Sony Boss Kidnapping Sees Security Upgrade Locally Sony Australia who has refused any interviews after the mass sacking of 32 staff is believed to have initiated new security measures for CEO Carl Rose and other senior staff following the kidnapping of Senior Sony executives in Europe.
The CEO of Freeview has claimed that “key” TV vendors will be in stores with a variety of Freeview compliant products by May 1 2009 which is when Freeview is set to be launched in Australia. She also claims that Freeview has executed agreements with 4 key manufacturers however the four top brands contacted by ChannelNews say that they will not have Freeview compliant TV’s in time for the Freeview launch.
TV vendors say that May 1 is less than 11 weeks away from when Freeview issued their specification wish list to manufacturers who claim that it could take up to 12 months to get a TV Freeview compliant product to market. And even then it could add up to $200 to the cost of a HD Digital TV said iSuppli who track build components for the consumer technology industry.
One medium sized TV manufacturer, LCD TV who makes the Baumann Meyer LCD TV range was so incensed with the Freeview contract that he demand and got clauses relation to what he could disclose removed from the specification contract prior to signing the agreement.
Malcolm Middleton the Managing Director of LCD TV described Freeview as an organisation that is misleading consumers "How can they claim that they will deliver 15 new channels when 11 of those channels are already available to consumers who have purchased a new HD TV" he said.
He added "As a small player in the market we will not have any Freeview compliant TV's ready for their launch. While there is a case for MPEG 4 technology there is no real value to a consumer in what Freeview is proposing".
A senior executive of a top four TV manufacturer said "The only way that major TV vendors will have a Freeview compliant TV under the proposed specification guidelines will be if they take TV's made for the New Zealand market which already has Freeview and TV that have built in an MPEG 4 decoder. However this is fraught with problems as New Zealand operates on different bandwidths" he said.
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