Pioneer officially ends in-house plasma production, Kuro LCDs coming soon

Say goodbye to Kuro as we knew (and loved) it, as Pioneer officially announced that after panel production of the next series of models is complete, it's ending all in-house plasma panel production and will build HDTVs based on panels bought elsewhere. The source went unnamed pending a final agreement, but Panasonic will likely follow up the 42-inch it's providing with plasmas of up to 60-inches. Due this fall are Kuro-edition LCDs, combining Pioneer's ultra-thin speakers and exacting picture quality standards with screens built by Sharp (hopefully this time sans-banding issues) that should see release Europe first. Other businesses affected are car audio, DJ equipment and Blu-ray players, but by streamlining operations and working closely with Sharp, it expects a return to profitability in 2010. Fans of deep black levels and accurate color reproduction probably shouldn't be alone right now, take a look at the .pdf and let the healing process begin in the comments. You're among friends, you're strong, you will get through this.

[Camperton @ Mar 7th 2008 2:59AM]

I'm a PQ fascist and my 50" Kuro is the best TV I have ever owned including CRT, especially when you consider the size. I'll be watching this very closely to see if Pio stay on their game.

[Sean @ Mar 7th 2008 3:04AM]

sad day ..
hopefully Pioneer will triumph sony at the LCD game and hopefully LCDs will be under 42 inches while they implement their superior technology into plasmas.

[Ted @ Mar 7th 2008 4:26AM]

Yeah I've got one too, this makes me sad...

[Seth @ Mar 8th 2008 12:53PM]

I think the Kuro is great, but I hate when people say "its the best x I've ever owned"

I mean, if its a gadget, your newest one should always logically be the best youve owned, right?

Plus, no one knows who you are or what tvs you have owned in the past, so the reference is useless.

just sayin

[Montusama @ Mar 7th 2008 3:13AM]

So, if Pioneer is restructuring....that means they're losing money? However according to a quick look at the pdf file, its not that they are losing money, they just want to increase profit margins and market shares (which both lead to either higher stock value or more value in the company....) To me this means a couple things.

Does Pioneer fear someone wants to buy them out? (Its possible)
Or Does Pioneer realize the market they are currently in isn't growing at the rate that businesses want them to grow at?

Please correct my economic's talk if their's any errors and opinions....

[ian9outof10 @ Mar 7th 2008 6:19AM]

Pioneer is already being slowly bought, by Sharp.

[Asterra @ Mar 7th 2008 3:18AM]

This presumably means that the concept Kuro that was originally slated for early 2009 - the one which was 100% black while on in a fully dark room - will never be sold. Sooo... hum. Guess I'll stick with my Fujitsu after all.

[YellowSphere @ Mar 7th 2008 6:18AM]

Your Fujitsu probably has a Panasonic panel inside it...

[Aron Trimble @ Mar 7th 2008 10:20AM]

There is always the possibility of them selling the tech to Panasonic...

In the end it's not a bad gig - they do the research to make awesome panels and get Panasonic to produce them...

Pioneer gets to reap the profits of selling good Plasmas as well as the profits of selling their tech to Panasonic

[Jon @ Mar 7th 2008 10:39AM]

"Pioneer is currently in discussions on the
feasibility of procuring panel modules that may incorporate the Company’s proprietary
technologies. Details will be announced as soon as they are finalized."

This gives some hope that the 9mm concept Kuro may one day be produced by a PDP manufacturer.

*crosses fingers*

[cmdwedge @ Mar 7th 2008 3:28AM]

If I was going to cry over the discontinuation of a product line, well, this would be it. :(

[Britboyj27 @ Mar 7th 2008 3:30AM]

Sharp? Really? I understand why but... man.

I'm glad I got the Elite Blu-Ray player while it's still truly Pioneer Elite.

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Mar 7th 2008 3:39AM]

This is terrible news. If Pioneer exits PDP, then I'll give up on TV forever and go back to watching stick puppets in a diorama. LCDs just ain't worth viewing.

