DisplayBlog

Panasonic’s TH-50PF9UK plasma display panel (PDP) TV sports Full HD 1080p capability with a pixel format of 1920 x 1080. Unlike other “1080p capable” PDP TV sets, the TH-50PF9UK is truly a real Full HD PDP TV. The contrast ratio is 5000:1, viewing angles are 160 degrees and response time super fast, like any PDP TV. Just a quick note on PDP TV response times: there is really no meaning in measuring PDP TV response times because they are so fast. The TH-50PF9UK comes with VGA, DVI and other inputs and has a tuner than is compatible with NTSC, PAL and SECAM. Unfortunately, the TH-50PF9UK lacks a ATSC tuner.

c|net’s article states the TH-50PF9UK as only the second 50″ PDP TV to sport a 1920 x 1080 pixel format with Pioneer’s Pro-FHD1 to be the very first. The article compares the two but gives the highest praise to the Pro-FHD1 for outstanding picture quality. Overall, c|net gave the TH-50PF9UK a 8.3 mark out of 10.

Source: c|net

Samsung SDI, a South Korean plasma display panel (PDP) manufacturer, will invest 710 billion won (about US$758 million) to increase production capacity in 2007. The production capacity will be used for PDPs as well as organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). This is response to Matsushita, who took over the #1 position from Samsung SDI in 2006. The new PDP plant was originally slated to begin operations in May 2007 but I do not have update information regarding the schedule. The new PDP plant is most likely to have a production capacity of 250,000 42″ equivalent PDPs per month increasing SDI’s annual production capacity to 7.3 million units in 2007.

Source: Yonhap News, Hardware Help

According to China’s Ministry of Information Industry (MII), China manufactured 7.12 million LCD TVs in the first ten months of 2006, which is an 124% increase from the same period in 2005. The 7.12 million LCD TVs accounted for 9.7% of the total output of color TVs, up 5.3% from 2005. A total of 73.25 million color TVs were manufactured from January through October 2005. Rear projection TVs (RPTVs) rose 31%, while plasma display panel (PDP) TVs decreased 15.4%. With all display technologies combined, China was the world’s largest manufacturer of color TVs with over 50% of the world’s color TVs.

This no surprise at all since China has continued to consolidate the world’s manufacturing capability for all kinds of electronics. Although Chinese labor has continued to increase, the cost of labor is extremely cheap relative to anywhere else in the world. With infrastructure developments such as reliable transportation, water and electricity, China will continue to become the manufacturing center for most anything.

Source: CCTV

First we had tube TVs based on cathode ray tubes (CRTs). Then TV technology exploded into several: LCD TV, plasma TV, LCoS front/rear projection, DLP front/rear projection, LCD front/rear projection, CRT front/rear projection, SED. There are still others: OLED, TDEL, etc. These different technologies used a variety of light sources: CCFLs, EEFLs, FFLs, LEDs, UHPs, ELs, etc. Now comes something a bit different: Laser-based TVs. The term laser TV is a bit misleading because it’s just the backlight that’s laser and not the way video is displayed.

Why laser?

Continue reading…

While I was reading about Engadget HD tonight, I came across the “Xbox 360 HD DVD ad: 6x the resolution = 6x the…breakdancers?” post. I thought the ad was fairly effective in communicating that HD DVD gives you a fuller experience than DVD. The use of breakdancers was a bit lacking in the classy department but overall I think the potential consumers of Microsoft’s HD-DVD external unit got the point. But that’s not why I’m posting tonight.

After watching the video, I decided to read some of the comments. I usually don’t do this because I have wasted too many minutes reading comments that really have no value whatsoever, but today I wanted to waste a few because I was curious as to what others had to say about the ad and HD-DVD in general. And, I came across a comment and a reply to that comment that I thought was ridiculously funny.

Comment: My LCD TV only outputs 1080i anyways, no problem for me. I’m picking this up on release.

Reply: No LCD (or DLP, or plasma, or LCOS, or anything other than CRT) outputs anything interlaced. It might only accept a 1080i signal and not a 1080p signal, but any fixed display technology will always output a progressive image.

Now, the first comment clearly signals the lack of knowledge about what 1080i is. But then to post a reply, a definitive reply!, for the world to see and make a fool of himself was too much for me. I just had to blog about it.

You see, no matter what display technology you have, whether it shows motion pictures in an interlaced or progressive manner wholly depends on how the motion picture is delivered to your display. There are many HD formats but let’s just talk about 1080i. Most TV stations, satellite and cable programming broadcasts HD content in 1080i. If you simply plugged the antenna, satellite or cable box into your HD TV that display will show motion picture at 1080 horizontal lines and update it in interlaced mode. Now, if you have a de-interlacer or an up-converter that manipulates the 1080i content and generates a progressively updated motion picture your HD TV will now display the original 1080i content in 1080p or something else. The person who replied also has some misinformation about CRTs. CRTs are just like any other display in that it can display motion picture in interlaced or progressive. The confusion probably comes from nearly all video sources having been interlaced when CRTs were the only choice for TV technology.