Laser TV

Image Copyright 2008 Engadget.com

January 7, 2008 – Las Vegas, Nevada

Mitsubishi heralded in the New Year in style Monday night at the first full day of the 2008 CES by unveiling its commercially ready Laser TV. The reviews are in and it’s a winner! While there’s no immediate word on the price and availability, we’ll post this information just as soon as its released. The photos and a few more of this 65-inch beauty can be found over at Engadget.

Image Copyright 2008 Engadget.com

Dimensions:

While Laser TV is not wafer-thin like OLED, it is proving to be the perfect standard for those in the market for large screen, high definition televisions. The use of miniature lasers is more compact than traditional lamp-based TVs, because space for optical filters, lenses and other parts are not needed. The result: thinner cabinets. The manufacturing costs are also reduced.

Competing Technologies:

LED – LEDs produce a dispersed light over a wide angle. Lasers produce a tightly focused beam of light with nearly no etendue, a nerd word for how “spread out” light is. A tighter beam of light produces better picture quality. Lasers are magnitudes brighter than LED too.

SED – Developed jointly by Toshiba and Canon, we’ll be lucky if this technology ever becomes commercially available due to prolonged litigation and negotiations. SED uses phosphors, so burn-in will be a concern and purists will argue the black levels are weak, but the biggest obstacle will be competitive pricing.

OLED – OLED is better suited for smaller televisions in the range of 27-inch and below. Anything larger is too cost prohibitive and the longevity really must really be called into question. Some reports place the lifespan of an OLED TV at 5000 hours or less, with unsettling news that oxygenation will deteriorate those glowing organic critters.

LCD – Currently the best value in the market, but displays images on in their native resolution, resulting in poorly scaled images and have weak black levels compared to other displays. While the viewing angles for LCDs have improved, Laser TV has incredible viewing angles, with no lag, ghosting or distorted colors.

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