At its recent retailer trade show, Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America demonstrated a new type of laser-driven HDTV design claimed to offer better colour performance than anything that's gone before - plus cabinets that are far lighter than today's large-screen plasma and LCD flat-panel sets.
The Mitsubishi laser HDTV is said to use separate red, green and blue semiconductor lasers along with Texas Instrument’s 1080p DLP HDTV chip. This combination is reckoned to significant improve the colour range and intensity, with the widest color gamut yet seen from any display source, including those lit by LEDs - a backhanded reference to the LED-driven 82in 1080p BRAVIA LCD TV set that Sony demonstrated at CES 2006.
Like the Sony, Mitsubishi laser-driven TV sets will use Extended Video YCC (xvYCC) - the latest color space standard for video applications - which each company says offers a colour range 1.8 times greater than normal LCD TV sets.
Discussing the significance of the new HDTV design, Mitsubishi's Frank DeMartin, VP of marketing and product development, said, “Mitsubishi laser HDTV technology will not only deliver unsurpassed color reproduction, but it will also enable new cabinet designs that are truly unique and revolutionary. With zero-width bezels, tapered-thin and sculpted rear cabinets and lightweight, low-height designs, laser televisions will redefine the modern look for future large screen displays.”
Significantly, the company also claims that laser technology is more "economically scaleable to larger screen sizes" than plasma and LCD (it makes no mention of LED!) and reckons that this increased affordability will lead to a mass market for very large, but very thin, high-definition sets.
Quite when US consumers will see this wonder technology in store isn't yet clear, however, nor the prospects for the UK, given that Mitsubishi pulled out of TV sets and VCR here a few years back.
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