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Smarthouse: Panasonic has now become the first company to extended the life of its consumer 1080p plasma displays to 100,000 hours from the industry-typical 60,000.

This puts Panasonic way ahead of any other plasma manufacturer. The two-thirds gain in “life to half brightness” appears in the company’s current 2007 model lineup, already available in stores, a spokesman said.

If a household watches six hours of TV per day, it would take almost 46 years for the display to dim to half it original brightness.

Announced specifications for competing brands cite typical 60,000-hour half lives, although one company’s lab data shows 100,000, said William Schindler, electrical engineering VP for Panasonic Display Laboratory of America.

Panasonic is also studying other improvements to future consumer-market 1080p plasmas, including the ability to accept a native 24Hz video signal from high-definition disc players.

Panasonic’s current consumer plasma displays accept 60Hz signals after a high-def disc player converts the 24Hz content to 60Hz in a process called 3:2 pulldown.

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TechOn: DisplaySearch reported that LCD TV panel and plasma sales were headed in opposite directions in Q2 2007.

LCD TV panel shipments enjoyed a record quarter in Q2 2007, rising 32% quarter on quarter and 65% year-on-year to 19.6 million panels.

Revenues grew 28% quarter-on-quarter and 39% year-on-year to a record US$7.2 billion.

For the first time, twice as many 40-inch+ LCD TV panels were shipped as 40-inch+ plasma panels.

Plasma panel manufacturers were expecting an increase of 18% to 2.7million panels, so clearly Q2 2007 was disappointing.

With plasma panel prices falling rapidly, plasma panel revenues were down 13% quarter-on-quarter and 37% year-on-year to US$1.2 billion.

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HDTV News: Sharp has predicted that full high-definition LCD (liquid-crystal display) TVs will take hold of the majority of the US market, leaving no room for plasma TVs.

LCD technology is already dominant in Japan. The company expects the price of large screen LCDs to fall by around 25% in 2007 due to increased competition, with the price of smaller screens bottoming out.

Sharp, Samsung and LG.Philips have all recorded increased profits in the LCD market with LCD outpacing plasma by five to one this year.

LCD TV shipments are expected to grow 76 percent to 74 million units in 2007 according to Brothers Holdings Inc. while shipments of plasma TV sets are expected to grow 30 percent to just 13 million units.

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Reuters: Samsung, the world’s third-largest plasma display panel (PDP) maker, posted a worse-than-expected quarterly net loss on Friday, hurt by tumbling prices of its television screens.

Results at the South Korean firm, which sells both PDP screens and traditional cathode-ray tubes (CRT) for TVs, are unlikely to improve significantly soon as the sectors will continue to see weak pricing and margins.

Samsung expected a slower fall in plasma screen prices in the second half.

The company was the world’s top producer of PDPs in 2005, but has been overtaken by Japan’s Matsushita (Panasonic) and home rival LG Electronics last year as it grappled with reduction problems and declining sales.

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TGDaily: Samsung has introduced two new plasma TVs that are equipped with draft-n (802.11n) connectivity to enable consumers to stream video content wirelessly to their TV.

The first Samsung TVs to offer this feature is the 94 series of plasma TVs, which are based on the also new 84 series.

According to the manufacturer, the integration of Wi-Fi can reduce the cable clutter that is usually involved when setting up a complex home entertainment system.

Provided other components include Wi-Fi capability as well, the TV can receive audio and video content streams from devices such as Blu-ray or HD DVD players, Samsung said.

However, when using wireless data transmission, the TV’s 1080p capability isn’t exploited as the wireless content quality tops out at 1080i.

The company will be selling 50” and 58” versions of the TV, both of which will offer a 15,000:1 contrast ratio, three HDMI ports and a USB interface.

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Smarthouse: Following on from reports last week about Panasonic’s latest “plasma is better than LCD” campaign in Australia, Hitachi has failed to lend its support to the campaign which bears a remarkable similarity to one jointly funded by Hitachi, Panasonic and Pioneer in Europe.

The sponsors of the European campaign; Panasonic, Pioneer and Hitachi, used the same research company Synovate Research as that used by Panasonic and its advertising agency George Patterson in Australia.

However in Australia, Hitachi and Pioneer did not cooperate with Panasonic, and late last week Mark Lawson the Plasma product specialist at Hitachi went out of his way to distance himself from the Panasonic campaign.

Lawson said, “Hitachi has not sided with Panasonic. We believe that both LCD TV and plasma have a place in the market. The reporting by Current on this issue indicates that Hitachi has sided with Pansonic and this is simply not true.” 

The European report funded by Hitachi, Panasonic and Pioneer presented information on consumer attitudes to plasma and LCD TVs. They even have similar web sites to present the information.