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Mar 7th 2008 3:43AM]

LCD is the devil killing the Plasma Angel. Oh, HDTV Father why have you forsaken thy AV nerds?

[Vanillacide @ Mar 7th 2008 9:41AM]

The masses don't care about black levels, gamma ramps, flesh tone reproduction, color gamut, etc. -- all they care about is a cheap flat screen.

[Aron Trimble @ Mar 7th 2008 10:23AM]

The masses are stupid.

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Mar 7th 2008 10:51AM]

If they cared about color preproduction, we'd still have Trinitron TV's that are better than those produced 5 years ago.

[Duscrom @ Mar 7th 2008 11:08AM]

"The masses don't care about black levels, gamma ramps, flesh tone reproduction, color gamut, etc. -- all they care about is a cheap flat screen."

First, If we REALLY all cared about all those things, we'd still be using CRTs which are STILL better the plasma, and LCD for color and contrast levels.

Second... there still is nothing Cheap about HDTV displays. When an 32in LCD gets to $199, then we can talk cheap, but the average person doesn't have $1500 to spend on a decent sized plasma. Hell only reason i've got a nice 42in LCD, is because it was 50% off at CompUSA when they went under ($600 for a 42in LCD)

[CKMBA @ Mar 8th 2008 10:47AM]

Yea but tubes are still INTERLACED.

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Mar 8th 2008 2:29PM]

They aren't STILL interlaced, because they no longer make them and your assertion is incorrect in two ways:

One, the 1080 signal is interlaced and will be interlaced for a long time to come; progressive screens still have interlacing capability. If the signal is interlaced, then the picture may be interlaced as well. (Yes I know of schemes that try to work around that, but as the old saying goes in signal processing "Crap in, Crap out".

Two, There are 720p progressive scanning CRT's out there and I do own two CRT monitors that can progressively scan beyond 1080p; but again these are CRT monitors not CRT TV's.

[lentiman @ Mar 7th 2008 4:24AM]

D@mn! I'm glad I bought my PRO110 in the fall. You all is the suck now if you want to buy one. Suckas!

[NAVYGASER @ Mar 7th 2008 4:28AM]

Sad news indeed. I'm just glad I bought my Kuro when I did.

Unless Pioneer gives Panasonic or Sharp (or whoever they go with) their secret to the best picture on any Plasma or LCD bar none then maybe my plasma will be worth more used than when I bought it!

Should I box it up now and put it away until the stores run out of Kuros and then sell it on Ebay?......NEVER!

[Matt @ Mar 7th 2008 9:51AM]

They did. In fact they sold the Kuro plasma technology to Panasonic and will be transferring some of their engineers over to panny as well. This was in the japanese press yesterday. In other news - Matsushita (the parent company of National and Panasonic) will be changing thier name to Panasonic for all subsidiaries.

[Syphon Filter @ Mar 7th 2008 4:44AM]

As a custom installer and Pioneer owner myself, I too will be keeping a close on eye on future Pioneers.

Pioneers plasmas are the best currently available on the market. Hopefully this switch/move will not affect their picture quality and exacting standards and general build quality and attention to detail.

A sad day in some respects but hopefully the pride that Pioneer have for their product will continue and we as consumers will not be affected by this move.

[Sean @ Mar 7th 2008 4:51AM]

Montusama:
Pioneer lost 96 million this year on PDPs they've cut their projections for selling units in almost half. They have been losing money on PDP for the last 3 years. Pioneer hasn't really marketted their units that well really.

Asterra - Fujitsu called it quit with plasma also. Panasonic and Hitatchi are the only 2 Japanese plasma manufacturers left.

