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Laser TV — the Death of Plasma?
spoco2 writes, "As reported in major news outlets yesterday in Australia (The Age, the Herald Sun), a new television technology has been developed which is touted (by the developers) as far and away superior to both plasma and LCD. From The Age: 'With a worldwide launch date scheduled for Christmas 2007, under recognisable brands like Mitsubishi and Samsung, Novalux chief executive Jean-Michel Pelaprat is so bold as to predict the death of plasma. "If you look at any screen today, the color content is roughly about 30-35 per cent of what the eye can see," he said. "But for the very first time with a laser TV we'll be able to see 90 per cent of what the eye can see. All of a sudden what you see is a lifelike image on display."' The developing company, Arasor International, is said to be listing on the Australian stock exchange shortly."
I must say I'm not too impressed with the picture quality of the plasma- and LCD TV's we can buy here in the Netherlands. Especially if you take the price into account. I'm glad I've bought one of the last CRT widescreen TV's a few years back. My old CRT IIyama monitor is also better than most LCD flat monitors you can buy today. Hopefully this new technology will deliver the colours and the viewing angles we have become accustomed to from CRT's!
-- Cheers!
Price and formfactor is what matters.
Even though Plasma looks far better than LCD, the average consumer cannot really distinguish image quality (many consumers prefer a overly color saturated SD display over a well-calibrated HD display).
They plan for this next year, SED has been planning to enter the market for several years, too.
The problem for all of them is that some companies like Panasonic are able through mass-production and new factories to really push the price down for Plasma displays.
If they can make screens even flatter and brighter and at a low price, it might have a chance to succeed.
If it is just an expensive, better looking device, it can only survive in a fringe market.
No, but it's entirely possible to configure a plasma to look worse than the TV next to it.
Look at the TVs in shops - they look awful, but it's the same technology, just setup poorly.
Apparently, this guy already saw the TV in action and was pretty impressed:
His post is a comment on another news story about the technology. Of course, take it with a grain of salt since nothing stops a company's marketing guy from posting as Joe Internet.
If they were completely phony, I doubt they'd be presenting at all the major display technology industry conferences http://www.novalux.com/company/events.php) because their exposure to hype-killing doubters would open them to a lot of attacks. And Mitsubishi is really big in projection TV, so is a clear choice of manufacturing partner to use the laser modules Novalux produces. As for the cost issues, clearly the quickest time to market way to go is to replace conventional display components with this optical front end, and modify existing electronics - ie, Mitsubishi chassis - to handle the increased bandwidth. It all sounds feasible. Note they are demoing at the SMPTE conference next week; it's not like some Gizmondo handwaving. SMPTE attendees would smell phony a mile off.