Pioneer reportedly ending TV production, spinning off DVD business
By Richard Lawler 
posted Feb 6th 2009 6:23PM
posted Feb 6th 2009 6:23PM
Say it ain't so (again) Pioneer, Japan's Nikkei is reporting that despite planning a return to profitability by sourcing Panasonic plasma panels, facing a consolidated loss of 100 billion yen ($1.08 billion U.S.) it will end TV development and production entirely. The DVD business will be spun off into a new venture with Sharp as part of a plan to shed several thousand employees over the next year, including a shutdown of its Shizuoka plant, along with already planned closings in the U.S. and Europe. Honestly, we should have seen things were going badly when it let LaserDisc die, but the worsening economy may have proved too tough for the idea that its Kuro and Elite line of products would not be subject to the ups and downs of the economy.[Via Gearlog, registration required on read link]
Um, what else do Pioneer even make? Okay, Blu-ray players and computer drives, assuming this joint venture with Sharp is literally DVD only and not BD. But other than that? Stereos (got one of those), receivers etc, DJ equipment (that can't be a massive market)...
There are probably other things, but they certainly seem to be downsizing in style.
(And I thought it was disappointing when they sold off their animation production business several years back...)
pioneer makes home theatre equipment... every type including speakers and control boxes
> "DJ equipment (that can't be a massive market)..."
Wrong. It is an absolutely HUGE market. Pioneer's CDJ-1000s equip pretty much every club on the planet these days, with at least four per booth, and there are hundreds of thousands of bedroom DJs out there with the rest of their line. They also make some of the best mixers, headphones and FX units out there.
Pioneer pretty much owns the DJ kit market.
They make car stereos too, but I don't know how well they're doing with it.
That may be true, Mike, but when you compare a market like "people who need DJ equipment" to a market like "people who watch TV", it looks a lot less impressive.
Now now bud. Pioneer makes some wicked DJ equipment. As the other guy said it's used everywhere. All the huge name DJs tend to use Pioneer because they do so many things right. I have a pair of CDJ-400s and the mixer that accompanies it and it's phenomenal.
Sorry for the little rant. I just felt the DJ market brings in quite a pretty penny for Pioneer. : )
Hey, I've got a pair of CDJ-800s here, and they're great. I'm sure Pioneer makes money from that business. But it still has to be a pretty niche market - how many nightclubs are there compared to homes with TVs or DVD players?
Kuro Elite? One of (if not the) best plasma screens on the market today. Sniff.
Perhaps, sam. But how many homes have six rooms each with four TVs in them? Now how many nightclubs do? You'll see that there are a lot more clubs with multiple CDJs per room than there are homes with multiple TVs per room.
That's too bad, Pioneer made the best Plasma HDTVs
The Pioneer Non-Elites PDP-5020FD / PDP-6020FD can be calibrated with ControlCAL as well. You can access these model's RGB High/Low Controls.
-Turbe
Agreed. Pioneer plasmas are really the best of the best. Such a shame.
Good job kilgoretrout, you brought out not one but TWO shameless spammers. Nothing like having a website in your username and linking it in every posting made for almost a year.
Logical move. Kuro TV-s were good but so incredibly expensive that no one actually bought them. The Elite line of LCD-s were not so outstanding. Actuallly they were not much better than those Sharp designs they were based upon, while costing at least twice as much. Only thing that makes me worried is outsourcing DVD production. Pioneer DVD players have always been really good, and not too expensive, And knowing how awful are Sharp DVD and Blu-ray players, we can only hope that this joint venture will use designers from Pioneer side...
No one bought them, Sparky? Really? I have one and I know at least 20 other people who have them.
There are a ton of people with them at the AVS forums. Pretty much every single person that has ever bought one has loved them to death. Hopefully this won't lead to Panasonic raising the prices on their plasma's or stopping production entirely.
I just ordered a panny 800u within the last week. If the Kuro's go down to that pricing level on clearance, I will be very tempted to return the 800u and grab one. Then again, they may never make it to clearance, since people that were on the fence will probably snap them up since this is their last chance.
This is a sad day for me. I've loved Pioneer for many, many years.
