Today's High-Def Headlines

Pioneer to launch full HD plasma TVs in October - Reuters
Japan's Pioneer Corp. said on Thursday it will launch its first full high-definition plasma televisions in October, playing catch-up with larger rivals such as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. Pioneer's plasma operations swung to a quarterly loss in April-June, hit by fierce price competition in the flat TV market, where plasma televisions are losing market share to rival liquid crystal display (LCD) models.

Q2 LCD Grows As Plasma Slows - TWICE
The NPD Group’s DisplaySearch company said worldwide LCD TV panel shipments rose a record 32 percent quarter-to-quarter and 65 percent year-to-year to 19.6 million panels in the second quarter of 2007. For the first time, twice as many over 40-inch LCD TV panels were shipped as 40-inch plasma panels.

Independent Cable Ops Eye Opportunities from DTV Transition - MCN
Independent cable operators agreed that they need to have a voice and a role in the looming digital-TV transition, but they haven’t reached a consensus yet on exactly what their strategy should be.

Canon Intros Hard-Drive-Based HD Camcorder - TWICE
Canon announced its first hard-disk-drive-based high-definition camcorder yesterday. The AVCHD-based HG10 features a 10x optical zoom lens with optical image stabilization and Canon’s DIGIC DV II processor. The camcorder’s CMOS sensor records 1920 by 1080i video to a 40GB HDD. It can snap 3-megapixel still images to a miniSD card and isolate 2-megapixel stills from video footage during playback with the Photo Grab feature.

Panasonic Launches "Living In HD" Project - TWICE
Panasonic kicked off a promotional campaign, called “Living In High Definition,” that seeks to bring, people, families and communities together through the use of its high definition consumer electronics products. The effort will award $20,000-plus complete Panasonic A/V and IT product suites to a total of 30 families across the country through March 2008.

Qwest CEO: No Need for New U-verse - Light Reading
Dick Notebaert: "Why in the world would you go do that [build a new broadband TV platform] and incur all that expense when you've got YouTube and the direction the world is heading and can still do the broadcast model with more HD than anywhere else with DirecTV. I can't find any logic for us doing it."