The Age of Home Theater Is Arriving!

I am sure you must be very busy every day with your pre-Olympics sales campaigns. In particular, it appears that this year�fs main products flat-screen televisions and Blu-ray Disc (BD) recorders are continuing to be in short supply. For both makers and distributors, the most important thing is to make sure you don�ft run out of products. How is your company doing?

Whatever the case, the efforts and achievements of the industry in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, such as the unification of BD standards and the launch of the �gdubbing 10�h system, have been truly wonderful. I sincerely wish to share my delight with you. The results can be seen in the pre-Olympics sales campaigns, in which BD recorders have gained strong support as the star products and are expanding rapidly.

Looking at the recent trend among users to purchase large-screen flat TVs, we can see that, in financial terms, sales of 50-inch models and larger have risen by 223%, and sales of models in the 40-inch range have increased about 190%. I have great hopes that from now on this swell will create a powerful current toward home theater based on rack-theater systems.

I have continued to make proposals for flat-TV, screen, and two-way theater. And as places for these theaters, I have suggested the living room, special rooms, and individual rooms, including the bedroom.

The expansion of flat TVs is leading to an increase in the sale of rack-theater systems and creating added value. At the same time, this has suddenly emerged as an important factor promoting the shift to full-fledged theater.

The age of home theater is about to arrive. I firmly believe that the door has been opened for the final chapter of home theater and the beginning of a robust home-theater era.

This has become conventional wisdom not only in our industry but also in various other fields too, including housing, architecture, interior design, and home renovation. As various industries come together, the concept without doubt is going to take root as an added-value selling point.

Thanks to such factors as the diffusion of flat TVs and BD recorders, the improved picture quality of all contents, including broadcasting, and the simplification of contents distribution by means of acTVila and so on, the infrastructure for home theater has been put into place.

I hope that we can capture latent users with such ideas as simple theater, casual theater, and full-fledged theater. The sharp rise in gasoline prices and the increase of many other commodity prices mean that people are going to spend more time at home. Willy-nilly, people are going to devote more time to the screen and to music. Inevitably, the demand for TV, screen, and two-way theater is going to grow.

I have defined and proposed home theater as �gthe creation of a family cultural base.�h The diffusion of flat TVs can be said to have firmly laid the infrastructure for that purpose.

After the pre-Olympics sales campaigns, I want to carry on forcefully promoting the creation of family cultural bases toward the sales campaigns at the end of the year.