pioneer back in the tv buisness

Source?

SOURCE !

The same person that told him Saab were making cars again.

boneidol wrote:

i'm not saying where i've got this info from lol but i've been told pioneer are making screens again, due to be announced in easter, to be released in august. will be exclusive to a well know chain of retailers for 12 mnths, but they are gunna be back. anyone else already joing the queue to get 1 lol

AFAIK Pioneer has no capacity to make screens these days.

However, Sharp is the largest single shareholder in Pioneer, and as you may have read in our news channel of late, is trying almost anything to make some money, given its currently horrendous expected losses for this year.

And Sharp already licences the Pioneer Elite name for large-screen TVs sold in the USA, while Hon Hai, which partners with Sharp in its major LCD plant in Japan, has launched TVs in Taiwan and China under the RadioShack name, using Sharp panels. Both companies are pretty keen to see some of the current overcapacity in Sharp plants used for something profitable.

Of course all this is absolute conjecture and doing the old '2+2=5' on my part, and we have no insider knoweldge, but if it happened that way it would be a bit spooky given a conversation DepWebEd Joe Cox and I had in the office the other day about whether Hon Hai would want to enter the European TV market, and which brand name it might licence if it wanted to do so.

But then in the current volatile TV market, almost any scenario, however fanciful it may seem, could be on the cards...

big big lol @ will there be any chains left.

a staff member in the chain that will be selling them have agreed with pioneer an exclusive 12 month deal (a/v specialist chain, should give you a clue) , apparently pioneer have been demoing new products, but no one was intrested after finding out about the screens lol

think will only be a few models in the range, including led ( i think) & 1 plasma, which would suprise me. so not sure if they'll be as good as the kuro's but will be interesting

To be honest I don't care if they come back or not, Panasonic are the new top dogs!  

at andrew e, apparantly was spoken about at recent pioneer demos done around the country to the industry when talking about new amps for this year???? i'm sure you could probe around & find out more, to see if this is the case??? someone may have said something they should'nt have lol

Not aware of any such information, but I am sure any Pioneer-branded TVs appearing now would have to use bought-in technology, given that both production capability and engineering resources are long gone.

Perhaps if I knew your source it might be easier to follow up, but I have asked the question...

is there anyway i can tell you without posting in the forum, i dont want to get said people in trouble etc... and you prob have best contacts to find out i guess. my mate has a 5090 & the pic is still unbeliavable, i like most have been looking at the panasonics, but if this is correct, could change the landscape some what lol

Yes, you can email me at the usual magazine email

That's Andrew's point though, the facilities that were used to build the 5090 don't exist any more, I believe the technology and patents were sold to Panasonic, so Pioneer couldn't use it even if they wanted to, so it would just be a rebadge of Sharp or HonHai screens, wouldn't be anything like the Kuros.

Of course HonHai might turn out to make the best TVs the world's ever seen, you never know...

ps while i'm sorting out sending email, can i please ask re manchester show. are there any plans to get it back as bristol is a long long way from Yorkshire lol & really missed show last year, kid in a candy store previous years springs to mind lol & my better half, she even loves it. which is always helpful when buying toys lol

camac wrote:

SOURCE ! The same person that told him Saab were making cars again.

That's actually less fanciful, the NEVS consortium have bought the assets and will be allowed to use the SAAB name, won't be until 2014 at the earliest and they initially said they'd only make full electric vehicles, no hybrids, so how well they'll do is anybody's guess but the business plan was based on projections for electric vehicles in the Chinese market that are now thought to be woefully optimistic (by a factor of ten or more).