Britboyj27 - Sharp owns a small stake in Pioneer, Pioneer will be providing Sharps with speaker systems, working together on blu ray players as well. In return Pioneer will be getting Sharp LCD panels to work with, presumably for the 42 inch and under market. Originally Pioneer wanted to work with Panasonic completely, but it looks like they will be able to source plasma panels with them for bigger tvs.

[RaynorWolfcastle @ Mar 7th 2008 5:05AM]

I really, really hope that they will license their plasma technology to Panasonic (or anyone else for that matter) so that plasmas with ultra-deep blacks will live on in one form or another. It would be a real shame for this technology to languish on a shelf somewhere collecting dust while all we get are inferior LCDs.

[Nuker @ Mar 7th 2008 5:18AM]

re: "...the 42-inch its providing ..."

Perhaps the author should have paid attention during English class. Apparently he/she does not know the difference between "its" and "it's." It is a sad commentary on our educational system when a person who is supposedly a trained journalist cannot weild the tools of his/her trade properly.

"...take look at the .pdf..."

What happened to the good old fashioned editor who used to catch these errors? Better yet, why doesn't the author edit the piece before releasing it?

[Shaun666 @ Mar 7th 2008 7:17AM]

Ha Ha - you mis-spelt wield !

[Aron Trimble @ Mar 7th 2008 10:27AM]

Way to go sucka - awfully quite now, ain't'cha?

/me really hopes that got under his/her/it's skin

/me can't stop

[Robohunter @ Mar 7th 2008 2:06PM]

Nuker misspelled "wield", and he left out the crucial hyphen in "old-fashioned editor". It also should have been "such errors", rather than the too-specific "these errors", and the tense is wrong at the end: it should be "why didn't", not "why doesn't".

See how annoying posts like this can be?

What a sad indictment on the state of the educational bla bla bla bla bla.

[enjoylabor @ Mar 10th 2008 4:19PM]

I bet you have a 89 IQ. Stop trying to make up for it.

[dontpetthesheep @ Mar 7th 2008 6:18AM]

looks like this is the one time where early adopters DIDNT get screwed.

Good thing my dad bought a Kuro back in november, instead of holding it off. Shame. Serious shame. Kuro was the best plasma on the market, now looks like they're just going to hand that title to Panasonic.

[Tom @ Mar 7th 2008 8:42AM]

I wasn't going to upgrade my Pioneer 720p (pre-Kuro, bought 2 years) set, after all the posts here how 720p was fine in most environments. Eventually I was going to upgrade to 1080p in a few years when those infinite contrast babies at CES appeared on the market. Now I feel I should grab a 1080p Kuro now before they are no more (I wonder if this will start a run on the sets!).

[Andrew Devis @ Mar 7th 2008 8:44AM]

From the PDF "after panel production for our next series of models is
complete."

So we still get one more good TV :-)

[pyromonkey007 @ Mar 7th 2008 9:37AM]

I read they will stop production after this current line is finished. Does this mean they will be coming out which the concept extreme contrast in the next gen still (not the 9mm one)?

[John @ Mar 7th 2008 10:46AM]

I'm still REALLY happy with my Pio Elite 50" 720p set. Hopefully by the time I'm ready to replace it the dust will have settled with this and Kuro will still be around and at the same (or better) level of performance, even if the panels are coming out of another company's factory.

[KingSizeDeluxe @ Mar 7th 2008 11:13AM]

Seems like early adopters didn't get screwed on this one.

The pannys are great screens but one huge factor that scares me away is their enormous power consumption (almost twice that of Pioneer for comparable models). Hopefully this technology will be passed as well.

As long as panny comes up with PDPs with great PQ and low power consumption, I'm all for it. However, a part of me is saying "It will never be the same." We'll just have to see.

Guess current KUROs are going to start selling out soon.

[OneLove @ Mar 7th 2008 11:17AM]

Pioneer plasma prices everywhere just went up and now salespeople are giving you the its the limted edition plasma bs.

