Can PDPs come back? In the PDP world, the answer to that question would be, "We never left!" PDPs produce excellent images at highly competitive prices. Motion blur performance of even low-end PDP-TVs is better than that produced by high-end LCD-TVs. Color gamut of low-end PDP-TVs is superior to that on all but high-end LCD-TVs, and many people find the self-luminous PDP display, which uses CRT-like phosphors, to be more pleasing and natural-looking than backlit LCD-TVs. In terms of value for money, PDP-TVs are exceptional.

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor

And unit sales keep rising. What’s the problem?

The problem is that LCD-TV unit sales have been rising much faster, so PDP-TV market share is declining. And although unit sales have been rising, revenues have not always followed suit. For everyone but Matsushita (Panasonic), there have been quite a few unprofitable quarters in the last couple of years.

Plasma’s cost advantage over LCD is the key to its continued success, and that advantage has been eroding seriously in the 40-/42-inch segment. In its 2007 PDP Technology Report, released last week, DisplaySearch said the outlook for plasma TV cost reductions and performance improvements are closely tied to improvements in luminous efficacy. DisplaySearch’s Y.S. Chung explained, "It will be critical for plasma manufacturers to increase luminous efficacy to improve their competitive position with LCD-TV manufacturers who continue to target larger and larger sizes where the plasma share is highest. We believe a doubling of luminous efficacy to 5.0 lm/W will happen this decade and can reduce plasma panel manufacturing costs by 9-11% vs. 2.5 lm/W costs, primarily due to reductions in address and sustain voltage levels and resulting increases in circuit integration. In addition, further improvements in luminous efficacy to 10 lm/W could reduce costs by as much as 40%."

At 10 lm/W, Chung expects plasma panel brightness to reach 800-1000 cd/m² for full-screen brightness and expects power consumption to be just 150W at 800 cd/m² for a 42-inch HD-PDP. These improvements would give plasma the upper hand in brightness and power consumption vs. LCDs. (Note: Insight Media has questioned claims for this level of full-screen PDP brightness in the past.)

The report added that the number of panel manufacturing process steps could be reduced from roughly 50 today to just 10-15, and that there could be a 50% reduction in process time with 10 lm/W technology.

These are such interesting predictions that we thought they deserved a second opinion. So we asked PDP guru and former Plasmaco CEO Larry Weber if he felt the predictions were credible.

Larry said, "In general this is credible. As I pointed out [at LatinDisplay 2007] in Brazil, the 10 lm/W is a target and not an actual lab result. This is a longer-range target. A 5 lm/W product this decade could indeed happen. 5 lm/W is very well established in the current lab results.

As far as the impact of luminous efficacy on costs, I have been singing this sermon for a few years now. Most of the PDP costs are in the circuits and most of the circuit costs are for the power supply board and the sustainer board. Costs for these boards scale linearly with power."

So, to the question "Can PDPs Come Back?" the answer is "Yes." But there’s much more to be said about both the question and the answer, as you will be able to see in the forthcoming issue of Insight Media’s "Large Display Report."

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