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Pioneer will get plasma panels from Matsushita

The LCD and plasma TV market is becoming so competitive that companies that were once rivals are teaming up to drive costs down and profits up. The latest victim of the competitive plasma panel marketplace is Pioneer.

Pioneer made plasma HDTVs under the Elite brand and now makes Kuro plasmas that were seen at CES 2008. Several sources are reporting that Pioneer will stop making its own plasma panels. According to Reuters, Pioneer Corp is finalizing plans to halt all internal production of plasma panels.

Pioneer is currently the 5th largest plasma TV maker and is reported to be losing money on the plasma business it operates. Nikkei says Pioneer originally planned to sell 720,000 plasma TVs for the latest fiscal year and were forced to revise its projections to 480,000 units. Pioneer is expected to report a loss of 10 billion yen or about $96 million USD for the fiscal year.

Pioneer is said to be closing down one of its three Japanese plasma manufacturing plants and focusing the remaining two plants on assembling TVs. Pioneer already teamed up with Sharp to procure LCD panels for its line of LCD TVs, and it will do the same thing to source panels for its line of plasma TVs.

Pioneer will get plasma panels from industry behemoth Matsushita, which has been on a spree recently with agreements to buy portions of Hitachi and teaming up with Canon and other manufacturers for LCD panels.

Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment Management told MSNBC, “This is an excellent development [Pioneer stopping plasma production]. Pioneer could have chosen another way and stepped up its plasma investment despite the fact that the business is bleeding red ink, but it's a wise step to decide against that. A quicker decision would have been even better, though.”

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Time to Pioneer another format...
By daftrok on 3/4/2008 3:31:58 PM , Rating: 1
I predict that in a couple years OLED will start to really explode just like 1080p televisions did. It seems like yesterday when those 1080p sets cost 10 grand, now they cost around 1 grand.




RE: Time to Pioneer another format...
By JackBurton on 3/4/2008 3:53:43 PM , Rating: 5
OLED has quite a few hurdles to overcome. I'd say more like 5 years before we get a good 50" panel.


RE: Time to Pioneer another format...
By HaZaRd2K6 on 3/4/2008 4:03:41 PM , Rating: 5
And even then it'll still cost you your left kidney.

But that's alright, you've got two for a reason :)


RE: Time to Pioneer another format...
By Hulk on 3/4/2008 5:08:24 PM , Rating: 3
Yeah but all those kidneys for OLED trades will drive down the value of kidneys!


RE: Time to Pioneer another format...
By exanimas on 3/4/2008 10:27:24 PM , Rating: 2
That's one less thing to worry about after falling asleep around a hooker.


RE: Time to Pioneer another format...
By Jedi2155 on 3/5/2008 12:59:18 AM , Rating: 2
Or worse when they realize its already gone, and take something even more valuable!


By erikejw on 3/5/2008 1:58:47 AM , Rating: 4
quote:
Or worse when they realize its already gone, and take something even more valuable!


They probably leave with your new OLED TV and you wound up wondering if it is worth your last kidney to get another one :)


RE: Time to Pioneer another format...
By mikeblas on 3/4/2008 4:23:59 PM , Rating: 2
We've been hearing these predictions since the first OLED devices were announced at CES in 2000. What makes you think you'll be right, this time?


By daftrok on 3/4/2008 5:03:32 PM , Rating: 3
A hunch.


RE: Time to Pioneer another format...
By Oregonian2 on 3/4/08, Rating: 0
RE: Time to Pioneer another format...
By slunkius on 3/5/2008 5:35:37 AM , Rating: 3
Why is the rating so important? Every time i see a "...why was i rated down, wah wah..." i put one more negative point for it, just fort the fun


By Oregonian2 on 3/6/2008 7:46:39 PM , Rating: 1
If it were important, then I wouldn't have posted that same idea again about incorrect assumptions of the competition standing still while new technology wipes them out.

I was just helping those who wanted to nick the posting without having to read it and risk being convinced. :-)


By Raidin on 3/6/2008 10:20:12 AM , Rating: 2
Hell, I marked him down for excessive abuse of paragraphography.

Just kidding...


By melgross on 3/4/2008 6:03:45 PM , Rating: 2
Now that the first OLED Tv is out, others will follow by the end of the year. That's the way it works. It could take five years before a 50" model comes out. Cost is less obvious. I don't think the $2,500 for Sony's 11 incher will be typical.

Don't forget that the first plasma cost $20,000 for a 42" 720p model.

