Mashable article re: the "death" of plasma tech

[Brad]

http://mashable.com/2012/05/11/panasonic-plasma-tv/

Panasonic, one of the last major TV manufacturers to champion plasma TVs, is now probably regretting that decision. The company just posted a $10 billion loss for the year, and one of its biggest losers is the plasma TV category, where sales fell way short of expectations.

Plasma TV sales only hit about 59% of what the company had predicted. Revenue on Panasonic’s balance sheet from plasma sets was $3.5 billion, down from $6 billion the year before.

Once the hottest kind of TV you could get, the plasma TV has seen tough times in recent years. Many manufacturers (notably, Pioneer) have abandoned the technology, noting a lack of consumer demand. After Panasonic acquired Pioneer’s industry-leading plasma tech in 2009, it began a valiant effort to promote and market the advantages of plasma TV. Looking at the numbers today, it clearly hasn’t worked.

The question remains: Why has plasma display technology fallen so far out of favor with TV buyers? A combination of factors in the industry and the consumer market have conspired to shut plasma TVs out of showrooms — and consumer living rooms.

“Plasma is a great technology that is suffering,” says Raymond Soneira, president of DisplayMate, a display-analysis company. “It has some advantages over LCDs but also has some disadvantages as well.”

On the plus side, plasmas can create much darker blacks, have excellent viewing angles, more accurate color and no motion blur, Soneira says. However, LCDs are much brighter, which can be an advantage in well-lit rooms, which tends to be the case at retail. They also don’t weigh as much and consumer less power than plasma sets.

Besides those technical details, there’s the perception that LCD technology is newer, and therefore superior. It’s not — LCD screens had been around for years before the first plasma sets came out, but LCD technology hadn’t been adapted for larger displays until the last decade. Big-screen LCDs came to places like Best Buy well after plasma models, though, so to consumers it was the “hot new thing” — a mindset that LCD makers such as Samsung and Sharp were only too happy to aggressively exploit.

SEE ALSO: Panasonic’s 103-Inch 3D Plasma Could Be Yours for $100,000
As the industry began to shift toward LCD, the technology has improved greatly since its debut, dulling if not altogether nullifying plasma sets’ many onscreen advantages. Meanwhile, the manufacturing of panels consolidated around just a few large-scale companies, making LCDs cheaper to produce for everyone.

There was also the dreaded “burn-in” issue, where customers believed watching the same material continuously (like a headline scroll on a news channel) would permanently “burn” the image into a plasma screen. It’s a real issue, but it actually takes much longer use than any normal person would watch a single image. In addition, new features on plasma sets all but eliminate the problem. Still, burn-in got a lot of press, and the damage was done.

Finally, there’s the simple fact that people don’t buy TVs that often. At this point, pretty much everyone who was going to buy an HDTV has done so, and novel technologies like 3D aren’t doing much to convince consumers to upgrade again. Even Panasonic’s LCD numbers fell about 30% short of expectations, and the size of the TV market has been shrinking from a peak of 35 million sets sold in 2009, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. There’s clearly a general cooling of the TV market in general.

However, the falling demand for TVs has hit plasma particularly hard.

It’s a shame, because even though LCD tech has shown a lot of improvement, plasma displays have inherent advantages, primarily because the tech doesn’t require a backlight — unlike LCDs, which twist crystals in individual pixels to affect the light passing through, plasma pixels illuminate themselves. Before Pioneer stopped making plasma TVs, it had demonstrated models with theoretically infinite contrast and razor-thin designs, showing off the benefits of a plasma display.

Why do you think plasma TV is on life support? Have your say in the comments.

thoughts? it'll be a sad, sad day when the misinformed staff at the big box stores finally put the nail in plasma's coffin.

[Suave]

Thanks for sharing this Brad.

A lot of "strange" things happen in the background in the TV business that have led to the sinking state of many TV manufacturers. Many of the big TV manufacturers have been losing a lot of money in the TV business in the last several years - however companies like Panasonic and Sony have continued operating their TV business since other arms of their companies were profitable. I recently heard that Korean companies, like Samsung and LG, appearantly receive a lot of funding from the government and hence make it even more difficult for companies like Sony and Panasonic to compete.

The article above says that Panasonic's efforts to promote plasma tech to consumers failed. Over the last few years we seen a big shift of advertising funds going from topic-related magazines/media to home/lifestyle and women's magazines - was this a right move? It sure doesn't seem like it now...

