LCD vs Plasma...is plasma finished already ?

http://www.reuters.com/locales/news...e=technologyNews&locale=en_IN&storyID=4516529

makes for interesting reading I suppose.

 

You’re not factoring in the Plasma manufacturers upgrading their products when you made that statement.
From my own experience, I’ve just purchased a 22” LCD for my bedroom, and whilst I’m very pleased with it and it fulfils my requirements for that purpose, I believe the picture quality of my series 4 Panny plasma in my lounge murders the LCD.
It is far more vivid and the Blacks – well lets not go there.
I still think LCD has to catch up with Plasma technology for picture quality (and I’m sure it will) and Plasma will be with us for a long time. Who knows, maybe the future generation Plasma panels will solve the screen burn issue (a non issue for me) and extend panel life (another non issue for me).
From my standpoint (being the owner of both technologies) I wouldn't consider an LCD screen for my main viewing.

 

err the point is, is it not ? that the manufacturers in question have themselves effectively decided plasma is not the future ?

No point arguing that 4th, 5th and 6th generation technology is better than 1st generation. That's not the point.

It hasn't been with us for that long anyway ? Can't see the business sense of setting up a deal of this magnitude if all they were gonna do was to compete with their own replacement technology. Really can't see the sense in that, can you ?

LCD I reckon by 3rd generation, is going to be seriously good, far far cheaper, and far more consumer viable than plasma. Considering 6mths or so has been the turnaround for generic generations of Plasma. I really don't think we are going to have to wait that long.

 

Hmm... Can't really see what that's telling us other than Sony are having to take some radical (and costly) steps in a bid to win back much lost market share in the flat screen market.

Why does this article cause you to ask the question "..is plasma finished already ?" ?

The article makes no reference to plasma at all which is another area where Sony is investing heavily. If you ask me this is just Sony backing two horses as no one really knows at this point which will win. BTW, my own take on it is that both LCD and plasma will sit side by side for many years to come with each technology offering it's own pros and cons and appealing to different market sectors.

One could quote this article

http://www.forbes.com/newswire/2004/02/03/rtr1239048.html

and ask if Plasma technology is likely to kill LCD. Horses for courses me thinks

 

Messiah > the article has changed and been updated from this morning, Reuters for you !

Why do I believe it's bad for plasma ?

Well only in recent incarnations has Plasma become a fairly serious alternative to CRT. Prices are still high for Joe Bloggs on the street and the only way manufacturers can bring them down in future is by increasing massively the scales of production.

In the meantime LCD has come along. The technology has been developed in far broader applications of usage, ie laptops, portable dvds, Projectors, Pocket PC'set etc etc and most importantly now in computer monitors. Plasma technology simply can't compete with that. It's because of all this momentum behind LCD that cross application development will simply accelerate it far beyond Plasma and is doing so right now.

Put it simply Monitors sell big and Telly's sell big. No logic in backing LCD for monitors and Plasma for TV's, natural convergence between these to adopt one technology IMO. Maybe simplistic but it's economics of the equation.

Cost effective ? I remember when Plasma's were over £10g. How long has it been for them to drop down to todays levels ?

You look at the prices of LCD displays less than a year ago and you look at them now. Just watch them prices drop and the quality improve. I don't think that trend is likely to slow down in anyway shape or form, in fact quite the contrary.

Sony-Samsung is a big deal, I think for a change Sony might have just backed the right horse.

 

One thing you forget is LCD technology has been around for far longer than just since LCD TVs. Laptops, for example, with cost effective LCD screens have been mainstream for over 10 years so I still believe we are a long long time away from LCD technology usurping plasma. Don't forget that much of the cost of a plasma screen is artificial due to no real competing technology and the current 'lifestyle' desire of such products.

IMO, the introduction of 'new' technology (or products) such as large screen LCD will simply work to the consumers benefit and cause the price of competing technologies, like plasma, to fall, not be wiped out.

In the end every one wins. I see it as being no different to the competing LCD vs DLP debate with projectors. Whilst long term it is likely that DLP (or some other new technology) will leave LCD far behind there is still much life left in the old dog yet

Don't discount plasma just because of a few articles which some of the manufacturers want people to believe

Who would have thought that WAP could copete against new technology like GPRS, yet 3 years since the introduction of GPRS and almost every new phone supporting it, WAP usage is stronger than ever. A very different scenario I realise but used just to explain the point.

 

Pioneer produce 600,000 plasma panels a year. That's not a lot really for a market leader after all this time is it ? NEC have just sold their plasma plant to Pioneer, citing they want to concentrate on core operations ( basically means we tried, we're not making money at it, we don't think we can do it any better so we've sold it on).

