TAKE A STEP INTO THE 3D WORLD...

Panasonic has officially set its roadmap for the year to come at its annual European convention – held this month in the German city of Munich.

The event brings together the main partners and representatives of the company, with the official theme this year being “Step into the 3D world”. Consumer Lifestyle News was there…

A Positive Spin to the Year...

The show opened up with Panasonic’s European President, Laurent Abadie, who was very positive concerning the sales figures for Panasonic and how they have reached a 10.2% total market share in 2009 (according to GfK). He also pointed out that Panasonic is #1 in Plasma (with 39.3% share) and #1 BD player with the DMP-BD60. He also showed the new PDP factory, Amagasaki, which opened in November 2009 and their upcoming LCD factory, Himeji, on track to open in July 2010. He also spoke about Sanyo joining the Panasonic group, finalised at the end of 2009.  He then turned his attention to what will eventually become the focus of this year’s convention, 3D. "I believe that Full HD 3D TVs will spark a new revolution in home entertainment”.

Next up was Hirotoshi Uehara, Director of PDP TV Business Unit in Japan who introduced the new updates in NeoPDP, such as a new reduction in power consumption (from 200 w to 129 w) and no more pilot lamps in the 2010 models, which means a new native contrast ratio of 5 million to one, 4x luminance efficiency and “Infinite Black Pro”.

Mr Uehara spoke about Viera’s strategy, as their mission will be to create new and exciting television experiences, and use their business strategy to strengthen product planning, cost and marketing, and finally, as a challenge, target their marketing to becoming #1 in flat TV.

Finally in speaking about 3D, he said that only plasma flat screens will be up for the challenge of 3D, as LCD’s response times are slower. "NeoPDP is deemed to be the most suitable for 3D, thanks to its crosstalk reduction”, he said.

Fabien Roth next took the stage. First big news is that 69 new plasma TVs will be introduced this year. Also spoke about their new LED LCD TV’s D28 series, which includes a 42’ version not seen at CES. He then spoke about the various applications for the new plasmas, such as Skype, Dailymotion, Euronews, etc.

New 3D Plasma was introduced: more accurately the TX-P50/65VY20E, which has all the bells and whistles of the Viera TVs, but in 3D and 50’/65’. Then the invitees watched a brief interview with the head of 3D content at Orange, which demonstrates how Panasonic is pushing for more 3D content in Europe.

Mamoru Yoshida, Senior VP of Panasonic AVC then took the stage to introduce the BD-T300, the first 3D BD player. It also has wireless speakers. 

There was also new camera line called the GF1, one of the “bridge cameras”, which allows anyone to take crisp, clear photos.

Finally, Tetsuro Homma, director of Panasonic’s Media Business Unit spoke about how MPEG-4e is on its way to becoming the prime standard. He also spoke at length about the reliability of BD storage for things such as a wedding videos and how Panasonic’s BD recorded discs are estimated to last 50 years.