Dang, I preferred Pioneer Tv's over Samsung, LG, and etc.
This is very bad for the plasma HDTV market. Everyone knows the Kuro range are the best plasma HDTVs available.
I don't get what's so special about Kuros. I'm looking at images of them on Google and the picture isn't any better than my computer's monitor.
LOL
Indeed they are some beautiful TVs, I'll be taking this one with a grain of salt for now
LOL that was funny
@ garganananana: Oh sure, that was a great idea, because the picture can be of better quality than your monitor, amirite? /sarcasm
But then again, your comment was probably sarcastic, so I'll have to use a /facepalm :P
garganananana - get off this site man - you're a disgrace.
Predator.Z6: Totally wasn't sarcasm.
Alright, I lied, it was.
That sentence was too though.
Fuck the economy. Pioneer TVs were awesome.
ARE awesome ;-)
i hate being that guy but i can't stop myself. too tough. its more than something.
that sucks, i was hoping to get my pioneer eliteness on when i upgrade my equipment
I probably could have never afforded a Kuro, but it's sad to see them go.
afforded? That is exactly the reason.
That's a damn shame. Sorry Pioneer. We'll miss your plasmas and Kuros.
That is a shame. The only reason I bought my Panasonic Viera Plasma instead of the Kuro was the steep price. If it was even a few hundred dollars more I would have considered it, but an extra grand is just too much considering Panasonic's hold their own.
Good Bye The Mighty Pioneer, may you live on in the prosumer and commercial markets
When can we expect a Kuro fire sale?
Here is a big thing that Pioneer did wrong, they made the BEST HDTV's with the most expensive equipment and only marketed a select group of people. There was an offer recently where Pioneer was going to use Panasonic LCD glass and make them cheaper so the paying customer could have a good quality LCD TV (1080p of course) and have it be affordable for them. The Pioneer LCD would have sold big because they are the better TV for HD gamers (Plasma's burn in images and are not the best for gamers that play hours at a time). This could have saved Pioneer but Panasonic backed out.
This is for the guy that did not know everything that Pioneer sold and wanted to know why they are so great. Pioneer for many years where #1 selling in the car audio industry. Car stereo systems, navigation, CD, not car DVD players, ect. If you don't know why Pioneer is so good, should not say anything. This is huge for the HD world as we know it. Pioneer is the leader in the HD world. They where first with the LCD idea... and the best. While other companies where catching up... Pioneer came out with the Plasma, then the 1080p tech... other companies are still on 1080i... which, if you know your HD, p is better and clearer then i.
In closing, I would just like to say that Pioneer is the greatest company in the Entertainment Industry and they will be greatly missed... I tip my hat to you.
Amen to that, brother.
umm, Pioneer is not dead... they're just pulling out of 1 market.
Damn, this is horrible news. Hopefully OLEDs will supplant the mighty Kuro one day in price and quality.
I just never liked that new curly-block logo
TVs, hell, they make one hell of a DVD drive. My pioneer DVR-1910 has burned well over 1,000 DVD+DL without a hiccup. I love Pioneer, they make quality stuff.
Since they had already outsourced the plasma panels to Panny, maybe they could make a deal to sell the Kuro name and technology to Panasonic as well.
Wow that is a shame. I own a Pioneer Elite 710HDi RPTV and it is still a great tv. I also have a Pioneer Kuro plasma and love it. My whole A/V system is pretty much compromised of Pioneer Elite equipment. On the Elite models the warranty and customer service is great. There was a board update with the 710HDi and they sent a guy over for free and they re-calibrated the whole thing too. The old Elite products had their problems but the new stuff is top notch. I think the quality of some of Pioneer's products has gone down though (not the Elite products). For example their car A/V stuff used to be better and nowadays they don't seem to concentrate on it as much anymore.
I'm in the suburbs of Chicago in a upper middle class area and I do computer work in a lot of people's houses around here and most of the houses have a Pioneer TV, but at the prices I think it's more of a niche market.
A company [Pioneer] that made high quality HDTVs stops production, while a company [Samsung] that makes inconsistent quality HDTVs with cheap Chinese LCD panels survives... damn, consumers are stupid!