40% of the 500,000 panels panels NEC produced went to Sony. Fujitsu are having to link up with Hitachi. Samsung supplies 14% of the plasma market.

Sony-Samsung deal to bang out worldwide mass supply of LCD screens like nobody's business from cut throat Korea suddenly has a major impact.

The price of a Plasma is not artificially high. Whilst volume remains at these sorts of levels there's little way for costs of manufacture to drop. If the price doesn't come down you can't generate volume. Catch 22, always has been with Plasma.

A first generation 16ms response Toshiba 32" LCD TV today costs circa £2400, a sixth generation 32" Plasma roughly about the same ? You can already pick up a 15" LCD telly for under £300 ? There is only gonna be one winner in that war.

LCD is lighter, more energy efficient, non-prone to screen burn, has a longer life and is gonna be cheaper.......by my estimations I'll give it just over a year.

 

An article from the very same Web site, dated today:

http://www.reuters.com/locales/newsArticle.jsp?type=technologyNews&locale=en_IN&storyID=4517149

Fujitsu-Hitachi JV to boost plasma display output

First few lines:
"
TOKYO (Reuters) - A joint plasma display venture between Fujitsu Ltd and Hitachi Ltd, the world's biggest maker of the flat screens, said on Monday it would invest 94 billion yen ($838 million) to quintuple production capacity by 2007.
"

Looks like Fujitsu-Hitachi, the market leader, strongly disagrees with the view that "Plasma's finished already"...

Thought it'd be relevant for this discussion here...

 

On the other hand, I would.

I bought a Philips 30PF9975 30" LCD about a month ago, it is being used as my main viewing TV, and I am more than happy with its performance.

Indeed at times, watching a DVD or a high quality Sky+ transmission, I am "blown away" (for want of a better phrase) by the PQ. And the quality of the picture I'm getting from the internal TV tuner is nothing less than stunning.

Nigel

 

$838m by 2007 ? If the demand arises ! Thats $280m even investment a year between two big players ? That aint major and also sounds like risk spreading to me. They all have to produce far far bigger quantities to bring prices down, in order to boost demand and to make it a viable alternative to CRT.

Sony-Samsung deal means $1.8bn right now and the plant starts churning out in a year from now. That's not serious numbers, that's serious intent.

It ain't a big sea of change, that's a tidal wave.

NEC have just sold out on Plasma to Pioneer. Panasonic were meant to have a 4th plant opening in 2006, which is now being only "considered".....not convincing long term argument for plasma is it ?

None of these players in their right mind first produce in volume to sell, they only produce in volume what sells in volume.

It's kind of evident already the balance between having flatscreen and being cost effective is swinging in favour of LCD. A Toshiba 32" LCD selling at the price of it's equivalent Plasma....already ?

When Joe Bloggs next goes to upgrade his PC monitor it is already a LCD he buys. When he decides time's up for CRT and time for a new flatscreen TV, it'll more than likely be LCD. Not sure what place Plasma will hold in the market place, but it'll probably be peripheral.

Sorry if it's a bit high brow and appears a long term outlook. Consumer electronic technology is moving at such a phenomenal rate at the moment. Long term in this particular field is about a year.

 

In case you're confused with this, the flat screen market ("pie") will continue to grow in # units for the years to come, and it appears that both LCD AND Plasma sales are bound to increase in the same period, with the LCD probably gaining more than Plasmas.

How increased sales of Plasma screens in the next few years translates into plasma being "finished" as you suggest is still a mistery to me...

One last thing: the numbers in the P.R. are facts, not opinion.

 

This also has to be about what will happen to the CRT market. Most commentators predict "flat screens" will replace CRT's, but there has to be considerable lowerng of prices before flat screens are for everyone. Hence the volume increases of both LCD and plasma.
Question is more "which technology (including RPTV), is going to improve sufficiently to fulfill the higher end?

 

For small to medium size CRT's, LCD TV's could be that replacement; in fact that's already happening big time for small size TV's (for bedroom, kitchen, what not) where LCD's are much more convenient than CRT's (more expensive too, but lately prices have come down substantially).

For larger sizes (up to 32") the pic. quality of LCD's is questionnable when compared to CRT's, LCD technology pitfalls being more apparent at those sizes obviously. However I believe LCD is bound to gain there as well, pricing being a major differentiator in favor of CRT's (not for the Loewe range though!) - for now.

At 32" and 36" plasma enters the picture together with LCD, but prices have to come down more to significantly eat into the CRT's share - though this is also starting to happen.