In Europe consumers are asked to go to http://www.plasma-lcd-facts.eu/

In Australia consumers are asked to go to http://www.whychooseplasma.com.au/

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DigiTimes: LG has announced that it will begin 8-up processing on its A3 plasma display panel (PDP) line. This technique will maximize LG’s PDP production capacity by allowing the company to produce eight PDPs from one sheet of glass substrate, up from the current six.

To accommodate increasing demand for PDPs, LG will maximize its production efficiency, especially in the second half of the year, said Simon Kang, CEO of Digital Display Company, LGE. This is part of LGE’s ongoing campaign to streamline its production system, Kang added.

The improved 8-up processing will increase LGE’s total capacity per month by 22%, from 360,000 to 440,000 panels, greater than the total capacity before its A1 line was shut down. LGE’s strategy to raise efficiency entails increasing per-line capacity while closing older, less efficient lines.

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Smarthouse News: In Australia, Samsung (which sells both plasma and LCD TVs) has called in its lawyers following the release of a national Panasonic advertising campaign that claims more Australians prefer plasma over LCD TV after viewing the two TV technologies together.

We saw a similar campaign in Europe last year.

Following an advertisement a few days ago, Sony also issued an open letter to retailers after taking legal advice over the campaign. The letter claimed it was Sony’s belief that rather than dispelling myths as it purports, the Panasonic campaign is actually confusing the market”.

Legal letters sent by Samsung Lawyers to Panasonic claim that material aspects of the campaign do not accurately reflect the facts about LCD and that the Panasonic campaign may be in breach Section 52 of the Trade Practices Act.

Samsung Corporate Marketing Manager Kurt Jovais said “While we support consumer choice of the two formats, both of which have their merits, and we support the use of clever advertising campaigns, we feel it is incumbent upon advertisers to ensure their advertisements accurately reflect the facts. Our lawyers have written to Panasonic to address our concerns and to ask for the research methodology”. This has been refused, says Samsung.

Following legal threats from Sony and Samsung, Panasonic has chosen to delete or change some of their statements on their website.  However Samsung feel their response is inadequate.

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Forbes.com: Here’s a Friday story for you. While Wal-Mart is known for dropping its prices, one US man took the ad campaign seriously when he dropped the price of a plasma television from $984 (around €730) to $4.88 (around €3.60).

Police arrested the man at the retail store on a charge of felony theft.

According to police reports, the man carried a 42-inch Sanyo Plasma TV to a self-checkout aisle after switching the original price tag of $984 with one for only $4.88 (around €3.60). Loss Prevention officers witnessed the alleged transaction and called police.

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AV Zombie: Disgruntled plasma buyers in Korea have besieged Samsung with complaints after their beloved flatscreens turned black.

Owners have even turned to a consumer rights group for help in demanding that Samsung immediately recall all of its plasma televisions.

Four models in Samsung’s 42-inch plasma range (the SPD-42S5HD, SPD-42S5HDM, SPD-42P5HD, and SPD-42P5HDM) appear to be affected by the terminal fault, which results in half the screen turning black after approximately a year’s use.

Samsung has confirmed that the black-out is due to a technical fault with the set and has offered free repairs to owners, however the CE giant is refusing to recall any screens. It has said however that if complaints grow it will consider extending its free warranty period from one to two years.

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I4U News:  It has been reported that Mitsubishi will show their Laser TV at the 2008 CES Show in Vegas, USA.

At the last CES, SED and Laser TVs had been no shows. In an NY Times article Rank DeMartin, vice president for marketing and product development at Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America, said that Mitsubishi will show a large-screen laser TV.

Mitsubishi announced the first Laser projection TV back in 2006 and said they would bring Laser TVs to market in 2007. Now we know for sure that this will not happen; It will be 2008.

The advantages of Laser TVs are bright and deep images on large, thin, lightweight screens. Laser TVs are also supposedly cheaper to make than Plasma screens. There are other companies like Coherent and Arasor that work on Laser TV technology. Coherent demonstrated a Laser TV on Kron 4 earlier this year.

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International Herald Tribune: Matsushita expects to double its production capacity for plasma display panels when a new plant begins production in western Japan in May 2009, a company spokesman said.

The Osaka-based maker of Panasonic-branded electronics plans to manufacture 300,000 42-inch plasma display panels a month at a new plant to be built in the western Japan city of Amagasaki, spokesman Akira Kadota said.

Combined with a planned output increase at another Amagasaki plant that began operating this month, Matsushita will be able to turn out 1.26 million panels a month by May 2009, up from the current 640,000 panels, Kadota said.

Construction of the new plant, Matsushita’s third in Amagasaki, is slated to begin in November, Kadota said. The company currently has four plasma display panel plants in Japan and another one in Shanghai, he added.

The new Amagasaki plant will eventually be able to turn out 1 million plasma displays a month, Kadota said. Matsushita has not yet decided on any production increases after May 2009, he said.

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