Go Big or Go Home

By Tim Kelly, Forbes.com

The biggest television screens in the world, 108 inches on the diagonal, are rolling off the production line at Sharp Corp.'s factory in Kameyama, Japan. Robots use gentle suction to lift and move these incredibly fragile sheets of glass, which are as broad as a king-size bed, as thin as a credit card and two thousand times as smooth as window glass. Other robots cover their surface with dollops of milky liquid crystal, lay on top a matching piece of glass and cut them up into small panels for assembly. You can't buy the 108-inchers--at least not yet. Sharp has produced only eight exhibition models. It takes six people to lug one around and costs the company as much as $40,000 just to ready one for public viewing. Size is beginning to matter greatly in the flat-panel display business. Sharp is locked in a manufacturing arms race with Sony, Samsung and the LG Electronics-Philips joint venture to make the biggest sets at the lowest cost. As you'd expect, security is extremely tight at the $3 billion Kameyama factory, the largest one producing electronics in Japan. Cell phones are forbidden. Workers wear color-coded uniforms to identify anyone who's not where he's supposed to be. Only a handful of senior managers at Sharp know the plant's full layout. Last year Sharp lost, for the first time, its lead in the liquid crystal display business, a blow to the pride of the company that invented LCD technology in the 1970s. Samsung, Sony and LG-Philips' joint venture leaped ahead as firms throughout Asia rapidly built production lines. Overcapacity ensued, soaked up only by massive holiday discounts at Wal-Mart and Best Buy last winter. Even so, LCD prices are off 20% in the past six months.
 

What's the best HDTV for gaming?

By David Carnoy, Executive editor, CNET Reviews

A few years ago, I wrote a column called What's the ultimate HDTV for gamers? Chalk it up to the pitfalls of good Google optimization, but ever since that column was published, it seems that people have been stumbling upon it in their searches and wishing my old advice was more current. Practically every week I get an e-mail or two requesting that I update it--and so I will attempt to do so. In three years, a lot has changed in the gaming landscape vis-a-vis HDTV. Back when I wrote the first column, the Xbox 360 and PS3 hadn't arrived yet (the Wii wasn't around either, but that console isn't about HD). And people weren't making a big deal about consoles with HDMI connectivity and 1080p output. Nor did you have many TV manufacturers touting newfangled gaming optimization technology. More to come...