Longer term the area where CRT's will still be around for a long while could be the professional graphics/video workstations, for which the LCD mediocre color rendering (currently anyway) and other goodies make it unacceptable.

So all in all the CRT's will definitely start to disappear in many areas over time (some manuf. (Toshiba? not sure) have in fact already announced they're stopping production of CRT's) but will continue to be around for quite some time nonetheless - all imho of course.

 

In case your confused with this, I haven't suggested it's finished, I asked the question is it finished ? it's in the title if you missed it.

Facts dont lie, so make of it what you will. If the expression for Plasma demand in the forthcoming years was that great, none of these big manufacturers would be willing to enter so readily to combine right now. And the likes of NEC with the slice of the "pie" that they have i the market certainly wouldn't be bailing out right now either. errr hello ??? After being in the game for so long and being on the verge of a boom growth by your reckonings, it makes great sense for them to bail out doesn't it ? Yep sure is great business acumen there....gotta remember that business plan.

Fact is it's an uncertain future for Plasma otherwise they wouldn't have bothered to develop LCD technology to the extent to be able to do that job and as an alternative so quickly.

Global production of all Plasma panels I believe is circa 1.6m a year. Is that it ??? If you can't be optimistic about increasing output and sales on the back of those numbers then it really is time to jump !!!

I'm sure sales will grow, cos they sure as hell need to ! Enough to sustain it as a viable technology ? errr not so sure on that one.

Why ? cos in the meantime LCD continues to steal the march and is embedding itself rapidly as the real alternative to CRT out there in the market. It already has in PC monitors. In TV's the first generation models are already beginning to take the market by storm. In a way Plasma simply hasn't been able to for all the time it's been around.

Personally I haven't got anything against Plasma, I think it's great, but I do fear for it's future.

 

Funny though that Sony have linked up with a manufacturer regarded as one to buy if you are desperate and can't afford any more. Nobody here would choose to buy Samsung if they could afford better, plasma or LCD. Let's hope Sony are planning on a bit of quality monitoring.

 

Ekko

The one thing I think you are missing is that plasma was never intended to replace the 'small' screen (37" and below). Above those sizes it is, at the moment, without doubt the best technology. I agree that LCD numbers will far outstrip plasma in the years to come but that is simply due to the numbers of screens purchased by size, surely.

I bet for every 32"+ CRT purchased there are 10 smaller ones purchased and, whilst I have absolutely nothing against LCD (have one in the kitchen and soon a 30/32" in the bedroom) I still believe that plasma is the better technology for the larger sizes. Whetehr it will be in the future no one knows but one thing for sure is atht other technologies will come along which may even give LCD a run for it's money.

All I'm trying to say here is that sales of smaller screen sizes will always far outweigh the large beasts and as plasma is firmly aimed at the large screen sizes I don't think anyone would argue that LCD numbers will outstrip plasma.

Isn't this game fantastic

 

Plasmas need re-gassing after three years, very expensive unless you are covered by an extended warranty, which in itself is very expensive.
At least that's what they tell you in Dixons / Currys / Comet, that's an awful lot of punters who go home thinking plasma is already old hat, lcd must be the future.
.... or will lcds need to be re-gassed too ?

 

I seriously doubt you need to 're-gass' a plasma screen to my knowledge The phosphor will degrade after a much longer time than this, which is around ten years on 8 hours a day for most plasma's

 

Dean

I believe gringottsdirect was being sarcastic and trying to prove a point about why customers may go for LCD rather than plasma

 

Samsung are a Korean giant. Just cos they dont make the fancy stuff for consumers is pretty naive to be dismissive of them. Their forte is not consumer front end goods yet they are still able to hold 14% of the plasma market with their models. They are a corporate with fingers in many pies, have the know how, R&D, skill-set and the means to mass produce anything and everything. If Sony tell them what to make and how to make it, they will go and do just that.

The product you'll buy will be Sony branded, with the aesthetics and all the know how of how to market it to consumers. That strikes of a pretty shrewd deal, you make us all the screens to our standards and leave all the selling to us cos we're better at that.

Why ? I suppose cos Sony want the really big market....CRT replacement, whether it be a 5" or 50" screen. They want that market and want to solely concentrate on establishing themselves in a big big way again and not get bogged down in manufacture I guess.

