Image source @ Visual China
Wen 丨 parity, author 丨 zero nine, editor 丨 zhao
"My eyes are rulers, you don't have to look at the replay!" No one would have thought that the first person to bring fire at the Beijing Winter Olympics was Wang Meng, the commentator in the short track speed skating competition.
With his professional understanding of short track speed skating, passionate commentary style, and sauce-flavored Northeast accent, Wang Meng, who was originally the winner of the four gold medals of the Winter Olympics, once again went out of the circle and became the first choice for everyone to "watch" the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Wang Meng's cooperation with the APP Migu video has also soared in popularity, that night, the social platform "opened Migu video overnight" netizens, the original Winter Olympics first official broadcast platform - CCTV is a little more lonely.
The "trade-off" of TV stations and mobile apps in the live broadcast of the Winter Olympics is also a microcosm of the changing importance of televisions and mobile devices in people's lives.
Asking friends around them, they learned that as early as last year's Tokyo Olympics, they were used to watching games on their mobile phones, and the same was true for daily dramas and variety shows. Most of the televisions that exist in the home have been reduced to "living room decorations", and several renters have never even considered buying a television set.
In the past 2021, domestic color TV retail sales also hit a new low in the past 12 years. According to data from Aowei Cloud Network, the retail volume of color TVs in China in 2021 was 38.35 million units, down 13.8% year-on-year. The TV that was once the first of the "four major pieces" of the times is now not only not watched, but also cannot be sold.
Why can't tv be sold and no one is watching it? Where will TV go in the future? Based on the development and current situation of television, we will study this problem from the following three aspects:
1. What has the technology and products of television experienced in the past and what stage is it in now?
2. How can the change of content and channels gradually change the importance of television in life?
3. What other changes and impacts will the traditional LCD TV industry face?
Trapped in a technological "empty window"
The television industry has not had a fierce "technology war" for a long time.
The last "technology war" in the field of television sets dates back to the "double dominance" of LED LCD TVs and plasma PDP TVs around 2005. At that time, the bulky CRT TV gradually withdrew from the stage, and new technologies such as LCD, plasma, and rear projection "played a big hand" for the leading position of the new generation of TVs.
Among the three major technologies, the rear shot was the first to fall behind, Sony, Sharp, and Samsung chose to develop LCD TVs, and Panasonic and Changhong bet on plasma TVs.
Panasonic has built a 150-inch plasma TV picture/network
As a TV enthusiast for more than 20 years, Jin Bin, who is still active in the TV forum, witnessed the "technology war" throughout the process.
At that time, although plasma TVs achieved better picture quality with self-luminescent materials, they were weaker than LCD TVs in resolution and power consumption, and the overall cost was higher. The three giants of Sony, Sharp and Samsung, which bet on LCD, used their strong technical reserves to help LCD TVs make up for the shortcomings of picture quality, and realized the large-scale mass production of large-size LCD panels, successfully seizing the opportunity.
Although the domestic TV giant Changhong also invested 2 billion yuan in plasma TV at that time, it was still a drop in the bucket under the siege of several Japanese and South Korean giants.
In 2008, following Sony, Sharp also successfully developed high-tech products such as RGB tri-color LEDs and local light control, further narrowing the gap between lcd and plasma picture quality, with Samsung and other Korean companies good at low-cost dumping tactics, LCD TVs finally won the big war, and thus became the absolute king of the TV market in the past decade.
Sharp's first RGB tri-color LED TV XS1 figure/network
But the victorious LCD TV soon entered the era of "lying flat".
Jin Bin, who has been paying attention to TELEVISION for many years, told me that after occupying most of the market share in 2009, the technological progress of LCD TVs has fallen into a period of stagnation, and even on some models of the same level, there has been a straight-down backlight change to side-entry type, shrinkage circuit design and other situations that do not advance and retreat.