Once the problems of OLEDs are solved, which seems to be pretty much the case, the production costs will be much lower once the R&D has been paid off.


shame
By GlassHouse69 on 3/4/2008 10:18:55 PM , Rating: 3
It is a shame. the panasonics were a close second but only second. 720p pioneer 50 inch beat a 1080p panasonic easily. the 1080p definitely.

not like i wouldnt mind either one ;)




RE: shame
By Integral9 on 3/5/2008 12:54:16 PM , Rating: 2
agreed. I have a 720p 43" pioneer plasma and it looks as good or better than every 1080p screen I've seen to date. Even the 60" at the Sony Style store running a BD movie couldn't top it. It did look damned good though. i'd bump you but, I haven't figured out how to do that yet.


RE: shame
By ernhamDjinn on 3/5/2008 1:32:29 PM , Rating: 2
Unfortunately it's all too easy to sell pixels vs. quality, because the former is easy to measure (1080 > 720, right ?) whereas quality is kind of harder to judge.
The truth is, no one can tell if they're looking at a 1080p or 720p image from 10 feet away, which is a pretty standard viewing distance. The video scaler is one of the most critical part of the display - buy a cheap TV, you'll see a bunch of artifacts like macroblocking or aliasing of color, no matter the resolution of the set. That's one of the reason why the Pioneer indeed looks better than some bigger or higher resolution TVs, and also why it's (sightly) more expensive. Pioneer is of course not the only good brand, but I don't think you can go wrong with a Pioneer plasma. Until they stop manufacturing them, that is.


RE: shame
By Raidin on 3/6/2008 11:33:18 AM , Rating: 2
You can't rate anyone's comments in an article you've posted in. =(


RE: shame
By Integral9 on 3/11/2008 10:19:45 AM , Rating: 2
Thanks, but I already know that. I'm looking for a '+' or '-' or 'rate' button, but am not seeing it. Is there supposed to be one there? Will it appear after I do x y and z?


Wow - this is bad news...
By Ohji on 3/4/2008 5:50:26 PM , Rating: 2
This is potentially very bad news for the plasma display market. Pioneer demonstrated some of the most exciting future technology at CES this year with their 9mm thick plasma displays and "Extreme Contrast" technology. If any of you own plasma or LCD displays, you know how blacks are often not truly black, but instead a very dark gray. Over the past few years, advances in panel technology as well as innovations like dynamic backlights have made things better, but pitch blacks are still not possible on (available) flat panel displays. Pioneer, however, demonstrated extreme contrast sets at CES that left many seasoned videophiles with their jaws on the floor. There was a great deal of excitement generated by the Pioneer presentation, and you can see some of the pictures at the link below:

http://gizmodo.com/341434/battlemodo-pioneer-super...

I'm not sure how much of this technology is in the glass versus the ancillary electronic components, but hopefully Pioneer will license or sell this technology to Panasonic if they do dismantle their plasma production. I, for one, have been lusting for absolute black levels for YEARS, and I hope to see it available at a reasonable price point in the near future. Where are you SED? :)




RE: Wow - this is bad news...
By theslug on 3/4/2008 7:34:13 PM , Rating: 2
It looks like that's a regular Kuro on the left. Any idea how the extreme contrast ones compare to the Elite Kuro series?


RE: Wow - this is bad news...
By Ohji on 3/5/2008 1:09:40 AM , Rating: 2
Good question, and unfortunately I don't know the answer. From my understanding, the bulk of a plasma display's black level ability is determined by the glass, not the electronics. The non-elite and elite Pioneer models use the same glass, but higher end electronics are present on the Elites. I tried to search and find objective measurements from a single examiner of the black levels of elite and non-elite Pioneers within the same generation, but I didn't have any luck.


RE: Wow - this is bad news...
By hcahwk19 on 3/4/2008 7:35:58 PM , Rating: 1
Pitch black would be a total absence of light. You would not be able to see anything at all in that situation. Think about real life. Most all blacks are really a shade of gray. Even low lit areas create a reflection of light waves that give the shade of gray some so desparately are wanting to get rid of. The only time you would have a true, pitch black, as you seem to want to so badly, would be to go into the woods or an unlit alley on a moonless night, or sit in a dark room with no light whatsoever coming in. That is pitch black. That kind of black would not do much good on a television, as those places would be the only time you would need that kind of black and, frankly, there are not very many scenes with total darkness. The slight shade of gray that LCDs give you is, in reality, a truer representation of the real world. A true black would be the absorption of all light waves. A black shirt you wear is simply a very, very, dark shade of gray, as it reflects some light, making it visible.