Plasma and Rear Projection were a way of going flatscreen and big, since CRT had simply reached it's feasible limitations. Problem is only about 3 months ago they were saying LCD could not go beyond 15"- 22". Well I can go buy JVC, Philips and Toshiba 30"+ LCD screens for really great prices today ? That screen size growth is not going to stop and that's the overlap that threatens Plasma. Add to that big screen action can be had from LCD/DLP PJ's and you only have to look at how the prices of those products are falling cos they are selling so fast. It kind of erodes plasma's comfort zone.

LCD's will simply sell because they will be cheaper, more efficient and robust. When Joe Public comes to replace their main day to day sets, being mass market it has to be a robust generic technology and can't come with conditions like screen burn which is simply a no, no.

PC Monitors and TV's used to be CRT, PC Monitors and TV's will become LCD.....3 letter acronyms seem to work well in this field, they really do !

 

When i was looking at the sammy LCD in comet the other day....one of the sale's people was telling me how good they are and how they are much better than the Tosh CRT RPTV's.
When i asked him if they could get the spare bulbs for it, he looked at me all funny and then said " Its LCD Sir.....it does not have bulbs...................The Tosh does........thats got 3 at £80 each".
When i told him that the Tosh does not use bulbs, he would not have it, telling me that they have had several costomers come back after a short time asking for new bulbs for them.
Once i started laughing at him....he got the Hump, unplugged the DVD player from the LCD that he was demoing for me and stormed off.
He could not evern tell me if the DVD player was outputting RGB....he said " i doubt it...its only a cheepy"....

 

Have you seen Sony's new plasma/lcd lineup?

From Homecinema Choice Feb 27th.

 

bit unfair IMO. Until they started being used in consumer TVs, there was little incentive to improve their quality in terms of contrast / black level etc, when they were mostly being used for laptops. Even now, LCD TVs have faster response rates than LCD monitors.

The next generation will have much better contrast (around 800:1). still not plasma, but getting much closer.

And my philips 30" is fine for normal TV viewing. Resolution and picture quality are superb.

At the moment though, its a size game. I see 36" and smaller going to LCD (which is the majority of the European market), and larger screens going plasma.

 

Just what I was saying above I have no doubt that LCD (or maybe some newer technology like LCOS or whatever) will win the majority of sales but I still think theres a bit of life left in plasma yet

 

Also shops don't like transporting plasma's they are heavy and it's a risky business breakage wise. even more so than Crt's!

 

No I haven't, doesn't really concern me either if it's their imminent range as these are not influenced by the Samsung-Sony deal which won't be on line until next year anyway.

It's normal practice and quite a standard thing anyway for manufacturers to quote silly prices to begin with.

Bottom line is this technology and it's pricing is market dictated anyway. 15" LCD monitor you can get now for under £200, 15" LCD TV you can get for under £400, 30" Top brand LCD TV you can get for under £2000 and the like for like 32" which you are quoting, the Toshiba equivalent model sells for £2375 and that's all in rip-off Britain ! So no, not bothered about the prices you are quoting cos it's simply not reflective of the market.

Yes I agree <36" is where LCD will dominate to begin with, but I just can't see it stopping there. It makes more sense to converge technology throughout the whole range and not differentiate. My point is it will be the focal technology that has the scope from covering 5" to 50". No other format covers that, not CRT nor Plasma nor any other I know of ??

The momentum has picked up with LCD and I will re-iterate that 1st Gen models were not a bad stab at all. I still believe by only 3rd Gen it will be certainly good enough. You only have to look at the activity in the periphery LCD market to take a note of that. In the last few months portable DVD players have proliferated at the £200 levels (previously unheard of) and a LCD Hi Res 16:9 panel PJ can be now had for £1200 and the ever increasing £per inch to performance ratio in the monitor business. This is all becoming possible because these are offshoots of the drive behind improving LCD technology. The technology is being pushed hard and any existing development is being used in any context it can and being sold off cheap to all that want it.

This market is immensely fast paced and is moving at such a phenomenal pace that all this talk of behind the scenes stuff relates to final product being on the shelves within a year, that's the reality of it.

Don't you just love it ?

 

Ekko, you seem to be under the impression still that big LCD is new. Not so, sharp etc and philips, not to mention Sony themselves of course, have had bigger models out for almost a year. Price is a big issue though, and funnily enough Samsung are considerably cheaper than one with a Sony badge. I still think it's a big mistake for sony to get in bed with Samsung, they may have 14% of the plasma market, but it's the bottom 14%. Do you perceive sony there? Mind you they are not alone, philips have done the same with LG

 

...but are Samsung not one of the very few actual manufacturers of Lcd panels. I don't think there is much choice in that market...same with Plasma screens

 

Samsung are indeed one of the 6. Just they are way behind everyone except LG