The United States-based TV maker Syntax-Brillian, maker of the once-popular Olevia HDTV brand, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after a year “of weak sales”, lawsuits, accounting issues and liquidity problems.
The company is now negotiating with creditors and lenders to secure capital, but has stopped its operations in Arizona. A few of the notable creditors of the company are Singapore-based WesTech Electronics Ltd, Taiwan’s Compal Electronics, cable sports network ESPN and Taiwan’s Digimedia Technology Co.
For the fiscal year ended June 2008, Syntax-Brillian’s total assets were $175.7 million USD comapred to almost $300 million USD in unpaid debts. The company cited “a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission enquiry and the loss of confidence of suppliers, vendors and employees” as the main reasons for the erosion of its business.
The bankruptcy filing includes all the company’s assets with the exception of Vivitar, the company’s digital camera unit, which is going up for sale.
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The music download store 7digital.com is reporting that since the introduction of DRM-free music from the labels Warner and EMI, sales have skyrocketed over 300 percent propelling the site into second place behind Apple iTunes as the UK’s biggest digital retailer.
Year on year download sales were up 300 percent for the year ended June 30th 2008, with CEO Ben Drury adding, “High-quality, DRM-free MP3 downloads have really sparked a new wave of digital music take up.”
Drury also notes that the MP3 format offers superior compatibility to DRM-crippled WMA files or Apple’s use of AAC and for that reason, many users are moving to the site.
80 percent of 7digital.com’s catalog is now DRM-free, (representing over 3 million songs) leading Drury to add, “It is now clear that MP3 downloads represent the future for digital music. With two of the four major labels now supporting MP3 in the UK, we expect to see the whole market supporting MP3 in the not-too-distant future.”
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Sony and four other Japanese companies have announced that they will be teaming up to develop key technologies for large sized OLED panels to be used in mass produced TVs in the future.
OLED displays are being paraded as a promising next-generation flat display, but so far the only commercial release is Sony’s 11-inch XEL-1, which is too small and too expensive to be mass produced.
These new panels offer many advantages over plasma and LCD displays, including richer blacks, slimmer sizes, better energy efficiency, and higher static and dynamic contrast ratios.
The other firms involved in the new joint venture are Toshiba, Matsushita (maker of Panasonic), Idemitsu Kosan and Sumitomo Chemical. The entire project was initiated by the Japanese government.
More details of the project, which is aimed at establishing technologies for HD OLED displays with sizes of over 40-inches, will be announced soon, added the companies.
