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PDP Competitive Breakthrough? Maybe
May 29th, 2007
At the SID press breakfast last week, Ross Young of DisplaySearch gave a disruptive technologies presentation and revealed the Advanced PDP Development Center (APDC) (Tokyo, Japan;
www.advanced-pdp.jp) has achieved plasma display efficiencies of 10 lm/W (lumens / watt) up roughly 4 to 5 times from today’s 2.0 to 2.5 lm/W efficiency. The group was formed in 2003 and represents a consortia of Japan PDP makers including: Matsushita, Hitachi and Pioneer.
Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor
Projection Monthly
The advancement are claimed to be able to offer significant performance and cost advantages including better contrast and brightness, improved pixel density and lower component costs.
But there appears to be a catch. The improvements require changes to the cell structure discharge scheme and are believed to be up to 2 years away from mass production according to Young’s report.
The technology behind all these advancements remains murky too. For example, Young indicated the APDC breakthrough was based on "significantly more tolerance in the plasma material due to declining discharge error," - but what does this really mean? And, if the group is at the cusp of a new breakthrough-they’re not talking (at least not at SID). There were no papers submitted by the APDC group and only one of the 12 papers presented on PDP came from a consortia member, Pioneer, who talked about a new dithering algorithm that increased the number of gray levels.
Insight Media analyst Ken Werner is currently looking into these developments, so we will have more soon.
On the benefits side, Young said the advance will significantly lower costs and increase performance of PDPs. One possible result could be cost effective 32-inch 1080 PDP-TVs, for example, which cost compete toe-to-toe with LCDs. LG is apparently planning to launch a 32″ PDP in Q3′07.
And, the technology could empower a 55-inch PDP with 4K x 2K resolution going beyond even the quad HD (3840 x 2160) pixel density offered by state-of-the-art LCDs. This is important today for broadcast quality monitors and beyond 2010, for next generation commercial displays, according to Japan broadcaster NHK (see QFHD article in June issue of Projection Monthly).
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The benefits to manufacturing cost are also staggering with an estimated 33% savings, says Young. The new process eliminates one of the upper electrodes and one of the drive boards, cuts out 50% of the process steps currently used in PDP production. The resulting large decline in address voltage means lower driver IC costs and reduced costs in EMI and optical filters as well.
Finally, this plasma panacea improves brightness of the display by a factor of 2X and contrast by 4X. These are the stated goals of APDC, which seem ambitious to us. Nevertheless, the need to try to achieve these goals is real as PDP competitiveness in the 40-inch range is under assault.
So the real question is: has this dramatic (disruptive) improvement to PDP technology that moves the category from a high-powered discharge to a low-power display device come too late? APDC partner Pioneer thinks no as it has already announced (at CES) moving up deployment of "new breakthrough technologies" that perhaps are the results of this research. In early May the company unveiled its 8th generation "Project Kuro" line that boasts especially deep black levels, and the four 1080p-native 50- and 60-inch sets offer 20,000:1 contrast ratio. The line-up will be available in 42 and 50-inch screen sizes in XGA (available from June) and Full HD in 50 and 60-inch (available from September), according to the company.
http://displaydaily.com/2007/05/29/pdp-competitive-breakthrough-maybe/