Sharp Electronics took the wraps off the largest LCD television: a 108-incher. Sharp realizes, of course, that not very many people will want such a gargantuan TV. Their rebuttal? There is always commercial customers, price drops and those early adopters. It should also be noted that this is yet another blow to plasma televisions: one of their main advantages was sheer size. Not only is this LCD television larger than any plasma one announced (105”), it has a higher resolution than plasmas and a lower power consumption.
"There is no question that LCD is becoming the dominant format in flat panels," Toshihiko Fujimoto, CEO of Sharp Electronics said. Consequently, Sharp plans to increase its marketing and branding efforts for LCD TVs in 2007 as well as apply price pressure to its closest competitors.
Opened in August 2006, Sharp's secret weapon is an eighth-generation plant in Kameyama, Japan. The factory processes glass sheets, which measure just more than 7 feet by 8 feet. Monthly production will go up to 30,000 sheets of glass in January 2007 and should be at 90,000 in March 2008. A single sheet is equivalent to six 52-inch LCDs. Thanks to the plant, Sharp has four separate lines of LCD televisions that differ in technical specifications. For example, Sharp plans to release (later in 2007) televisions with a refresh rate of 120Hz (as opposed to 60Hz) - this is expected to largely increase picture quality.
News source: News.com
"There is no question that LCD is becoming the dominant format in flat panels," Toshihiko Fujimoto, CEO of Sharp Electronics said. Consequently, Sharp plans to increase its marketing and branding efforts for LCD TVs in 2007 as well as apply price pressure to its closest competitors.
Opened in August 2006, Sharp's secret weapon is an eighth-generation plant in Kameyama, Japan. The factory processes glass sheets, which measure just more than 7 feet by 8 feet. Monthly production will go up to 30,000 sheets of glass in January 2007 and should be at 90,000 in March 2008. A single sheet is equivalent to six 52-inch LCDs. Thanks to the plant, Sharp has four separate lines of LCD televisions that differ in technical specifications. For example, Sharp plans to release (later in 2007) televisions with a refresh rate of 120Hz (as opposed to 60Hz) - this is expected to largely increase picture quality.
News source: News.com
Uhh I think they mean not very many people can "afford" a tv that size... I'd love to have one, but price wise, never gonna happen!
Very few consumers are going to want this large of a screen (or even have room for it), but I bet a lot of government/corporate users will want these.
...
all ~200.000 neowinians please borrow me some money please
Looks a lovely piece of kit though.. I suspect we'll only see it on MTV's Cribs when some smug-arsed rapper is showing you around and he'll have two mounted in his toilet.
Bah.
Why the hell is this plant called a "secret" weapon? There are press releases all over the place. Usually when something is referred to as a "secret" weapon, it means that the company is trying to keep it a secret. C|Net has some of the laziest and least creative reporters. I doubt very many of them even took journalism classes in high school.
I'd like to see someone drop one, get a dead pixel, smash it by accident. I'd laugh.
LCDs have a high pitched whine and the Panasonic Plasmas (if not others) don't burn in.
Guessing the price will be around 15-20K
Last edited by Mikee4fun on 08 Jan 2007 - 19:24
The burn-in isn't nearly as bad as most of the FUD suggests.
There is a big difference between burn in and ghosting. Sure, you are going to see ghosting from time to time on a plasma. Stick a movie in or do a white screen for a few seconds and it's gone. True permanent burn in takes a long time to develop and with the current technologies in place, it's actually harder to do that you might think. Just be a bit careful and you will have no problems at all.
The latest plasmas from Panasonic have 3072 colour gradations in RGB and 2048 in gray, resulting in...just over 29 Billion colours that the display is able to reproduce. Now, what about that Sharp? Or any other LCD? Plus, people should stop that FUD about power consumption - Pioneer's and Panasonic's plasmas have more than 50% less power consumption than their rivals, and if you consider that the power consumption of an LCD is constant and that of plasma is variable (i.e. depends in the brighness of the picture, etc.), that statement doesn't stand a chance.
Plasma is well known for its smoother colours, bigger colour gamut and deep blacks - if you know something about colour, check out the representation of people's faces on LCD and plasma. That all stems out from the fact that plasma is a self-illuminating display technology, which would always be better than a backlight-based one, period.
P.S. Emil, check your grammar next time when you are posting on the front page - make sure you pay attention to the difference between the plurals and the singulars and correct order of words in the sentence - that's for the starters.
Last edited by FrozenSpoon on 08 Jan 2007 - 23:45
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