You may have read about the recent Panasonic 3D Truck Tour where that company is looking to bring 3D to the public ala its 103-inch behemoth plasma display (H-103PF10UK) and a modified Blu-ray player using active shutter glasses to show off the technology.

Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor

Not many expected the company to launch 3D in the consumer market with this elephant-sized TV and with a recently reduced $50K price tag. Rightly so, the king plasma maker (OK sole PDP survivor in Japan) has just announced a 50-inch 3D plasma TV will begin selling in 2010-along with a modified Blu-ray disc player to feed it. (See the Nikkei.net September-28.) Not many more details are available now, but we expect to see this new set perhaps as early as October at CEATEC in Japan and definitely on the show floor at CES in early January-2010.

Plasma technology is particularly suited to the fast shutter speeds required by 3D and we think this gives the company an edge in the consumer market moving forward, but will it really matter? Many in the industry (myself included) have been taken back by the dominance of LCD flat screens over PDP in consumer market sales-particularly because plasmas emissive cells offer display speeds unparalleled by the light gating LCD approach. Plasma also offers an extended off-axis viewing angle (90-degrees) well beyond the limited cone of even the best-rated LCDs. (For details see LCD-Plasma Display Technology Shoot-Out.) But past that, here’s an excerpt from Dr. Soneira’s report found on displaymate.com:

"All of the LCD units have a noticeable color shift at less than ±15 degrees, while the Panasonic Plasma is visually indistinguishable from face-on viewing well beyond ±45 degrees. This is true for both the measurements and the viewing tests." So in spite of all the effort and progress LCD has made in the past decade, it looks as if color shift in off-axis viewing is still one big area the industry needs to address. All this makes plasma better suited for sports and action films, yet LCD sales are somewhere north of 10 to one over plasma in the consumer market.

With 3D looming on the horizon and the super fast PDP technology perhaps better suited for this type of display, can Plasma makers (Panasonic, LG and Samsung) seize the high ground once more in CE? We’ll see. - Steve Sechrist