For most of the past decade, lcd TVs have seen the biggest innovation in size and the increase in mainstream resolution from 1080P to 4K. The whole is still a small tinkering in the framework of the liquid crystal, and there is no large technical iteration like the previous CRT to PDP/LCD.
Until around 2018, the gradual maturity of OLED TVs in technology has brought a long-lost impact to the LCD TVs that sit firmly in the chair.
LG, Sony, Skyworth, Xiaomi and other brands have launched a series of OLED TVs, because of their self-luminous characteristics, in contrast, shadow details, power consumption and other aspects are better than LCD TVs; and benefit from the lack of backlight module characteristics, in the thickness of the traditional LCD can be thinner.
LG exhibited OLED TV, and the advantage of shadow details is obvious Figure/Network
However, limited by the cost of large-size OLED, after several years of development, the current price of OLED TVs is still generally high.
Jioupai (jioupai) visited offline electrical appliance stores, and inquired about the price of some OLED TVs on the online platform, taking Sony, LG, Skyworth's 65-inch OLED TV as an example, Sony's 65A80J offer ranged from 12,000-15,000 yuan, LG's 65C1P offer ranged from 12,000-16,000 yuan, and Skyworth's 65R9U offer was also above 10,000 yuan.
In the market, the price of most traditional LCD TVs is below 8,000 yuan. In the consumer's most favored products below 5,000 yuan, almost all are LED LCD TVs in the world.
In OLED TVs, the only one that is "downgraded" to 5000 gears competes with LCD is the Xiaomi OLED, which is known for its cost performance, but even Xiaomi has to be limited by the cost, reducing the screen refresh rate of entry-level OLED from 120Hz to 60Hz. However, at the price of 5,000 yuan, the 120Hz panel of the LED LCD TV is already standard.
5000 yuan xiaomi oled TV refresh rate is only 60Hz figure / xiaomi official website
The high price or "shrinkage" caused by cost is not only reflected in olED TVs that deliberately replace liquid crystals. Mini-LED, a transitional technology product widely regarded as an LED liquid crystal and OLED/Micro-LED, cannot escape the fate of controlling costs for cost performance.
Domestic brands attach great importance to Mini-LED TCL and Hisense, in order to popularize Mini-LED, the product price has been reduced to about 5,000 yuan, but due to the high cost of new technology, the picture quality has also been shrunk.
Taking TCL's Thunderbird's R645C series as an example, its 55-inch model backlight beads are 2046, 65-inch models are 3200 backlight beads, and 75-inch models are 3840 backlight beads. The picture quality of the Mini-LED TV is closely related to the number of backlight beads, and the picture quality is significantly better than that of the MINI-LED TV with LED liquid crystal, and the number of backlight beads is more than 10,000.
This also makes the new technology products represented by OLED and Mini-LED have no obvious advantages over traditional LED LCD products in the mainstream price segment of consumers buying TVs.
The two major technologies seem to be surging forward, but more of a high-end product business of liquid crystals, consumers who are willing to spend tens of thousands of yuan to buy TVs will be more inclined to choose OLED and Mini-LED. Statistics from Aowei Cloud Network show that from 2018 to 2021, the domestic OLED TV market share has been hovering between 6-11% for a long time, and has not been able to achieve a big breakthrough.
In the mainstream price segment below 5,000 yuan, TV is in an awkward "technical window period".
LED liquid crystal technology upgrade peaked, OLED and Mini-LED is difficult to "decentralize", TV manufacturers can only start from the concept to promote consumer replacement. Sharp and other manufacturers push 8K TVs, Samsung erected QLED signboards, Hisense pushed ULED, are all representatives of concept-driven machine replacement. However, after the 4K replacement tide around 2015, consumers have gradually "desensitized" the concept created by manufacturers.
8K TV parity shoot in an electrical store
Wang Hao, who changed the TV at home to a 4K TV in the tide of changing machines five years ago, told me that after changing the new TV for a few years, he did not feel any big difference from before when he watched the TV station program, and felt that "it doesn't matter if he changes it or not."