"[Samsung] that makes inconsistent quality HDTVs with cheap Chinese LCD panels survives"
qinese lcds? Since when? Stop talking out of yo a*.
Hrm, this is really a sad thing if it indeed proves to be true. Pioneer Kuro sets are among the best in the market!
I wonder if we'll see a clearance sale on their stuff should they stop production?
damn, Pioneer now. wtf, i like there tvs to, everything is going down the shitter and its only gettin worse
This is indeed sad news. Yet, one must remember that Pioneer entered the television market by selling tweaked Hitachi projection TVs while developing their video processing prowess. Pioneer never made the glass-they made the case and processing boards. So, all the groaning about their switching to Panny for glass is silly talk. Just as every Sony uses Samsung or LG panels.
But the real killer is our desire for CHEAP TVs. Fujitsu stopped production of what were the only plasmas to rival the KURO sets well over a year ago. Now, Pioneer is backing out of a market that simply has no profit margin. I can't blame them. Rather, I blame people who insist on buying grey market or b-stock only online. Doing so breaks their business model. They don't develop that technology for love.
I fear for the likes of any high-end manufacturer in these "troubled economic times." Yet, I think the economy is only a small portion of the problem. The commoditization of consumer electronics has encouraged people to buy lower priced, feature laden gadgets they can afford to discard and replace rather than investing in quality legacy-grade equipment. That is great if you want to move boxes but sooner or later the customer becomes weary of buying new hardware. And heaven forbid, should a company make a product that holds up over time, how do they make money to survive?
Meanwhile, the iPod (et all) revolution has sparked a generation of consumers who do not appreciate high-fidelity music (or video) and are well content with, essentially, a fancy looking jam-box rather than a real stereo and a video port to YouTube.
Combine all these factors and I'm not surprised to see the better companies back out of the market for a while. The good news is that these trends are cyclical. Eventually, we will come to our senses and desire quality over quantity/portability and/or price.
Which is to say, we did this to ourselves. Drank the Kool-Aid. End of rant.
How ridiculous!
Quality and price are a tradeoff. Turns out there is a large part of the market that cannot afford a Kuro and gets incredible quality for the money they do want to spend by buying an LCD.
And then you try to say quality trumps portability? They're ridiculous, they are two different axes. I could have a $1M system at home and won't do me any good when I am not at my home.
All I see is someone angry that others would make different choices than him, and because they do, Pioneer can't make enough money to stay in business. If you think Pioneer is so compelling, you can be the one to keep them in business, either by buying product or investing in them.
The DVD business will be spun off into a new venture with Sharp as part of a plan to shed several thousand employees over the next year, including a shutdown of its Shizuoka plant. http://www.laptops-battery.co.uk/dell-inspiron-6400-battery.htm
pioneer sell its TV production to sharp? The DVD, sony is the top 1 in DVD, hope pioneer can break sony's market,
this is a sad news... but this just again proves that price is a decisive factor for average consumers, especially in this economy. Sure, Pioneer's TVs offer the best pictures, but how many average consumers can afford or are willing to buy a kuro when competitors' are cheaper? plus a lot of consumers just don't care/know much about picture quality, how black is the black, etc...
Well they wouldn't really be selling it t2 Sharp considering Sharp are the controlling company (own) Pioneer since 2007.
After sitting on the HD fence for years, I finally pulled the trigger last week and got a Kuro. No BS, the picture is beyond amazing. I have never seen any TV with a better picture, and I don't regret the extra $$$ at all.
So it is really sad to see that they are going away. I suppose if you don't bother to do your research and are just upgrading a 27" CRT, why spend the extra $$$ vs. a $1000 Vizio? Vizio doesn't make a terrible product, the picture is certainly better than an old SD TV. Indeed, the difference between this and a Vizio is a lot smaller than it used to be.
But I am still surprised that there isn't more demand for these. It isn't a mainstream product, but you would think there are enough people out there who see the value in this to keep the business viable.
Well, I guess my new TV will feel right at home near my old, reliable ReplayTV DVR, another bit of clearly superior technology that couldn't make a go of it.
totally srs.