RE: Wow - this is bad news...
By Ohji on 3/5/2008 12:53:55 AM , Rating: 3
Yes, I am indeed in favor of pitch blacks. I do, however concede the point that absolute black is rare in natural situations. What I was implying with my post is that if the luminance value of a pixel is supposed to be zero, I would like that pixel to emit no light at all. Unfortunately, what we have today is several sets that have a minimum pixel luminance of say 0.20, so all the 0.05, 0.10, and 0.15 values appear the same as an absolute black value of 0.00 (these are, of course, all arbitrary numbers used to illustrate the point). These very, very, dark shades of gray that, as you say, make up the bulk of the dark environments commonly encountered in the real world are then lost. A key point (for me, at least) in video displays is not being able to discern a black screen on the display from the surroundings in one's viewing environment. I live in the middle of Miami, and my living room is by no means perfectly dark, but a completely black screen on my plasma is clearly visible as a glowing dark gray. This poor black performance would be exponentially more miserable in a home theater or other environment with controlled lighting. I have never personally seen a flat panel display that "disappears" in a dark room when displaying dark content. Right now, because of the relatively poor black levels of current sets, a great deal of shadow detail is lost in dim scenes, as the subtle shades of very dim grays that make up so much of dark environments are all the same luminance. Dynamic backlighting on some LCD sets helps if the entire scene is dim but loses its effectiveness if there are bright areas in the scene.

If you look at the Pioneer demo at CES (done in a light controlled environment), the images they had were bright images that appeared to almost hover in the air with little ability to discern the borders of the screen. I am but a novice in this area, but if you hop over to avsforum and do a quick search there, you will see many others with far more knowledge and experience than I possess who were truly excited about this demo.


Quality
By jonrem on 3/4/2008 3:35:51 PM , Rating: 4
I hope the quality doesn't suffer due to this decision. That said, perhaps the prices for Pio plasmas will be more competitive with solid performing plasmas from Panasonic and Samsung in the future.




RE: Quality
By Oregonian2 on 3/4/2008 3:54:28 PM , Rating: 2
Probably can't get their price too close to Panasonic's seeing as how they'll be buying their panels from Panasonic and presumably Panasonic will profit off of that sale. :-)

I suspect if it happens it'll be after Panasonic's new mega plasma-plant comes online.


RE: Quality
By therealnickdanger on 3/4/2008 3:55:18 PM , Rating: 2
When buying my set, it was pretty close between Pioneer and Panasonic (Matsushita), so I can't say that I'm worried. They both make spectacular 1080p plasmas. I'm sure that the KURO line will live on and set itself apart from regular Panasonic sets with better video processors and build quality. At least we'll all get cheaper sets out of this!


Line it up
By Jynx980 on 3/5/2008 3:14:03 AM , Rating: 3
Pioneer first planned to sell 1,080 ,000 units, but then backed down to 720 ,000 and eventually settled on 480 ,000. Not very creative numbers for a forecast eh?




RE: Line it up
By RandallMoore on 3/5/2008 11:32:51 AM , Rating: 2
lol! I was thinking the same exact thing.


What about SED?
By MrBlastman on 3/5/2008 10:28:11 AM , Rating: 2
With all this talk about LCD, Plasma and now OLED, I think the consumer is the true loser currently with SED technology being locked up in never-ending litigation over the patent and usage rights of the technology.

Toshiba and Canon really dropped the ball here. The biggest problem with the current flavors of flat panel technology is their:

Inability to switch resolution and maintain quality of image.

LCD/Plasma/OLED all use single point light sources (well with plasma it is a RGB blend), but either way there is no true "meshing" of the image like you would find in a traditional CRT screen. When you change resolution, the image becomes chunky or distorted as it is not at the pixel-perfect native resolution.

I'd love to see the SED problems solved and could really care less about the other technologies as they are incessantly caticornered in a fixed native resolution for life.

Sure SED has a single electron gun per pixel, but through the use of phosphorous I think we have a greater chance of image consistency throughout the resolution range. Albeit perhaps not as nice as a CRT, but I would hope it would be far better than the current downgrade we are experiencing in display technology. They save space, yes. Most people don't need to change resolution, yes. But, I always feel like I'm getting the short end of the stick when we are missing that great deal of image versatility we have with a CRT versus fixed resolution solutions.

I might be few and far between - I'm one of those odd people that could care less about how something physically looks (bling factor) and am far more utilitarian when I'm looking to make a purchase.




RE: What about SED?
By overzealot on 3/5/2008 11:45:57 AM , Rating: 2
SED would have the same scaling issues as the other 1:1 displays. CRT's only get around the fact by physical interpolation.
The problem with 1:1 screens is that no-one invests in the better, more expensive up-scalers, because people will buy whatever displays best in native resolution with regard to cost.

SED's strengths would have been in contrast ratio, response rate, refresh rate, colour accuracy.
Given the continuing litigation delays, it probably won't see the light of day (LCD and plasma are getting better each generation).


Quite Ironic
By elegault on 3/4/2008 3:45:54 PM , Rating: 2
This is very ironic news considering I've been seeing more Pioneer commercials with Plasma TV's (they may be LCD) in them in the past weeks than I ever have.

Actually, I've never seen Pioneer commercials up until now.




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