Panasonic elevates TV viewing to higher level

TOKYO, Japan — With its new 65-inch plasma display flat TV panel set for release next month and a next-generation DVD system anchored on the Blu-ray disc format, consumer electronics giant Panasonic is set to elevate home viewing to a higher level.

Kasuhiro Tsuga, executive officer of Panasonic’s parent firm, the Osaka-based Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., noted in his speech during the recent Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies (CEATEC) Japan 2005 that the company’s digital appliance strategy will integrate the concepts of "pursuing technologies for realizing customer satisfaction into ideas for life."

He said as viewers become more demanding in the quality of their products, Panasonic will satisfy this need with its line of plasma display panel (PDP) TV sets, particularly in the big screen segment.

"Plasma is the way to go for larger sizes," Tsuga said.

Masaaki Fujita, director of Panasonic’s PDP Business Unit pointed out that the conventional cathode ray tube (CRT) TV model is fast losing its grip of the global market, with flat TVs expected to account for 41 percent of the market by next year.

In the flat TV segment, the smaller screens - between 26" and 36" — would make up half of total demand by 2008 while the other half are those sized 37" and over, about 90 percent of which are PDPs.

Due to this expected surge, Panasonic has put on stream a new PDP factory — the biggest in the world - in Amagasaki, Hyogo last September to complement its other factories in Japan, Shanghai, the US and the Czech Republic. The new plant is targeted to produce five million plasma TV units in 2006.

Fujita said over the last two years, 6,000 plasma TV sets were sold worldwide; this year, sales is expected to reach 30,000 units.

On a global scale, PDP sets now make up 35 percent of the TV market: in Japan, PDPs account for 70 percent of sales; 55 percent in the US and 30 percent in the UK.

Plasma sets are superior to LCD (liquid crystal display), another medium for flat TVs, in terms of angle-free viewing, smooth motion picture, self-illuminating display, a deep black background, clear and crisp color reproduction and energy saving mode.

Panasonic has also developed a prototype of a 50-inch PDP with 1080p (progressive) resolution. The prototype is the world’s smallest PDP that delivers more than two million pixels and the same brightness as its current high-definition model.

Panasonic is also pushing the Blue-ray DVD format along with Sony Corp. in an industry alliance to challenge a Toshiba-led group — which has gained the support of Intel and Microsoft - marketing an incompatible high definition DVD (HD DVD).

Panasonic will introduce the Blue-ray Discc (BD) drives for notebook and desktop computers that can write and read single and dual layer BDs as well as all types of recordable DVDs and CDs. The drives, the first of their kind in the world, will become available by next year to bring in the next-generation optical disc format into widespread practical use.

The world’s first BD drive for notebook PCs is only 12.7-mm high and can record and playback the three generations of optical discs. It supports single-layer 25 gigabyte (GB) and single-sided, dual layer 50 GB BDs. The multimedia drive uses Panasonic’s own laminated glass plate prism technology that enables the reduction in size of the optical pickup to one-twelfth of the size of conventional pickups.