Such a reaction is not surprising, after all, the resolution of the output signal of most domestic TV stations is still stuck in the Full HD era. Taking the CCTV news channel as an example, its output hd signal is 1920 * 1080i 50 frame progressive scan, the signal presents the picture on the 1080 and 4K resolution TV sets, it is difficult to watch it significantly.
The technology of mainstream price products is trapped in the empty window period, and the new generation of technology products represented by OLED and Mini-LED has not yet reached the "sweet spot" between picture quality and price, and consumers who have been driven by a concept to change the machine have also begun to be indifferent to new concepts such as 8K.
This also means that at the moment when the number of TVs in each household has been basically saturated and the SERVICE life of TVs is long, consumers face LED liquid crystals that have not made much progress, and obviously lack sufficient power to change the machine. Tv sales brought about by the demand for replacement machines naturally decreased.
Content channels change, TV is dispensable?
If TV technology is in an awkward window period, the main impact is only on consumers who need to replace TVs. Then the drastic changes brought about by the popularity of mobile Internet in the past decade have shaken the content basic disk of TV as a "living room entertainment center" for many years, so that some potential consumers even have a much smaller desire to buy the first TV.
iResearch data shows that in 2012, the number of smartphones in the mainland was 360 million, the smartphone penetration rate was 32.6%, and by 2021, the penetration rate of smartphones in the mainland has reached 95.6%, and the existence of Internet video platforms such as Tencent Video, iQiyi, Mango TV, and Youku has profoundly changed the way people have audiovisual entertainment by taking advantage of the popularity of smart phones.
With this, the importance of film and television dramas and variety shows to broadcast on television has changed.
According to the "2021 Variety Show Annual Insight Report" and the "2021 Domestic Drama Market Research Report" of Yien Data, we have sorted out the webcasting and staring of film and television dramas and variety shows in the 2021 Broadcast Index Top 10.
Last year's Top10 film and television drama variety show on the star situation odd and even pie mapping
In terms of film and television dramas, the top 10 episodes Tencent Video/iQiyi each accounted for half, but only 5 chose to be broadcast on the star to the TV station, accounting for 50%; among them, "You Are My City Fortress" was only broadcast on CCTV-8 two and a half months after the network broadcast, and the popularity has long passed. There are only 4 Top 10 episodes that are actually broadcast simultaneously on TV stations.
In terms of variety shows, the top 10 variety shows are distributed in Tencent Video/Mango TV/Youku/iQiyi 4 network platforms, and only 3 variety shows are selected to be broadcast by Shangxing to TV Stations, of which two variety shows still belong to Hunan Satellite TV, and none of the top three variety shows in the broadcast index are on the stars.
In addition, the film and television drama "The Beginning", which was a hit at the beginning of 2022, was only broadcast exclusively on Tencent Video and did not land on any TV station.
Judging from the choice of film and television dramas and variety shows, TV stations that were once the main force of people watching TV are gradually losing the attention and priority of content producers, and are also being pushed by the audience from the sequence of viewing methods to the mobile terminal.
This trend has also been reflected in sporting events over the past few years. According to iResearch Statistics, in the 2018 World Cup in Russia, 86.2% of the viewers chose to watch the game on their mobile phones, more than 72.9% who used TV to watch the game.
At the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games, more than 50% of 18-40-year-old viewers used mobile phones to watch games, and less than 40% used TV to watch games; at the recent Beijing Winter Olympics, the popularity of Wang Meng's commentary in the mobile APP and the loneliness of CCTV are even more stark.
Spectator equipment for the Tokyo Olympic Games Photo/iResearch Consulting
While losing the attention and priority of content producers, the role of TV as a publicity channel is also decreasing, and TV advertising, which was once regarded as an important publicity channel by brand parties, has been showing a downward trend in recent years.
