South Korea's LG Electronics unveiled a 71-inch Plasma Display Panel (PDP) TV set last week, claiming it is the biggest of its kind available.
The wide-screen TV is capable of displaying high-definition 1080-line progressive scan video and went on sale in LG's home market last week. It comes packaged with a home theater system, speakers, and a set-top box receiver for digital terrestrial broadcasting, says Karen Park, a spokesperson for LG.
As if having the world's largest PDP TV in the living room wasn't enough for their customers, LG has painted parts of the TV and the various components with 24-carat gold paint. The result is that the world's largest PDP TV is also the world's most expensive, according to LG. The package will set customers back a cool $75,700, says Park.
The company has plans to put the set on sale in the U.S., Middle East, and Commonwealth of Independent States before the end of the year, she says.
Big Screens
The set is several inches larger than a TV introduced by Panasonic earlier this year. That set has a similar resolution and a screen that measures 65 inches diagonally. It doesn't come with gold paint or a home theater system, but is already on sale in Japan at a more affordable but still pricey $20,195. Panasonic plans to sell it in the U.S. market sometime in 2005.
While LG's latest set is the largest in commercial production, it's not the largest PDP that the company has made. In October 2003 it announced the development of a prototype screen that measures 76 inches diagonally. The company hasn't indicated when that panel will go into commercial production but the 71-inch panel included in this week's TV was announced as a prototype in July 2003.
LG is gunning for a larger share of the global market for flat panel displays. It aims to have a 30 percent share of the PDP module market by 2005, the number one position in the PDP TV market by 2006 and the number one position in the LCD TV market by 2008.
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