&T Will Buy DIRECTV AT&T has spent a small fortune on its U-Verse TV service over the last three years, but still only has about two million subscribers to show for it. Not only that, it's still only available in 22 states. In 2010, the telco will finally concede the point (TV is not their specialty) and buy the nation's top satcaster, DIRECTV. 3. Comcast-NBC Merger Will Fail Despite NBC's slobbering over President Obama over the last two years (coincidence?; maybe not, huh?), the Democrats in the administration and on Capitol Hill will not be able to justify the merging of these two large and powerful entities. If the merger goes through, it will likely change everything related to the production and delivery of entertainment, from whether local stations continue free of charge to the cost of your local cable service to whether your satellite or cable company will be forced to pay more for Comcast-NBC owned channels (and then pass the extra cost to you in your monthly bill.) And the merger would put the greatest influence over how these changes are implemented in the hands of the new Comcast/NBC Universal monolith, which would likely become one of the 10 largest companies in the nation. Don't hold your breath on that one. 4. Your TV Provider Will Lose Channels (Often) The current dust-up between Time Warner and Fox is just the beginning. In 2010, the broadcast networks and cable channels will ask cable and satellite operators for even more money to carry their signals. And the TV providers will say no, fearful of spending too much in a so-so economy. Consequently, the TV providers will be forced to drop the channels from their lineups while the negotiations continue. In some cases, some popular channels will be unavailable on your local cable or satellite service for months. 5. DIRECTV Will Offer Less Than 200 HD Channels The satcaster has just launched a new satellite that will double its capacity to offer high-def channels. DIRECTV, which now claims it offers 130 HD channels (including PPV), says it will have the capacity to provide 200 HD channels. But I predict that DIRECTV will fall far short of the 200 HD channel count in 2010, even when you factor in PPV channels. I also predict that DIRECTV will only add about 10-15 high-def cable networks next year. Why? DIRECTV has to pay the programmers extra money to carry their high-def signals, something that it's loathe to do in a stagnant economy. (This is why DIRECTV has been battling with the Versus sports channel for the last three months; it doesn't want to pay Versus more money to carry its SD and HD signals.) So instead of adding real channels, DIRECTV will keep costs down -- and appearances up -- by adding more PPV HD channels and other services such as 3-D HD broadcasts. The satcaster will try to fool the public into believing that it's offering a lot more HD when actually it will largely just inflate its HD channel count with more PPV. 6. 10 Million Blu-ray Players Will Be Sold Last year, I predicted that 8-10 million new standalone Blu-ray players would be sold in 2009 -- and people said I was nuts. (Particularly tech analysts who generally are terrible at predicting whether new products will be accepted by the general public.) But now it looks like I was right, according to recent sales reports which say around 7-8 million standalone players will be sold by year's end. I predict that 2010 will be another great year for Blu-ray, with 10 million new players sold. This will put the high-def disc right in the mainstream. 7. Online HD Movies Will Continue to Struggle Just about every major entertainment company is pushing some version of an online movie and/or TV service via a TV set-top or a PC. Many executives say HD movie downloads will soon replace the hard media of Blu-ray. Nonsense, I say. While the HD video quality of the movie downloads has improved greatly over the last few years, the concept of connecting your home Broadband service to a TV set-top box is still foreign to most Americans. And even fewer people want to watch high-def online movies on a small-screen PC. And, finally, while the HD video quality of movie downloads is getting better, it's still not up to the standards of Blu-ray. -- ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 Mail: antunes at uh dot edu *********************************** * POST TO [email protected] * *********************************** Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