Tv advertising changes in the past five years Photo/CTR Media Intelligence News
According to the statistics of CTR Media Intelligence, in the five years from 2016 to 2020, the publication expenditure of TV advertising except for a slight increase of 1.7% in 2017, the remaining four years are declining, with a decline of 3.7%, 0.3% and 9.5% in 2016, 2018 and 2019, respectively, and 13.5% in 2020.
The length of TV advertising has continued to shorten in the past five years, with TV advertising lengths shortened by 4.4% and 4.5% in 2016 and 2017, 8.1% in 2018, 13.6% and 20.7% in 2019 and 2020, and the cumulative shortened advertising time is close to one-third, which shows the obvious decline of TV advertising.
TV is not without trying to embrace video APP, after smart TVs with the 4K replacement tide around 2015 has become popular, search TV applications Dangbei market can be found that many video websites have special TV APP. For example, Tencent's Cloud Audiovisual Aurora, iQiyi's Galaxy Kiwifruit, and Youku's CIBN Cool Meow can all be installed and watched on TV.
But at the same time, we also found that the interactive logic and use experience of the TV APP are limited by the operation of the remote control, which is not perfect, and it is much behind the mobile APP; and the VIP member price of the TV end is generally more than double the price of the mobile member, and the members opened by the mobile terminal cannot be synchronized with the TV side.
Tencent can watch VIP content on TV super movie VIP price parity pie screenshots
As we all know, the lack of members of the video APP can watch the content is extremely limited, the TV side of the "price deviation", but also many consumers who intend to use the TV APP to watch content blocked off the screen.
It has lost its former content advantages, lost the leading position of advertising in the past, the gap in the use experience of TV video APP, coupled with the rise of new content forms such as vertical screen proportion short videos and live broadcasts. With the above content and channels changing, TV seems to be becoming dispensable.
In 1985, Neil Bozeman criticized television-derived content forms in Entertainment to Death, bringing bad entertainment tendencies to serious public industries. But what he did not expect was that with the further spread of the tide of entertainment, the TV that was once the benchmark of entertainment has also become a front wave on the shore in terms of content channels.
The TV business is also cold, and laser projection is waiting for the opportunity?
Due to the changes in technology and content channels, the status and market of television are declining, which has also made home appliance companies that once attached importance to tv business turn to in recent years.
Let's take the top two in China, Once regarded as China's color TV double male Hisense and Skyworth as an example.
Hisense Video's 2021 semi-annual report shows that in the first half of last year, Hisense, as one of the leaders in the TV industry, had a revenue of 17.002 billion yuan in the display terminal business represented by TV, with a growth rate of 35.98%, but compared with the 69.23% growth rate of the laser display business, the gap was obvious.
The semi-annual report of Hisense home appliances shows that its HVAC business revenue is 16.13 billion yuan, ice washing business revenue is 11.128 billion yuan, the growth rate of the two major businesses is more than 40%, and there is a trend beyond the display terminal business.
Compared with Hisense, Skyworth, which relies more on TV categories, has struggled in the first two years.
In 2019, Skyworth TV's domestic market shipments increased by 2.6% year-on-year, but the domestic revenue of tv business fell by 15.8% year-on-year to 13.648 billion yuan; in 2020, Skyworth merged TV and other businesses into multimedia business statistics, and although the revenue of 24.571 billion yuan increased by 14.3% year-on-year, the report showed that tv sales in the Chinese market were only 7.597 million units, compared with 9.031 million units in 2019, but down 15.9%.
The volume and price of the TV business have risen together, which seems to have become a luxury. Under the background that it is difficult for TV single categories to have a large growth space, Skyworth began to focus on intelligent systems, intelligent appliances and modern service industries in 2021. According to the 2021 semi-annual report, skyworth's above businesses reached 8.786 billion yuan in the first half of last year, accounting for nearly 40% of Skyworth's revenue in the first half of the year.
