Japanese firm aims to link all home gadgets
Vito Pilieci
Province
Toshihiro Sakamoto, president of Panasonic AVC Networks, unveils 150-inch plasma TV at Las Vegas electronics show. Photograph by : Getty Images
LAS VEGAS — Panasonic AVC Networks Co. took the wraps off a new line of super-slim televisions yesterday — and then showed off a 150-inch TV set the size of a rhinoceros.
“Can you imagine watching the Olympics on this baby?” Panasonic president Toshihiro Sakamoto asked thousands who watched the unveiling at the Consumer Electronics Show.
Appropriate for the enormous trade show, the 3.3-metre-wide television, the size of nine 50-inch sets put together, is billed as the world’s largest flat-screen TV.
While Sakamoto didn’t rule out home use of the behemoth, he said the new television would be primarily marketed toward a commercial audience.
The smaller, home-use televisions in the Viera line are less than 2.5 centimetres thick.
The Japanese manufacturer, which offers everything from digital cameras and TVs to medical devices, is pinning its hopes on making it easier to connect all your home’s gadgets and devices together.
The company has been working with hundreds of families, studying how they use their home-entertainment systems.
The Viera TVs that arrive this year will have built-in slots for memory cards typically found in digital cameras, allowing photos to be easily shown on the TVs.
As well, Panasonic will release a new high-definition camcorder that saves information to a special card, allowing HD videos to be watched on a new Panasonic TV.
Sakamoto confirmed Panasonic’s support for a new wireless HD standard announced last week. Devised by a consortium of electronics and computer manufacturers and Hollywood companies, the standard will let consumers throw away the cords hanging behind their home-entertainment systems. Technology built into new TVs and DVD players will allow them to transmit video signals automatically in high-definition.
Panasonic’s parent company, Matsushita Electrical Industrial Co. Ltd., reported net income decreased to $914 million US, down nine per cent, compared with the same period one year ago. The firm also warned that the market for electronics would remain challenged in 2008.
CES is the world’s largest consumer electronics show, annually attracting more than 150,000 people.
© The Vancouver Province 2008
