No more plasma from 2006?

[London Geezer]

Shamelessly stolen from the AVForums.

New Sony models due soon...

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Mate of mine works for Sony and I've been thinking about getting a V40 for a while now. He sent me an e-mail yesterday that made me think I should wait; here's an excerpt:

*****
there will be three new ranges of Sony Bravia sets around in the spring and it is highly likely they will be cheaper than the existing Bravia range...
...main differences in the new LCD ranges will be in picture and sound enhancement systems and final details are still embargoed until February. However, I can tell you that ALL will be Freeview and HD Ready sets from 26" to 50" initially.
*****

Sounds good, as it will probably drop the price of the existing models too

Also, he had this to say about plasmas:

******
During' 06 we will cease production of CRT and Plasma products completely as will many of our competitors.
Plasma will probably disappear next year generally ,as older sets are now failing fast with screen burn and system is becoming too expensive to produce and service in comparison to LCD.
******

Interesting eh !? Lets hope the SD picture improves on the new models

Very interesting!!!

 

[Martin Eddy]

Looks like Toshiba and Panasonic have different ideas.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=248
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20060111120405.html

 

[skilzygw]

I still want a $999 ED Plasma for my bedroom. Please don't stop production, I need lower prices.

 

[Sxotty]

I still want a $999 ED Plasma for my bedroom. Please don't stop production, I need lower prices.

He is right about this, though ED isn't enough for me. I still need them to get cheaper as well

 

[kyleb]

...older sets are now failing fast with screen burn and system is becoming too expensive to produce and service in comparison to LCD.

That doesn't make sense. Plasmas become less likely to burn-in the longer they are used, and unlike LCD there is no blub to change or much of anything else that requires service. Sony has been phasing out their plasma line, but I'm sure they have more logical reasons for doing so than the onese presented there.

 

[Tahir2]

Pioneer and Panasonic are too heavily invested in plasma screen technology to cease production so soon.

Sony on the other hand have been working with Samsung for their panels so it is possible that they will end this agreement and move on to other technologies for large panel displays.

The answer though is definitely not LCD for the future.. IMHO anyway.

 

[DemoCoder]

Plasma doesn't scale very well production wise. It is a dead-end, heavy, power hungry technology. It will be replaced by SED (or FED). Not to mention that Plasma's CR advantage has been wiped out by recent gains in LCD/DLP technology, and technologies like Sony's SXRD demonstrate larger color gamuts (105% NTSC). Hell, Samsung demoed a DLP set at CES (going on sale soon) with 120% of NTSC GAMUT, using LED backlighting (no lamp).

Plasma is just an interrim solution on the road between CRT and SED.

 

[kyleb]

What LCDs or DLPs have CRs that compare to first teir plasma panels, or are you talking about on paper specs rather then the actual visible contrast ratio?

 

[Tahir2]

SED at this time is the baby of Toshiba and Canon. I cannot see them giving up their research so quickly - so whilst SED is indeed the future until OLED, the other manufacturers are stuck with Plasma for the near term.

 

[digitalwanderer]

LB is wrong, 2006 is the year for plasma for me...

 

[Sxotty]

OLED will have problems similar to Plasmas IMO. At least in the fact that the blue color chemicals always break down too quickly. That is unacceptable. DLP is nice, but it is annoying to me in that the sets are still bigger, and the viewing angles of the ones I have been around are not very good. It gets washedout if you are not straight on. LCD has the same problem, but even more severly, at least it is thin though. SED is the most promising to me, but it is also simply too expenseive, it seems nothing is doing a very good job.

 

[Tahir2]

My post did not imply that OLED is around the corner, even though it is in smaller displays devices like mobile phones. Eventually though it will be. By that time we will be dreaming about some other technology no doubt. OLED is meant to be better than SED as it will be more flexible (quite literally).
Interesting fact about SED is that it is cheap to manufacture - just the R&D has been incredibly long and drawn out. This is why the first wave of SED devices will be expensive.

 

[kyleb]

OLED will have problems similar to Plasmas IMO. At least in the fact that the blue color chemicals always break down too quickly. That is unacceptable.

How much of a problem is that with plasmas? I mean obviously such a problem can be calibarated out with subpixel adjustments, but I've never heard this was an issue in the first place so I'm curious as to how much quicker the blues atually wear down compared to the other colors?

