Planar Defines Three-Brand Strategy with Runco at High End
Planar will put Runco at the high end of its CE line and position Vidikron to test-drive new technologies as Planar integrates its acquisition, Senior Product Manager Brian Carskadon told us at last week’s CEDIA Expo. Planar, which bought Runco for $37.5 million cash (CED May 29 p1), will put products under its own brand in the midrange, keeping separate distribution for each brand, said Robert Hana, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing.
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Runco will maintain its 650-dealer base as Vidikron seeks to expand by year-end from 400 to 550, said Scott Hix, vice president and general manager. Planar sells through about 170 largely custom installers, a total it wants to grow to 1,200, he said. The brand will overlap little, given that there are 7,000 to 8,000 custom installers in the U.S., Hix said.
“With the Runco and Vidikron brands you have penetration in 15 to 20 percent of the custom installation,” Hix said. “There’s a lot of them out there that may be looking for a brand with a different feature set and price point that we will look to attack.”
Planar will move Runco into new brands and sizes. At CEDIA, it introduced a CineWall 103-inch ($99,995) plasma TV using a panel sourced from Panasonic and also part of a 100- inch in-wall TV and 42-inch outdoor set ($9,999) with 1,280x720p resolution. The plasma set, to ship in December, has 1,920 by 1,080p resolution and DVI and RS-232 inputs for connecting to Runco’s DHD digital controller containing the company’s ViVix video processing technology. Introducing the 42-inch LCD outdoor set and an DLP-based 100-inch in-wall model that’s 47 inches deep, Planar borrows from technology it acquired in its 2006 purchase of commercial display developer Clarity Visual Systems. The in-wall set will be based on Texas Instruments’ 0.95-inch 1080p chip. It delivers 600 nits brightness from a 180-watt UHP lamp and a 10,000:1 contrast ratio. Pricing and availability haven’t been set, Carskadon said.
The 42-inch model will feature a “Black Bead” screen that Planar is developing with a third party, said Carskadon, who declined to identify the partner. Black Bead technology is meant to improve contrast and resolution. Among companies selling Black Bead screens are Dai Nippon Printing, which developed the technology with 3M. With Black Bead, an ultrafine pitch Fresnel lens distributes a projected image through a Black Bead element -- a layer of tiny glass beads set in a film of black material. As projected light passes through it, the filter leaves a nearly completely black area that absorbs ambient light.
“We have this business under Planar so we get the benefit from access to all the different channels,” Carskadon said. “Now we can create these platform products and optimize them for these different applications and tap the channels that go into them.”
Runco also is marketing 52- ($7,995), 57- ($12,995) and 65-inch ($12,995) LCD TVs, plus a new entry-level RS-440 DLP 720p-based front projector ($4,995) packaged with a CineWide 2.35:1 lens. The CineWide technology also is available with the step-up RS-550 front projector ($8,995), which adds 1080p resolution.
The Vidikron line previously carried JVC’s D-ILA LCoS microdisplay technology in front projectors, but it’s now an all-DLP front projector mix, including the Vision Model 65 that ships in October with a 1,920 by 1,080p resolution and a $8,995 retail price. It also demonstrated the Vision Model 15 ($5,995) with 1,280 by 720p resolution and Imagix video processing. But Planar isn’t ruling out returning Vidikron to the LCoS fold along with DLP, Carskadon said. Vidikron’s flat-panel TV line will include 42- to 65-inch plasma sets under the PlasmaView banner and 26- to 57-inch DView LCD models.
“For a while out there, LCoS was floundering and DLP and LCD were going to replace it,” Carskadon said. “I think now you're going to see a little bit more of return to LCoS. There’s room for it and better applications for it than in the past.” Vidikron’s dealer base is “more willing to try out new technologies and it gives us the ability to test things,” he said.
For the Planar brand, which stumbled last fall as the company sought to nail down sourcing, the company demonstrated the DLP-based PD8130 ($6,999) front projector, shipping in December with 1,000 lumens, 10,000:1 contrast ratio, 1.85-2.40:1 long throw lens and Gennum’s VXP video processor. The entry-level model will be the PD8120 that uses a Silicon Optix Relata processor and has 1080p resolution, 1,200 lumens and 5,000:1 contrast ratio. The flat-panel TV line will include 37- ($2,299) to 52-inch ($6,999) LCD models. Planar planned to introduce both 1080p front projectors and flat-panel TVs last fall. It did ship 720p models.
Runco’s sale to Planar sped some product introductions as Runco capitalized on Planar’s sourcing network for components, Hana said. The 103-inch plasma TV was in Runco’s product plans, but before the sale, wasn’t expected to be introduced until CES in January, Hana said.
“There were things about the company that I couldn’t handle,” Runco founder Sam Runco, who is continuing to work with Planar on Runco products. “I'm an entrepreneur and front-end guy, and as the company started to get bigger, the processes and procedures were things that were not in my DNA. That’s why I went out and did what I did with Planar.”