As part of its bid for supremacy in the global plasma TV market, LG Electronics is showing a special 50-inch plasma display panel (PDP) at the 2005 International Meeting on Information Display and Exhibition (IMID’ 05) in South Korea.
The size of the plasma TV itself is not remarkable, given the bigger screens released by rivals such as Samsung, which boasts of having the world’s largest PDP (at 102 inches). No, the 50-inch LGE plasma TV showcased at IMID ‘05 has the distinction of being the first XGA-type plasma TV in the world to be developed using single scan technology.
This single scan technology can lower the price of plasma TV production by as much as 20% as compared to the cost of making PDPs using the conventional dual scan method. Moreover, single scan technology has the added benefits of resolving issues related to the scanning time following an increase in resolution and screen size.
This obviously has ramifications for the growing affordability of plasma TVs. While prices are not exactly tumbling down yet, they are considerably lower than the plasma TV price ranges of 2-3 years ago. Market penetration of flat screen televisions in the United States residential sector is about 10%; let’s see where it’ll be in the next two to three years.
