Just when you thought you had completed all of your television research and had finally grasped the ideas of DLP, LCD, plasma, DMI, HDTV, and 1080i, a whole new technology has emerged that may delay your new big-screen TV purchase. Last week, Mitsubishi unveiled its new laser TV to the public.
Instead of using the current norm of white light mercury lamps, the laser TV uses red, blue, and green lasers to generate images on the screen. The new laser TV will be lighter and thinner than a comparably sized plasma TV and will produce brighter and crisper images, all at half the cost.
The new laser TVs will be only a few inches thick, perfect for wall mounting, unlike a 50-inch DLP TV that is about 17 inches deep. Mitsubishi is using an advanced lightweight plastic for the screen rather than glass. As a result, the support casing will be smaller and instead of seeing a thick plastic border around the screen, you will see a cleaner, practically all-screen look.
Once in mass production, the laser TV will cost manufacturers about half as much to produce as a plasma television. Whether the manufacturer will pass these savings on to the consumer or mark up the price in order to increase profits has not yet been determined.
It would seem plausible to think that a cheaper, thinner, and lighter TV would produce images of inferior quality compared to those of the more expensive models, but that is not the case. Plasma televisions currently produce what is considered the brightest and most vivid picture of all the different units on the market. Plasma TVs can project about 30 percent of the color spectrum visible to the human eye. Laser TVs, however, can produce a stunning 90 percent of the visible light spectrum, thus projecting brighter and clearer images.
Plasmas tend to burn out after a few years, LCDs get dead pixels, and DLPs require bulb replacements. Laser TV users will encounter none of these problems.
The lasers are considered a nearly permanent light source and should long outlast the life of the television itself. Also, DLP and plasma's high-power lamps require three times as much power as the new laser TVs will use.
Much like DLP, the new laser technology will be able to serve different purposes. The use of DLP TVs led to the production of DLP projectors which allow users to watch TV on an entire wall of their house.
One drawback, however, is that the room needs to be dark in order to achieve a quality picture. Since lasers are much brighter than DLP lamps, users will be able to project images on a wall or screen even in a lit room, essentially making a TV as large as a wall.
Choosing the best television to suit your needs is becoming increasingly more difficult with the use of new technology and confusing lingo.
The choice does not include merely big or small and color or black-and-white any longer. The pace at which consumers are buying big-screen televisions has doubled recently as they are eager to take advantage of the increasing amount of available high definition content with such innovations as cable and satellite high definition (HD) programming, XBOX 360, Sony PS3, and new HD DVDs.
Mitsubishi and other companies have said that retail versions of their laser TVs will be available before Christmas of 2007.
If they are priced lower than plasmas, DLPs, and LCDs upon their release, they may very easily render these now state-of-the-art technologies obsolete.
Matt Sbrogna is a staff columnist for The Heights. He welcomes comments sbrognam@bcheights.com.
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