Pioneer Corp. has unveiled four models of new plasma TV, all of which employ a panel featuring a contrast ratio of 20,000:1.
The new products are 60- and 50-inch full high definition (HD) models (1920 x 1080p) and 50- and 42-inch WXGA models (1365 x 768). The company has adopted a new brand name "KURO (black)," representing the deep black color reproduced by the enhanced contrast ratio.
The company exhibited the plasma panel with a 20,000:1 contrast ratio at CEATEC 2006 in October 2006. It also presented prototype TVs using the panel, aiming for commercialization by the summer of 2007, at 2007 International CES in January 2007.
The WXGA models were released in the United States and Europe in July 2007. The WXGA models and full HD models will be released in Japan in early September 2007 and early October 2007, respectively.
The new KURO panel employs an additional electron emission source provided on the address electrode located on the backside of the light emitting cell. This enhances the speed of electrical discharge, thereby reducing the size of pre-discharge referred to as "pilot flame."
Combined with the high-efficiency plasma discharge achieved by the Crystal Emissive Layer, which has been employed in the company's existing panels, the new products have enabled a contrast ratio of 20,000:1 in a stable manner by reducing the black luminance to about 1/5 that of the existing models.
As a result, the color purity has also improved. In the existing panels, light is constantly emitted from each of the R, G and B cells over the entire screen. Thus, when only red cells are intended to be emitted, for example, blue and green cells also emit light.
As a result, the color purity is degraded due to the emission of unwanted colors. The latest panel boasts high color purity because it can only emit desired cells, red cells in this case. In addition, the company reports that the panel hits 107% NTSC color gamut.
It has also improved the performance of the Direct Color Filter, which is provided to prevent the multiple reflections of images inside the panel, thereby minimizing the external light reflections and glaring on the screen. The new products allow the contrast ratio suitable for use in the bright living room, unlike other general plasma TVs that are less appropriate for use in a bright environment.
"We have made improvements to the equipment so that these technologies can be employed at all of our plants," said Katsunobu Shioda, General Manager of PDP Product Planning Department, Business Planning Division, Home Entertainment Business Group of Pioneer, explaining that the technologies will be the basic specifications for Pioneer's plasma panels in the future.
The panel has a totally new image processor including the newly-developed interlace/progressive (I/P) converter and noise reduction system. The system reduces the block and mosquito noises resulting from the MPEG compression as well as the flicker generated by the upconversion from the standard definition (SD) to HD.
The new TVs are also provided with the Film Smooth function to interpolate the frame rate of movie materials from 24 to 60 fps.
Another feature of the TVs is the Living-room Mode, which automatically optimizes the picture quality by detecting the ambient brightness with an illuminance sensor provided on the lower side of the panel, and also by determining the category, i.e. sports, live, travel and so on, of the video source.
Responding to the changes in environment or scenes, the picture quality is gradually varied by taking about 20 seconds to one minute. As a result, the optimum picture quality can be obtained naturally.
The latest four models have chassis with glossy black finish that accentuates the black color on the screen. Notched portions corresponding to the power switch, remote controller signal reception unit, logo, etc. are eliminated from the front bezel as much as possible.
Pioneer has made efforts to design the new products in such a manner that the presence of TV is not overemphasized. For instance, when displaying a horizontally-oriented video source like movie films, the masked portions on the top and bottom sides of the screen look as though they were integrated with upper and lower bezels.
Pioneer regards the new plasma TVs not as a home appliance but as one of the audio visual (AV) systems.
In addition to the panels and circuits tailored to reproduce high quality pictures, the company has also unveiled: built-in speakers that realize high quality sound comparable with that of a theater by a TV unit alone; a Blu-ray disc player that allows the faithful playback at 24 fps of a Blu-ray disc storing a movie source recorded at 24 fps in an as-is fashion; and a theater system that realizes a three-dimensional sound field with speakers positioned not just in horizontal direction but in the direction of the ceiling.
Meanwhile, the company has further reduced the power consumption of its products, although it has not mentioned it at either the press conference or in the demonstrations of respective functions.
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