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And now the smaller the more beautiful? The announcement from Hitachi-Fujitsu Plasma -HFP that they have reached a new low may look puzzling, but here we are: in the plasma world, the contenders want to be able to mass produce smaller screens to compete with already "full" HD (1920X1080 resolution) LCD panels. And there is a Sharp contestant in that segment. Earlier this year, Panasonic, Samsung and other Pioneer had demonstrated 50-in PDPs with full High-Def. However, Hitachi-Fujitsu is the only company to predict full launch during the second quarter of 2007.

It sounds funny that, while press rooms' business is, every day, to announce the "largest" this or "widest" that, now actually going DOWN in size seems to be greater. Wow! So HFP has reached a new "low"... What happens?

LCD TVs are already capable of full HD 2-megapixels resolution in sizes -37-in- that are more suitable for most of us, simple mortals (see our article about the size of screens to be displayed on december, 24), hence more rentable. By coming close to this size segment HFP is coming closer to the core of the market, where mass production can bring revenues for quite a while. Hitachi-Fujitsu seems to consider such move as strategic, probably because they claim a 30% share in the XGA and WXGA PDPs market, and they're definitely targeting to keep their piece of the cake, or even gain new territories with this launch.

42-inches 1920X1080 Plasma is new frontier for Hitachi

This, while LGE has also announced a 43-in PDP display equipped with a 160GB hard disk drive only weeks ago. Panasonic has made a similar announcement for a 1920X1080p 50-in Plasma HDTV in October, but none have precised their production plans, nor availability.

FHP will operate from their new plant in Kunitomi in the South of Japan as early as Q3/2006, with a capacity of 200000 per month, later to be extended to 300000. The device will be put on the market under the Hitachi brand.

The 42-in new plasma is capable of full HD (1920X1080), delivers a 3000:1 contrast ratio and reaches 1000 cd/m2. Such performance has been difficult to reach with the constraints generally associated with Plasma TVs -constraints that actually explain why this technology has always been proposing very large dispays. FHP had to reduce the horizontal width of the ribs, indeed dividing them by a two-third factor. They also had to reduce the pitch between adjacent ribs to 0.16 mm, thanks to advanced processing technologies.