These cameras, unlike typical webcams, are customized for the technically challenging environment of the living room, where there can be a wide range of distances between the TV and viewers.
Panasonic, based in Japan, and LG, based in South Korea, will sell specially designed Web cameras for their Skype-enabled sets, which should cost $100 to $200. A TV program will stop playing once a Skype call is made or answered TV processors are not yet powerful enough to allow people to chat while they watch a show, the companies say. The Skype service on a TV will work much as it does on a PC, but with some limitations. “The TV is not just a one-way entertainment device, but a two-way communications device and a portal into other people’s lives,” said Bob Perry, a senior vice president at Panasonic. By adding other services and making a television more like a PC, TV makers now want to change the very identity of the primary screen in the house. Until now, Web-connected TVs have accessed only a limited number of online services, like widgets from Yahoo that offer weather and news updates, or Netflix’s streaming movie service. In some cases, TV makers also get a slice of the revenue when customers make Web purchases from their TVs. A 50-inch plasma, high-definition TV with a broadband connection from LG runs about $300 more on than a TV of the same size without the connection. Internet-enabled TV sets, though they have not yet proved a hit with consumers, can restore some of those shrunken profits.
But furious competition among manufacturers cut deeply into prices and profits, with the price of a 46-inch LCD TV, for example, falling under $1,000 for the first time. The domestic TV market survived the recession in surprisingly good health, shipping 33.86 million units during 2009, up 17 percent from 2008, while retail sales were generally flat, according to the research firm iSuppli. “This is the year when Internet-connected TVs will start to take off, and there is no doubt that soon every TV that ships will have built in Wi-Fi, webcams and microphones,” said Jonathan Rosenberg, chief technology strategist of Skype.
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