Today’s Wall Street Journal (link via subscription only) reports that Hewlett-Packard is coming out with a slew of new digital TVs.
Hewlett-Packard Co. is broadening its assault on the television market, unveiling 10 new products that analysts say will further heat up the battle for the living room between computer companies and traditional TV makers.
The Palo Alto, Calif., computer and printer titan said it will begin marketing 10 new models of digital TVs, after entering the market last year with just four. The new models, aimed for the fall shopping season, include four sets featuring ultrahigh-resolution screen displays based on a technology known as Wobulation, to be priced between $2,499 and $4,999.
The H-P TVs include features that link them to personal computers, such as an ability by some to view digital photo files and listen to music downloads. Like its competitors, which include Texas PC titan Dell Inc. and Japan’s Sony Corp., analysts say H-P’s new televisions are being designed to take advantage of the changeover in TV technology from analog sets to digital ones.
Those are pretty pricey screens, and I wonder how much luck HP will have competing with big consumer electronics companies that have much better distribution networks and razor-thin profit margins?
I do have to hand it to the marketing genius who came up with Wobulation. After reading this article, I poked around HP’s Web site and found this explanation:
“Wobulation” technology works by generating multiple sub-frames of data while an optical image shifting mechanism then displaces the projected image of each sub-frame by a non-integral number of pixels. The sub-frames are then projected in rapid succession to appear as if they are being projected simultaneously and superimposed. The resulting image has significantly higher resolution than images produced by conventional digital projection devices.
After reading that, I still have no idea what this technology does, but with a name like that, I want it!