Electronics Dealers Try To Rekindle Excitement Manufacturers Hope Raft Of New Products Will Bring An End To Holiday Slump

After one of its slowest selling seasons in years, the consumer electronics industry is determined to get people excited again about its latest gadgets and gizmos.

Watch TV on your personal computer! the companies coax. Send e-mail through your telephone! Record crystal-clear images using digital camcorders!

Despite a raft of new cool products, U.S. manufacturers face skeptical retailers at the giant Consumer Electronics Show opening today in Las Vegas. Last year, the trade pledged innovations that never arrived on store shelves.

“Last year there were a lot of promises. They promised everything,” said Chuck Cebuhar, vice president of home electronics at Sears Roebuck & Co.

“Now we need some solidification.”

The stakes are high for makers of electronic gear. At least 80,000 participants, mostly retailers, will be searching for the next hot product at the industry’s largest annual event. Many store buyers place orders for the whole year.

Last January, manufacturers whetted retailers’ appetites by pledging to bring out what seemed the next product wave - digital video discs, or DVDs by mid-1996. Store owners drooled over potential sales of a product that looks like a CD but plays full-length movies with crystal-clear pictures.

But the machine that was supposed to captivate people was unavailable in U.S. stores last year because of a protracted industry tussle over copyright issues.

The electronics industry insists this time it can deliver. Having resolved copyright concerns, Sony Corp. and other electronics giants are announcing on the show’s eve they will start selling DVD players this spring.

Starting at $600, DVD players initially will cost more than video cassette recorders and, unlike VCRs, won’t allow consumers to record programming. Still, the industry estimates it will sell about 1 million DVD players around the world this year, rising to 10 million by the year 2000. Further driving the trend is a new generation of PCs with DVD drives, aimed at eventually supplanting CD-ROMs and floppy diskettes.

Other spotlighted products include flat-panel TV screens, CD players with Star Trek sound effects and video-conference machines for consumers. Companies will orchestrate media events and exhibits to promote them, using such celebrities as heavyweight legend George Foreman and country music singer Clay Walker.

The glitz contrasts with unusually hohum electronics sales during the important Christmas season amid a lack of a new “hot” item like the Walkman to spur store traffic.

Key to renewing electronics fervor is a trend toward convergence of traditional digital and entertainment technology. By late spring, major computer makers hope to sell “PC TVs” - personal computers that enable people to watch television and actually interact with the programming.

Gateway 2000, the nation’s largest direct-mail seller of PCs, pioneered the trend last year with its big-screen Destination computer, which includes a TV tuner.

But improvements are needed before these products convince average Americans to rearrange their furniture and habits. One challenge is creating monitors that show data and images as crisply as today’s computer but on screens large enough for TV viewing.

Toward that end, Princeton Graphic Systems is introducing in the first quarter of the year a large-screen monitor big and bright like a TV set but sharp as a computer monitor.

“You can look at the screen for a long period of time and not get a headache,” said Darwin Chang, chief technology officer for the Cupertino, Calif.-based company.

Further casting PCs in a home-entertainment role is a new micro-processor chip that enhances the ability of computers to show “3-D” graphics - ideal for playing today’s elaborate video games. The new chip, introduced Wednesday, shows up in computers this month.

Other advances are further off.

Sony, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and others have begun selling $2,500 to $3,000 camcorders that use digital technology to deliver sharper images and reduce picture distortion. But prices need to drop to the $1,000 level before consumers take the bait, retailers say.

The real test for any new product is whether it’s truly useful - and fun.

We need “a product that is easy to use, looks good and is reliable,” said Mark Russell, owner of two Bang & Olufsen electronics stores in Manhattan and on Long Island.

Rather than overload it with features, “it’s much more important it be something that can be used in the home,” he said.