IFA 2008 - Panasonic Thinks Big with 150-inch Plasma Display

Panasonic is unveiling several new plasma TVs at IFA 2008 that are especially thin and energy efficient. Additionally, the company is also demonstrating a huge 150" Display.

The market share of plasma TVs is much smaller than that of their LCD-based brethren. For example, German market research group GfK expects that about 630,000 plasma TVs will be sold in Germany in 2008 compared to an estimated 5.1 million LCD models.

Now Panasonic is trying its luck with five new plasma TVs belonging to the Viera line which will be shown as prototypes at this year’s IFA. Specifically, the company will be demonstrating 42”, 50”, 58” and 65” panels. Panasonic promises that at the same brightness, the new panels use only half as much energy as previous models. Another distinctive feature if these panels – they are less than 2.5 cm thick.

On top of that, Panasonic claims that the new models will be eco-friendly, since their production process is completely lead-free. The company quotes a life expectancy of up to 100,000 hours for the Plasma TVs.

However, Panasonic isn’t limiting itself to the Green-IT movement but is flexing some technology muscle as well. As its IFA highlight, the company is demonstrating a Full-HD plasma display with a diagonal of no less than 150” (3.81 meters). It uses a resolution of 2160 x 4096 pixels, which equals four times the 1080p HD specification, for a total of 8.84 million pixels. It remains to be seen whether this monster of a display will ever become more than a demonstration of what is technologically possible today. After all, there are already projectors today that are suitable for image sizes of two meters and up.