CES 2006 - Day 3: Playstation 3, Quarter-size Hard Drives, SED and lots of TVs
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Manveer Wasson on January 9, 2006 1:25 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
1080p Plasmas Galore
Plasma display technology has improved by leaps and bounds over the past few years. Once only available for the ultra-wealthy, you can now purchase a very respectable unit for around $2000. Now that High Definition television has become more mainstream the market for these displays has grown significantly. Last year plasma took a back seat to other display technologies like LCD, DLP, and LCOS when 1080p version of said sets started shipping and plasma 1080p sets were nowhere to be found. However at this years CES almost every plasma panel maker is showing off their 1080p displays.
Hitachi's "modest" 55" 1080p Plasma
The latest 1080p pets from Pioneer, Panasonic, LG, Hitachi, and Samsung were being displayed with sizes ranging from 50" all the way up to 103". One interesting to note is the number of "Worlds Largest" plasma displays we saw on the floor. We saw a 102" sets from LG and Samsung, and a 103" from Panasonic - all claiming to be the worlds largest.
It's the world's largest 102" plasma
...and the world's largest 103" plasma
The sets we saw were stunning to say the least.
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JarredWalton - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Looks fine for me with Firefox 1.07, but Internet Explorer is all messed up. The odd thing is that it's only *this* article that's having problems.Oop... found the issue. The article description had a double-quote in it, and changing that to " fixed the problem. Thanks for pointing this out!
tuteja1986 - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28840">http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28840world largest is panasonic not samsung :)
Samsung 102"
Panasonic 103"
So as you can see Panasonic wins by 1" ...lol
Cygni - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
I just cant see how anybody really expected HD-DVD or Blu-Ray to be a success, to be quite honest. They seem to be expecting everyone to dump all their "old school" DVD's to pick up the SAME titles in the new formats, like most people eventually did with the VHS->DVD move... but i think its quite obvious that there just isnt any motivation to DO that this time.Can you say Laserdisc anybody? I just dont see Blu-Ray or HD-DVD taking off like they think it will. Will they stick around in the long run, unlike Laserdisc? Probably, simply because the added storage will be useful in the long long run and the discs/drives should eventually be dirt cheap... but they ARENT going to be a run away, must upgrade success. Thats for sure.
And when can i get a 103" OLED display? :p
Chadder007 - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
:werd:I thought this was hillarious
Blu-Ray AND HD-DVD will be a failure.
sprockkets - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
It just confirms what I have been saying, recording HDTV to DVD on 720x480 doesn't look that much worse than it coming on 1920x1080 live.Sure the original was smoother and clearer, but, it wasn't mind blowing, and if I didn't tell you, you probably wouldn't notice the difference either.
gsellis - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
First, thanks to the AT crew for going out of their way on such a horrible journey to cover this event. We all know you had to suffer to do it, but anything for the AT user's, right? ;)On the DVD to HD-DVD/Blu-Ray compare, their content did not show much difference because of the source. The played content was probably film of Pro-HD and compressed to MPEG or HD codec with a high-end encoder (the reds in that closest did not appear to be crushed as much as a standard encoder would do with something like DV content.) It looks like the source was at least 4:2:2 and maybe 4:4:4.
If the sources had been DV vs HDV, their would have been a little more dramatic. And as noted, if it had been compared to NTSC 480i, it would have also been more dramatic.
But, you are very correct in that this is not VHS-DVD where the quality jump is higher and the feature set is bigger. DVD is non-linear in how you can view content compared to tape and the big bonus was adding the bonus material. The bonus material is already there, so what can they add to really make it worth it? Especially when the players can do upconverts? And 720p movies fit on DL DVD-ROM already.
OK, (maybe coining a new twist on an old term or it probably has be done) having a Blue disc player and replacing your DVD library makes your v-penis(tm) bigger :p
MrSmurf - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
You can play your current DVDs in the newer standards. I think both will have moderate success on the PC once the price goes down due to their size but it'll be some time both stand alone players even put a dent in the market.Xenoterranos - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Hellz yeah. I wouldn't mind that 82 in LED lit LCD either, probably the closest you can get to a big screen OLED screen right now.OddTSi - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Someone please fix the page formatting. Everything is all over the place.JarredWalton - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Should be fixed now.