9mm
Latest
Hands-on with the Pioneer 9mm-thick Kuro plasma
Engadget had the chance to get up close and personal with the recently-announced 9mm-thick Kuro plasma concept at CES, with Paul Meyhoefer, VP of Marketing and Product Planning, and Tony Ueda, Worldwide Manager of Display Technology, demoing at the Pioneer booth the night before the show floor opens. Pioneer gave the grand tour of two new technology concepts, with "advanced design" and "extreme contrast" displays. Pioneer has always claimed to target the high-end home theater enthusiast, and this 50-inch Kuro concept plasma shows that off in spades, being 9mm (0.35 inches) thick at the glass and only 24mm (0.94 inches) thick at its widest point. As seen in our gallery below, there is not even a hint of input ports or other distractions from its 40 pounds of sexy svelteness. We held up a BlackBerry Curve 8320 next to the plasma's glass, and dwarfed it with a whopping 15.5mm (0.6 inches) of depth.%Gallery-12844%
Pioneer's Project Kuro: The 9mm thick, infinite contrast 50-inch plasma HDTV
You've seen it during our liveblog, now have at in product shots. Having successfully acquired countless awards, Pioneer's Kuro line is now aiming to take being the thinnest, blackest flat panel on the market to a whole new level. Today it unveiled "Project Kuro", a 50-inch plasma that it says is capable of displaying absolute black, while also measuring a minuscule 9mm (0.35-inches) thick. Besides making Hitachi's Ultra Thin 1.5-inch thick plasma appear obese, the promise of an infinite contrast ratio would represent a holy grail of PQ. This HDTV that can perfectly mimic a piece of art hanging on the wall, is definitely not going on sale in 2008. Check out the rest of the pictures of this HDTV after the break, this is the closest you'll get to perfection for a while.
Motorola's 9mm MOTOFONE
Eat your heart out, Samsung. Well, not really, since Motorola's new MOTOFONE is not only 2.1mm thicker than Samsung's current record holding X820, but also comes up quite short in the features department. Instead the new MOTOFONE, coming in GSM and CDMA flavors at a svelte 0.35-inches, is targeting first time wireless users, prepaid buyers, and developing countries. Luckily, while Moto was weeding out those "nonessentials" like a camera, MP3 playback and a color screen (The MOTOFONE has instead an electrophoretic display with similarities to e-paper) they managed to lose that unsightly hump Samsung slapped onto the X820. Motorola's thinnest phone does include some niceties beyond size, like local language voice prompts for ease of use, dust and sun resistance, and "extended" battery life. There's no word on price or a release date, but we're sure we can find enough change in our couch for whenever it does come around. Phone Scoop is calling this unit part of Motorola's "Scalpel" platform, of which the rumored SCPL should be a bit more of an exciting member.[Via Phone Scoop; thanks everyone]