[ksjohnsonz @ Mar 7th 2008 11:23AM]

This is very sad for the LCD and Plasma business where Sony and now Pioneer are in bed with Sharp who is selling US Americans third rate LCD panels with tons of defects. The US government needs to step in on all these quality issues especially as we are forced to transition to digital and people start racing out to buy TVs in 2008 and 2009 for the transition only to be met with quality issues. The viewing angles on "ALL" and I mean all Sharp LCD panels is horrible as compared to the competition. They also "claim" to perform with 4 and 6ms response but the reality it eyeball tricks to fake those response times. Color response is also horrible and so it panel surface consistency.

How in the world does Pioneer hope to maintain its status as a quality electronics producer? Just when I was thinking to sell my Sharp and get a Plasma, we're back to crummy Sharp.

[KingSizeDeluxe @ Mar 7th 2008 11:40AM]

Geez the price on the PDP-5080HD @ Best Buy jumped back to MSRP. I called a local dealer and they increased their prices by $100. Hm...anyone else seeing this?

[Chris @ Mar 7th 2008 1:13PM]

Isn't Kuro LCD an oxymoron? What's the Japanese word for "gray"?

I know, a little flame-y, but the odds are pretty good that this year's Kuro LCDs will be trounced by last year's Kuro plasmas, at least in terms of "black levels, gamma ramps, flesh tone reproduction, color gamut, etc." What a shame.

[Dancin' @ Mar 7th 2008 10:50PM]

The pdf shows that Pioneer will loose money. It seems they did not get the sales volume needed to amortize out there costs over enough units. Unfortunately a flawed business plan. Interestingly, Apple seems to be able to make a similar strategy work. Apples computers cost more and supposedly are better products and people are running out to buy them. Pioneer however was not able to make the average consumer desire their Kuro TV's in the same way. So the $1,000-2,500 extra cost of the TV turned people away. Was it ever really worth that much more to get the better display? To some yes; to most of us no. So sales fell short and the direction of the company will change. I don't think you will see a run up in prices a quick check tonight of the Internet authorized Pioneer dealers showed me no price increases at all. I've been watching these sets since Christmas waiting to see a sub $4,000 PDP-6010FD 60. On Amazon, that target is only $370 dollars away. How can you think in six months when every other set maker will have slashed prices by 10-15% that these will actually go up in value. Dream on.

If any of you have seen the 11 inch Sony OLED TV as I have, there is where the future lies. Better than a CRT with no doubt at all. Now $2,500 for an impossibly thin 11 inch display makes the Pioneer TV's seem cheap, but the difference between the OLED picture and a Kuro is as dramatic as the difference between a 1080p HDTV and an old CRT TV. I've heard that Panasonic has already been working on their next generation of plasma that will have the blackest blacks ever.

Technology will march on and the sets will continue to improve and prices will continue to decline. The Pioneer Kuro line will be remember as a high mark in the first decade of the 21st century. But in less than two years, by 2010, most everyone will be able to buy something much better with less money.

[David @ Mar 8th 2008 12:53AM]

I work for Best Buy and I can tell you Kuro have the best picture but are the most expensive and 90% of consumers buy by pricepoiint ergo Pioneer's current business model isn't cutting it.

If they were more like say a Denon and catered to enthusiests maybe they could make but they produce al ot of Tvs that don't get bought unless you forget the fact you can still buy FHD1s brand new in the box...

I personally think they could make a good plasma using Panny's panels and their Kuro technology...we'll see.

Also most customers are still afraid of plasmas from allt he urban myths from like four years ago...PDP is just getting killed by LCD.

[Joe @ Mar 8th 2008 7:59AM]

Roll on OLED!

[Alienwarez @ Mar 11th 2008 9:04PM]

Just letting you all know that Panacronic bought the R&D behind the Pioneer Kuro range for £50m. As of summer this year we will see the end of the 8 series and beginning of the 9 series kuro and that will be the last in house screen. Pioneer will be making some more in car navigation systems with a "twist"