The Biggest LCD. The rumors date back to early February at least, and yesterday LG.Philips.LCD confirmed it has developed a 100-inch TFT-LCD panel, the world’s largest. Not coincidently, the panel is considerably larger than rival Samsung’s 82-inch TFT-LCD, which previously held the record.

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor
of HDTV Retailer

The panel was made on LPL’s Gen 7 line in Paju, which processes 1950×2250-mm substrates. The screen dimensions exceed 2.2m (H) by 1.2m (V). Bus resistance in large LCDs is an issue, and LPL keeps it down by using its proprietary copper-based interconnect technology. The panel has a response time of less than 5ms, a contrast ratio of 3000:1, and an enhanced color gamut of 92% (NTSC).

The point of these “mine-is-bigger-than-yours” exercises is to obtain press coverage (which obviously works), demonstrate technological puissance, and exercise the intellectual muscles of your design and manufacturing engineers. The lessons learned can be valuable, but don’t expect the sale of 100-inch LCDs to make a substantial contribution to LPL’s bottom line.

Origami Unfolds. Microsoft has been using “viral marketing” and a teasing website to stir interest in its Origami Project, rumored to be an attempt to establish a new class of lightweight computing devices. Prototypes of the first Origami-based products were introduced yesterday at CeBIT by Samsung and ASUS, but these ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs) turned out to be underwhelming 2-pound tablet computers with Celeron M or Pentium M processors. They feature 7-inch touch-screen displays capable of running the full version of Windows XP and, presumably, the forthcoming Vista.

Microsoft’s Origami contribution is a touch-interface layer that sits on top of Windows. There’s no keyboard, but you can input alphanumerics with a stylus and pie-shaped soft keyboards on the screen. There are USB connectors, so a keyboard can be added for those of us who capture keystrokes for a living.

A third PC company, China’s Founder, has also signed on to the project. Samsung and ASUS units are to be commercially available next month, Founder’s in June, at prices between $600 and $1000 - and with battery lifetimes topping out at 3 hours. The platform supports WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS.

Microsoft says this is just the first wave, with smaller UMPCs (perhaps with Via processors) and longer battery lifetimes in the future. Microsoft missed the mark the last time they tried to push tablet PCs on the general computing public. Let’s see if they do better this time.

LG Embraces HD-DVD. Yesterday, LG Electronics, formerly a firm supporter of the Blu-ray Disc format for high-definition optical recording, said it would support the rival HD- DVD format along with Blu-ray. James Kim, president of LG Europe, made the announcement at CeBIT. LG may be the first steer in a stampede. Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group expects Samsung and RCA to introduce hybrid players that will accommodate both types of disk “before the winter is out.” (As I calculate it, winter will be over in less than two weeks.) Kim said that LG will also introduce a hybrid player.

My colleague Steve Sechrist has been emphasizing HD DVD’s strengths for some time, even in the face of what seemed like overwhelming support for Blu-ray from the Hollywood studios and the consumer electronics establishment. Steve called it pretty well: The momentum seems to be shifting in HD-DVD’s direction.

Moreover, conversations we had with retailers suggests a level of skepticism about the rollout date for Blue-ray and its lack of announced titles. A recent article in the St. Petersburg Times quoted a sales person at a local Sound Advice retailer saying March 28 is the date of the first HD DVD player sales. And, we have seen web sites now taking orders for the HD DVD players.

But given the fact that HD DVD is scheduled to roll out this month and Blu-ray is scheduled for May, the sounds of silence from both camps are remarkable, a point made by James Townsend, President of Insight Media’s financial partner Townhall Proprietary Research, in our conference call this morning. Could it be that both camps have determined that consumers and retailers are too skittish right now to justify the cost of a full-bore marketing initiative? Will we see a “soft” rollout before we see a vigorous one?

Time will tell.