Up Close with Panasonic’s 150-inch Plasma

The 150-inch plasma on display at Panasonic’s corporate office in New Jersey.

Besides its obvious size, we examine the features and specs of this giant plasma.

The feeling of heading to see it was reminiscent of those movies where a scientist is hustled to a top secret location to see some marvelous discovery. And while the location for this event isn’t all that top secret, seeing what Panasonic had to show was still a sight to behold.

After walking through the winding hallways of Panasonic’s New Jersey corporate offices, past a few security card readers and then another long and surprisingly wide hallway that leads to the company’s warehouse you’re there. Countless TVs and other consumer electronics have passed through these doors, but here is where Panasonic has set up a staging area to offer a select few a chance to behold its latest beast. It is the company’s prototype 150-inch plasma TV.

While Panasonic provided a peek of this behemoth at CES, it is hard to appreciate much on the show floor, where everything is big and loud, and more importantly how awe and wonder are part of what “stays in Vegas.” Thus seeing this HDTV up close and personal is so much more impressive, even if the demo area is still just located in a warehouse. Apparently even Panasonic isn’t quite sure how you best utilize a TV set of this size.

Equally surreal was seeing the suddenly now-so-small 103-inch plasma set, which had been wheeled off to make way for this much bigger brother. Seeing that set off in the corner just served as a reminder on how fast TVs are getting bigger and bigger.

To really prove that point my Panasonic hosts were however kind enough to wheel back in the still massively large 103-inch set for a side-by-side comparison. The fact is that the 150-inch makes all other TVs seem small, even on that is twice the size of most TVs sold today.

And rightfully so; with 150-inch screen size (measured diagonally as all TVs are), it is actually 137-inches wide or 11-feet five inches, and it is 82-inches or just under seven feet tall! More impressive is that this set is made from a single panel of glass, the so-called “mother glass” from which five 50-inch panels would be cut. That makes for a massive 1,700 pounds for just the glass, and with the accompanying shipping container this set’s travel weight is 2,800 pounds. When this set arrives at retail would be buyers should probably expect a hefty shipping cost in excess of what a 37-inch LCD TV costs these days. And let’s not even think about the fuel surcharge!

But before you decide to mortgage the house – or rob a bank – to buy one, you’ll have to hold off a bit. Currently, there are two 150-inch panels in the New Jersey location, and one of those will soon be heading to Dubai. Three more prototypes are quite big in Japan in more ways than one. The retail versions won’t likely be ready until the 2009 prime time season makes its debut in about a year.

And likewise, don’t expect to just head down to the local big box store to get one. This will need more than a big box. More importantly as this is considered an industrial platform display, so even when the price is announced (likely at CES), would-be buyers will have to save a few dollars for an accompanying surround sound system as there are no speakers. Those would only add to the weight and really a 10-watt stereo system wouldn’t do this bad boy justice anyway. Likewise the set won’t be loaded with the A/V connections we’ve come to expect with consumer model HDTVs.

Instead, this set will feature four card slots – with three being removable. Thus how you want to use it is up to you, and options should likely include dual HDMI per slot, giving this set a maximum of six HDMI inputs. Additional inputs would include RGB PC inputs and component video. Panasonic won’t be offering a composite slot, because frankly standard definition, low resolution content can’t possibly look very good.

HDTV should however look incredible. While the 103-inch model was considered a 1080p display, with 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, or 2 million pixels, the 150-inch model is a 2K/4K display with a total of eight million pixels.

There has been a lot of hype this year about how anyone can have a home theater, but a select few will make the leap to home cinema. If a projector just doesn’t do it for you, and price is really no object, this is a set that will certainly make an impact. A very big one.