Panasonic IPS-Alpha LCD Panel Technology

A quick overview of the panel technologies

Viewing angles on TN are substantially worse, particularly vertical viewing angles, and all TN LCD panels are natively 6-bit panels that use dithering to approximate 8-bit color. Most people won’t notice the difference in color accuracy, but imaging professionals would definitely prefer something better. The advantage of TN panels is that input lag is not a problem. Response times are usually lower on paper, but again it’s difficult to actually see the difference between a 2ms panel and a 6ms panel, especially when the display refreshes every 17ms (60 Hz refresh rate).

PVA and IPS are basically the exact opposite of TN: great viewing angles, very good color reproduction, and true 8-bit colors. However, pixel response times are a little lower (it’s not something that has ever bothered us). The big problem on the S-PVA panels are input lag, ranging from as low as 20ms up to nearly 50ms. However, S-IPS panels (example of S-IPS brand LCD TV is Panasonic Viera) don’t seem to have a problem with input lag.

Viewing Angle Comparison Chart Released By Sharp

A less common panel type is MVA, which in practice is similar to PVA but seems to perform better in regards to input lag. Color quality and other aspects are also good, but pricing and availability is a concern.

Frequently, the choice will come down to getting something larger with a cheaper TN panel versus getting a smaller LCD with a PVA/IPS panel. Even among the same panel technology, however, there are wide variations in quality. Most LCD panels are manufactured by one of only a few companies (Taiwan Chung Hwa Picture Tubes, Chi Mei Optoelectronics), but similar to processors these panels are “binned” based on quality. Bottom line, you get what you pay for! If you’re wondering why LCD A seems to have the same specifications as LCD B but costs significantly less, it’s very likely that the panel doesn’t meet the same quality standards. Color uniformity is one of the big differences between various LCD panels, with the best panels often ending up in displays that cost twice as much as LCDs that are otherwise equal in terms of specs.

Hiroshi Take, one of the managers of Sharp Corp.’s latest and most advanced television factory, beams like a proud father. The gleaming white $1.4 billion Kameyama factory, 260 miles southwest of Tokyo, came online in year 2004 and is cranking out thousands of Sharp’s hot-selling large-screen flat-panel Aquos TVs per month.

Sharp got its flat-screen focus from Katsuhiko Machida, the company’s president, who for years fretted that his outfit was doomed to be a second-tier player. When he ran Sharp’s television business in the 1980s, Machida says, the firm had trouble competing because it didn’t manufacture the most important TV component, the cathode-ray tube. Forced to cobble together parts bought from competitors, Sharp was little more than an assembler, cranking out sets that were always a little too expensive and a little too poorly engineered to attract many customers. It was a dispiriting struggle, says Machida, but it taught him an ironclad belief that is now axiomatic throughout the company: “If you are in electronics and you are not strong in TVs, your business and your brand will suffer.”

When Machida became president in 1998, he wasted no time acting on his theory. Sharp, he knew, had long excelled at developing products featuring liquid-crystal displays (LCDs). It released the first mass-market LCD calculator in 1973, developed its first flat-panel LCD TV in 1987 and dabbled in LCD televisions throughout the 1990s. Building on that foundation, Machida moved LCD TVs to the forefront of Sharp’s strategy. He spent heavily over three years on the design, manufacture and marketing of a new flagship TV brand dubbed Aquos, and his bet paid off. Launched in January 2001–a moment referred to inside the company as the Big Bang–Aquos quickly became the coolest name in TVs since the Sony Trinitron. Sharp is now the world’s biggest seller of LCD televisions, accounting for 1 in 4 of all LCD sets sold.

Sharp AQUOS LCD Televisions

Wow, from the bold statement above, I can say that Sharp captured more than 25% of LCD televisions market share worldwide. Anyway, right now, Sharp is the only company that produce own LCD panel, LCD TV and has it own intellectual property on LCD technology that remain solo in LCD televisions fierce war.

Even in his core business of manufacturing LCDs, Machida is playing to Sharp’s strengths and avoiding margin-killing commodity products. Taking on Goliaths like LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics across every LCD product line would be foolish, he says. They’re dominant, for example, in mass-market LCD panels used in smaller, cheaper TVs and in laptops. Rather than engage them in a murderous price war, Sharp concentrates almost exclusively on ever larger TVs or on small, high-quality panels found in cell phones, car navigation systems and handheld game players like Sony’s PSP and Nintendo’s DS. That tactic has enabled Sharp to withstand the margin pressure that’s ravaging its rivals.

Right next door to the Kameyama plant that opened last year, Sharp is building a larger, more advanced plant, costing another $1.4 billion, that is scheduled to open in 2006. But Sharp’s competitors are also building furiously. In a joint venture, LG Electronics and Royal Philips Electronics are spending $5.1 billion to create the world’s largest plant for LCDs. Sony, whose lack of flat-screen capacity has been a huge disadvantage, is teaming with Samsung in a $2 billion LCD venture. Hitachi, Toshiba and Matsushita have similarly joined forces. In the U.S., computer maker Dell is getting into the flat-panel game. However, Sharp is happy to go it alone, hoping that it’s strong enough technologically to maintain a leadership position without a partner.

Sharp Kameyama LCD Televisions Plant

Source of article above from Time’s Sharp’s New Focus (www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1106322-1,00.html)