A few days ago the news that Pioneer, manufacturer of some of the best TV sets ever made, hit the net that they will cease manufacturing of their plasma panels. The reality is, amidst high prices and misguided customers who think that modern plasmas have limited lifetime, the LCD technology has won the market, even if inferior — according to many expert A/V reviewers. Because of this, Pioneer will outsource their future plasma panels to Matsushita, who recently came up with a 30000:1 contrast ratio panels — directly competing with Pioneer’s thus far superiority. In a new interview with Gizmodo, Pioneer says that Kuro will continue to live, but LCD panels will also be sold by Pioneer, using Sharp’s panels (Sharp LCD panels are known to have banding issues though, but there is not much they can do as Sharp almost owns Pioneer). What all this have to do with OSAlert? The Kuro/Elite plasma Pioneer line runs on Linux. I bought for my household recently their 50″ 5010FD model, which is indeed as good as reviews around the net and magazines say it is.
Pioneer Claims That Kuro Will Live
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Pity there is so much FUD going around about Plasma screens.
Energy usage is one where “tests” reveal LCD’s are more efficient, which might be the case for when you have a scene which lights up every pixeland keeps them lit over a period of time but what they fail to point out is that LCD’s have constant power draw regardles of how many pixels are lit where as Plasma only uses energy for the pixels that are lit for the scene.
Coupled that with the New generation Plasma screens superior display capabilities, same life if not more so and non screen burn that plagued the earlier Plasmas and you have a much better display device that LCD’s can’t compete against. There is nothing else yet to challenge Plasmas in this regard.
I hope to be able to afford a Kuro 50″ some time towards the end of this year or early next and given I will be ouputting content from my PC I see it as a great tool for media creation as well.
Yes, the Kuro has an “exact” resolution mode, so it can function as a PC monitor without blurring.
It’s a great TV indeed.
Its is definitely Sad that Pioneer is going away with their Plasma I bought a 50″ Plasma Elite 4 Years Ago and it still runs great. No Fading whatsoever and I use it alot. Play games on it.
And the Plasmas Run Linux also. What a shame. If you want a good Plasma you better get the last ones Manufactured by Pioneer before they switch to the other company.
-j
http://www.rubioturf.com
Edited 2008-03-07 22:35 UTC
I can just see the OSAlert article now
I mean, after all, a very large percentage of assembly lines that are automated are controlled by some variation of an OS, somewhere, somehow, or more than one separate OS, or embedded software (no readily defined OS), so why not cover any other product for the sake of that? Thus, it would make as much sense for covering the Plasma TV stuff for the sake it has an assembly line controlled (to some degree, or at least monitored) by Linux as it would for drawing the Parallels between an assembly line producing condoms (human anti-virus) and discussing the security-related software (McAffee, perhaps) so we have the nice rhyme of safe sex powered by safe hex, or something aroused in the mind along those lines 
Or, perhaps it’s wiser to say, “We think the Plasma TV stuff is good enough to cover because we cover so much more than OS stuff these days” and not try to make excuses because you feel hard-up for justifying things (why worried about readers getting hot and bothered over it?)
Please read the forum rules very carefully, because this kind of comment is covered there. OSAlert does NOT cover just OS news. It is a generic technology site.
And yes, the Kuro DOES use Linux EXTENSIVELY. We cover embedded Linux news a lot.
It would be nice, however, if you included a link to some information about the Kuro’s use of Linux.
There is no tech information on their web site, AFAIK. You have to download some PDFs to see the various license information to get a hint. I believe they use the Linux kernel, the network stack (the Elite Kuros have ethernet support), and even the USB stack (the Kuro has a USB port to playback media). I am personally surprised that sites like LinuxDevices.com haven’t followed up on this for the last 4 years. It is commonly known among A/V enthusiasts that these sets use Linux.
Ok, I downloaded the Kuro Elite PDF manual, and there is the full text of the LGPL and GPL in there, ALONG this piece of text:
“The Pioneer Plasma Television is powered by utilizing the Linux operating system. The machine readable copy of the corresponding source code is available for the cost of distribution.”
So, quit nagging now. If you want more info, email the LinuxDevices.com guys to interview Pioneer.
it’s a real shame that they stop proucing their own panels.
if i had the money i woud have bought a pioneer plasma tv
but i can’t blame them, the mass still remembers the problems with 1st generation panels
Sony exited the Plasma business. Good enough for me. The two top LCDs are Sony and Samsung, whose panels are apparently produced at the same factory (according to a couple of videophiles I’ve talked to). Not sure how true that is, but their picture quality is very similar.
Personally, I bought a 46″ Sharp LCD (64 series) before Black Friday and couldn’t be happier. Image is clear, no banding (that I’ve seen in 3 months). There’s pixelation on close-up fast moving scenes, but I think that’s due to bandwidth issues from DirecTV. As far as plasma goes, it’s dying technology IMO regardless of the perception of “better”. Also, I don’t want a space heater hanging on my wall making my already $300/month electric bills even higher.
And the Pioneer runs Linux? Is that a selling point? Does that mean I have to run xfree86cfg to switch between 480i and 1080p and hope it works? Bad joke, yes I know.
