Report: Panasonic preparing 150-inch PDP screen
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Panasonic is preparing to repeat its CES show-stopper of a couple of years ago with the unveiling of the largest flat-panel screen manufactured to date, according to a Japanese media report.The company will unveil a 150-inch PDP television at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that begins in Las Vegas on January 6, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported earlier this week.Two years ago, Panasonic stole the lead on two South Korean rivals, Samsung and LG, by unveiling a&#160;103-inch PDP screen. The two Korean companies had previously shown 102-inch panels. With the new screen Panasonic captured by an inch the title of &quot;world&#39;s biggest flat-screen&quot; and held that title until CES 2007 when Sharp unveiled a prototype 108-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) panel. Panasonic&#39;s display remains the biggest PDP in the world but not the biggest flat panel.Panasonic declined to comment on its specific plans for CES 2008 but did say that say it is &quot;putting its efforts in developing larger screens&quot; because the 103-inch was well received.If the 150-inch screen does appear at CES it is likely to be an early prototype from the company&#39;s &#165;280 billion ($2.5 billion) state-of-the-art PDP production line in Amagasaki, in western Japan, that is due to start production sometime in the year from April 2008. The new production line is a step more advanced than Panasonic&#39;s current line and should be able to make more advanced PDPs at lower costs.The cost savings come from the line&#39;s use of larger sheets of mother glass -- the initial glass sheets on which several panels are produced. Panasonic&#39;s current line can handle mother glass from which eight 42-inch panels can be produced while the new production line will accept sheets from which twelve 42-inch panels can be made.Panasonic won&#39;t disclose the exact size of the sheets but simple arithmetic shows they need to be roughly 2 meters by 3.4 meters to produce twelve such screens. To make a 150-inch PDP panel would require a sheet of glass about the same size.
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TechWeb - The maker, LG.Philips, will also show an 84-inch LCD screen at the Consumer Electronics Show next week.
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Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd.  (6752.T) said on Wednesday it will launch four new models of  high-definition plasma TVs, including the world's largest with  a 103-inch panel, challenging LCD TVs' lead in offering higher  resolution images.
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MAJOR JAPANESE manufacturer Sharp said it has succeeded in developing a 65-inch Aquos colour high definition LCD TV. The unit includes a 6.22 million dot panel and Sharp is showing it off at the Ceatec show in Japan this week.
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Showcased at the Mobile Displays Conference this week in San Diego, LG.Philips LCD's screens for mobile devices are designed to be compact and efficient.
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Electronics maker unveils an 80-inch plasma display TV.
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Emerging Display Technologies (EDT), specializing in small-to-medium STN/CSTN-LCD panels, will ramp up its monthly capacity for CSTN LCDs from 30,000 units at present to 70,000 in the second quarter of 2005, according to the company.
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Want a big-screen television set before this year's Super Bowl? Better figure out if you want LCD, DLP, PDP or CRT, and if you want your picture to be HD, ED or plain old SD.
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The Pico Projector, from Microvision, takes a cell phone image and projects it project an image onto a nearby surface the equivalent size of a 60-inch television screen.
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The electronics giant has begun production of next-generation screens using organic light-emitting diode technology.
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SOUTH KOREA &#39;S LG Electronics said it had embarked on production of the world&#39;s largest plasma display panel (PDP) flat television screen.
