At the Society for Information Display conference in San Francisco last week, manufacturers were showing off some big displays. I mean really big!
A 100-inch LCD HDTV from LG.Philips
A 102-inch plasma HDTV from Samsung
These are certainly impressive displays, but why do they build them? Certainly, they aren’t commercial products (though I’ve been told that a few people in places like Southern California have offered to pay whatever it costs to get one of these for their living room). The point is that these are technology demonstrations, and show that the companies are able to work with enormous sheets of glass to create HDTVs. This translates into economies of scale, which I will discuss tomorrow.