2005 HDTV Report, Part 9: LCD TV Panels

[Rodolfo]

This part 9 is dedicated to LCD panels, they are becoming larger and larger from one year to another; last year's 40-inch screens introduction seemed a big step forward, a step into the domain of plasmas; this year the competition for even larger panels is heating up. The plasmas and LCD panels announced at CES 2005 overlap in the 37 to mid-50-inches range; the new large LCD TV panels generally cost more than similar size plasmas, twice as much in many cases, but prices are coming down fast for both types of panels. The larger LCD TV panels are now at 1920x1080 resolution on the 45+ sizes, while in plasmas the 1080p resolution is seen on much larger sizes. One example of large LCD TV panel is the Sharp's 1080p 45" LCD TV panel (AQUOS models 45GD4U and 45GD6U) available since fall of 2004 at an original price of $10,000 MSRP (but seen at less than half of that on the street by mid year 2005). The first large LCD panels were shown last year at CES 2004, and by year-end 1.4 million LCD panels were sold; 2004 was a year of market attraction for panels over other
technologies. LCD-TV Panels will be coming in 57" and even 65”, a 57” is expected from Samsung, TTM Jun 05 ($16000), 1920x1080p, integrated with ATSC/QAM CableCARD tuners, response time faster than 8 ms, an improvement from the 12 ms of their earlier 46" model 468W, not to mention the comparable improvement over the 20ms+ of many other LCD products. Also shown at CES was the Sharp AQUOS 65" LCD-TV panel, TTM 2H05, $TBA, 1920x1080p, integrated ATSC/QAM CableCARD tuners, Quick Shoot video circuitry for 12 milliseconds response time, HDMI, IEEE1394, and DVI-I. When reviewing the MSRP and TTM (time to market) information keep in mind that is as of 1Q05 for the CES 2005 report and, as is usual with CE, prices and availability might change when products are actually released; additionally, street sale prices should be expected to be lower than the MSRP data used throughout the report.

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