 

[DemoCoder]

What LCDs or DLPs have CRs that compare to first teir plasma panels, or are you talking about on paper specs rather then the actual visible contrast ratio?

What Plasma panels have CRs anywhere near their paper specs? Unless you plan to house your Plasma in a darkroom with completely non-reflective surfaces, it won't come close to its paper On/Off CR. And secondly, because of the nature of Plasma, displayed black level changes significantly depending on the whites in the scene. And almost ALL Plasmas I've seen have DC voltage restoration issues.

Go to AVSFORUM, there are people there measuring calibrated CRs on current generation LCD/SXRD/DLP projectors from 2500:1 to as high as 5000:1 on 10,000:1 specs. That's *measured* CR. Now, go to this AVS thread, where a 10,000:1 Plasma panel was measured at less than 1000:1.

The fact is, paper specs are bullshit, yet alot of mythology surrounds Plasma. If you've been to CES, you'll see LCD and DLP RPTVs and FPs that trash Plasma. The new LED+LCD panels blow last years Sammy and Panny panels out of the water.

 

[kyleb]

Nah, I didn't see CES; but I wasn't talking about mythology or marketing specs, rather what I have seen in local showrooms.

 

[Sxotty]

Kyle I did not mean that plasma's blue colors wear out more quickly. I meant that plasmas are not durable in general, they wear out too quickly, and OLED will as well. It does seem that blue is for some reason difficult though, in regular LED's it took forever, and it often seems to be unstable and fade in chemicals. Except perhaps in super toxic chromium chemicals, but no one likes them

 

[Mintmaster]

Nah, I didn't see CES; but I wasn't talking about mythology or marketing specs, rather what I have seen in local showrooms.

Showrooms aren't exactly the best place to see well calibrated sets in good lighting.

I was surprised by your praise of plasma, as they haven't had the contrast ratio of DLP or SXRD for a while now. I don't know if they ever did, because old plasmas had rather poor blacks as well.

 

[kyleb]

Heh, Mintmaster, I'm not talking about the shelves at Best Buy, when I say showrooms I'm talking about what you find at speciatly A/V shops that have soft lighting and people who calbrate displays for a living. But anyway, which DLPs have you seen that better the contrast of first tier plasmas?

Also, what is the lifespan on OLEDs anyway? If its anywhere close to the 60,000 hour half-life on modren plasmas I'd call that fairly durable.

 

[Platon]

Normal SDTVs 4 ever ...

 

[Entropy]

Kyle I did not mean that plasma's blue colors wear out more quickly. I meant that plasmas are not durable in general, they wear out too quickly, and OLED will as well. It does seem that blue is for some reason difficult though, in regular LED's it took forever, and it often seems to be unstable and fade in chemicals. Except perhaps in super toxic chromium chemicals, but no one likes them

"OLED will.." is a dangerous assumption. There are chemists working on that problem.
Never underestimate a chemist.
The question of lifetime is relative - how long a lifetime do you need? Not all applications have the same requirements. If it's TV - how many hours of your life are you going to spend watching those coloured pixels moving? Some spend an extraordinary time in front of their TVs, and don't replace their sets either, but not everyone lives like that. So even for TV applications, there is a significant span in usage patterns, public broadcast systems at stations, schools et cetera having the hardest time of it.

I don't know exactly what the molecular reason for the OLED blue lifetime problem is (electronics reports rarely show chemical details as neither the journalists or the readership can be assumed to understand it anyway), but I'd wager a guess that it has to do with blue light being of higher energy, requireing the electronic energy states that the electron has to move between to generate the photon to be higher, as well as the corresponding excitation energy. When you're approaching UV frequencies, I guess it gets harder to ensure that not only the molecular structure is stable despite being subject to high excitation energies, but that the molecules don't have pathways for alternative electronic decay (losing effeciency, and again long term stability).

You'd need a basic understanding of molecular electronic orbitals to understand the problem at all, and some pretty damn good (unrealistically good, I'd say, wouldn't truly trust the results to have the necessary accuracy) quantum chemical calculations coupled with some good synthetic polymer chemists who preferably has good fingerspitzgefuhl for electronic states in complex structures including the excited states. Ouch. The problem is obiviously adressable, probably solveable, but not necessarily easy, and there would be a fairly long turnaround time for each new candidate structure .

Writing 3D-games is a picknick in the park.