Panasonic goes 3D crazy at CES

by Pete Mason on 11 January 2011, 00:14

Tags: Panasonic (TYO:6752)

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Panasonic's CES booth this year was truly massive and almost all of that space was taken up with showing of the latest and greatest in 3D.

In terms of pure wow-factor, not much could beat the company's new 152in Plasma TV. For reference, the viewable area is just less than six feet from top to bottom. Although Panasonic has been selling this monstrous 4kx2k TV for a few months now, it was still the centre piece of its line-up.

Of course, in these tough economic times, the more financially constrained individual could always opt for the smaller 103in 3D-capable consumer-focused TV, which also launched recently.

But it didn't stop at TVs. There were also professional-grade 3D cameras for broadcasting and web conferencing, 3D camcorders and 4/3 3D still cameras with interchangeable lenses making up the full family of 3D products.

It wasn't all about the third dimension, though. Although it was limited to a relatively small corner of the booth, the reps were keen to emphasise Panasonic's green credentials. Apparently all of the company's TVs are Energy Star compliant and are among the most energy efficient in their class. The electronics giant is also helping to collect and recycle older products and is working on home energy storage and generation technology with the goal of making zero carbon imprint homes a reality by 2018.

We couldn't help but ask how a power-guzzling 152in plasma TV levels with trying to protect the planet and conserve energy. Obviously that sort of display is never going to be very kind to Mother Earth, but we were told that if it has to be a 152in screen, Panasonic's will be the most environmentally friendly available.

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HEXUS Forums :: 2 Comments

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Posted by aidanjt - Tue 11 Jan 2011 12:24
Waste of time and space. Even if you find a concrete wall big and strong enough to hold it, and you have a fission generator to power it. 1080p isn't going to give you anywhere near enough resolution for a display that size. And plasma? Really?
Posted by miniyazz - Tue 11 Jan 2011 23:50
Well it apparently supports 4kx2k, but obviously TV won't be streamed in that quality, if that's what you meant.

But actually, IMHO, it is going to be plenty. Because you're sitting at it across a room - and it would need to be a big room as well (152" is massive). For reference, my projector at a distance of roughly four metres produces a 100“ image, give or take. That fills the wall, and I don't have a particularly small wall (although granted, it's not as big as in a decent-size living room), but even 100” is only 2/3rds the size in each direction of this mammoth TV.

Plus - while for me, displaying 720p at 4 metres gives an unnecessarily large image with an annoyingly low resolution, my housemates have worse eyesight and for them it's a more appropriate size. And displaying 1080p gives a font size that's really too small for me to comfortably read text without zooming in. Increase the screen size by 50% and keep the resolution at 1080p and that'd be pretty much perfect.

Obviously there are other benefits, like increased picture sharpness, with higher resolutions - for example with dpi turned up. But 1080p would actually be adequate for most tasks for most people at most distances. It's just nice to have the extra pixels there if your usage scenario is a little different - but for watching TV/blu-rays, you're not going to be sitting close enough that you notice pixellation in 1080p.