The Pioneer’s selling point is not Linux (in fact, they seem to keep it a secret as much as they can). Pioneer’s selling point is simple: they have the BEST tv sets EVER created. Every reviewer/user says that, not me. Read around.
As for Sony going with LCDs, they made it clear why a month ago: because they sell much better. Consumers are misguided about plasmas, they think they have a limited lifetime and that they burn easily. Both lies, for modern plasmas. But the market is what it is, LCDs sell like hotcakes, and they are CHEAP. So Sony went with the flow, not with the best technology.
Granted, LCDs have got to be cheaper to produce. But quality-wise vs. plasma, I believe that gap is shrinking. As I stood in CC, BB, Sears, and Tweeter for 8 hours looking at panels (yes, it sucked) personal preference kicked in and out came the plastic.
You can still get more screen for your money, when you go plasma, but still…weight, heat, glare…those were large factors when making my purchase.
What didn’t factor was 120Hz processing. Everything I read on CNet said that it’s marketing hype, and does nothing for the picture. Personally, I went for the response time (4ms) to try to get as close to the 0 benchmark of a plasma.
“Pioneer’s selling point is simple: they have the BEST tv sets EVER created. Every reviewer/user says that, not me. Read around.”
So, I guess you don’t get Consumer Reports? They rated Panasonic Plasma TVs better than Pioneer in all but the 42″ class. (And their repair history is better too.)
“Consumers are misguided about plasmas, they think they have a limited lifetime and that they burn easily. Both lies, for modern plasmas.”
They still burn-in, just much less than they used to – due to improved materials and a few tricks. Even LCDs can burn-in.
“So Sony went with the flow, not with the best technology.”
Sony saw the handwriting on the wall. Plasma is a dead end. OLEDs will replace both Plasma & LCDs as fast as they can be scaled up, which may be a couple of years yet. Meanwhile, LED backlit LCDs will be the next big thing as power use starts to factor in.
Show us any OELD’s that are larger than a mobile sized view screen?
All promise and no delivery there and probably won’t be for quite some years.
Power consumption concerns are misplaced for Plasmas vs LCD’s and the info that is thrown around in LCD’s favour is when a full colour test pattern or white full screen image is used over a sustained period of time. Only then are LCD’s less power hungrey. Thing is that Plasmas only use power per pixel and even then consumption is based on how lit the pixel is. LCD’s have a constant draw on power that is no different if the screen is black or full white.
Weight issues are again something which depends on a few factors and yes, given a 50″ top of the range plasma vs LCD the weight will be on the plasmas side but then no LCD can touch a plasma when it comes to Black reproduction which is one key element towards picture reproduction.
Also, a plasma shown in a brightly lit sales environment without calibration and amongst LCD pannels will not do it any justice. Sort of like going to a cinema and watching the movie with the lights left on and with each wall of the cinema showing something different. Only thing better than a plasma for picture reproduction is a good old TV tube.
Unfortunately for you, Sony released an 11 inch OLED in Japan.
Yes, and costs like $3000. Please be more serious when replying. OLEDs might be the future, but a future in 10 years, not today. For today, plasmas are still better.
Not serious? Compared to what? If you prefer to be a Luddite, so be it. The future is NOT plasma, period. Ask any Manufacturer and they’ll tell you (off the record) that plasma is at the end of its game. What is plasma besides TVs? LCDs are everywhere, and OLEDs are inching up every month.
If you need to justify your purchase of Plasma, that’s fine, but don’t do it by making false statements about other technologies. 10 years is a long time in the electronics business.
Ask, and thou shalt receive… well, a prototype anyways… read it and weep… a 27 inch HDTV by Sony!
http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/08/sonys-1-000-000-1-contrast-ratio…
Note that also all new Sony LCD televisions run on Linux. I got GPL/LGPL licenses on paper with mine (W3000). Sources for the various models’ kernels, busybox, glibc etc. can be downloaded from Sony’s web site.
I’ve watched TVs with all sorts of contrast ratios, from 500:1 to 10000:1, but for the most part it seems limited by the fact that everything is using 8bit/channel (for some panels this is not the case, but for the media you play on them, it is generally the case).
Of course, I like my blacks being darker, and whites being brighter, but in the end, the color resolution itself is the same. You’re still limited in the sense that a wholly dark image is going to look poor since it’s only got a few shades of black to play with. Gradients still look terrible, no matter how much dithering you use.
The more pressing problem is that if you keep increasing the contrast ratio while maintaining the same depth, the image starts to look a little strange, and you end up needing to turn the contrast down. In real life, a white shirt isn’t going to be 20x brighter than someone’s face; in reality you only have small glints on the high end of the brightness spectrum, which can be really effective. Naturally there are things you can do to try to simulate this or simply band-aid the problem, eventually 8-bit/channel is probably going to be a more significant problem than resolution or contrast ratio.
Already, I adjust my settings to way below it’s rated contrast ratio on my relatively wimpy LCD flat panel for anything other than movies, because it makes it so difficult to watch or play games on.