Have we seen the last of the SD Viera's?

UrbanT

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I have been having a discussion with a good friend of mine today, regarding the Panasonic Viera's.

This involved whether we believed we had seen the last of the SD Viera's, and whether any further models would be introduced. I won't tell you which of us fell into which camp, but one of us firmly believes there will be at least one more update (if not more), and the other believes the PE50's are the last of the line of SD screens.

So what do you all think? I thought it would be interesting to ask.

I have to say there is a very nice pub lunch riding on what Panasonic decide to do in the next 8 months :)
 
Better question would be if there are going to be any more HD Vieras judging from the difficulty people seem to be having sourcing them :)
 
I think the PA50 will be the last one...

From a technical point of view, it doesn't make any sense to build SD panels anymore. The PV500 can do SD very very well, so....

Also the PA50 is pretty cheap right now for folks who don't need HD. But within the next year I think SD panels will completely vanish from the market.
 
I think there will be one more 'batch' with minor changes that come in at a price point that will capture the people unsure of plasma technology and the whole SD/HD thing.

There's no need for HD ready sets at the moment, and think in a years time that it won't have changed that much apart from the few who want the latest and greatest (and most of the few are on this forum!).

Give us some decent content, at a decent price and I think the manufacturers will go to HD only sets, but for now I think we'll see some more SDs. It would be interesting to know what was going on in Japan in terms of HD take up...
 
Do you really believe that Panasonic spend over $500mln on building a new Viera 8 production facility, just to get rid of the SD panel production in one year's time?

The manufacturing cost of plasma displays is currently $7 per diagonal inch. It does not really make any difference if it is SD or HD, the cost is about the same. The only reason you want to have SD panels in production is so that you can demand a premium of more than $1000 on the HD panels you sell to eager buyers. Its a marketing trick.

So, i do not believe that SD panels will fade away, this year or in three years time. They will be there just to be able to demand the higher premium for HD panels, at least until the cost of comparable sized LCD displays falls at the SD plasma price range.
 

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