Faster LCD panels are next front in TV battle
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(InfoWorld) - Even if you bought a TV in the last several months you may already feel like it's out of date.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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South Korea&#39;s LG.Philips LCD is out to impress at next week&#39;s Consumer Electronics Show and will unveil a 14.3-inch color electronic paper display.The display, which is about the same size as an A4-sheet of paper, has a resolution of 1,280 pixels by 800 pixels and can display 16.7-million colors, LG.Philips LCD said Thursday. That makes it the highest resolution screen of its type yet developed, the company said, and is an advance on a display unveiled in May last year that offered just 4,096 colors.Electronic paper is being pursued by many companies as a future replacement for paper. The screens are often produced on a flexible substrate so they can bend, unlike conventional LCD (liquid crystal display) panels that are made on glass. But the amount by which they can be bent without causing damage to the screen widely varies between prototypes, and there are still no displays that can be folded like a sheet of paper.The new LG.Philips LCD panel borrows some of the TFT (thin-film transistor) technology used by the company to make LCD panels and marries it with metal foil and a plastic substrate. The result is a flexible screen that is less than 300 micrometers thick, which is a few times thicker than standard copier paper. In addition to being flexible the screen can be viewed through 180 degrees even when bent, the company said.At CES the company also plans to show a mono e-paper screen equivalent in size to a B5 sheet of paper (176 mm by 250 mm). While not as impressive as the larger, color display, it is easier to manufacture and LG.Philips LCD said it plans to launch this latter display later in the year.In addition to the physical specifications of the displays one of the keys to success will be how fast the image can be refreshed on the screen. A conventional LCD is capable of redrawing the image many times per second but e-paper prototypes shown until now typically take a few seconds for the on-screen image to completely change. For example, a&#160;Fujitsu prototype unveiled&#160;in May last year took 2 seconds to refresh an 8-color image and 10 seconds to refresh a 4,096-color image.&#160;
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Plasma successor ramping rapidly Samsung will follow its roll-out of 14in OLED screens by 2010, revealed last week, turns out to be merely the first step toward the release of 40in and 42in panels a year later.â¦
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By Chris Flores, Daily Press, Newport News, Va.  Dec. 16--Consumers buying flat-panel high-definition televisions are facing a curious little feature that they aren't quite sure about.
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Flat-panel TVs look lovely on a wall Â the cords hanging from them, less so. After a few years of false starts, the industry finally seems close to tackling that problem. At least three dueling wireless technologies for high-definition TVs will be on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which starts Monday. Manufacturers promise that sets incorporating these technologies will be in stores before the next holiday season.
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A new generation of OLED displays, which are thinner and more energy efficient than LCDs, is working its way to market. But it could be years before they're cheap enough to displace LCD screens.
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Samsung is close to producing a lighter, thinner, better television.
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LCD TV leader plans to do its competitors one better.
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You could sum up the state of TV at the International Consumer Electronics Show this way: New delivery methods will let people watch pretty much anything, anytime, on gorgeous flat-panel displays.
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Colour television (CTV) makers expect Indian consumers to switch over to top-end plasma projection and liquid crystal display (LCD) televisions at a rapid rate.
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By Martha McKay, The Record, Hackensack, N.J.  Feb. 18--These days, it's all about TVs -- who's got the biggest, the  sharpest, the loudest.   But some day soon, homeowner envy may shift to a different subject:  automation.
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Consumers are racing to replace their aging televisions with high-definition TVs. Trouble is, many are still using devices and services that can't fill those HDTVs with enough visual information to make them look their best.
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For people who dislike the appearance of a blank TV screen, aesthetic ways to camouflage that huge L.C.D. or plasma panel are on the market.
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Flat or fat? EDTV or HDTV? LCD or plasma? Anyone who&#39;s on the hunt for a new TV set these days knows getting a dream screen can be more confusing than the plotline of Days of Our Lives.
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Intel said it will delay its highly anticipated television chips, based on Liquid Crystal on Silicon, or LCOS, technology, which promises to deliver large screen TVs at a price point half of what they cost today. The chipmaker said the ...
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Plasma television technology has a  bright future despite an onslaught on its home turf from rival  LCD (liquid crystal display) TVs, makers of plasma screens told  Reuters at the IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin.
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Liquid Crystal Displays continue to dominate the television market. That hasnât stopped Panasonic and Sony from trying to develop other display technologies.