In its lead display story this morning, DigiTimes quotes LG Electronics as saying that the company "is scheduling the time for mass production in overseas markets" of a television set based on LG.Philips LCD’s (LPL’s) record-breaking 100-inch-diagonal LCD.

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor
Mobile Display Report

Now, although that sounds like a commitment, it isn’t. First of all, "mass" production of a 100-inch panel doesn’t mean a truly massive number of units - not when the production cost is over $150,000, a number DigiTimes’ quoted from an LGE press release. Second, the schedule could wind up calling for commercialization in, say, 2008 - and that wouldn’t be a bad idea given the amazingly noisy images we saw on the prototype 100-incher shown at IMID/IDMC ‘06 in Daegu, Korea in August and at Flat Panel Display International in Yokohama last month.

At both exhibitions, the panel had so much video noise as to be nearly unwatchable: The noise was visible (and extremely objectionable) from 8 feet away. Every other large LCD and PDP panel at the shows, including LPL’s, were showing reasonably clean images. This was a problem with the panel, not the feed.

LPL would do itself a favor by fixing what needs to be fixed before its next public demonstration of the 100-inch. As for "mass" production, I’m not holding my breath - not when you’ll be able to buy one of Panasonic’s 103-inch, Full HD plasma TVs for a paltry $69,999.95 (MSRP) this Christmas. And although display gurus will always argue endlessly about the fine points of image quality, there are no overt faults in the Panasonic image that assault you from 8 feet away.

LGE has some homework to do.