Big, Beautiful and Wall-Mounted

Manufacturers cannot make plasma display panels (PDPs) in small sizes. The smallest practical panel has a diagonal of about 20 inches, because each dot, or single-color subpixel, is a gas discharge cell that you cannot miniaturize.

Companies are building larger panel sizes to 42 inches for wall-hanging TVs, but none have the high-resolution pixel count that computer users would expect in such a large display. Although manufacturers are building many PDPs with the 9-to-16 aspect ratio of Japanese HiVision HDTV, no manufacturer has announced one with the 1035 effective line resolution of Japan's HDTV signal -- even for panels being developed. Those in production hav e only 480 pixels vertically and thus rely on scan converters to produce a lower-resolution image from HDTV. Besides large size, advantages of PDP include light emission (rather than backlight) and a wide viewing angle.

Sony is developing a 25-inch wide-screen plasma-addressed liquid crystal panel using technology Tektronix developed. However, the constraints of the plasma portion limit pixel count to that of plasma displays, even though you view the image on an LCD screen, which in turn may limit the viewing angle. Sharp has a sublicense on the technology from Sony.

Stacked Fujitsu 21-inch PDPs are in use at the New York Stock Exchange to display prices. Airport information displays could be another big user. Other applications might include the use of a giant VGA display in classrooms or conference rooms. The price of market leader Fujitsu's 42-inch panel is Y500,000 ($4500). The firm says it will invest an additional Y40 billion ($363 million) in 1998 to increase pr oduction. NEC is also producing a 42-inch PDP.

Fujitsu president Tadashi Sekizawa says that by the year 2000, the market for plasma displays will reach 3 million units per year. Even if the industry reaches such volumes, it still pales in comparison to the 100 million CRT-based TVs sold in 1996.