Panasonic upgrades its 103-inch plasma: sorry, early adopters

Well, don't you feel silly. After springing for that 103-incher last year, Panasonic has made a mockery of your spendy home theater with a 150-inch display at CES, and now an upgraded version of the original 103-inch behemoth. The new TH-103PF10UK upgrades the video processing, anti-reflective coating, "wireless presentation capabilities," media card reader and adds dual HDMI, but the actual display seems to be the same as last time around. There's also a 100,000 hour warranty included, which is only fitting since we're guessing this new 103-inch won't be selling for much less than $70 grand.

[Via Crave]

[LegendZ28 @ Feb 25th 2008 11:26AM]

Crap, and I just ordered two... you know, for dual display.

[tamoghno @ Feb 25th 2008 12:00PM]

why stop at dual ? make it quad . flight simulator will be awesome on it.

oh wait, first you need to buy ...ummmm... a football ground ?

[C.K. @ Feb 25th 2008 11:28AM]

I'll be expecting my $100 gift card is in the mail.

[phanbouy @ Feb 25th 2008 12:52PM]

your avatar is oh so wrong and yet so right.

[toxicpiano @ Feb 25th 2008 11:36AM]

Personally I would just get a projector instead.

[Ray @ Feb 25th 2008 11:41AM]

For that price you could just buy a drive-in theater.
Course you couldn't watch porn then...

[BarryBee @ Feb 25th 2008 11:44AM]

Or could you...? AAAAAHHHHH.

[Jonathan @ Feb 25th 2008 11:46AM]

How bad can you possibly feel for somebody who can afford to buy one of these?

Personally, I hate them.

[oZone @ Feb 25th 2008 11:59AM]

Jealous much? LOL.

[kal326 @ Feb 25th 2008 11:50AM]

Who cares about an updated 103" version, I want the 150" model.

[Steve @ Feb 25th 2008 11:52AM]

$70 Grand - thats $70 000?? Surely not!

[bob sakamano @ Feb 25th 2008 11:55AM]

150 inch? Nice

103? Not so much

[Alex Roberts @ Feb 25th 2008 12:00PM]

"$70 grand"

Huh? Seventy dollars grand? Seventy grand dollars?

Does not compute!

[MobileMan @ Feb 25th 2008 12:08PM]

Wow thats BIG!... I just need a big room now..

[Dan Davis @ Feb 25th 2008 12:14PM]

Seriously... what are the dimensions of this beast?

[M @ Feb 25th 2008 12:15PM]

if you're an early adopter, my guess is that you're either a: pretty well off or b: pretty well-connected so you can sell off the 103 and get the 150. and if you're a true religion early adopter, why worry about the discrepancy eh?

[Robobagins @ Feb 25th 2008 12:18PM]

All that and only dual HDMI? Come on!

[Mike @ Feb 25th 2008 12:18PM]

The people that could afford to be early-adopters on the 103 incher can probably also afford to upgrade to the new hotness.

[Jakob @ Feb 25th 2008 1:02PM]

Oh I feel sorry for you (DR - A Danish Public Service Channel)

[Evan @ Feb 25th 2008 2:01PM]

$70,000? Some people spend $70,000 renovating their kitchen, but their food still stinks. Some people spend $70,000 on a BMW, but they are still stuck behind a Kia on their commute home. It's amazing how many ways people find to waste $70,000!

[andy @ Feb 25th 2008 2:20PM]

70k BMW's draw cop attention. I blow by them daily in the 99 Hyundai.

[Christian @ Feb 25th 2008 2:44PM]

Dude...... its a Hyundai!

[phrank @ Feb 25th 2008 3:33PM]

Let me rearrange this information with my own absurd conjecture in semi-interesting ways.

Given the 100K hour warranty, this television costs $16 bucks a day to have on 24 hours a day for eleven years (plus the extraordinary cost of building, maintaining and fueling your own small power plant to provide electricity for your TV). However, we'll assume that in eleven years, pretending that the price corollary of Moore's Law applies to televisions, this will cost closer to $500, and who can afford a $70K TV now, yet would want a $500 TV in 2019, which would be about 75 2008 dollars given the current rate of inflation.

To continue on this ridiculous tangent, with a 5% interest rate, I could buy this $500 TV in eleven years by putting less than $300 in a savings account now.

So in summary, in 2019, your $70,000 TV's warranty will expire, and my $500 TV will have cost me $300, and will be brand new. Pretend math FTW!

[Jared @ Feb 25th 2008 12:29PM]

I love when people use moore's law as if it were actually a law and not a theory. Moore's law had nothing to do with pricing, but rather transistor deinsity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moores_law

BTW just to be a jerk, you didn't factor inflation into your calculation

[phrank @ Feb 25th 2008 5:30PM]

The Jared IS a Jerk Theorem:
("absurd conjecture"+"pretend math")^("just fucking around, dummy")/("Jared"-"sense of humor")=STF(x)^U

:)

[Mike @ Feb 25th 2008 12:37PM]

Something tells me that 150" LCD TVs aren't going to cost $500 in 11 years...

[Jared @ Feb 25th 2008 12:47PM]

I do have a sense of humor and because of that I appreciated your second formula much more than your original tangent.

[Ceralor @ Feb 25th 2008 3:49PM]

Still, what's incredible is the 11-year continuous-use warranty. Don't believe me?

100,000 Hrs / 24 hr/day = 4166.666 Days / 365 day/yr = 11.4 years.

Now that's what I call a warranty!

[jmiday @ Feb 25th 2008 4:11PM]

i believed you.

[Rick @ Feb 25th 2008 7:58PM]

The price is a tad high. We just had a custom built rear projected 105" display using theater grade DLP. The entire project was about $60K, so for this product to be a viable alternative, should be around $50.

[Allen @ Feb 25th 2008 9:18PM]

At BestBuy I got to observe one of these being put in. A Magnolia team was a vendor for the transaction between Panasonic and the customer (no, Magnolia does not sell these direct), and in order to get it in the customers house they actually had to cut out the exterior wall of the room he was putting it in, then build a brace so they could cut two load bearing posts out of the way, then insert the TV only to reinstall the supports and use the brace as the mount in the wall (combined with two more steel I-beams), and then of course the construction crew had to re-build the outside wall.

The TV cost $100,000 back then, but the construction and the rental of the crane (this was on the second floor of the house) must of cost at least that.

The 150 incher though is absolutely impossible. The only way Panasonic ships those is in the nose of a Boeing 747, and only one at a time can fit (it shifts too much to risk two screens bumping into each other). Pricing is expected to be half a million dollars (if it ever comes out), BEFORE the shipping costs which you pay yourself.

So yes, its possible you can get the 150" sometime, but you will need to charter the services of the plane, crew, land transport (you won't tow this home with an F-450), and construction. You could of course have it installed while the house is being built but I highly doubt you will want this braced to the supports while the house is unfinished.

In the end, the 150" screen will probably become a commercial application, if it ever comes out.