In addition, Skyworth has also entered the photovoltaic business, and plans to lay out the industrial Internet in this way, in the three quarterly reports of 2021, Skyworth disclosed that the photovoltaic business in the first three quarters of last year has reached 2.182 billion yuan, which has become an important driving force for Skyworth's re-development. And the tv that was once the most reliant has long been a fading flower.
Companies are gradually moving away from "TV dependence" and turning to other businesses. Behind the demand for large-screen entertainment that TV once represented, new forms of laser display and projection are also waiting for opportunities.
Aowei Cloud Network data show that since 2014, the average size of the domestic TV market has continued to grow, from 42.2 inches in 2014 to 54.4 inches in 2021, and it is expected that the average size will reach 55.9 inches in 2022, and the large size market of 70+ and 80+ is ushering in a period of vigorous development.
The average size change of domestic TV sales Figure/Aowei Cloud Network
However, at present, the price of TV products above 75 inches is quite high, the price of high-end products is more than 10,000 yuan, more than 90 inches and other experience of large-size products, LCD TVs are limited by panel cutting and volume, the product line is not perfect; the maximum size is basically not more than 100 inches, and most of the product prices exceed 50,000 yuan.
But for projection and laser display products, 100 inches is a breeze, and the price has a great advantage; in a jimi store located in Jiang'an District, the salesman recommended a combination of a home projector and a 100-inch curtain to me, the price is only 7,000 yuan, and then there are 120 inches or even 150 inches to choose from, and has a good audiovisual effect in the dark light scene.
Searching the major e-commerce websites can also be found that Xiaomi, Hisense, Changhong, Toshiba and other TV manufacturing companies have also entered the laser display products, and have launched their own laser TVs, the price ranges from 10,000 yuan to 20,000 yuan, compared to the same size LCD TV products that are often priced at more than 50,000 yuan.
Laser TV price of e-commerce site Parity pie screenshot
However, the brightness of laser display products such as projectors cannot be compared with LCD TVs for the time being.
At present, the brightness of most laser display products is below 3000 lumens, and according to the international relatively common light source brightness / size / display brightness conversion standards, the illumination brightness of 3000 lumens is only equivalent to the display brightness of less than 300 nits in a 100-inch environment. The peak brightness of the existing LCD TV panel in China is generally above 600 nits.
The brightness of laser display products is only about 300 nits, which means that their experience in bright light and daytime environments is doomed to defects. This is a major difficulty that laser display needs to cross to replace large-screen TVs, and laser display products are still immature at present.
However, in the context of home appliance companies adjusting the layout and laser projection waiting for opportunities, the industry changes and impacts faced by traditional TVs are not small, and their share is gradually eroded by laser display products, which seems to be a foreseeable future.
Write at the end
From the perspective of technology, content, industry situation and other three aspects, there is no doubt that the status of television as a family entertainment center is being challenged in many ways, and the road ahead of the television industry is cloudy. But it's obviously too early to say "TV is going to die."
With the advancement of OLED, Mini-LED and relatively perfect Micro-LED technology in the future, its product cost will also be better controlled, and new technology products will eventually achieve the replacement of LED LCD TVs, with the improvement of film and television source image quality, TVs may also usher in a new wave of replacement tide.
Film and television dramas, variety shows, sports events and advertisers, although they no longer put TV channels in the first place, but in order to achieve the largest scale of influence, it is obviously not enough to only carry out single channel delivery on the mobile side. Television will remain one of the most important battlegrounds for many resources in the coming decades.
The immaturity of laser display products in terms of brightness, scene, etc., also gives the TV a chance to breathe and regroup. Under the increasing wave of fragmentation and entertainment, people who still have a demand for professional content such as documentaries will also become loyal viewers of television.
Television is going down, but there is a future for television. However, what needs to be done in the future to continue to maintain the competitiveness of television in the new situation? The entire television industry needs to explore the answer to this question as soon as possible.