ANALOG vs DIGITAL - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

Gossip&News
Feedback
New Home
for Jadis
Not that Jadis is exactly new. The
French maker of upscale tube gear (the
name is French for “yesteryear,” no doubt
inspired by its tube technology) has been
around for decades. For a number of
years, North American distribution had
been in the hands of the Montreal-area
company Pierre Gabriel, also known
for its eponymous loudspeakers hardly
anyone bought. Oh, and upscale silver
cables.
We liked the cables enough that we
still use some in our reference systems,
and some of our readers have them too,
because we used to list them in our
Audiophile Store. We dropped them
because a newer incarnation of the
cables was markedly inferior. A promised
upgrade never turned up. In recent years
Pierre Gabriel was mainly known for
distributing Jadis.
Well, what can we tell you? The
Pierre Gabriel Web page now contains
only the company logo and an e-mail
link — but don’t stand on one leg waiting
for a reply. We talked recently to
company founder Pierre Raymond (full
name: Pierre Gabriel Raymond), who
has plans for the future, but not with the
business he set up.
But that left Jadis an orphan in
North America. Inevitably, then, the
French company has found a new home,
Bluebird Music, which also distributes
78 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine
Gossip&News
Industry News
Chord, Spendor and Van den Hul.
The amplifier shown above, by the
way, is the DA30. It was reviewed in
UHF No. 66.
Bad season
for TV makers
Just the other day we were recalling
the first plasma TV set to appear
at Costco. It was offered at a bargain
price…$14,000! No wonder the leading
edge of technology is often referred to
as the bleeding edge. Today, the cheapest
plasmas are in the same store for $700.
So how do you make money making
and marketing a product that is plummeting
toward the bottom? Apparently
you don’t.
You’ll recall that, several years
ago now, Pioneer killed off its muchrespected
Kuro line of plasma HDTVs.
Those were generally considered to be
the best available, and Pioneer had never
joined the wave of commodification that
were bringing prices ever lower. A Kuro
HDTV would still have cost $5000
when a competitor from Panasonic or
Samsung might have cost $2500 (and
today less than half of that).
Oddly enough, there was a brief
hope that the Kuros were coming back,
as new Elite TV’s were announced. But
the ads didn’t say Kuro, and they didn’t
say Pioneer either. They are actually
made by Sharp, and they are LCD, not
plasma. What they have kept from the
Kuro days are the prices, ranging from
$6000 to $8000.
We wish them luck, but in the meantime
let’s see what’s happening to other
TV makers.
Sony, which never did recover from its
failure to find a successor to its Trinitron
technology, has had seven consecutive
annual losses in its TV-manufacturing
arm. It has now reorganized itself into
three groups.
One group will oversee the LCD
operations (Sony has never made plasmas
— a missed opportunity in our
view), another will coordinate contract
manufacturing, and a third will oversee
the development of next-generation
sets. We’re not sure we understand the
strategy of setting up these divisions like
silos. Chrysler was once organized that
way (engineering, styling, marketing)
and it nearly died as a result.
Sony’s most troublesome competitors
seem to be Samsung and Vizio. Even
LG, the other Korean maker, has seen
its sales drop.
As for Panasonic, whose TV sets
are well regarded, it’s projecting a net
loss for the year of $5.5 billion. Back in
April, Panasonic announced a cutback
of its global workforce from 367,000 to
350,000. Panasonic has also revealed that
it will discontinue LCD production at its
Mobara plant, which is near Tokyo. It
also plans to stop shipping plasma-panel
manufacturing equipment to Shanghai.
Amagasaki No. 3, the largest plasma
panel factory in the world with production
capacity of 330,000 panels per
month, was completed in December
2009.
Finally, Panasonic may sell off an
LCD panel plant at Mobara in Chiba
prefecture, near Tokyo.
And Sharp is not doing well in the
TV business either. Will making “Elite”
sets help?