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Flatscreens dazzle at CES

New TVs are thinner, bigger than ever with superb picture quality

By Larry Thomas -- Furniture Today, January 23, 2005

Las Vegas — The flat-screen televisions that dazzled attendees at the annual Consumer Electronics Show held here this month employ a variety of cutting-edge technologies to deliver superb picture quality, but they have a couple of simple, common threads.

They're extraordinarily thin. And the screens are really, really big.

Gone are the days when TVs came in only 21- 23- and 25-inch screen sizes. Today's plasma, LCD (liquid crystal display) and DLP (digital light processing) televisions are available in an almost infinite number of screen sizes, but every one of them is only two to three inches deep.

Traditional TVs, known to electronics junkies as CRT sets (for cathode ray tube), are at least 20 inches deep.

But what the newfangled sets lack in depth, they make up for in screen size. The 25- or 27-inch TVs many Americans now have in their homes are postage stamps when compared with, say, Samsung's new 57-inch LCD screen or LG Electronics' new 71-inch plasma model that attracted hordes of CES attendees.

Samsung, in fact, displayed LCD models in nine screen sizes ranging from 15 inches to 57 inches, not to mention six plasma TVs ranging from 37 inches to 80 inches.

Interestingly, Korea-based LG claimed its 71-inch plasma was the "world's largest production plasma," even though the screen was nine inches smaller than Samsung's biggest plasma. An LG spokesman said his company could make that claim because the LG model would be available in March (suggested retail: $75,000), while Samsung's giant plasma wouldn't be on the market until midyear, at the earliest.

Samsung, meanwhile, claimed its 57-inch LCD was the "world's largest" of that genre, but archrival Sharp made the same claim on its new 65-inch LCD for the upper-end Aquos line.

"There are no standard screen sizes anymore," said Mark Phanco, senior vice president of sales for Bush Furniture's home products group, whose lineup features furniture for the high-tech gadgets. "Our job is to provide solutions for whatever size the customer chooses."

Even if the consumer electronics industry could agree on a few standard screen sizes, that probably wouldn't help much because the total width of the sets varies markedly. Screens in the wide-screen format are, you guessed it, wider than sets with standard-format screens.

Plus, a growing number of TVs, including models unveiled by Toshiba, Panasonic and Pioneer, have speakers built onto the sides of the unit.

Pioneer didn't make any "world's largest" claims at CES, but did unveil a 50-inch plasma screen, while Toshiba focused on DLP, which actually is a proprietary technology developed by Texas Instruments.

Texas Instruments, best known for its calculators and computers, had a huge projection DLP TV in its CES booth, but the company said it has no plans to sell TVs under its own name. Instead, it will sell the DLP chip to established TV manufacturers.

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