RE: Slightly OT: home cinema

["Kenneth Watt" <kennethwatt@xxxxxxx>]

Phil,

A reliable trade source revealed that Sharp already have the technology to
mass produce LCD screens, BTW sorry for the confusion, yes I agree with you
CRT projectors knock lumps out of LCD but the price man, the price! I got
my
MT1 for just a shade over 2K and it is a very capable projector, one of the
best I've seen. The cheapest (not the best) CRT projector was more than
twice that price, so LCD projection is big screen action for the masses
and,
me on my limited budget :o(

Plasma, unless the price takes a serious tumble, life expectancy is
increased and quality improved will not challenge any other technology
around in the mass market, whereas LCD is established already, is
reasonably
reliable and people are used to seeing them, so no great leaps to sell
them.
Sharp already has 15" CRT replacement sets on the market, albeit at a
silly
price just now. Oh, and yes it was a typo, I meant 160 degree. Plasma could
have been good but the price is being held artificially high by Sony, in
particular, who hold the patents (as far as I know) and they will continue
to do so, so long as the corporate market and high end AV fans are prepared
to pay silly money for them. They are selling bucket loads of the things in
the corporate market where it's cool to have them at the moment instead of
a
projection system, hence the screen sizes.

I saw a sharp LCD 28" set and it is mighty impressive looking with no
picture on it! Estimated to street fourth quarter this year for about 2K
with price drops to follow. When faced with 4K plus for a plasma or about
£1000-1500 for a 32" LCD late next year, which do you think the public
will
take on board? Plasma will have to drop in price to compete and it will be
interesting to see which technology wins the war or what they all do to
compete. After all, the general public is who will decide which format wins
or loses, a la VHS vs. Betamax, and at the end of the day I wouldn't like
to
call it but I will stick my neck out and guess that, yes we all want rid of
bulky CRT's, but no, we are not prepared to pay much more than we would for
a premium CRT set.

K.

-----Original Message-----
From: Phillip Harris [mailto:phillip.harris1@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 08 April 2001 02:02
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [ukha_d] Slightly OT: home cinema


> That's interesting Keith, I had a Sharp XVC20 and it suffered the same
> problem, getting dimmer through time. I now use a Toshiba MT1 and have
not
> noticed anything untoward yet after about five months and it get
really
> heavy use at times, additionally it is reasonably quite, certainly
much
> quieter than a Sony and three Sharps I have tried.

I was quite impressed with the MT1 - good choice. It's very common for
bulbs
in LCD projectors to wear quite rapidly. I have recently sourced a very low
hours Sony VP400QM for someone on this group (325 hours use) but have
forewarned him that by 1,000 to 1,100 hours he'll need to be looking at
replacing the bulb. (Sony claim up to 2,000 hours for the 400QM bulbs.)

> Plasma is dead!

No it's not ... sorry.

> Long live LCD. Watch this space and mark my words, within
> the next year or so LCD will take over the top end CRT and plasma
screen
> markets.

I doubt it very much. Plasma has a long way to go yet and will develop far
more over the next couple of years. LCD's have big enough problems of their
own. If anything I think you'll see a decline in the market share of LCD
for
projection as DLP picks up more. *IF* LCD takes off for domestic direct
view
displays then I really don't see how it'll be in the next year.

For projection then LCD has a very long way to go before it can ever be
considered a serious threat to CRT at any point in the market where the
primary concern is quality rather than brightness. I am pretty confident
that I could challenge you to find *ANY* LCD projector that comes anywhere
close to matching my CRT projector setup and know that you'll not get
anything as good from an LCD device. Sure, you'll get brighter but that's
all ... on a 6ft wide image I have *NO* visible line structure or
pixellation. I have just run off some digital camera screenshots (using a
tripod and no flash of course) as a test and they've come out superbly ...
I'd send you one but they're an 11.5Mb TIFF!

> By third quarter 2002 Sharp will have LCD with a 60 degree viewing
> angle on sale at roughly ?23-28 an inch, bye bye CRT, its been
> nice knowing you :o)

But at what cost? A 60 degree viewing angle is awful - I assume you mean
160
degrees!

> The factories are built, it's just the tooling for mass production
that
> needs sorted. Plasma is too unreliable for domestic use so far and way
too
> expensive for the general public to be remotely interested.

Ken, plasma displays have come down in price ... you can pick up a 42"
plasma screen for a little over £4k, current "large" screen LCD
displays are
nowhere near that size but are many times the cost. I believe that the
yeild
on plasma panels is also an order of magnitude greater than the yeild on
large LCD panels.

To be completely honest with you I think LCD is going to be squeezed into a
niche market more than being a widespread consumer item.

Phil





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