But perhaps the most important fact stated in the article (in my opinion) is that consumers simply are not interested in upgrading their TVs nearly as often as the TV manufacturers would like them to. Way over estimating TV sales is one of the primary reasons why the big TV manufacturers are losing so much money today.

It'll be interesting to see how this continues to play out...

[Brad]

I think the main issue with that (the lack of upgrading) is that people don't have a *need* to. I bought my TV in 2008 and I have yet to see something that makes me think I *need* to update. I am the consumer the companies should be gunning for...someone who wants the best and is willing to pay for it, buying higher MSRP, higher margin sets. Focusing on low MSRP, low margin items isn't the way forward. Thing is, the consumer like me won't buy unless we are blown away, and nothing I've seen since 08 has blown me away!

Instead of wasting time with internet ready TV sets (I need another internet ready device in my house like a I need another hole in my face) and 3D (most of which looks sub-par) TV manufacturers *should* be striving to produce better quality images and processing. I'd rather they be good at the blood and guts than all the frilly extras like silly 3D and networking the Tv so I can show pictures off a computer (if I want to do that I'll buy a $110 Apple TV)

There aren't too many areas in today's tech world where 4 year old technology still trumps that of today, but TV tech is one of them. It needs to change!

[dakmart]

I think the main issue with that (the lack of upgrading) is that people don't have a *need* to. I bought my TV in 2008 and I have yet to see something that makes me think I *need* to update. I am the consumer the companies should be gunning for...someone who wants the best and is willing to pay for it, buying higher MSRP, higher margin sets. Focusing on low MSRP, low margin items isn't the way forward. Thing is, the consumer like me won't buy unless we are blown away, and nothing I've seen since 08 has blown me away!

Instead of wasting time with internet ready TV sets (I need another internet ready device in my house like a I need another hole in my face) and 3D (most of which looks sub-par) TV manufacturers *should* be striving to produce better quality images and processing. I'd rather they be good at the blood and guts than all the frilly extras like silly 3D and networking the Tv so I can show pictures off a computer (if I want to do that I'll buy a $110 Apple TV)

There aren't too many areas in today's tech world where 4 year old technology still trumps that of today, but TV tech is one of them. It needs to change!

TV marketing 101: There's a reason why it's hard to buy a high-end TV these days without 3D capability and streaming apps. It's because manufacturers must include them in their sets, lest they be seen as technology laggards, and because it doesn't cost that much to add them to the sets (if you don't believe me on that one, consider that most of today's sets are cheaper than their 2008 equivalents, which have neither feature).

In the television world (actually, in the manufacturing world in general), features vs performance has never been an either/or proposition -- more money buys you both better performance and more features. The trick is finding a set at your price point that gives you the best performance with the features you want. And yes, there are still great performing TVs out there if you know where to look -- Panasonic's 2012 line of plasmas has been getting rave reviews, for example, and Samsung's plasmas aren't far behind. No, no current set is as good as the Kuro was, but the Kuro was a niche product that while the Panny and Samsung sets are affordably priced for the most part. And while you and I believe the value of higher-margin products, we're in a minority and there aren't enough of us out there to enable manufacturers to concentrate on higher-end products.

Finally, why the hating on 3D and streaming? Nobody said you had to use them, but it's nice to have them should you want to watch Netflix without having to turn on the XBox (or get firmware updates as they come out) or see Hugo as it was meant to be seen. If these features are dealbreakers for you, your loss, I suppose.

[Jimi]

I agree with Suave

perhaps the most important fact stated in the article (in my opinion) is that consumers simply are not interested in upgrading their TVs nearly as often as the TV manufacturers would like them to. Way over estimating TV sales is one of the primary reasons why the big TV manufacturers are losing so much money today.

My t.v. (a Panasonic plasma , is nearly 3 years old) and it still looks better to me than some new LED and LCD sets. The original article in this thread mentions a 103 inch Panasonic Plasma 3D set for $100,000, I've seen an 80 inch LED 3D t.v. for $6500. I realize it's a smaller t.v. and a different technology but that is quite a big difference. Plasma seems way more expensive when you get to the really large screens. Still , I hope they don't abandon the plasma format unless they can give us a better picture in some other format for roughly the same cost. The manufactures keep telling us that these t.v.'s will last so long (100,000 hrs etc.) then at the same time they think people will keep changing their t.v.'s every few years. It's unrealistic of manufacturers to expect people to keep buying a new t.v. every 2 or 3 years etc.