Panasonic To Quit Making Plasma Televisions - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: SgtRock
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 10, 2013, 05:13:11 am
content: Greetings EEVBees:--Panasonic is getting out of the Plasma TV business. I have always thought they made the very best plasma sets, and the only ones that were guaranteed to have good reliable capacitors in them. Also, they were designed in such a way, apparently, so that one bad board did not usually take a bunch of others with it.http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/09/panasonic_plasma_tvs/“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”H.L. Mencken 1880 - 1956Best RegardsClear Ether

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2013, 08:22:11 am
content: Yep, I also found Panasonic electronics to be good quality.But their after-sales support is terrible. When my projector had an issue they refused to sell me a replacement custom IC. I had the part number for it, and they stocked the part but I was told they needed the serialnumber to confirm my projector was a local model and not a parallel import. They wouldn't sell parts for parallel imported modelsAlso, on the subject of plasma displays, you might find this entertaining

author: hedgewallace
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2013, 08:38:00 am
content: This seems very odd.I suppose with a strong market in LED and LCD Televisions, this is a move that Panasonic has chosen to make.Panasonic seem to have a lot of plasma Televisions on sale, so this is very odd.Perhaps Panasonic are going to target more at LED and LCD Televisions?

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2013, 09:53:56 am
content: i use a 720P Panasonic AE900 projector and would never go back to a regular LCD/Plasma TV for watching TV/movies. The big screen is just so nice.99% of my TV/Movie watching is after work, so its dark enough for the projector to work well.I recently replaced the projector lamp and it really improved the contrast and brightness compared to the old lamp.Wouldn't mind upgrading to a 1080p projector sometime in the future, but probably not until this projector dies. Maybe by then there will be reasonably priced 4k projectorsbut probably not

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2013, 10:34:41 am
content: Crap. Now we have to put up with crappy LED TVs and inferior LG plasmas (I would never buy a Samsung plasma... too unreliable... and LG's black levels are sky high.) Ugh.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2013, 11:37:20 am
content: Yes ! Good riddance. Bloody old vacuum tube technology with its high voltages.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2013, 12:21:27 pm
content: Now they can focus on true LED/OLEDIm sick of people calling TVs LED when they're LCD with LED backlight.

author: Fsck
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2013, 12:25:59 pm
content: Just out of curiosity, do Panasonic TVs use Panasonic caps?... they're completely different divisions and I've seen (probably everyone else here too) some amusing cost-cutting measures...

author: TMM
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2013, 02:02:24 pm
content: Quote from: Psi on October 10, 2013, 12:21:27 pmIt'll come back to bite the manufacturers in the arse when they get real LED tvs to market.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2013, 02:03:37 pm
content: Quote from: Fsck on October 10, 2013, 12:25:59 pmThey USED to. (begin rant.)Up until about 2011 they used Panasonic, Rubycon, Nichicon and Chemicon caps. In 2012 started seeing them use AISHI, Taicon, Lelon etc.I have seen pictures of 65" Premium plasma from Panasonic... with Lelon caps on power supply! UGH!High voltage? Highest voltage a plasma TV uses is around 200V for panel sustain. Yeah it's high but it's not like 25kV anode on a CRT.

author: Hypernova
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 10, 2013, 04:29:57 pm
content: The writing has been on the wall ever since LCD TVs came out, I am surprised that it took this long for Panasonic to realize the hard reality.

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2013, 04:46:04 pm
content: Waiting for oled's to drop. Already calibrator reviews are gushing over Samsung's $9,000 set.It's just so STUPID to market it in a curved screen (just because they can). Concentrates reflected light to a streak in the center.I really like the perfect blacks on my OLED Samsung Galaxy Note 2. You can also view from any angle with no color change.If not for oled coming, I'd prefer a plasma if only the APL would hold steady, but usually the power supplies are too wimpy.Still enjoying my 2007 DLP TV, no lag, bright, etc.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2013, 07:12:00 pm
content: i bought a cheap Transcend media player a while ago with an OLED display. Nice display ( white) and quite bright and still going well with no problems, though it did perform a lot better after I did a firmware update recently which fixed a lot of random crashing issues and fixed some weird filesystem bugs. This replaced a very old Samsung media player which ran into problems with both battery runtime dropping to a few hours from the 2-3 days it had when new and with non recoverable bad blocks in the internal flash. that was on it's second pouch cell, the original having died, and i was lucky enough to get another unit that had suffered a little mechanical damage to salvage a good pouch from.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2013, 08:30:21 pm
content: Quote from: mojo-chan on October 10, 2013, 03:46:05 pmThey're usually on the power board. What screen size do you have? Oddly, 55" and below 2012 did not use crap caps. Probably a mid-stage engineering decision.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2013, 12:55:01 pm
content: Quote from: mojo-chan on October 11, 2013, 11:14:49 amYou're probably OK then, and no it doesn't make any sense, but perhaps it's less competitive 50 inch and below? (Panasonic are the only company to have ever made a 1080p 42 inch plasma panel.)

author: ivan747
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2013, 11:25:49 pm
content: Quote from: Psi on October 10, 2013, 12:21:27 pm^ This ^It seems to be an epidemic marketing disease to confuse people about this. Kind of the same happened in my country when they introduced flatscreen TVs back in the mid-2000s. Everyone would call them "plasmas" even though 95% of the TVs where in fact early overprices LCDs, useless for our SD TV cable service. They introduced HD about 2 years ago and the still only have like a dozen of channels.The moral is 1: marketing annoys me and 2: sometimes your TV is too good for the s**t quality stuff you are watching, the same for audio gear and most commercial music but let's not get started with that.

author: echen1024
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 12, 2013, 04:44:08 am
content: I have the 65" VT30. Nothing except the new Plasma's and one other LG set come even CLOSE to the picture quality. But the LG is 10 times more than what we paid for our TV. Real shame, actually.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 12, 2013, 05:38:49 am
content: I stopped watching TV a while ago, but due to the vagaries of the TV licence system still pay for the privilege ( You really have to try hard to get off the list once on, but of course they do not go after the pirates just those that are honest) of having a TV set that is not even plugged in any more.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2013, 06:10:45 pm
content: Friend went to UK for 5 years, and on his return got the bill in the post. Even with having proof of being out of the country he had to kak en betaal for the 5 years, and a penalty to boot as well as insult. Tannie SAUK needs your money to pay for the perks and golden handshakes they are giving to the top as they roll through.

author: echen1024
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2013, 02:20:28 am
content: Please do not get me started on the bullshittiness of TV licensing...

author: cloudscapes
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2013, 03:11:54 am
content: Quote from: Psi on October 10, 2013, 08:22:11 amBeautiful! Reminds me of some of the screensavers I used to have.