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NuVision is Back with Strange Partner at CES 2013
At CES 2013, TVs with the revered Nuvision logo shared booth space with Apex brand of generic TVs, available at Walmart, Target and other fine CE retailers.
I was to learn that the company was acquired last year by TMAX Digital Inc., “a Consumer Electronics company created to provide leading edge entertainment products at value pricing,” according to the company Web site.
Value pricing indeed. TMAX is behind Apex Digital, beloved TV brand of Target, Walmart and other fine A/V retailers.
It wasn’t easy getting information on NuVision or TMAX in general at CES. I stepped inside the booth, where a couple of attendants sat at a table talking to each other and thumbing their mobile devices as I walked around snapping pictures and looking confused. They barely looked up so finally I asked if they could tell me anything about NuVision.
“No, not really,” they replied.
“Well, is there someone who can?
Apex and Nuvision at TMAX booth, CES 2013
Apparently annoyed that I interrupted their texting sessions, they stepped into the back room and dragged out an equally perturbed Eric Fishman, TMAX director of sales and operations, who wasn’t at all pleased to meet the pesky reporter inquiring about NuVision. During our five-minute conversation he never looked up from his phone, although to his credit I think he did apologize once.
He told me that NuVision was acquired last year by TMAX Digital Inc., but a Google search yields no evidence of such an event.
Fishman told me, “It’s hard to make money on TVs,” so they picked up NuVision as a margin booster.
No, they didn’t acquire physical assets or intellectual property, just the brand and Website, he said.
When I asked if he realized that Nuvision is, I mean was, a premium brand with some unique feature sets, he said he did indeed recognize that the former product line was “way in the stratosphere.”
The two TVs shown at CES, shown in 46- and 55-inch models, carried these specs:
- Complete 3D Support
- Super Slim Edge Lit LED
- True 10-Bit/1.07 Billion Color Signal Processing
- Full HD 1080p 1920 x 1080 Resolution
- True 240Hz Processing
Whether TMAX would specify premium features (such as friendly integration) in its own version of NuVision TVs, he wasn’t sure. And through what channels the company would sell the product, he said, was “yet to be determined.”
This might just be me, but I’m thinking TMAX might not have a very good shot at the custom channel.
RELATED: Appallingly Bad Booth Manners at CES 2013
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Article Topics
News · Product News · Displays · TVs · Events · CES · Nuvision · Tmax · Ces 2014 ·About the Author
9 Comments (displayed in order by date/time)
It seems like they were completely unprepared to display their TVs. You would expect a press release before the show and some firm announcement at the show.
Steve, MOST of the booths are equally unprepared, but all it takes is: “I do apologize, we don’t have the appropriate information here. Can I take your card and have someone get in touch with you?”
Thanks for warning us ahead of time about NuVision. There are plenty of us who would’ve otherwise jumped out of our seats, believing that it was a rebirth for a quality product. Rather, it seems destined for an Energy/Klipsch/Audiovox cheap-junk-a-box-with-a-snappy-brandname future. Very useful info for CE pros! Thank you!
Julie,
I got the same poor impression when I stopped by. They acquired the brand license over a year ago and bought a few sample TV’s for the 2012 show from the factory that made the top-of-the-line models for NuVision back in 2011 and couldn’t figure out what to do with the brand.
Missed this at CES. Isn’t Apex the company that managed to undercut prices in the DVD marketplace by forgetting to pay for the hardware that they sold? Whereas we paid for our NuVision hardware AND then had to pay for replacements for it when it broke. I’m so wanting to go back there again!
What they’ll probably do is put a Nuvision badge on an Apex TV and then point everyone to all the great reviews about Nuvision products. (Doh! Just lost another shot at getting ads from them.)
NuVision = NoVision to me. Thanks for the head’s up, Julie.
Had the exact same experience Julie! We were a NuVision dealer up until the time they shut down so I was shocked when I noticed their logo prominently displayed on the big sign above the booth. I made a beeline to the two models on display and waited for a couple of minutes for one of the booth reps to come talk to me since neither of them was engaged in conversation with anyone else.
Instead, they both sat on stools, poking away on their smartphones, oblivious to my presence. I wasn’t particularly bothered by that, but was really surprised that when I approached one of them, he really didn’t know anything at all about the TV models themselves, or the NuVision’s plans for the future. He was also surprisingly non-technical overall, with poor communication skills, and might as well have been a random guy from a fast food joint. Everyone has different skill sets in life, but don’t hire dullards to work at your CES booth! Isn’t the point of spending all that money for space at CES to get people excited about your products?