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(InfoWorld) - Even if you bought a TV in the last several months you may already feel like it's out of date. Your shiny new flat-screen arrives, you hook it up to the antenna and the first thing you see is a commercial for a bigger, better model. It might even have a cheaper price. It's the way things seem to work these days in the world of TVs. Things aren't likely to change any time soon. The latest buzz is around "100Hz" or "120Hz" technology, which relates to how often the image on the screen is refreshed or redrawn. The technology is already appearing in TVs, and if you haven't seen promotional stickers for it yet you probably will soon. Most TV sets today refresh the picture either 50 times per second (50Hz) or 60 times per second (60Hz) depending where in the world you live (different regions use different color formatting.) That rate is fine for most images, but when it comes to fast moving shows like sports events the images can appear blurry on an LCD (liquid crystal display) TV. Doubling the rate at which images are displayed, to 100 or 120 frames per second, makes for a better, more high-definition picture. The need to improve LCD TVs has been especially acute because their chief competitor, PDP (plasma display panel) TVs, don't have the same blurring problem. Compounding the issue is that screen sizes are getting bigger, so any imperfections are more noticeable, said Mina Naito, a spokeswoman for Sony. PDP makers have trumpeted their advantage for some time, but things may be about to change. Compared to previous LCD panels, the new 100Hz and 120Hz models are "a big improvement," said Hisakazu Torii, a TV industry analyst with DisplaySearch in Tokyo. Prototype panels with the faster refresh rate began appearing last year. At the FPD International 2006 show in Yokohama in October, Samsung ElectronicsÂ demonstrated images and text scrolling across just such a panel, and they appeared to move more smoothly than on existing LCD TVs. Then at theÂ Consumer Electronics ShowÂ in Las Vegas in January, Sony announced a 120Hz model with the Samsung screen for the U.S. market. The 70-inch LCD TV is launched this month and carries the hefty price of $33,000. Samsung plans a 70-inch set, also based on the Samsung panel, which will go on sale in the first half of this year. Competitors including Victor Co. of Japan (JVC) and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (Panasonic) are also promoting 120Hz sets in Japan. The latest company to join the party isÂ Sharp, which last week said it would put five sets in its Aquos range on sale in Japan from March. The price runs from Â¥500,000 for a 42-inch model to Â¥1 million for a 65-inch model.
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PC World tested 17 new midrange-priced wide-screen LCDs in three size categories that are growing in popularity: 19 inches, 20 or 22 inches, and 25.5 to 28 inches. The results may surprise you: bigger isn't always better.
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HDTV manufacturers are trying to make the task of buying an HDTV set much more difficult than just choosing between LCD and plasma, 42 inches or 46 inches.
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Toshiba Corp. plans to abandon the plasma display panel television market and would begin next summer producing surface conduction electron emitter display (SED) panels for flat panel televisions with 40-inch or larger screens.
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(InfoWorld) - Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (Panasonic) is refreshing itsÂ Toughbook rugged laptop PC lineÂ and aiming for a big jump in international sales of the computers over the next three years. The company, already a leader in the rugged PC market, aims to ship 7.5 times more rugged PCs outside Japan by 2010 than it did in 2006, said Toshiyuki Takagi, director of the IT product division and Panasonic's AVC Networks division, at a Tokyo news conference. In Europe it is aiming for a ten-fold increase in shipments. The new 7-series machines, aimed at corporate users, are beefier than the current 5-series machines and can survive a fall from a greater height. The new models can be dropped from 76 centimeters -- the height of an average desk -- while switched on and still work, according to Panasonic. Its current Toughbook models for the corporate PC market are rated for a 30 cm drop but only when switched off. The 76-cm claim was backed up at the news conference as the laptops were dropped numerous times without any problem. Panasonic also demonstrated a new irrigation system in the keyboard that can funnel water through the machine and out of a drain hole in the base. It can handle up to 200 milliliters of water -- about the amount in a medium-sized glass -- without the PC experiencing any problems. The four new laptops -- one of which will be available in Japan only -- are based on Intel's Santa Rosa platform, which combines a processor, chip set, and wireless adapter. They have double the memory of their predecessors, at 1GB, and the hard-disk capacity is one-third larger, at 80GB, than in the previous models. They all include 802.11 a/b/g wireless LAN but the new 802.11n variant is not supported. The Japan-only CF-R7 has a 10.4-inch screen with 1,024 pixels by 768 pixels (XGA) resolution but no optical drive. It will be launched on Oct. 19 and will cost about Â¥205,000 ($1,780). The CF-T7 has a 12.1-inch XGA screen and will be launched in Japan on Oct. 19. It will cost Â¥220,000. The CF-W7 adds a DVD Super-multi drive to the mix and will go on sale in Japan on Nov. 16 for around Â¥250,000. Finally, the high-end CF-Y7 has a 14.1-inch screen with 1,400 pixels by 1,050 pixels (SXGA) resolution and the DVD Super-multi drive. It will launch on Oct. 19 and will cost about Â¥270,000. The CF-T7, CF-W7 and CF-Y7 will be launched in Europe on Nov. 27. The CF-W7 will cost â¬1,950 ($2,760), the CF-T7 will have a â¬2,100 price tag and the CF-Y7 will be â¬2,170. North American and Asian prices are yet to be announced. Launch dates will be around the same time as those in Europe.
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LCD TV leader plans to do its competitors one better.