Matsu****a shows 103-inch plasma Top seller of flat-screen TVs beats Samsung record; gives no indication when item will hit shelves. January 5, 2006: 8:59 AM EST TOKYO (Reuters) - Matsu****a Electric Industrial, the maker of Panasonic products, said Thursday it had developed a prototype of a 103-inch plasma display panel, the world's largest such screen. The prototype, which will be on display at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas from Thursday, appears to put Matsu****a slightly ahead of South Korea's Samsung Electronics for bragging rights over who can develop the biggest flat TV. Samsung grabbed headlines at last year's CES by unveiling a 102-inch plasma display prototype. Neither company has made clear when or if these monster screens will actually reach store shelves or at what price. Samsung boasts the largest plasma TV now on the market, having started sales of an 80-inch model in South Korea in October for a whopping 130 million won ($130,200). Matsu****a recently began selling a 65-inch plasma set for about 1 million yen ($8,614) in Japan. Matsu****a, the world's top seller of plasma TVs, said the bulk of demand for the 103-inch set would probably come from businesses, schools and medical institutions, but it also saw demand from consumers looking to set up home theatres. Matsu****a said the prototype met full high-definition specifications, meaning it can produce images at the highest standard of 1,920-by-1,080 pixels of resolution. Developing panels able to display a full high-definition picture has been a major challenge for plasma makers because of numerous hurdles inherent in the technology. Antony
I think he's referring to the 103 inch plasma listed under "Latest News". http://money.cnn.com/ for some reason copying the article hyperlink doesn't work.... nevermind, I see he edited his post.....
At $130,000 I guess I'm faced with yet another decision: "Let's see...used 360, or big TV....used 360 or big TV...hmmmmmm"
sure BUT the problem is that the damn pixels are huge - i can't imagine that would look very good. you're putting 1M pixels on your display (however big it is) and this monstrosity puts 2M pixels on something probalby 4X or more the surface area of your plasma. so the pixels have to be at least twice as big as what you've got today. the bigger the pixels the more pixellated the image is likely to look. 1920x1080 @ 50" or 60" diagonal will work. beyond that i think you need to really start talking about more pixels. a 100" plasma should probably be 3M to 4M pixels. doody.
Is that spelled: Matsu****a, Matsu****a or Matsu****a? I hope it's #2, 'cause if somebody asks if I called 'em something, I can just say I was talking about a TV.
ah - i found my spreadsheet. i have a 50" plasma at 1280x768, which is about 920 pixels per square inch. if you've got a 50" plasma at 1366x768, that's about 980 pixels per square inch. this 103" plasma (assuming it's 16:9) at 1920x1080 will run about 450 pixels per square inch. that's horrendously non-dense, by comparison (remember your physics about how the intensity of light reduces with distance - it ain't linear). and for comparison, the LCD i'm staring at (my laptop) is 1280x800 (not quite 16:9) 13.25" diagonal - that's about 13K pixels per square inch. it's not plasma, and it's pretty useless for viewing from 15' away of course, but it underlines how non-dense the 103-incher is. but imagine a 103" flat panel display with the pixel density of a laptop lcd screen! you'd have nearly 62M pixels. the bandwidth requirement to move data to it would be about 62M * 60 Hz * 3 channels (R/G/B) * 12 bits per channel (let's say) = 134 Gbps assuming no overhead - so figure 150 Gbps. neat! if you did the 103" display at the pixel density of your plasma that's 10Gbps in bandwidth to drive the damn thing. more than twice what HDMI can support (though you could do two channels of HDMI, in theory and hope the computer feeding it out can keep it all in sync - IBM does this (DVI) on some monster high-end medical LCD system they have). anyway - fairly pointless math, but you get the point that the ACTUAL problem in increasing flat panel display sizes is going to get constrained by how you get a properly-dense signal to it than how big you can make the glass. your geek for the evening, doody.
Large displays are intended to be viewed from a distance, so that the display takes up the appropriate angle of view and the pixel structure isn't visible. For a 4:3 aspect ratio display, the recommended distance is about 3x the diagonal, for a 16:9 aspect ratio display the recommended distance is about 2.5x the diagonal. For a 103" screen, the "proper" viewing distance is about 22 feet, much larger than most family rooms.
well that's really only the case BECAUSE of the pixel density, right? i know plenty of guys with 100" screens and projectors who watch closer than 22' and the picture is of course wonderful. it might not be to everybody's liking of course, but my point is just that it's silly to keep increasing the size and not deal with the pixel density issue (which represent substantial compute and bandwidth issues). IF they could build 100" flat-panels with pixel density along the lines of 1000 pixels per square inch, the image would be valuable from 15' away and jaw-dropping gorgeous. even more to the point, the pixel density of today's plasmas is IMO not adequate. the densities need to be higher in the current form factor - never mind a bigger form factor. doody.
Yes, if you put in more pixels, it would look "smoother". But it really wouldn't be better in terms of resolution, which is the only real point of putting in more pixels. The program content itself is still only 1920x1080 or less if it's HD and 720x480 for just high-quality SD. You could spend a pile of dollars to build in digital filters and line interpolators to synthesize the image pixels needed to drive the display pixels, but all you would be doing is smoothing the "low" resolution content so it wouldn't look cruddy on the super-hi-res display. You achieve the same effect just by stepping back from a 100" display or "settling" for a 60-80" display for a 15' room.
Here's a pic of my home made screen I use my projector on. The screen is 88" wide and the couch is 7' from the screen. You can't see any pixels at all when watching. Projectors have come a long way from the days of old. "Screen door effect" is becomeing obsolete with projectors. I can zoom the projector out all the way and the image will be as wide as that whole wall, and you still can't see pixels at 7'. The only problem then is you have to turn your head when items go form one side of the screen to the other, so you're constantly turning your head like in a tennis match. http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/8881/dscn00491wx.jpg
Nice Martin-Logans! They just might be my next speakers (unless I win the lottery and buy some Wilson Audio's!). Sorry for the mini-hijack, I'm more into the sound than the picture.
Thanks. Oh, it's got sound baby Put on Blue Man Groups "Complex" or Pink Floyd "Dark side" on SACD and watch out!!
I think I win the contest. I still have my parents first TV that they got when the were married, form like 1975. And it was used then!!! Still working though.
I wonder when the consumer 2k sets will be coming out? I guess it wouldn't do much good until we start broadcasting at that level or producing 2k or above DVD's.
