HDTV roll-out to push sales of LCD television

CEBU, Philippines - Samsung Electronics Philippines Corporation is looking forward to an improved LCD television appliance take up in the Philippines in the next few months, following the nationwide roll-out of high-definition (HD) home entertainment option.

Samsung Philippines’ product leader for Flat Panel TV Ma. Jo-Anne L. Roman said that even before the introduction of HD TV service technology, the Philippines is already one of the top countries in South East Asia that quickly embraced LCD TV usage.

 “Philippines is one of the highest in terms of LCD sales in South East Asia,” Roman reiterated.

 Despite the perceived economic difficulties, Roman said the Philippines’ LCD sales performance grew by about 50 percent this year.

“We are looking forward for higher growth in the next few months,” Roman said in an interview.

Besides, she said prices of LCD TV are now going down, as consumers can already own one for a low as P16,900 (21 inches).

 Samsung is confident that with Cignal TV’s introduction of direct-to-home HD TV service, sales of LCD TV in the country will double, as 90 percent of the Filipino households are still on SD (Standard Definition) TV sets.

Last week, the country’s largest multi-media company, MediaQuest Holdings Inc. has brought in the first high-definition (HD) TV viewing in Cebu, with the introduction of Cignal Digital TV.

Through MediaQuest’s subsidiary company-- MediaScape, Inc., the company pioneers the offering of HD TV in Cebu allowing television viewers to fully enjoy home entertainment packages.

  Working on Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) technology, Cignal has partnered with NDS, a pioneer in developing digital TV solutions for some of the most successful satellite broadcasters around the world.

Also, Samsung and MediaScape is currently “cooking” a promotional bundled offer, giving customers of Samsung LCD buyers an automatic Cignal TV connection, upon buying HD television.

An HD TV is a digital television broadcasting system with higher resolution than traditional television system of SD TV. It is digitally broadcast, the earliest implementation used analog broadcasting, but today digital television signals are used, requiring less bandwidth dur to digital video compression.

 Besides, the take up of HD television is also expected to tremendously hit the Filipino market, despite its seemingly high cost, due to its environmentally-friendly feature that consumes lesser electricity/power compared to the SD TV.  (Ehda M. Dagooc)