Mitsubishi's laser TV coming to CES

Frank DeMartin, vice president for marketing and product development at Mitsubishi, casually mentioned in a recent NY Times article that the company will be showing off its large-screen laser TVs at the next CES (in January, put it in your calendar!). As we mentioned in 2006, the new tri-laser projectors are said to have higher picture quality and a larger range of color than LCD or plasma screens, making them a bit of a threat to the status quo -- although currently it looks like the TVs will be promoted to the "premium" end of the market, thus waylaying any direct competition (save for the videophile crowd). Then again, since we'll all be getting these under the tree this year anyway, we're not sure what the big deal is.

[Tyk @ Jun 25th 2007 10:54AM]

This is just a new source of light and televisions based off them would be projection based would compete with MMD televisions and front projectors... not lcd or plasma panels.

In anycase, you would still need an mmd of some sort to produce the image. That would become the limiting factor.

I would be most concerned about longevity of the solid state lasers... given how bright they need to be for larger sets.

[Clinton @ Jun 25th 2007 12:49PM]

If "MMD" means micromirror device, then most likely Mitsubishi will a DLP Digital Micromirror Device (DMD).

[loker @ Jun 29th 2007 6:15AM]

nope, no micro-mirror device...they can put thousands of lasers on one chip which implied to me 3 lasers (RGB) will make up one pixel...

[kballs @ Jun 26th 2007 8:25PM]

You can also use LCoS chips as they are reflective like DLP... or you could also use 3 panel LCD (using the lasers as 3 individual light sources for monochrome LCD panels - basically the same as what they do now with a light bulb and 3 color filters).

The point is this is for front/rear projection, not flat panels.

I would rather see this in a front projector (same with LED setups ) than in a rear projection "box"... but they will need to be even brighter for that to happen... while they have far superior color accuracy, lower heat, near-zero startup time, etc., they still can't compete with the arc lamps on lumens.

[Mile @ Jun 25th 2007 10:56AM]

You would think that "burn in" would be a horrible problem with Laser TVs, wouldn't you?

[paloooz @ Jun 25th 2007 11:14AM]

Now if you watch The View you _really can_ go blind!

[Blake @ Jun 25th 2007 11:15AM]

Thats a pretty picture in the post.

[Jason @ Jun 25th 2007 12:01PM]

Dr. Evil already has one of these sets with frickin laser beams.

[Mr. Picklesworth @ Jun 25th 2007 12:57PM]

No!
Insolent fool, Dr. Evil will only accept /Evil/ laser beams.

[alex @ Jun 25th 2007 1:13PM]

Are there any sharks involved with these lasers?

[Michael @ Jun 25th 2007 2:03PM]

If you read the earlier article, it says that the thickness of the TVs is half that of a plasma TV. It may be a projection based technology, but not like current DLP sets. Also, projection based shouldn't have to worry about burn-in, and should be much lighter in weight than plasma.

[erich.strasser @ Jun 26th 2007 3:15PM]

2008 could be the year of the new TV technologies. 1. OLED-TV, 2. Laser-TV, 3.SED-TV, 4. FED-TV, HDR-TV, TMOS? All news and informations about all technologies at http://www.oled-display.info

[Cough @ Jun 26th 2007 10:41PM]

Someone did research a couple years ago and found out that if the MMD (aka DLP) mirrors were small enough, the phase of the light can be controlled to make a 3d effect similar to holography. Gotta wonder about that.

[erik @ Aug 9th 2007 12:12AM]

German Laser-TV news and Infos can be find at http://www.sed-fernseher.eu