from the inside, looking in

Matsushita, the leading PDP manufacturer, has announced 4 new models which go on sale on September 1st.

All of the new models are full HD (1920 x 1080), and include models with 50, 58 and 65 inch (diagonal) screens. The prices of the 58 and 65 inch models (at an estimated JPY1M and JPY0.85M respectively) handily undercut the prices of the similar sized full HD LCD models from Sharp, reflecting PDP technology’s cost advantages at the larger end of the spectrum.

The big news (pun intended) announced was the other model in the lineup, which is a 103 inch (that is more than 2.5 metres!) screen. Price, a whopping JPY6M (more than $50k).That is the same size screen as displayed at this year’s CES. Matsushita expects 5000 of these huge displays to be sold globally in the first year, with 500 units in Japan.
At the smaller end of the scale (the volume market for flat panel TVs is 37-45 inches), Matsushita said they are making technical progress in full HD displays for these smaller screens, but no schedule was announced for commercialisation. This is the big technical issue for PDP, assuming that consumers require a full HD screen.