Scarlet leaves LG seeing RED

Jim Jannard, CEO of video camera manufacturer RED, has spoken out about his company suing LG over its use of the Scarlet name.

It seems that LG used the Scarlet moniker, which is said to be owned by RED, without the company's permission.

While LG did confront the company about the name, its free use was not granted by RED, and LG decided to use it anyway.

Speaking about the situation, Jannard said on the Reduser.com forum: "LG released the Scarlet TV even after asking us permission and us turning them down.

"I guess they thought they could just 'take it'. Litigation was initiated in Orange County. My bet is that this is just the tip of the iceberg,"

Jim Jannard's RED camera has caused a revolution in videomaking circles, as it's a professional camera capable of shooting up to 5k footage, but costing just a fraction of its rivals.

The RED Scarlet is due to be released in early 2009 and can shoot 3k footage, so Jannard, who was also the brain behind Oakley sunglasses, will be hoping for a fairly quick resolution to this problem.

More Scarlett woes

In other Scarlet news, LG was left, er, red-faced this week when the TVs it shipped to South Africa were found to include faulty software. The problem concerns the HDMI connection.

Discussing the issue, LG marketing director Michelle Potgieter said: "The problem is the upgrade of HDMI software.

"HDMI switches provide an interface between any compatible digital audio/video source, such as video game system (Sony PS3), set-top box, HD/Blu-ray DVD player, or PC into a HDTV or digital audio and/or video monitor."

Though 3,000 TVs were shipped to South Africa, most of the TVs do not contain the software fault, according to LG.

However, IT Web are reporting that some shops have stopped selling the TVs as no one from LG has come to update the sets.