Laser TV

[toomanycats]

This sounds promising, anyone else hear anything about it? It's supposed to display 90% of the colors the human eye can see, be cheaper and lighter.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/NATIONAL/Laser-TV-predicted-to-be-death-of-plasma/2006/10/10/1160246121576.html

[lfcrule1972]

Yeah I saw similar yesterday, honestly a new better product is always just around the corner eh ?

http://www.ferrago.com/portal/click/?id=1229295

[lfcrule1972]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/home-theatre/laser-tv-here-comes-the-plasma-killer/2006/10/11/1160246198806.html

This is a better link to the article I saw...

[toomanycats]

I was thinking about getting a new TV but I am going to wait now. I may buy amother HD LCD Projector in the meantime if my present one blows but I am definately waiting on the TV. I wonder how it actually works.

[toomanycats]

Ask and answer. Apparently if uses a DLP chip to aim the laser beam which means you will be looking thru a sheet of plastic to see the picture. I am not a big fan of rear projection because my eyes always pick up the grain from the plastic screen the light shines thru. I wonder if there will be a projector model.

[TNT]

Maybe I should hold out on buying the HD I had my eye on. . .

@TMC:
I think the fact that they are experimenting with phones to project, they will probably come out with a projector.

[toomanycats]

I wonder if their using a color wheel. The color wheel produces a rainbow effect that bothers the heck out of me.

[nwg]

I wonder if their using a color wheel. The color wheel produces a rainbow effect that bothers the heck out of me.

5x speed wheels are supposed to have no rainbow effect.

Even though the colours are better with DLP, I am sticking with LCD.

By the time I can afford a HD projector, maybe they have 1080 3 chip DLP's by then (no RE ). There is already 1080p LCD projectors coming soon and should be around £2000. They were a lot more not long ago.

Panasonic AE1000 (replaces the AE900)

[RFBurns]

This isnt anything new. The concept of using a red, green and blue laser beam instead of beams from a cathode ray gun assembly or LCD emitters has been around since the mid 90's. Problem was...the blue laser element was not easy nor cheap to construct, nor was the materials available at that time good enough to make the beam reliable.

Blue is the "coldest" color of the 3 needed for producing a complete color image. Because of this, blue crt's and blue LCD emitters and blue plasma emitters run twice as hard than their green and red counterparts. This is evidenced in the crt's where the blue crt in a projection unit or blue gun inside a direct crt tube would always go weak long before the green or red.

Had the elements used to make the laser diode been capable of reliability and intensity, not only would laser tv had been introduced LONG before the plasmas, but blu-ray DVD would have been around too.

Now there are newer materials that can be used to make a blue laser beam that not only lasts, but produces the fine beam necessary for extreme sharp focusing point that would match the green and red. Because the beam must be run twice as hard to produce the intensity necessary to maintain "grey scale" or color balance (known as purity), focusing the intense beam would produce side effects such as fuzziness around the beam center point, in turn would not make a very sharp image required for HD.

Dispite the fact that the units would run on less electricity than its plasma coutnerpart or lcd counterpart, it does use laser beams, very similar to what you would find in a DVD player or CD player or computer optic drive. Those go bad due to usage and componet age, the laser tv would be no exception to that fact. In time, the laser emitters too would go out due to age and usage. Quite possibly sooner than the counterparts. Although the materials used for laser emitters are far better and do last longer and produce more defined beams at higher intensity, the laser element in the laser tv may or may not have the expected life span that is anticipated.

In a lab, the prototypes are not watched the same amount of hours as a tv sitting inside a living room. Although test after test are run on the prototypes, they are in what is called a "controlled environment and conditions"...meaning they turn it on, take readings and measurements, which can take up to an hour or less, perhaps a bit more, then the unit is shut off for days or even weeks while the engineers go over the data and make changes where necessary. It is not until a final prototype is built that the unit is put to "real world tests". But even those tests do not replicate actual real world use and in real world environments.

Like anything that is brand new...and recent history proves it...there are always some flaws or bugs that get through. Nothing is perfect no matter what is done to try to make it perfect, but if I were anxious to purchase the latest thing...I would wait a bit until version 2 or 3 hits the shelves before forking out several grand for watching pictures.

[toomanycats]

Well that cleared that up. It seems that LCD's are going to be the dominating force. The article I linked to was one of the few that are starting to predict the end to Plasma TV's. I did see the new Sony LCD direct view at Sears and the latency was better than the rest but still noticeable. It's gonna be a while before I get one. I can't believe anybody would buy a TV or Projector with moving parts, it just seems archaic to me, it still is a "mechanical" TV.

[nwg]

In the UK, anything over 42" is more common as plasma. LCD's are definitely getting popular and there has been quite a few £400 32" for sale. My brother picked up a 32" IDTV for just £550 and it is excellent. I saw HD for the first time on a TV (we are many years behind the US in terms of HD).

[toomanycats]

You may be behind in HD but I would give up a few years for some decent Fish n' Chips with a bowl of Trifles as desert.

[nwg]

You may be behind in HD but I would give up a few years for some decent Fish n' Chips with a bowl of Trifles as desert.

Sky HD has only recently started and then there is only a few channels and they don't do HD all the time.

The BBC have started Digital HD trials in London but any possibility of it national is something like 2012.

Something like 40% of the population don't even have Digital TV and is still on analogue.

HD DVD and Blu Ray should be out in the UK/Europe by Christmas or maybe November.

[Kabuchan]

So are the laser TVs the same as the LCD TV/monitor I just bought? Is it the one that works with the tiny mirrors? It's picture is so clear and bright.

[nwg]

So are the laser TVs the same as the LCD TV/monitor I just bought? Is it the one that works with the tiny mirrors? It's picture is so clear and bright.

No. LCD's are not lasers.