RE: Slightly OT: home cinema

["Kenneth Watt" <kennethwatt@xxxxxxx>]

LEP, to my knowledge, is about 2-3 years away from any real commercial
ventures. The last I heard, about 6 months ago, they had it working in
shades of green and grey but colour was a fair bit off and commercial
applications obviously further away. But, yes, LEP looks very promising and
will probably end up being the future, but it's all about licence money for
the manufacturer that invents "the next big thing", so they're
all racing to
get some kind of flat screen technology in place to try and be the accepted
one by the public and, consequently, guarantee revenues for the next twenty
years like Philips with CD technology.

As I said the cost of LCD should be at about ?25-28 per inch by the end of
next year, that's from Sharp and I acknowledge that this may end up being
off a little but at the end of the day that is what they are aiming for in
terms of price and timescale. In that period of time plasma will not be
able
to increase yields to allow any real competition and will many customers
wait? If the general public need a telly they go and buy a telly, we (that
are AV nutjobs!) go and buy one because the picture's a little better, less
bleed or the set just doesn't look cool anymore! Totally different markets
altogether and whereas we will pay a premium for image quality etc. etc.
the
general public will not. Sharp are going for massive worldwide sales, not
targeting the likes of you and me, we are far too critical to use LCD sets
as they are at the moment, but the public at large are not. To get the
development you need the sales, look at CRT, CRT should have been a dead
duck twenty years ago, but it's still a massive seller because the public
have accepted it as it is cheap, produces pretty good pictures and they can
nip into Comet and buy one off the peg as it were.

So far I have seen one plasma screen in Frasers and on in Comet in Glasgow,
both the Philips one that's on the telly, four years after plasma hit the
market! Some lead-time to retail :o)

K.

-----Original Message-----
From: Timothy Morris [mailto:timothy.morris@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 08 April 2001 15:17
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [ukha_d] Slightly OT: home cinema


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kenneth Watt [mailto:kennethwatt@xxxxxxx]
> Sent: 08 April 2001 10:44
> To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
> Subject: RE: [ukha_d] Slightly OT: home cinema
>
>
> Phil,
>
>
> Plasma, unless the price takes a serious tumble, life expectancy is
> increased and quality improved will not challenge any other technology
> around in the mass market, whereas LCD is established already, is
> reasonably

If you are looking for the quality to drastically improve, then Panasonic
have already done it! They have solved two problems which plague ALL other
plasmas on the market - black levels looking black and not grey, and
posterisation, or colour banding. Most existing panels can only display 256
shades of grey - the Panasonic can display (I think) 1024.

They still aren't cheap though, I'll agree, but I think that has more to do
with yield problems than licensing costs. How much would a 42"
diagonal LCD
cost? Prices have halved in the last year, and I'm sure that as yields
improve that costs will continue to be driven down. As Keith has mentioned
Plasma is only an interim measure, LEP screens have been "coming in 6
months" for the last 2 years!

Only time will tell on the life issue, but you can be sure that I will keep
a very close eye on it.

Tim.






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