$90,000 103in HDTV

An anonymous reader writes "Found this review of Panasonic's 103in plasma. Not only is the screen itself massive, but the price tag comes close to $100,000! I guess if you can afford a room big enough to house it, you can afford the TV. "

i'm looking forward to the day

[circletimessquare]

when you go to radio shack, and for $19.95, you get a can of paint and some sort of gadget. you go home, stick the gadget to the wall (your interface), then paint a rectangular area on the wall next to the gadget. the paint consists of self-aligning chemicals that when dry, creates a television

it really isn't far fetched nanotechnology, the requisite advances in semiconducting polymers means the concept is not that far off. since they already have electronic paper, liquid crystals displays are well established, and OLEDs are coming on the scene now, technologies getting close to the "paint your own tv" concept, chemically and technically at least, i really don't think this concept is that far off

think about it: at the factory where they make OLEDs/ liquid crystal displays/ electronic paper, there is a fabrication process. that fabrication process merely assembles the requisite pixels into a proper grid. someone, somewhere, will make this process automatic, like crystallization/ polymerization, so all you need is for it to "dry" after applying it to a flat surface

Re:For the US-centric...

[Tet]

It is refreshing to see a jumbo plasma TV that isn't a low-res, corporate boardroom model, though.

You think it isn't low-res? I was quite depressed when I saw how few pixels they'd given it. At 103", 1920x1080 equates to a rather paltry 22dpi. I just don't understand why large screens can't at least have the same resolution as a decent monitor. I mean, I'm not expecting a 103" screen with 100dpi. But just being able to match, say, the number of pixels found on a Dell 30" monitor would be nice...

Videophiles may call it "cheap"

[Anonymous Coward]

$100.000 doesn't sound too expensive for some people since I know at least 1 person who paid $80.000 to Barco CRT projector alone and there were THX guys setting up/validating the audio for his private cinema at his ranch. I guess it may have hit $250.000 for full setup.

I heard he was using 35mm+(Cinema) DTS before and that was "full" digital upgrade. I didn't follow but I am sure he will be interested in Digital Cinema when tests are over.

Sound mad? Well, you can buy a $1M Lombarghini (taxes) and get stuck in Istanbul traffic behind a bus, which one sounds logical? :)

Posting AC for this one since I don't want guy traced from my nick. Customer privacy :)

Costs $0.41 Per Minute To Watch

[centauricw]

Plasma screens are only rated for 3600 hours of viewing time before they deteriorate below spec and the manufacture won't replace the glass. Based on this, we computed that you loose $0.41 a minute watching this set.

How far away do you have to sit?

[AmiAthena]

My boyfriend and I recently got a 61" DLP (which he NEEDED because he bought a PS3). According to both the manual and our experience, you should sit 7' to 10' away for optimal viewing pleasure. Sitting closer results in having to turn your head to follow the action (as well as the color looking a little off); this makes you very aware you are watching TV, ruining immersion. I don't really know how to go about the math for this, but it seems like you'd have to be something like 20" away to view anything properly on such a huge screen. So not only do you have to have a wall wide enough and tall enough to fit the thing on, the room needs to be long enough to sit that far away. As someone mentioned, this might not be a problem since a person who can afford this probably has the space for it, but it still makes my brain hurt a little.

Another impracticality that springs to mind is that this isn't even a very good investment- what's the average life of a plasma screen? Could you go back to a relatively normal size TV after you've had this, or will you be shelling out $90,000 every 5 years or so? At least our "little" DLP will still be usable in 10 years. We might have to spend $300 on a light bulb for it, but we'll be able to see the picture.

Here's some math I can do: for the same amount of money, you could buy 30-40 61" TVs and put one on every wall; which would be kind of scary but pretty awesome. (And on a moral, "isn't there anything worthwhile you could do with your obscene sums of money?" note, I looked up one of those sponsor-a-child charities I see on TV and you could sponsor 312 children for one year, or 20 children for 15 years each, or of course one child for 312 years. I am *NOT* judging anyone, I just got to thinking about the numbers.)

I can't deny it would be cool to have, but for several reasons I can't imagine buying one, even if I could afford to.

My personal impression

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I've seen one of these in person and played around with it a bit, so I guess I'm pretty much obliged to comment...

Yes, it is ridiculously huge, just bit over 2.6 metres from corner to corner.

It's also not a TV, it's just a monitor. From what I was told it takes both VGA and DVI inputs, and it has an RS232 port for controlling brightness etc.

HD looks great on it, the colours are good, and you can easily view it from almost 90 degrees to the side without any real loss of color or contrast. Then again, you really have to be at least 3 or 4 metres away from it to be able to see the whole image comfortably.

There are 12 (yes, twelve!) fans on the back of it to provide cooling, which I guess you need every bit you can get of, considering the monitor uses 1500 watts when in use.

I think their target market is high-end home cinemas, but at that price and at that power usage, I would think an HD projector would be more economical. The monitor is useful in daylight though, you can't really say that for most projectors.